State doctors' group to meet on addiction crisis

WALTHAM, Mass. — The state's growing heroin and prescription drug abuse crisis is getting the attention of the Massachusetts Medical Society.

The group representing more than 24,000 physicians will devote its annual Public Health Leadership forum to the opioid epidemic. The meeting will be held in Waltham on Wednesday with topics expected to include overdose prevention and the safe prescription of pain medication.

Michael Botticelli, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, is among scheduled speakers.

State police reported 217 suspected heroin overdose deaths in the first three months of this year. Those figures did not include the state's three largest cities: Boston, Worcester and Springfield.

An opioid abuse task force created by Gov. Charlie Baker met at the Statehouse last week and is expected to make recommendations later this year.

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Indiana faces long road to restore image after religious law

INDIANAPOLIS — Indiana tourism agencies are rolling out campaigns emphasizing that everyone is welcome, but it might not be enough to quickly restore the state's battered image after a backlash over its religious objections law.

An uproar sparked by fears that the law would allow discrimination against gays and lesbians led a few convention organizers and performers to cancel events and some state and local governments to ban travel to the state last week. Revisions to the law's language have eased some of the criticism, but experts say the state could be dealing with a damaged reputation for years to come.

In a sign that Indiana is still under close scrutiny, hundreds of gay rights supporters marched to the site of the NCAA Final Four in Indianapolis on Saturday as college basketball fans were arriving for the games. The marches called for the state to go further and enshrine in its civil rights law protection for gays and lesbians.

Chris Gahl, vice president of Visit Indy, the lead promoter for Indianapolis, said he has been in "full crisis mode" since the furor erupted after Gov. Mike Pence signed the law late last month.

Gahl said Visit Indy received more than 800 emails from people saying they were canceling trips for events such as the Indianapolis 500 or choosing a different vacation destination. The agency has been scrambling to prevent groups and businesses from either pulling out of negotiations for future conventions or canceling upcoming events altogether.

Two groups, including the public employee union AFSCME, have canceled conventions, and Gahl said two others were on the fence. He put the economic impact of those events at a "healthy eight figures."

"What keeps us up at night is the fact that 75,000 people depend on tourism for a paycheck," Gahl said. "And if we don't fill the city with conventions and visitors, they don't work."

The crisis isn't confined to Indianapolis. Fort Wayne, the state's second-largest city, has had six national conventions express concerns about continuing business in Indiana. If all six pulled out, it would represent about $1.2 million in revenue, said Dan O'Connell, president and CEO of Visit Fort Wayne.

Businesses say they've been inundated with emails from people asking for reassurance that they are welcome in Indiana, or canceling orders or plans. The famed French Lick Resort, a hotel in an historic town in southern Indiana, issued a statement Friday saying it has "always been open and inclusive" and that the new law won't change that.

Traci Bratton, owner of the Hoosier Candle Company in Dayton, about 50 miles northwest of Indianapolis, said she's received emails from out-of-state customers who like her products but say they won't be bringing their business to Indiana because of the law.

"Hoosier Hospitality has been thrown out the window," Bratton said.

But the impact is being most keenly felt in Indianapolis, which has earned national praise for its transformation from a place once referred to as "Naptown" and "India-No-Place" to a vibrant, friendly city that used sports and a downtown renaissance to land a Super Bowl and become a popular pit stop in what was once called "flyover country."

Indy Big Data, a tech convention slated for May, has lost nine national sponsors, including Amazon and Cloudera. GenCon, the city's largest convention, has a contract with the city until 2020, but Gahl said negotiations to extend the agreement for another five years could fall through because of the outcry over the law. A departure of GenCon, which brings in about $56 million each year, would be a huge loss, Gahl said.

Even though lawmakers have revised the language of the religious objections law to make clear that it's not intended to discriminate, Indiana still lacks statewide civil-rights protections for the gay and lesbian community. And economic experts said perceptions about the law could prevent companies from attracting and retaining young talent.

Kyle Anderson, a business economics professor at Indiana University said Indiana already had a hard time competing on a national level to bring in top talent. For young professionals who tend to be more progressive about social issues, the law could be another reason for them to avoid jobs within the state.

"The last week will perpetuate the notion that it's not a great place to live," he said. "And I think that will live on for quite a while, unfortunately."

Lawmakers and community leaders acknowledge they have work to do but say the state will recover.

If history is any indication, they're likely right.

Arizona battled a similar public relations crisis in 1987, when former Gov. Evan Mecham sparked an outcry when he rescinded Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a paid holiday. The fallout, which included losing a bid to host the 1993 Super Bowl and a boycott of tourism and convention sites for much of the late 1980s, severely damaged the state's image for years.

In 1992, an initiative to restore Martin Luther King Jr. Day in Arizona was approved, making it the first state with a voter-approved King holiday. The state has hosted three Super Bowls since then.

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Journalism school to release review of Rolling Stone article

RICHMOND, Va. — News organizations following up on Rolling Stone's horrifying tale of a gang rape at the University of Virginia exposed serious flaws in the report and the Charlottesville Police Department said its four-month investigation found no evidence that the attack happened — or that the man who allegedly orchestrated it even exists.

Now the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism is about to explain how it all went so wrong. The school's analysis of the editorial process that led to the November 2014 publication of "A Rape on Campus" will be released online at 8 p.m. EDT Sunday.

The article focused on a student identified only as "Jackie" who said she was raped by seven men at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house more than two years earlier.

It also described a hidden culture of sexual violence fueled by binge drinking at one of the nation's most highly regarded public universities. Charlottesville Police Chief Timothy Longo said at a March 23 news conference that his investigators, who received no cooperation from Jackie, found no evidence to support either.

The article prompted protests on the Charlottesville campus, but the story quickly began to unravel. Other news organizations learned that the article's author, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, had agreed not to contact the accused men. Three of Jackie's friends denied the writer's assertion that they discouraged the alleged victim from reporting the assault, and the man described as the person who led her to an upstairs room in the fraternity house to be raped could not be located.

By Dec. 5, Rolling Stone acknowledged that "there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie's account." The magazine asked for the independent review, which was conducted by the dean of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.

The fraternity has called the article defamatory and said it was exploring its legal options.

"These false accusations have been extremely damaging to our entire organization, but we can only begin to imagine the setback this must have dealt to survivors of sexual assault," said Stephen Scipione, president of the Virginia Alpha Chapter of Phi Kappa Psi, after the Charlottesville police suspended their investigation.

Despite its flaws, the article heightened scrutiny of campus sexual assaults amid a campaign by President Barack Obama. The University of Virginia had already been on the Department of Education's list of 55 colleges under investigation for their handling of sex assault violations.

The article also prompted U.Va. President Teresa Sullivan to temporarily suspend Greek social events. Fraternities later agreed to ban kegs, hire security workers and keep at least three fraternity members sober at each event.

___

Online:

Release of report: http://www.RollingStone.com , http://www.CJR.org

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Area hospital to use new security device

Newton-Wellesley Hospital will be rolling out new, non-lethal devices for its security staff in the coming weeks, as hospitals across the country have seen an increase in violent attacks by patients.

"As the services in the community decrease, more folks turn to the emergency room for their needs," said Dave Corbin, director of public safety at Newton-Wellesley. "(Hospitals are) all saying we're seeing more violence, and if any hospital turns around and says they're immune to it, they're either in the middle of nowhere or they're lying. It's certainly a trend across health care."

Violent crime in U.S. hospitals increased by 25 percent from 2012 to 2013, according to an International Healthcare Security and Safety Foundation report, and disorderly conduct has increased by 40 percent over the same time period. In January, a cardiovascular surgeon was shot and killed in his office at Brigham and Women's Hospital by the son of a former patient.

Newton-Wellesley is training its officers to use the Pro V2, a high-tech device designed specifically for security staff.

"It was built with this layered defense concept in mind, as the situation intensifies it is able to escalate and meet that threat, without getting carried away," said Paul Hughes, chief operating officer for Guardian 8, an Arizona-based company that sells the devices.

Guardian 8 will be at the ASIS International Boston Security Expo 2015 on Thursday in Boxboro to show off the Pro V2.

The Pro V2 has three phases to respond to escalating threats.

The first phase simply records audio and video — Newton-Wellesley will only record video thanks to the state's wiretapping laws. The second stage emits a strobe light and a siren, intended to catch an aggressive person off-guard. The last phase shoots a concentrated stream of pepper spray, which the company says is more reliable and precise than traditional pepper spray canisters.

"This is purely a defensive tool," Hughes said.

Corbin said the decision to use the device was not based on a single incident, but was part of a regular evaluation of the hospital security practices. Newton-Wellesley had planned to get pepper spray canisters for its security staff, but decided the Pro V2 was a better fit for the hospital.

"It takes the old-school pepper spray can, which is a dumb device," Corbin said, "and wraps it in technology."

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Techies mine data to reveal secrets about living in Boston

Allston-Brighton residents file the most complaints about graffiti, adding a bike lane on Blue Hill Avenue would be the best way to cut down on accidents, and Hub residents find trash problems more irritating than slow snow removal.

Those are some of the revelations from Boston's latest HubHack hackathon, which asked techies to dig into a haystack of data and come up with needles.

"We want to deliver services in a whole different manner as we move forward," Mayor Martin J. Walsh said. "This is an exciting time in the city of Boston, we're doing an awful lot around social media and hackathons ... things that the city has never seen before."

About 70 people in 17 teams worked with everything from traffic and accident data from GPS app Waze to census data to Boston's crime information, in order to highlight trends and uncover insights that could be useful to the city. Seven finalists unveiled their analyses yesterday at Faneuil Hall. Some things they found include:

•    Blue Hill Avenue has the highest collision rate for cyclists, so adding a bike lane there would give the city the most bang for its buck.

•    Commonwealth Avenue, widely considered the most dangerous for cyclists, has a relatively low collision rate based on how many people ride down that street.

• The day of the week with the most crime is Friday, followed by Saturday and Thursday.

•   Issues with trash pickup and sanitation make residents angrier than snow removal problems, according to a language analysis of Citizens Connect complaints.

• Beacon Hill ranks 14th in total Citizens Connect complaints, but ranks second for complaints about street lights. South Boston leads in complaints about trees, and Allston-Brighton leads in complaints about graffiti.

• A whopping 43.3 percent of the residents in the college-packed Fenway/Kenmore area are between 15- and 20-years-old.

•  Most neighborhoods are relatively split in terms of gender, except East Boston, which is 57 percent male.

"It's an exciting opportunity for us, for operational purposes, to help us better understand the city," said Jascha Franklin-Hodge, the Hub's chief information officer, adding the data visualizations could be used to improve city services. "The work that's being done around public safety and bike lanes may inform some of our priorities and our decision-making."

That project, which compared accident rates on streets with and without bike lanes, won first prize.

The hackathon marked the second time the city has opened up some of its information to outsiders. Last year, a hackathon focused on improving the city permitting system and three of the apps built then have been implemented.

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Iran stocks soar after nuclear framework deal

TEHRAN, Iran — The Tehran Stock Exchange has rallied after world powers clinched a nuclear framework agreement with Tehran, reflecting hopes that some crippling international sanctions could soon be lifted.

The official IRNA news agency says the Tehran Stock Exchange index rose 6.9 percent over two days. The agency says the index improved by 4,535 points to 70,261 on Sunday — the second working day of Iran's new year. It was the highest level in at least 18 months.

The framework deal announced Thursday envisions a final agreement that would pare back Iran's nuclear program for at least a decade in return for sanctions relief. Iran and six world powers, including the United States, hope to reach a final agreement by June 30.

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Regulators take comments in April on herring rule changes

AUGUSTA, Maine — Federal fishery regulators are taking comments until the end of the month about planned changes to the rules they use to set catch limits for Atlantic herring.

Regulators say they are planning to change the rules to make sure herring aren't overfished. The New England Fishery Management Council is working on an amendment designed to make sure future catch limits are based on "scientific uncertainty" and the status of the herring stock.

Regulators say the changes could be approved next year. The council is accepting comments until April 30.

Herring are important because they are sold as food and used as bait. They play a key role in the Atlantic Ocean food web. Maine and Massachusetts had by far the largest commercial Atlantic herring fisheries in the country in 2013.

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Giant atom smasher starts up after 2-year shutdown

BERLIN — The world's biggest particle accelerator is back in action after a two-year shutdown and upgrade, embarking on a new mission that scientists hope could give them a look into the unseen dark universe.

Scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, on Sunday shot two particle beams through the Large Hadron Collider's 27-kilometer (16.8-mile) tunnel, beneath the Swiss-French border near Geneva.

The collider was instrumental in the discovery of the Higgs boson, a subatomic particle that had long been theorized but never confirmed until 2013.

Scientists are promising nearly twice the energy and more violent particle crashes this time around. They hope to see all sorts of new physics, including a first ever glimpse of dark matter, during the collider's second three-year run.

CERN said the restart went smoothly and faster than expected. Still, it will be a while yet before the accelerator is working at full speed and particle crashes start.

"It will take us about six weeks to two months to establish the first stable collisions for the experiments, because we have to commission all the instruments, all the systems one by one," said Joerg Wenninger, the accelerator's coordinator of operations.

Dark matter — and its cousin, dark energy — make up most of the universe, but scientists haven't been able to see them yet, so researchers are looking for them in high-energy crashes, in orbit in a special experiment on the international space station, and in a deep underground mine.

CERN spent about $150 million on the upgrade, opening the massive machine every 20 meters (66 feet), checking magnets and improving connections.

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Kentucky's 1st loss draws best TV rating for semi since '93

INDIANAPOLIS — Wisconsin's win over previously undefeated Kentucky drew the highest preliminary television rating for an NCAA semifinal in 22 years.

The Badgers' 71-64 victory Saturday night averaged a 13.3 overnight rating and 24 share across TBS, TNT and truTV, according to Turner Sports and CBS on Sunday. That's up 48 percent from last season's matchup of the same teams.

It was the best rating for a semi since a 13.8/24 in 1993 when Michigan's Fab Five sophomores edged the Wildcats in overtime.

The two games Saturday averaged an 11.4/22, the best since 1995 and up 39 percent from a year ago. Duke's 81-61 win over Michigan State received a 9.6/20, the highest for the early game since Illinois-Louisville in 2005 and a 30 percent increase from last season's UConn-Florida matchup.

Viewership has been strong all tournament, with a string of upsets and close games the first Thursday building momentum and Kentucky's pursuit of perfection piquing fans' interest. A championship game between Kentucky and Duke on Monday on CBS would have attracted a massive audience, though the matchup of the Blue Devils and Badgers will likely still do well.

The main broadcasts Saturday aired on TBS, with "homer" coverage for the teams on TNT and truTV. When the Final Four aired on cable for the first time last year, viewership for the semis on TBS was down from the games on CBS the previous season. As has occurred with other sports whose biggest games migrated to cable, Saturday's ratings showed that the most attractive matchups can still draw big audiences even with the networks available in fewer homes.

Ratings represent the percentage of U.S. households with televisions tuned to a program, while shares represent the percentage of TVs in use at the time. Overnights measure the country's largest markets. Full viewership numbers were expected later Sunday.

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Exporting Philly: Cheesesteaks, ices and pretzels go global

PHILADELPHIA — The man intent on taking the Philly cheesesteak global saw a familiar sight from home on a recent trip to Florida: a Wawa.

The hoagie-making, coffee-brewing convenience and gas chain from the Philadelphia area is pushing hard into the Sunshine State, opening more than 60 stores since 2012 with another 25 planned by the end of the year.

Albie Misci, sales director at cheesesteak chain Tony Luke's, knows the idea.

He's helping take Philly's most famous culinary treat to Florida, California and even the Middle Eastern nation of Bahrain.

"The cheesesteak has grown from a Philadelphia sandwich, a local food, to a national sandwich. Everyone's familiar with it," Misci said in a recent interview. "When we're in Las Vegas or in L.A., they'll come up to us and say, 'Hey, Tony Luke's, you're from Philly!'"

Other staples from the City of Brotherly Love, including its beloved soft pretzels and water ice, are also going global, as their Philadelphia-based purveyors aggressively expand into national — and international — chains.

Tony Luke's has 22 stores, seven more in development and plans to grow to 360 locations within a decade.

Philly Pretzel Factory, started in 1998 as a single stand by friends who hawked pretzels as kids on the side of a busy Philadelphia boulevard, has 150 stores and plans to open 350 more and break into the international market by 2020.

Rita's Italian Ice, already up to 600 stores in the U.S., is expanding into six Middle Eastern countries and is looking to Canada and Mexico for further growth.

Rita's chief development officer, Eric Taylor, said its Philadelphia-bred franchisees — and customers who've relocated from the city or vacationers hitting the beach, the theme parks or Phillies spring training — have an emotional connection to the product.

"They want to bring water ice out to Arizona or Utah or wherever they are now," Taylor said of the sugary frozen treat, which is more sorbet than snow cone. "They take pride in bringing a Philly staple back to their home market."

Wawa skipped straight from its footprint in five mid-Atlantic states to Florida, where census data shows 3 percent of residents are natives of Pennsylvania and 8 percent are from other northeast states.

The company has stores in the Orlando and Tampa areas popular with retirees and tourists — including the one Misci saw near the Phillies' complex in Clearwater. It's opening three stores at once next week in Fort Myers.

Wawa spokeswoman Lori Bruce said the reception has been so strong in Florida, the company will continue to open 25 new stores there and 25 in the mid-Atlantic — further into northern New Jersey and south into Virginia — each year.

Across the company and employee-owned chain, its made-to-order Philadelphia-style hoagies remain a top seller.

"It speaks to the unique connection Philly foods have with people," Bruce said.

Philadelphia's boom in gastronomic exports comes at a heady time for the city.

It'll host Pope Francis in September and the Democratic National Convention next July and a major soccer championship this summer.

It's also been featured prominently on the television shows "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" and "The Goldbergs," which recreated Veterans Stadium — the former home of the Phillies and Eagles — for a recent episode.

The brands built around the city's iconic foods are following a trail blazed by every major chain before it — growing from a single store into a regional player before leaping into less familiar territory, said Penn marketing professor David Reibstein.

Think Starbucks, which started as a single-store operation at Seattle's Pike Place Market, or one of its main rivals, Dunkin Donuts, which evolved into a global coffee and pastry giant from a small chain of shops in the Boston area.

"Part of what it takes is, is that city or that region known for those particular products," said Reibstein. "We can think about Italian shoes. That's really well-known and if you say it's Italian, that must be really good. But, if we saw Slovakian shoes, no one's going to be really enamored with that."

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