Conn. university to test pot for contaminants

WEST HAVEN, Conn. — The microscope at the University of New Haven, set at 10-times magnification, shows a marijuana leaf covered with dozens of tiny bumps. It's mold, and someone, somewhere could be smoking similarly contaminated pot and not have a clue.

Heather Miller Coyle, a forensic botanist and associate professor at the university, says all sorts of nasty things not visible to the naked eye have been found in marijuana — mold, mildew, insect parts, salmonella and E. coli, to name a few.

That's why Coyle and her students earlier this year began developing a new process to detect contaminants in marijuana through DNA profiling and analysis. The aim is to be able to identify potentially harmful substances through a testing method that could make the analysis easier and quicker for labs across the country in the developing industry of marijuana quality control testing.

Twenty states and Washington, D.C., now allow medical marijuana with a doctor's recommendation, and Washington state and Colorado have legalized the recreational pot use. Connecticut and Washington state already require testing and other states are doing the same, spawning a testing industry.

"If there's no certification ... it's like saying we don't check our meat for mad cow disease," Coyle said. "That's our goal as a private university, to develop the tools to address or mediate this issue."

A number of labs around the country are testing marijuana for contaminants using different methods, many of which have been around for decades and used to test other plants, including food crops, for harmful substances.

The health effects of marijuana tainted with mold, pesticides and other contaminants aren't clear, said Mason Tvert, a Colorado-based spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, D.C. The project was founded in 1995 to lobby for the reduction or elimination of penalties for marijuana use.

"Although we have not seen significant problems with tainted marijuana in the past, we should certainly be taking steps to make sure it's not a problem in the future," Tvert said. "We have never seen a death solely associated with marijuana use. The same certainly can't be said of alcohol and other drugs."

Food and Drug Administration records from 1997-2005 show no cases in which marijuana was the primary suspected cause of death, but the drug was listed as a secondary suspected cause contributing to 279 deaths.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in July that an "epidemic" of synthetic drug use has caused rising numbers of deaths and emergency room visits.

One study released earlier this year, however, found that pesticide residues on cannabis are transferred to inhaled marijuana smoke, possibly posing a "significant toxicological threat." The study was done by The Werc Shop, an independent testing lab for medical cannabis in Pasadena, Calif., and published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Toxicology.

Marijuana can develop mold from an inadequate drying process or poor storage conditions after harvesting. It can also become tainted with E. coli and other dangerous substances by being near farm animals.

Coyle will be developing a new method for creating DNA profiles of biological contaminants found in marijuana including mold, viruses, fungi and bacteria. The profiles could then be compared with DNA profiles of organisms kept in a database maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information — a division of the National Institutes of Health.

"What we're trying to do is put the information together in a user-friendly format," Coyle said. "Having some better technology in place is a good thing."

The university's work also will include identifying whether cannabis material is real marijuana or a synthetic version comprising non-marijuana herbs sprayed with THC, the compound that gets users high.

Coyle is aiming to complete the new process by next summer. What happens after that hasn't been determined. The school could patent the process and sell it for a fee to whoever wanted to use it, or could allow its use for free, she said. The school also could establish its own commercial testing lab.

The University of New Haven's work is an extension of the law enforcement-related marijuana DNA profiling the school has done over the past five years under a $100,000 grant from the federal Office of National Drug Control Policy's High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas program. The school created a marijuana DNA profile database that has helped federal authorities determine where illegal pot growers and dealers got their product.

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Ireland sees green in growing Boston companies

Ireland's top diplomat in Boston is looking to build bridges to the Bay State's business community as a way to help get his country's economy back on track.

Breandan O Caollai, the Consul General of Ireland in Boston, said local companies could be key to Ireland's continued economic recovery.

"It's a huge potential there," he said.

O Caollai, who started in August, said one of his priorities will be to find economic opportunities for Ireland, largely by convincing local companies to open offices in his island nation. The relationship between Ireland and Boston should be about more than just heritage and history, he said.

"We just don't want to sentimentalize this, we don't want it to just be St. Patrick's Day," he said. "We want it more than that."

As Ireland's economy recovers, the country is hoping American investments can play a part in its continued growth. Last week, the country's unemployment rate dropped to 12.8 percent, the lowest rate since 2009, and down from a high of 15.1 percent.

Companies "can invest in Ireland, you can have your European headquarters in a sympathetic country which has its economy in good shape," he said.

More than a dozen Boston area companies have offices in Ireland, largely technology, life sciences and financial companies, O Caollai said.

He said many companies choose to open offices in Ireland because of the availability of talent, the relatively short travel time and lower corporate taxes than similar countries.

Mike Volpe, CMO of HubSpot, a Cambridge marketing technology company, said locating its international headquarters in Dublin made sense for a number of reasons.

"The biggest thing was the talent pool and the companies that had the models that were similar to ours were right there," he said.

The office, which opened at the beginning of this year, has about 50 employees, and will continue to grow, Volpe said.

"An awful lot of the growth in American investment in Ireland is from companies that are already there," O Caollai said.

O Caollai said he, along with Irish economic development agencies in Boston, will be looking for bio-tech and technology companies to complement the companies that are already in Ireland, such as Boston Scientific, Fidelity and LogMeIn.

On top of established companies, the country is also looking for companies that can mature in Ireland.

"New York and Boston have a thriving internet startup community — we are identifying these companies at an early stage in their development," said Barry O'Leary, CEO of IDA Ireland, a foreign investment department.

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Long-term jobless to suffer

Federal benefits for the long-term unemployed in Massachusetts are set to be eliminated at the end of this month, a move community leaders and economists say will hurt those who can't find work and is not necessary for the nation's economic health.

People eligible for Emergency Unemployment Compensation, a federal program that paid for 24 additional weeks of benefits for individuals after 26 weeks of unemployment, will no longer receive aid after the program expires Dec. 28.

"It's going to be very hard. I don't know what I am going to do if that happens," said Eric Santos of Malden, who was at a Boston unemployment office Friday. "I haven't found anything."

The Malden resident said members of Congress considering moves to extend unemployment benefits should go to unemployment offices and talk to the people whose lives will be affected.

"They need to help us out," said Santos. "I don't think they realize what we're going through."

Nigel Gault, co-chief economist for the Parthenon Group, said the state of federal spending has made the cuts unnecessary.

"We're not in a situation where it's imperative to make these cuts in order to keep the budget deficit down," Gault said.

Unless Congress votes to extend the benefits, more than 2 million unemployed workers will lose benefits by March. The number of people affected in Massachusetts is unclear, the state said.

"There's a lot of people throughout the country who are going to lose that income, and there's nothing to replace it," said John Drew, president and CEO of Action for Boston Community Development.

To make matters worse, Drew said nearly all of ABCD's job training programs have been eliminated due to sequestration-related cuts. The community organization now only offers one program, and has cut 11.

Barry Twomey of Boston is retired and has a pension, but he had been working for Mission Hill Health running farmers' markets to make ends meet until the markets concluded for the season.

If his unemployment benefits were cut, his pension benefits would leave little beyond the necessities, Twomey said.

"I'd be getting by paycheck to paycheck," he said.

Michelle Amante, director of the state Department of Unemployment Assistance, said her department will try to help those who will be affected by the cuts.

"It is a priority for DUA to ensure claimants know about and are prepared for the end of this federal program," she said.

Some, including Drew, are hopeful that Congress will act to keep the benefits, which have been amended 11 times since 2008.

"I hope that good sense prevails, that they do extend" the benefits, Drew said.

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Housing recovers faster in non-judicial foreclosure states

WASHINGTON — Why have many of the local housing markets that were hit hardest during the bust — especially in California — bounced back so vigorously and quickly, with prices close to or exceeding where they were in 2005 and 2006?

And why have many others along the East Coast and in the Midwest had a slower move toward recovery, with sluggish sales and gradual increases in values?

Though multiple economic factors are at work, appraisal industry experts believe they have isolated a crucial and perhaps surprising answer: Real estate markets rebound much faster in areas where state law permits foreclosures to proceed quickly, moving homes with defaulted loans into new owners' hands expeditiously, rather than allowing them to sit and deteriorate, tied up in court procedures for years. Prices of foreclosed homes in such areas typically are depressed and negatively affect values of neighboring properties, but they don't remain so for lengthy periods because investors and other buyers swoop in and return them to residential use rapidly.

By contrast, in states where laws allow large numbers of homes in the process of foreclosure to remain in legal limbo, often empty and unsold, home-price recoveries are hindered because lenders are prevented from recovering and reselling the units to buyers who'll fix them up and add value.

Pro Teck Valuation Services, a national appraisal firm based in Waltham, recently completed research in 30 major metropolitan areas that dramatically illustrates the point. All the fastest-rebounding markets in October — those with strong sales, price increases and low inventories of unsold houses — were located in so-called non-judicial states, where foreclosures can proceed without the intervention of courts.

All the worst-performing markets — where prices and sales have been less robust and there are excessive numbers of houses available but unsold — were located in judicial states, where post-default proceedings can stall foreclosure completions for two to three years or even more in some cases.

Among the best-performing areas were California markets such as Los Angeles and San Diego. California is a non-judicial state. Among the worst performers were Florida markets such as Tampa and Fort Myers, as well as parts of Illinois and Wisconsin. All of these are judicial states.

Currently, 22 states are classified as judicial foreclosure jurisdictions, including Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Vermont and Wisconsin. All other states handle foreclosures without court participation.

Tom O'Grady, CEO of Pro Teck, says the differing rebound patterns of judicial and non-judicial foreclosure states jumped out of the study data dramatically. "When we looked closer" at rebound performances state by state, "we observed that non-judicial states bottomed out sooner" — typically between 2009 and 2011 — "versus 2011 to 2012 for judicial states, and have seen greater appreciation since the bottom," typically 50 percent to 80 percent compared with just 10 percent to 45 percent for judicial states, O'Grady said.

"Our hypothesis," he added, "is that non-judicial states have been able to work through the foreclosure 'glut' faster, allowing them to get back into a non-distressed housing market sooner, and are therefore seeing greater appreciation."

Judicial states, on the other hand, tend to be still struggling with homes flowing out of the foreclosure pipeline — prolonging the negative price effects on other houses for sale.

O'Grady noted that in non-judicial states such as California, foreclosures now account for just 10 percent of all sales, and home listings amount to a four-month supply — well below the national average. In slow-moving judicial states, by contrast, anywhere from 25 percent to 50 percent of all sales are foreclosures, and unsold inventory represents anywhere from a five-month to 10-month supply.

The takeaway here? Though real estate prices are popularly thought of as reflecting the "location, location, location" mantra, inherent in that concept is something less well-known: State laws governing foreclosure affect market values as well and govern how well they bounce back after a shock.

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Ex-New York Observer editor Kaplan dies at 59

NEW YORK — Peter Kaplan, the former editor of The New York Observer who hired a then-unknown Candace Bushnell to write a column called "Sex and the City," has died. He was 59.

Kaplan died Friday of cancer in New York City, said his wife, Lisa Chase.

He edited the Observer from 1994 to 2009. The salmon-colored weekly has a reach beyond its circulation of about 50,000 because it is read by the Manhattan-based movers and shakers it covers.

Kaplan was credited with honing the paper's snarky tone and with hiring writers who became influential voices of their era.

Bushnell's column about love and dating inspired the hit HBO series "Sex and the City" starring Sarah Jessica Parker.

"The more cancellations we got for her column," Kaplan wrote in New York magazine in 2011, "the more the paper knew we had hit the jackpot."

Other writers who worked under Kaplan at the Observer include Joe Conason, who is now editor-in-chief of the political website The National Memo, and Nikki Finke, who founded Deadline.com.

After leaving the Observer, Kaplan was hired as the editorial creative director at Conde Nast Traveler. In 2010, he was named editorial director of the Fairchild Fashion Group, now Fairchild Fashion Media, a division of Conde Nast Publications.

But Kaplan's role as a cultural arbiter was perhaps best exemplified by the creation of several fake Twitter personae in his honor, including Wise Kaplan, Cranky Kaplan and Real Kaplan. Wise Kaplan's profile identifies him as "New York Oracle."

In addition to his wife, Kaplan is survived by their son, David; three children from his first marriage to Audrey Walker: Caroline Kaplan, Charles Kaplan and Peter Walker Kaplan; and two brothers, James and Robert.

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White House: On track for health care website goal

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration says it will meet its self-imposed deadline of fixing the troubled health care website so that 50,000 people can log in at the same time starting late Saturday. Yet questions remain about the stability of the site, the volume of traffic it can handle and the quality of the data it is delivering to insurers.

Round-the-clock repair work since HealthCare.gov went live on Oct. 1 has produced fewer errors, and pages are loading faster.

But the site still won't be able to do everything the administration wanted, and companion sites for small businesses and Spanish speakers have been delayed.

Still, the White House hopes a website that is at least operating more smoothly after weeks of bad publicity about its troubles will mark a fresh start for Obama and the signature domestic initiative of his presidency, as well as give him a chance to salvage a second term that has been weighed down by health care law's rough start and other issues.

Administration officials said HealthCare.gov was "performing well" Saturday, the deadline set to have it working smoothly for the "vast majority of users," after overnight hardware upgrades to boost server capacity. The deadline fell during a long holiday weekend when traffic to the site likely would have been slower anyway and at a level unlikely to expose new technical issues.

More hardware upgrades and software fixes were planned for overnight Saturday to further improve speed and reduce errors.

"With upgrades last night and those planned for tonight, the team is continuing its ongoing work to make HealthCare.gov work smoothly for the vast majority of users," Julie Bataille, communications director for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said Saturday in a blog post. CMS oversees the health care website and is a division of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Additional data on the website's progress was to be released Sunday by Jeff Zients, the website's chief troubleshooter.

Obama promised a few weeks ago that HealthCare.gov "will work much better on Nov. 30, Dec. 1 than it worked certainly on Oct. 1." But, in trying to lower expectations, he said he could not guarantee that "100 percent of the people 100 percent of the time going on this website will have a perfectly seamless, smooth experience."

The nation's largest health insurer trade group said significant problems remain.

Karen Ignagni, president and CEO of America's Health Insurance Plans, said insurers have complained that enrollment data sent to them from the website include too much incorrect, duplicative, garbled or missing information. She said the problems must be cleared up to guarantee consumers the coverage they signed up for effective Jan. 1.

"Until the enrollment process is working from end to end, many consumers will not be able to enroll in coverage," Ignani said.

The first big test of the repaired website probably won't come for another couple of weeks, when an enrollment surge is expected as consumers rush to meet a Dec. 23 deadline so their coverage can kick in on the first of the year.

Avoiding a break in coverage is particularly important for millions of people whose current individual policies were canceled because they don't meet the standards of the health care law, as well as for a group of about 100,000 in an expiring federal program for high-risk patients.

The law requires most people who don't have health insurance to buy coverage or pay fines.

If HealthCare.gov seizes up again at crunch time, the White House may have to yield to congressional demands for extensions or delays in key requirements of the law, such as the individual requirement to get covered. Delaying the individual mandate, in turn, could lead to higher future premiums, since healthy people would no longer have an incentive to sign up.

For the system to be successful, the administration needs large numbers of mostly younger, healthy people to buy coverage to help offset the cost of insuring older people who generally use more health care services. Federal subsidies are available to those who qualify to help lower the cost of insurance.

As a result of the website troubles, HealthCare.gov, which services 36 states, signed up just 27,000 people in October, while the 14 states that run their own websites enrolled 79,000. The total of roughly 106,000 was far off the administration's estimate that nearly 500,000 people would enroll within the first month of the six-month enrollment period.

When the website went live on Oct. 1, it locked up right away. Consumers could not get past a balky page that required them to create accounts before moving on to the next step. The system also did not allow window shopping, which experts said was a departure from standard e-commerce practices and contributed to overloading.

Conflicting explanations were given for the decision, and contractors working on the site told lawmakers there wasn't enough time for testing before the system went live.

The White House initially put a positive spin on the problems, saying the system was overwhelmed by unexpectedly strong interest from millions of consumers. But after Obama tapped Zients, a management consultant, to troubleshoot the situation, officials acknowledged hundreds of bugs that needed fixing.

Obama said this week that despite opposition to the law by Republicans and others, and the past two months of problems that contributed , he believes it will work out in the long run.

"I continue to believe and (I'm) absolutely convinced that at the end of the day, people are going to look back at the work we've done to make sure that in this country, you don't go bankrupt when you get sick, that families have that security," Obama told ABC News. "That is going be a legacy I am extraordinarily proud of.

___

Associated Press writer Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar contributed to this report.

___

Follow Darlene Superville on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/dsupervilleap

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White House: On track for health care website goal

WASHINGTON — As the holiday weekend draws to a close with people returning to their regular routines, the Obama administration's revamped health care website is set to be tested under increased demand.

The arrival of an end of November deadline to repair the site hasn't stopped the work of hardware upgrades and software fixes which continued overnight. The administration says it's confident the goal has been reached and that fixes so far seem to be helping.

But questions remain about the stability of the site, the volume of traffic it can handle and the quality of the data it is delivering to insurers. And the site still won't be able to do everything the administration wants. Companion sites for small businesses and Spanish speakers have been delayed.

Weeks of bad publicity about its troubles marred the website's rollout and the president hopes this marks a fresh start.

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LeSabre shakes and rattles when it’s not on the roll

I own a 2005 Buick LeSabre with 65,000 miles on it. It has developed a vibration when stopped at a light with my foot on the brake and the transmission in drive. The vibration can be felt in the floor, brake pedal and steering wheel. Three GM dealers and one independent service agency have worked on the car. All four engine/transmission mounts have been replaced but the car still vibrates. Can you offer any suggestions?

While the engine/transmission mounts are always suspect in a case like this, there are several other possibilities. An engine misfire, roughness or vacuum leak can cause an idle shake. Since the power brake system utilizes engine vacuum for its assist, perhaps vacuum is leaking only when the brakes are applied.

In a safe location such as a large, empty parking lot, bring the car to a stop and keep your foot on the brake.

Then apply the parking brake very firmly. Release the brake pedal — hopefully the car won't move. Does the vibration/shake stop? If so, a vacuum leak is highly suspect.

Another possibility is contact between a driveline component such as the exhaust system and the chassis. A physical inspection might reveal rub marks confirming the contact.

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I have a 2001 Pontiac Grand Prix with front-wheel drive. The two front tires are P205/65-R15 in excellent condition. Several days ago I installed two P205/70-R15 tires in the rear, also in excellent condition. Will the slightly different tire size interfere with handling or fuel mileage? To my untrained eye, maybe this wasn't the best choice.

I agree — putting different-sized tires on the rear of your vehicle wasn't the best idea, but it probably isn't a complete disaster. First off, since the larger tires are on the rear of your front-drive vehicle, there shouldn't be any effect on fuel mileage.

The differences in tread width and rolling diameter between the two are relatively small. The rear tires are eight-10ths of an inch larger in diameter when new, but have the same section/tread width, 8 inches. And since the speedometer read-out is based on driveline and front-wheel speed, there won't be any change in speedometer accuracy.

Handling? That's another issue. But while it's never a good idea to mix tire sizes, since the tire size differences are very small and all four tires are in "excellent" condition, I can't see a huge issue.

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I drive a 2001 Hyundai Elantra with 178,000 miles on it. Over the past couple of years all four wheel bearings have been replaced. The first two only lasted one to two days each. The third, replaced along with the drive axle, lasted until April and the fourth went out in mid-May. The replacement lasted until July. What's going on?

Most manufacturers of front-drive vehicles utilize sealed front hub/bearing assemblies that are not serviceable. Hyundai, on the other hand, used a non-sealed hub with replaceable bearings in that vehicle.

Since the bearings were replaced individually, the quality and source of the bearings and the quality of installation are suspect. If the hub/bearing/knuckle assembly is not set up and installed correctly, bearing life will be dramatically reduced.

In addition, in July 2001 Hyundai began installing front-wheel bearing dust covers to keep road debris and contamination from getting into the bearings. If your vehicle was not fitted with these, the dust covers can be added when the bearings are replaced.

Paul Brand, author of "How to Repair Your Car," is an automotive troubleshooter, driving instructor and former race-car driver. Readers may write to him at: Star Tribune, 425 Portland Ave. S., Minneapolis, Minn., 55488 or via email at paulbrand@startribune.com. Please explain the problem in detail and include a daytime phone number. Because of the volume of mail, we cannot provide personal replies.

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Ex-BP engineer who deleted texts heads to trial

NEW ORLEANS — Nearly a year after energy giant BP cut a deal to a resolve a criminal investigation of its role in the nation's worst offshore oil spill, a jury is set to hear the Justice Department's case against a former company employee accused of trying to stymie the federal investigation.

Kurt Mix, who was a drilling engineer for BP, possibly faces a prison sentence if convicted of charges he deliberately deleted text messages and voicemails about the company's response to its massive 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Jury selection for his trial on two counts of obstruction of justice is scheduled to begin Monday in New Orleans.

His former employer pleaded guilty in January to manslaughter charges for the deaths of 11 rig workers and to lying to Congress about the size of the spill. The company agreed to pay $4 billion in penalties, including nearly $1.3 billion in fines.

Mix, 52, of Katy, Texas, is one of four current or former BP employees charged with crimes related to the deadly disaster or its aftermath. His case is the first to be tried.

Mix worked on a team of experts trying to stop the flow of oil from BP's Macondo well after a blowout triggered an explosion that killed the workers on the Deepwater Horizon rig. Between April 2010 and July 2010, BP sent him 10 separate notices that he was obligated to preserve all records related to the catastrophe, which led to millions of gallons of oil spilling into the Gulf.

The indictment says Mix deleted a string of text messages to and from a supervisor from his iPhone on Oct. 4, 2010, a day before a company vendor tried to collect documents from his laptop.

In June 2011, federal authorities issued a subpoena to BP for copies of messages that Mix sent and received around the time he was working on trying to cap the blown-out well.

On Aug. 20, 2011, Mix is said to have deleted dozens of text messages that he had exchanged with a BP contractor named Wilson Arabie. The indictment says Mix also deleted one voicemail from Arabie, one voicemail from the supervisor and one voicemail from an unidentified caller that went through BP's general switchboard.

Two days later, Mix met with the vendor and turned over his iPhone to be imaged. That same day, he also is said to have told BP attorneys that he had deleted some text messages and voicemails from the phone, including texts related to the Macondo well, according to the indictment.

The supervisor, Jonathan Sprague, and Arabie worked with Mix on spill response efforts, prosecutors noted.

"The timing of these deletions provides compelling evidence of (Mix's) corrupt intent to prevent the discovery of his text messages with the Supervisor and Contractor," they wrote in a court filing.

Mix's attorneys, however, said prosecutors never presented the grand jury with evidence about the content of the deleted texts messages.

"And had the grand jurors been given copies of the deleted text messages, they would have seen that they were not only not incriminatory in any way, but predominantly — and arguably entirely — innocuous and insignificant in substance," they wrote.

The content of Mix's messages with Arabie was "patently innocuous," Mix's lawyers argued.

"The vast majority of the text messages involve the type of mundane exchanges one would expect to find between co-workers (e.g., 'Call you after I eat'; 'have u set the time for meeting tmrw?'; where are u sitting?')," they wrote.

A vendor recovered all but 17 of the text messages between Mix and Sprague, who was BP's drilling engineering manager for the Gulf of Mexico. All 17 unrecovered messages were sent within 10 days of the blowout.

Mix's lawyers asked U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval Jr. to bar prosecutors from referring to the unrecovered texts during trial. They argued it wasn't plausible that the deleted messages had any bearing on whether BP intentionally underestimated how much oil was flowing from the well.

Duval, however, said the unrecovered texts qualified as "relevant evidence."

"All of the text messages at issue were sent during the time frame when (Mix) was working on flow rate issues," he wrote.

Duval had refused to take the case out of jurors' hands and dismiss the indictment before trial. He said a reasonable jury could conclude that Mix's deletions "had the natural and probable effect of interfering with the due administration of justice."

"Indeed, a jury might find that the deletion of harmless electronic data might have been done to hide the deletion of one extremely incriminating one," Duval wrote. "The inquiry that Mix invites this court to undertake is clearly one that requires an analysis of motive and intent and a review of testimony and exhibits that require it to invade the province of the jury."

Earlier this year, one of Mix's lawyers had urged Duval to sanction prosecutors for allegedly withholding evidence in the case. Prosecutors, meanwhile, said a lawyer for Mix emailed a potential government witness and said he wouldn't be called to testify if he spoke to defense attorneys.

The attorneys' combative rhetoric earned them a warning from Duval, who said he has "never seen such vituperative and condescending behavior and palpable rancor as displayed by some of the attorneys on each side."

"Such behavior is not availing for their clients and will not be tolerated in the future," he wrote.

Each of the two counts against Mix carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Anthony Badalamenti, a former Halliburton manager who pleaded guilty in October to destroying evidence after the Gulf oil spill, faces a maximum of one year in prison and a $100,000 fine when sentenced. Halliburton was BP's cement contractor on the Deepwater Horizon. Prosecutors said Badalamenti instructed two Halliburton employees to delete data during a post-spill review of the cement job on BP's blown-out well.

Three other current or former BP employees await trials on spill-related criminal charges.

BP well site leaders Robert Kaluza and Donald Vidrine have pleaded not guilty to manslaughter charges stemming from the rig workers' deaths. Prosecutors say they botched a safety test and disregarded high pressure readings that were signs of trouble before the blowout.

Former BP executive David Rainey is charged with concealing information from Congress about the amount of oil spewing from the well.

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Stay classy ND: Ron Burgundy co-anchors newscast

BISMARCK, N.D. — Television viewers in Bismarck, N.D., were treated to some real class this weekend when none other than the great Ron Burgundy read them the news.

Actor and comedian Will Ferrell reprised his "Anchorman" role for KXMB's Saturday night news broadcast. The former "Saturday Night Live" star is promoting its upcoming sequel, "Anchorman 2."

Ferrell read stories while engaging in some witty banter with the news team. He also clowned around, popping into anchor Amber Schatz's screen while she read a story and noting after the sports segment, "I've never seen fighting in a hockey match before. That was fascinating."

The team expected Ferrell to end with his "Stay classy" catchphrase, but he missed the cue, saying: "What? Am I supposed to read that?"

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