Rapper Ja Rule set to leave NY prison in gun case

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — Platinum-selling rapper Ja Rule was set to leave an upstate prison on Thursday after serving most of his two-year sentence for illegal gun possession but head straight into federal custody in a tax case.

The rapper, who had been in protective custody at the Mid-State Correctional Facility because of his celebrity, has some time remaining on a 28-month sentence for tax evasion, correction officials said. His sentences were expected to run concurrently.

Ja Rule may have less than six months left and may be eligible for a halfway house, defense attorney Stacey Richman said. An order to pay $1.1 million in back taxes is one of the main reasons he wants to get back to work, she said.

"Many people are looking forward to experiencing his talent again," Richman said.

Ja Rule scored a Grammy Award nomination in 2002 for the best rap album with "Pain is Love." He also has appeared in movies, including "The Fast and the Furious" in 2001 and "Scary Movie 3" in 2003.

Ja Rule, who went to the prison in Marcy in June 2011, is getting out at his earliest release date, state correction spokeswoman Linda Foglia said. He had two misbehavior reports for unauthorized phone calls in February 2012 and had work assignments on lawn and grounds crews and participated in education programs, she said.

In the gun case, New York City police said they found a loaded .40-caliber semiautomatic gun in a rear door of Ja Rule's $250,000 luxury car after it was stopped for speeding, and he pleaded guilty in 2010.

He admitted in March 2011 in federal court that he failed to pay taxes on more than $3 million he earned between 2004 and 2006 while he lived in Saddle River, N.J.

"I in no way attempted to deceive the government or do anything illegal," he told the judge. "I was a young man who made a lot of money — I'm getting a little choked up — I didn't know how to deal with these finances, and I didn't have people to guide me, so I made mistakes."

Richman said the 36-year-old rapper, whose real name is Jeffrey Atkins, is looking forward to his daughter's graduation.

"He's a devoted father," she said.

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Personal Best: When to Retire a Running Shoe

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Ryan Hall, one of the world’s best distance runners, used to pride himself on wearing his running shoes into nubs. No more. Now he assiduously replaces his shoes after running about 200 miles in them. He goes through two pairs a month.

“I know that my shoes could probably handle a couple of hundred more miles before they are worn out, but my health is so important to me that I like to always make sure my equipment is fresh,” he said.

Of course Mr. Hall, sponsored by Asics, does not have to pay for his shoes. Most of the rest of us do, and at around $100 a pair they aren’t cheap. Yet we are warned constantly to replace them often, because running in threadbare shoes may lead to injuries that can take months to heal.

So here’s a simple question: How do you know when your shoes are ready for those discard bins in gyms? And if you do get injured, is it fair to blame your shoes?

My friend Jen Davis runs more than 100 miles a week, like Mr. Hall, but has a different set of criteria for getting rid of shoes. One is that if they smell bad even after she washes them in her washing machine, it’s time for a new pair. She estimates she puts 500 miles on each pair of shoes.

Henry Klugh, a running coach and manager of The Inside Track, a running store in Harrisburg, Pa., says he goes as far as 2,000 miles in some shoes. He often runs on dirt roads, he said, which are easier on shoes than asphalt is and do not compress and beat up the midsole as much.

My coach, Tom Fleming, has his own method. Put one hand in your shoe, and press on the sole with your other hand. If you can feel your fingers pressing through, those shoes are worn out — the cushioning totally compressed or the outer sole worn thin.

As for me, my practice has been to keep track of the miles I run with each pair and replace them after 300 miles. Who is right? Maybe none of us. According to Rodger Kram, a biomechanics researcher at the University of Colorado, the theory is that you must change shoes before the ethylene vinyl acetate, or E.V.A., that lines most running shoe insoles breaks down.

“Think of a piece of Wonder Bread, kind of fluffy out of the bag,” he said. “But smoosh it down with the heel of your palm, and it is flat with no rebound.”

A moderate amount of cushioning improves running efficiency, he has found. But as to whether cushioning prevents injuries, he said, “I doubt that there are good data.”

Dr. Jacob Schelde of Odense University Hospital in Denmark, has looked for clinical trials that address the cushioning and injury question — and has found none. He’s applying for funds to do one himself, a 15-month study with 600 runners.

Dr. Schelde did find a study on injury rates among runners, published in 2003, that had some relevant data even though it was not a randomized clinical trial and shoe age was not its main focus. The study was large and regularly tested runners in a 13-week training program. The researchers failed to find any clear relationship between how long running shoes were worn and a runner’s risk of injury.

It also is difficult to find good data on how long E.V.A. insoles last. But one exhaustive study, led by Ewald Max Hennig of the biomechanics laboratory at University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany, involved 18 years of shoe testing from 1991 to 2009. The researchers measured the performance of 156 shoe models worn by runners. Dr. Hennig and his colleagues wrote that the sort of mechanical testing that shoe manufacturers do to evaluate cushioning materials does not reflect what happens when people actually run.

Over the years, running shoe quality steadily improved, the researchers reported. The shoes also changed as running fads waxed and waned. Shock attenuation, for example, diminished starting around 2000, when there was talk of shoes providing too much cushioning.

Then, when cushioning became fashionable again, it returned. But so did minimalist shoes designed for the barefoot running fad, which have almost no cushioning.

In Europe, the researchers reported, people typically wear shoes for about 600 miles. But their studies indicated that shoes could last much longer.

Most shoemakers, of course, would prefer to see us trade in sooner. Kira Harrison, a spokeswoman for Brooks, said shoes should last for 400 to 500 miles. The very light models last about 300 miles, she said.

Biomechanical studies have shown that after those distances the shoes lose their bounce, she said: “Everyone in the industry knows that standard.”

Gavin Thomas, a Nike spokesman, said a shoe’s life span depended on the type of shoe — lightweight or more heavily cushioned — and on the runner’s weight and running style. Those who are light on their feet can wear shoes longer than those who pound the ground. Those who run on soft surfaces can keep their shoes longer.

After 300 or 400 miles, Mr. Thomas said, a typical shoe worn by a typical runner will not feel the way it used to, a sign it is worn out.

But Golden Harper, developer of Altra running shoes and founder of the company, said any advice on mileage was “a lot of malarkey.” Mr. Harper, a distance runner, said most runners could feel when their shoes need to be replaced. “You get a sense for it,” he said. “Nothing hurts, but it is going to soon.”

So when should you retire those faithful running shoes, and what happens if you don’t? Despite the doomsday warnings, no one really knows. And with so many variables — type of shoe, runner’s weight, running surfaces, running style — there may never be a simple answer.

But we can take comfort in Dr. Hennig’s work. Even people like Henry Klugh, who put in many more miles than most guidelines suggest may still be fine. Their shoes may still be performing.

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In Montana’s Kalispell, Guns Are a Matter of Life

Making Guns in Montana:
Kalispell, Mont., has become the center of a growing firearms industry, particularly for high-end rifles and industrial rifle parts.

BIGFORK, Mont. — Jerry Fisher’s big and careful arms cradled a polished cutout of English walnut, which was aging in his workroom like a fine wine. The slight tapering along one edge gave a ghostly hint of its future as the stock of a handmade hunting rifle.

His eyebrows lifted as he explained the properties of this piece of walnut. “This wood will assume the moisture content of the atmosphere you store it in,” he said. “It takes five or six years to dry it.”

Mr. Fisher, 82, is a gunsmith whose exquisite firearms, decorated with designs by fine artists, have attracted customers from around the world. He built on the work of older gunsmiths here, just as younger ones hope to learn from him. He epitomizes the values of the Flathead Valley of northwestern Montana, where people grow up with, relax with and live around guns.

Since the 19th century, hunting has been a pastime in the forests that climb up the tiara of rocky peaks around Flathead Lake. Members of the growing group of high-end gunsmiths say it is the mountains, the air and the game that draw them, not the presence of other artisans. But the area’s reputation for this kind of gunsmithing has also made it a growing destination for more prosaic manufacturing of gun parts and guns — including high-end semiautomatic rifles and military weapons.

In Kalispell, the Flathead County seat, 250 people earn a living making guns or gun parts, a tenfold increase since 2005. That growth helped mitigate the effects of the recession, which was a body blow to construction, a major local employer. Another longtime industry, logging, has also withered.

Clint Walker’s company, New Evolution Military Ordnance, became one of the newest entrants in the business within the last couple of years, joining a roster of companies that included Montana Rifle, McGowen Precision Barrels and SI Defense.

Mr. Walker, who had been an editor of trade magazines covering video equipment, said Montana Rifle was “doing literally tens of thousands of barrels” for large gunmaking companies back East. “They have to slow down and stop what they are doing to help us out,” he said. “And they’ve done that. They said: ‘You guys are local. You’re family.'”

“That is a large part of the success of this area,” Mr. Walker added.

To provide trained hands for companies like these, Flathead Valley Community College started a course in gunsmithing last summer. Students learn everything from hollowing out a barrel to checkering a stock – carving fine crosshatched indentations behind the trigger both for decoration and to create a solid grip.

Jane A. Karas, a former New Yorker who is the school’s president, said the program “focuses on craftsmanship that maintains the historic values” of the area. Her colleague Susan Burch, who worked with a transplanted Oklahoma gunsmith, Brandon Miller, to teach the course, added, “You’re looking at the intersection of art and the outdoors.”

Homicides with guns are relatively rare in the area. There have been six murders in Kalispell (population 20,000) in the past 12 years, said Roger Nasset, the local police chief. His officers are never surprised to find a gun inside a car they stop for a traffic violation – and seldom bother to discuss it, much less confiscate it. Montana’s laws on gun possession are among the least restrictive in the nation.

Guns are not permitted in schoolrooms, but have been used to raise money for them. Last fall, the Stillwater Christian School earned more than $20,000 when its parent-teacher organization held a raffle for a locally made semiautomatic AR-15 assault rifle donated by Mr. Walker, a parent of two young students there.

“When we did the fund-raiser, it didn’t cross my mind, ‘Wow, we’re donating an assault rifle to a school for a fund-raiser,'” he said. It was just, ‘This is one of the No. 1-selling rifles in America.'”

Butch Hurlbert, whose daughter and teenage granddaughter were murdered with a gun near Kalispell on Christmas Day in 2010, blames the killer — his daughter’s former boyfriend — and the police, not the gun. Having a gun, he said, “is pretty much just a normal thing.”

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Robin Roberts returns to 'Good Morning America'

NEW YORK (AP) — Five months after undergoing a bone marrow transplant, Robin Roberts is back on television in the morning.

Roberts said Wednesday she'd been waiting 174 days "to say this, good morning America."

The morning-show host is recovering from MDS, a blood and bone marrow disease. She looked thin with close-cropped hair but was smiling broadly, back at work on "Good Morning America" at ABC's studio in New York.

Roberts was welcomed back in a taped message from President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, former ESPN colleagues and Magic Johnson.

ABC announced Roberts will interview the first lady later this week, to be shown next Tuesday.

ABC News President Ben Sherwood came into the studio to give fist bumps to the anchors at the 7:25 a.m. EST break. He said Roberts' health will be closely monitored to make sure she doesn't overdo it at the beginning.

"This was up to Robin, her doctors and God," Sherwood said. "It's a day that we all rejoice."

ABC didn't miss a beat with her absence, continuing in first place in the ratings after first overcoming NBC's "Today" show last spring. Sherwood said the success with Roberts' absence surprised him.

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The New Old Age Blog: The Reluctant Caregiver

Now and then, I refer to the people that caregivers tend to as “loved ones.” And whenever I do, a woman in Southern California tells me, I set her teeth on edge.

She visits her mother-in-law, runs errands, helps with the paperwork — all tasks she has shouldered with a grim sense of duty.  She doesn’t have much affection for this increasingly frail 90something or enjoy her company; her efforts bring no emotional reward. Her husband, an only child, feels nearly as detached. His mother wasn’t abusive, a completely different scenario, but they were never very close.

Ms. A., as I’ll call her because her mother-in-law reads The Times on her computer, feels miserable about this. “She says she appreciates us, she’s counting on us. She thanks us,” Ms. A. said of her non-loved one. “It makes me feel worse, because I feel guilty.”

She has performed many services for her mother-in-law, who lives in a retirement community, “but I really didn’t want to. I know how grudging it was.”

Call her the Reluctant Caregiver. She and her husband didn’t invite his parents to follow them to the small city where they settled to take jobs. The elders did anyway, and as long as they stayed healthy and active, both couples maintained their own lives. Now that her mother-in-law is widowed and needy, Ms. A feels trapped.

Ashamed, too. She knows lots of adult children work much harder at caregiving yet see it as a privilege. For her, it is mere drudgery. “I don’t feel there’s anybody I can say that to,” she told me — except a friend in Phoenix and, anonymously, to us.

The friend, therapist Randy Weiss, has served as both a reluctant caregiver to her mother, who died very recently at 86, and a willing caregiver to her childless aunt, living in an assisted living dementia unit at 82. Spending time with each of them made Ms. Weiss conscious of the distinction.

Her visits involved many of the same activities, “but it feels very different,” she said. “I feel the appreciation from my aunt, even if she’s much less able to verbalize it.” A cherished confidante since adolescence, her aunt breaks into smiles when Ms. Weiss arrives and exclaims over every small gift, even a doughnut. She worked in the music industry for decades and, despite her memory loss, happily sings along with the jazz CDs Ms. Weiss brings.

Because she had no such connection with her mother, whom Ms. Weiss described as distant and critical, “it’s harder to do what I have to do,” she said. (We spoke before her mother’s death.) “One is an obligation I fulfill out of duty. One is done with love.”

Unlike her friend Ms. A, “I don’t feel guilty that I don’t feel warmly towards my mother,” Ms. Weiss said. “I’ve made my peace.”

Let’s acknowledge that at times almost every caregiver knows exhaustion, anger and resentment.  But to me, reluctant caregivers probably deserve more credit than most. They are not getting any of the good stuff back, no warmth or laughter, little tenderness, sometimes not even gratitude.

Yet they are doing this tough work anyway, usually because no one else can or will. Maybe an early death or a divorce means that the person who would ordinarily have provided care can’t. Or maybe the reluctant caregiver is simply the one who can’t walk away.

“It’s important to acknowledge that every relationship doesn’t come from ‘The Cosby Show,’” said Barbara Moscowitz when I called to ask her about reluctance. Ms. Moscowitz, a senior geriatric social worker at Massachusetts General Hospital, has heard many such tales from caregivers in her clinical practice and support groups.

“We need to allow people to be reluctant,” she said. “It means they’re dutiful; they’re responsible. Those are admirable qualities.”

Yet, she recognizes, “they feel oppressed by the platitudes. ‘Your mother is so lucky to have you!’” Such praise just makes people like Ms. A. squirm.

Ms. Moscowitz also worries about reluctant caregivers, and urges them to find support groups where they can say the supposedly unsay-able, and to sign up early for community services — hotlines, senior centers, day programs, meals on wheels — that can help lighten the load.

“Caregiving only goes one way – it gets harder, more complex,” she said. “Support groups and community resources are like having a first aid kit. It’s going to feel like even more of a burden, and you need to be armed.”

I wonder, too, if reluctant caregivers have a romanticized view of what the task is like for everyone else. Elder care can be a wonderful experience, satisfying and meaningful, but guilt and resentment are also standard parts of the job description, at least occasionally.

For a reluctant caregiver, “the satisfaction is, you haven’t turned your back,” Ms. Moscowitz said. “You can take pride in that.”

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Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.”

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DealBook: Office Depot and OfficeMax Announce Plans to Merge, After Erroneous Release

9:40 a.m. | Updated

Office Depot and OfficeMax announced their plans to merge on Wednesday, just hours after an erroneous release about the deal briefly surfaced.

Under the terms of the deal, Office Depot said it would issue 2.69 new shares of common stock for each share of OfficeMax. At that level, the transaction would value OfficeMax at $13.50, or roughly $1.19 billion, a premium of more than 25 percent to the company’s closing price last week.

The deal has been anticipated, as the companies face an increasingly difficult competitive environment. Both companies, which are burdened with big real estate footprints, have struggled against lower-priced rivals like Amazon.com and Costco. By uniting, the two companies should be able to cut costs and better negotiate prices.

“In the past decade, with the growth of the internet, our industry has changed dramatically,” Neil Austrian, chairman and chief executive officer of Office Depot, said in a statement. “Combining our two companies will enhance our ability to serve customers around the world, offer new opportunities for our employees, make us a more attractive partner to our vendors, and increase stockholder value.”

While the deal has been years in the making, it was initially announced prematurely. A news release announcing the merger of the two office supply retailers was posted early Wednesday morning on Office Depot’s Web site, but it quickly disappeared.

Several news organizations reported the terms disclosed in the errant news release for Office Depot’s earnings. The details were buried on page four of the release under the header “Other Matters.”

As the details filtered through the market, shares of the companies jumped. In premarket trading, Office Depot’s stock rose more than 7 percent, while OfficeMax shares were up more than 8 percent.

The episode is reminiscent of other times that companies’ earnings releases were published prematurely. Last fall, Google’s third-quarter earnings were published three hours early, which the technology giant blamed on a mistake by R.R. Donnelley & Sons, the company’s printer.

Representatives for Office Depot and OfficeMax were not immediately available for comment on the erroneous release.

Strategically, the deal makes sense, as the companies deal with a changing competitive environment.

Combined, the companies reported about $4.4 billion in revenue for their third quarter of 2012; in comparison, Staples disclosed $6.4 billion in revenue for the same period.

Office Depot has also been under pressure from an activist hedge fund, Starboard Value, which sent a letter to the retailer’s board last fall. In it, Starboard called for more cost cuts and a greater focus on higher-margin businesses like copy and print services. With a 14.8 percent stake, Starboard is the company’s biggest investor.

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Obama to Turn Up Pressure for Deal on Budget Cuts

WASHINGTON — President Obama, back from his three-day golf getaway, on Monday morning will make use of his bully pulpit, while Congress remains out all week, to turn up the pressure for a bipartisan agreement to avoid indiscriminate across-the-board budget cuts that will otherwise hit March 1.

In the morning, Mr. Obama will speak at a White House auditorium, where he will be joined by first responders to illustrate the sorts of Americans whose jobs are threatened if the cuts take effect. According to the White House, the Federal Emergency Management Agency would not be able to provide grants to states and local governments that currently support hiring for firefighters and other local emergency personnel.

Some Republicans in Congress have proposed alternative savings that would spare any cuts in military spending but not in domestic accounts. Mr. Obama and Congressional Democrats are calling for a mix of spending cuts and additional tax revenues by closing some tax breaks for wealthy investors and corporations.

A White House statement announcing the president’s scheduled remarks summarized the political frame that Mr. Obama has devised to try to corner the Republicans into compromising: “The president will challenge Republicans to make a very simple choice: do they protect investments in education, health care and national defense or do they continue to prioritize and protect tax loopholes that benefit the very few at the expense of middle- and working-class Americans?”

The president’s latest deficit reduction push comes as the heads of his 2010 deficit reduction commission — former Senator Alan K. Simpson and Erskine B. Bowles, a former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton — unveil a new plan that would reduce the deficit by $2.4 trillion through a series of spending cuts and an overhaul of the tax system.

When Congress returns from a winter recess next week, just days remain before the deadline for the so-called sequester of spending cuts, a deadline that already was moved once — at the start of the year — to allow more time for the two parties to negotiate.

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McCready's death renews questions for Dr. Drew

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The criticism of Dr. Drew Pinsky spread on the Internet almost as quickly as news of Mindy McCready's death.

The country singer with the tumultuous personal life became the fifth cast member of his "Celebrity Rehab" series to die since appearing on the show and the third from Season 3. The previous deaths stirred up rumors of a curse and a debate about the show's helpfulness. McCready's apparent suicide upped the pitch of the reaction, however.

Singer Richard Marx on Twitter compared Pinsky to Dr. Jack Kevorkian, the so-called suicide doctor: "Same results."

Marx backed off later Monday, saying the crack went too far. But he restated his thoughts in a way that summed up much of the reaction in the first 24 hours since the 37-year-old McCready's death Sunday afternoon in Heber Springs, Ark.

"It is, however, my opinion that what Dr. D does is exploitation and his TV track record is not good," Marx wrote.

VH1's "Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew" is not currently on the air. Pinsky switched his focus to non-celebrities in Season 6 last fall and changed the title to "Rehab." The show spawned two spinoffs, "Sober House" and "Sex Rehab."

Season 3, shot in 2009, featured McCready, former NBA star Dennis Rodman, actors Tom Sizemore and Mackenzie Phillips, former Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss and a handful of lesser known celebrity types.

McCready was a sympathetic character on the show and appeared to be far less damaged than her fellow cast members, some of whom experienced fairly graphic symptoms of opiate withdrawal in front of the cameras. McCready suffered a seizure while on the show, further endearing her to Pinsky and the others.

She said in a 2010 interview with The Associated Press that she initially turned Pinsky down.

"But Dr. Drew said something to me that just mowed me over literally, just floored me," she said. "He said, 'You've been being treated for the symptoms of what's wrong with you, not the problem. And you're going to have to put your family aside for a moment, put their feelings aside for a moment and worry about you because if you don't get better, it doesn't matter what your family thinks. You're not going to be there anymore.'"

Pinsky diagnosed her with "love addiction" during the series' run and called her an "angel" in the finale. In an interview with The Associated Press several months later, he said McCready had a good shot at recovery if she remained in treatment.

"Like with anybody I treat, it's really up to them," Pinsky said. "I never know. If they do the work they're supposed to do, yes (there can be success). If she does the work it will be great. It's up to her how much of that she does, how much she feels she needs to do. It seems like she's doing rather well right now so I hope she continues to do so."

Three years later, she's dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot to the head. McCready walked away from treatment several days ago after her father asked a judge to intervene. Her body was found on the front porch of a home she shared with David Wilson, the longtime boyfriend and father of her youngest son who appears to have killed himself in the same spot last month.

Pinsky wasn't available for comment, his publicist said, but he issued a statement Sunday night that noted he'd spoken with McCready recently.

"She is a lovely woman who will be missed by many," the statement said. "Although I have not treated her for a few years, I had reached out to her recently upon hearing about the apparent suicide of her boyfriend and father of her younger (child). She was devastated. Although she was fearful of stigma and ridicule she agreed with me that she needed to make her health and safety a priority. Unfortunately it seems that Mindy did not sustain her treatment."

A lack of continued treatment also appears to have led to the deaths of McCready's Season 3 castmates Mike Starr, bassist for Alice in Chains, and Joey Kovar, a "Real World" participant. Los Angeles riots spark Rodney King and actor Jeff Conaway also have passed away. Starr and Kovar overdosed and King was found dead in his pool with alcohol and marijuana in his system. Conaway was initially thought to have overdosed, but died of pneumonia and an infection.

Bob Forrest, a chemical dependency counselor who appeared on Season 3 of "Celebrity Rehab" and continues to work with Pinsky, said a discussion about mental health and substance abuse issues is important. But attacking Pinsky has only distracted from the real issues.

"Regardless of your feelings about how we do it with the TV show, calling Dr. Drew 'Dr. Kevorkian,' what kind of dialogue is that?" he said. "It's a good headline. We're going through a growth spurt in regards to who we are as a country. I really feel there's something going on in America beyond Mindy McCready's death."

The most recent figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show there were 38,364 suicides in the U.S. in 2010 — an average of 105 a day. Thirty-three percent of suicides tested positive for alcohol in 2009 and 20 percent for opiates, including heroin and prescription painkillers.

There were no immediate numbers available for suicides or overdoses post-rehab, but a patient with substance abuse problems is a higher risk for an attempt.

Dr. Sharon Hirsch, an associate professor in the University of Chicago's Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience, says patients can get trapped in the yin and yang of addiction. She was not familiar with McCready's case, but noted people abusing alcohol or drugs have a lower impulse control. And their lows when they're off drugs become more difficult to overcome, also lowering their resolve.

Dealing with loss, as McCready was, also increases risk, especially around anniversaries.

Hirsch said mental health and addiction issues have to be taken as seriously as a heart attack.

"Depression and substance dependence are all very malignant disorders and I think people forget that," Hirsch said. "They think of cancer, strokes and heart attacks killing people, but depression, substance abuse and eating disorders, too, all kill people. There are very, very high rates of deaths in those illnesses."

Pinsky's shows drew attention to the struggle. But did they help patients? Pinsky has taken an interest in cast members after the shows end and referred them to continuing treatment. But ultimately Hirsch wonders who was on call the last time McCready pondered killing herself.

"One of the key components of any treatment is to talk confidentially with your treatment provider about every aspect of what is going on with you, to be able to get the best care you can," she said. "I just don't know how that could occur in the context of an internationally televised show. And so it would be difficult for me to envision it as a complete treatment program. ... It just really strikes me as entertainment and not as treatment."

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

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National Briefing | South: Abortion Curbs Clear Senate in Arkansas

The State Senate voted 25 to 7 on Monday to ban most abortions 20 weeks into a pregnancy. The measure goes back to the House to consider an amendment that added exceptions for rape and incest. The legislation is based on the belief that fetuses can feel pain 20 weeks into a pregnancy, and is similar to bans in several other states. Opponents say it would require mothers to deliver babies with fatal conditions. Gov. Mike Beebe has said he has constitutional concerns about the proposal but has not said whether he will veto it.

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Wall St. Shares Inch Ahead

Shares on Wall Street inched higher in early trading on Tuesday, putting the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index on track to extend its seven-week winning streak.

Shortly after the opening bell, the S.&P. 500 was up 0.3 percent, while the Dow Jones industrial average was up 0.1 percent. The Nasdaq composite rose 0.2 percent.

The strong start to the year has been helped by legislators in Washington, who temporarily averted a series of automatic spending cuts and tax increases, as well as by better-than-expected earnings and economic data. The Federal Reserve’s stimulus policy has also been a major factor.

But further gains for the benchmark S.&P. index have been a struggle as investors look for new catalysts to lift the index, which hovers near five-year highs.

The compromise by lawmakers on across-the-board spending cuts, known as sequestration, only postponed until March 1 a resolution to the Congressional budget fight.

The faster pace in merger-and-acquisition activity, a sign of optimism about the outlook on Wall Street, has resulted in more than $158 billion in deals announced so far in 2013.

“The firm market tone continues," said Andre Bakhos, director of market analytics at Lek Securities in New York, "fueled by a lack of negative surprises as well as an increase in M.&A. activity, adding confidence to market valuations.”

“The market has been able to shrug off minor negatives as it looks ahead to a potential bigger hurdle in the sequestration,” he said. “Until then, the situation looks stable.”

The No. 2 office supply retailer in the United States, Office Depot, surged 24 percent. The company is said to be in merger talks with a smaller rival, OfficeMax. OfficeMax shares jumped 30 percent.

The computer maker Dell reports fourth-quarter results on Tuesday, and it is expected to show earnings per share fall to 39 cents from 51 cents a year earlier. Analysts will have their first chance to question management on a buyout deal struck earlier this month by its chief executive, Michael Dell, private equity firm Silver Lake and Microsoft.

According to the Thomson Reuters data through Friday, of the 388 companies in the S.&P. 500 that have reported results, 69.8 percent have exceeded analysts’ expectations, compared with a 62 percent average since 1994 and 65 percent over the last four quarters.

Fourth-quarter earnings for S.&P. 500 companies are estimated to have risen 5.6 percent, according to the data, above a 1.9 percent forecast at the start of the earnings season.

European shares rose on Tuesday, lifted by gains at food group Danone and fresh signs of a German economic recovery, although broader market sentiment remained cautious ahead of Italian elections this weekend.

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