Scientists say they have found a way to put the antioxidants from the skin of ripe tomatoes into a pill, which would slash cholesterol levels.

The new pill, called Ateronon, has been developed by Cambridge Theranostics Ltd., a subsidiary of Cambridge University in London. The pill could be on sale as early as July.

Ateronon was launched at the conference of the British Cardiovascular Society in London. “This has the potential to affect everybody. We are very excited about it,” chief executive Gunter Schmidt said.

Ripe tomato skins contain a substance called lycopene, which is thought to protect against cancer, heart disease and strokes. Ateronon is developed from lycopene and contains other compounds found in natural foods.

The manufacturers claim that in tests on 150 people suffering from heart disease, it appeared effective on all of them.

ROCHESTER, N.Y. —  Contact lens maker Bausch & Lomb Inc. had an overriding reason for going private in 2007: It wanted to handle a devastating recall of its flagship lens cleaner, its chief executive said, “without a lot of outside distraction.”

Over the past year, away from the glare of public scrutiny, the optical products company has quietly settled nearly 600 fungal-infection lawsuits — with dozens more individual claims yet to be resolved. The cost so far: Upward of $250 million.

More than 700 lens wearers in the United States and Asia say they were exposed to a potentially blinding infection known as Fusarium keratitis while using ReNu with MoistureLoc, a new-formula multipurpose solution for cleaning, storing and moistening soft contact lenses.

Sometimes, the damage was irreparable. Seven people in Florida, Maryland, New York, Oregon, Tennessee and West Virginia had to have an eye removed. At least 60 more Americans needed vision-saving corneal transplants.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed 180 cases in 35 states from June 2005 through September 2006, when the agency’s dedicated surveillance stopped, according to Dr. Benjamin Park, a CDC epidemiologist. CDC continued to hear of sporadic, unconfirmed cases in the months after MoistureLoc was withdrawn, Park said.

“Surveillance usually captures the tip of the iceberg and sometimes it captures a larger tip than other times,” Park said in an interview.

Among out-of-court settlements reached in May was a potential bellwether case brought by Andrea Martin, a Broadway actress and comedienne whose eye was scarred. In Colorado, a corneal transplant ended a race-car driver’s career. In Baltimore, a chimney-sweep business owner who lost an eye got hooked on painkillers.

“It left him with a chronic pain situation where at one point he had to go through drug rehab,” said attorney Andy Alonso. “His business — handed down from generation to generation in his family — has fallen apart, his marriage has fallen apart and he now lives with his mother.”

The culprit, an infection so rare that most eye doctors had never seen a case, somehow eluded MoistureLoc’s disinfecting defenses. The outbreak appeared first in Hong Kong in spring 2005 and reached its peak in the United States just days after MoistureLoc was removed from domestic markets in April 2006.

Victims typically complained of eye irritation that progressed to a sudden onset of searing pain. Many were mistakenly treated with antibiotics and steroids — a delayed diagnosis that worsened the condition. A woman in New York was afflicted three months after Bausch & Lomb announced a worldwide recall in May 2006.

“She didn’t know about the recall, and the infection was so aggressive, she lost her eye within two months,” said her attorney, Hunter Shkolnik.

Leading eye doctors and government scientists concluded that MoistureLoc, launched in 2004 with novel disinfectant and moisturizing ingredients, was the only lens solution that contributed to the outbreak. Yet the mechanics of how it caused the problem are still not fully clear.

Some researchers theorize that the disinfectant, alexidine, absorbed into lenses at unusually high rates and the moisturizing agents created a biofilm in some circumstances that shielded and even fostered growth of the fungus to infectious levels.

With some fungal lawsuits still unresolved, the prospect of Bausch & Lomb’s health care nightmare being aired in court has not entirely faded — which heartens some lawyers and doctors.

“The truth has been very carefully buried, and it appears to have been buried going back to the beginnings of the outbreak,” said Dr. Arthur Epstein, who was chairman of the American Optometric Association’s contact lens and cornea section during the highly publicized crisis.

“All settlements were predicated on silence about the clinical findings and blame and so forth. My hope was that what actually happened would become part of public record in a courtroom. That way, we’d be able to learn from it and move on and make sure it never happened again.”

Multipurpose solutions have been on the market for over a decade, all but replacing older systems for rinsing and cleaning lenses.

In 2007, another popular formula made by Santa Ana, Calif.-based Advanced Medical Optics, the No. 3 manufacturer behind Alcon Inc. and Bausch & Lomb, was linked to a flurry of hard-to-treat Acanthamoeba keratitis infections caused by a parasite. More than 170 people have sued the company, which was acquired this year by Abbott Laboratories.

The Food and Drug Administration is poised to lay out more comprehensive testing standards for lens solutions.

“We did take the two epidemics as very much of a wake-up call, because contact lens safety is an essential public health issue,” said Dr. Malvina Eydelman, director of the agency’s ophthalmic division.

Financial analysts and lawyers estimate the MoistureLoc debacle could wind up costing as much as $500 million. But far more draining for Bausch & Lomb has been losing its dominance in the lucrative lens care market: 2.3 million of the nation’s 30 million soft lens wearers used MoistureLoc, generating $100 million in annual sales.

While Bausch says it has settled “the vast majority of fungal infection cases,” it is challenging another 500-plus lawsuits linking MoistureLoc to assorted bacterial, viral and parasitic afflictions. A pretrial hearing set for June 3-5 in New York will decide if there’s a reliable scientific basis for arguing such a link.

Alissa Lynch, 21, of Thompson, Conn., said she developed a parasitic infection while using MoistureLoc in college in New Hampshire. It left her with a vision-blurring scar that took a year to heal.

“We went through hell and spent a lot of money to save that eye,” said her father, Brian, who eventually decided against seeking damages. “We’re just that kind of people. I don’t think anybody intentionally looked to hurt anybody’s eyes.”

When Bausch & Lomb was acquired by private equity firm Warburg Pincus for $3.67 billion in October 2007, Chief Executive Ronald Zarrella said the deal would allow the company “to pursue the growth path we were on … without a lot of outside distraction.” Zarrella retired last year.

The 156-year-old Rochester-based company, which posted $2.5 billion in 2007 sales, employs 13,000 people and expects to return to public ownership within the next six years.

“They can do all this out of the public eye — guys like me aren’t sitting there scrutinizing the financial impact of every single settlement,” said analyst Jeff Johnson of Robert W. Baird & Co. in Milwaukee. “You can completely focus on your brand and on doing what’s right by the patient.”

Bausch & Lomb resorted to pushing an older product, ReNu MultiPlus, to try to shore up its battered lens care business. But those sales dropped from $522 million in 2005 to about $450 million in 2008, while Alcon’s rose from $297 million to $469 million, said analyst Peter Bye of Jefferies & Co. in New York.

The knock on profits was more acute. With MultiPlus already sold under generic or retailer-chain labels, Alcon’s share of branded solutions is “much higher than Bausch’s,” Bye said. “When you talk about (lens-care) boxes going out to new patients, it’s up in the 60-70 percent range in the U.S.”

Alcon’s multipurpose formula was untarnished and “that’s why they’re cleaning up,” Bye said, adding that “the stasis at the FDA means this competitive imbalance is continuing.”

Jan. 19, 2002: Dr. George Tiller speaks to a small group in a tent during a rally at Tiller’s clinic in Wichita, Kan.

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WICHITA, Kan. —  A man suspected of shooting and killing Dr. George Tiller, one of the few doctors in the U.S. who performed late-term abortions, was in jail Monday while investigators sought to learn more about his background, including the extent of his connections to anti-abortion groups.

Tiller, 67, was serving as an usher during morning services Sunday when he was shot in the foyer of Reformation Lutheran Church, police said. The gunman fired one shot at Tiller and threatened two other people who tried to stop him.

The suspect, identified by one law enforcement agency as Scott Roeder, was taken into custody some 170 miles away in a Kansas City suburb about three hours after the shooting.

Tiller had been a lightning rod for abortion opponents for decades. The women’s clinic he ran is one of three in the nation where abortions are performed after the 21st week of pregnancy, when the fetus is considered viable, and has been the site of repeated protests for about two decades. A protester shot Tiller in both arms in 1993, and his clinic was bombed in 1985.

Roeder, 51, was returned to Wichita and was being held without bond on one count of first-degree murder and two counts of aggravated assault. Formal charges were expected to be filed on Monday.

A man with the same name as the suspect has a criminal record and a background of anti-abortion postings on sympathetic Web sites. In one post written in 2007 on the Web site for Operation Rescue, a group that closely followed Tiller’s work and legal troubles in recent years, a man identifying himself as Scott Roeder asked if anyone had thought of attending Tiller’s church to ask the doctor and other worshippers about his work.

But police said Sunday that all early indications showed the shooter acted alone. Operation Rescue condemned the killing as vigilantism and “a cowardly act.” The president of the group told The New York Times that Roeder was “not a friend, not a contributor, not a volunteer.”

In 1996, a 38-year-old man named Scott Roeder was charged in Topeka with criminal use of explosives for having bomb components in his car trunk and sentenced to 24 months of probation. However, his conviction was overturned on appeal the next year after a higher court said evidence against Roeder was seized by law enforcement officers during an illegal search of his car.

At the time, police said the FBI had identified Roeder as a member of the anti-government Freemen group, an organization that kept the FBI at bay in Jordan, Mont., for almost three months in 1995-96. Authorities on Sunday night would not immediately confirm if their suspect was the same man.

Morris Wilson, a commander of the Kansas Unorganized Citizens Militia in the mid-1990s, told The Kansas City Star he knew Roeder fairly well.

“I’d say he’s a good ol’ boy, except he was just so fanatic about abortion,” Wilson said. “He was always talking about how awful abortion was. But there’s a lot of people who think abortion is awful.”

In May 2007, someone posting to the Web site of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue used the name “Scott Roeder” in response to a scheduled vigil to “pray for an end to George R. Tiller’s late-term abortion business.”

“Bleass everyone for attending and praying in May to bring justice to Tiller and the closing of his death camp,” the posting read. “Sometime soon, would it be feasible to organize as many people as possible to attend Tillers church (inside, not just outside) to have much more of a presence and possibly ask questions of the Pastor, Deacons, Elders and members while there? Doesn’t seem like it would hurt anything but bring more attention to Tiller.”

The slaying quickly brought condemnation from both anti-abortion and pro-choice groups, as well as President Barack Obama.

“However profound our differences as Americans over difficult issues such as abortion, they cannot be resolved by heinous acts of violence,” Obama said in a statement.

Wichita Deputy Police Chief Tom Stolz said that Tiller apparently did not have a bodyguard with him in church, although the doctor was routinely accompanied by one. An attorney for Tiller, Dan Monnat, said the doctor’s wife, Jeanne, was in the choir at the time of the shooting.

Monnat said in early May that Tiller had asked federal prosecutors to step up investigations of vandalism and other threats against the clinic out of fear that the incidents were increasing and that Tiller’s safety was in jeopardy. However, Stolz said authorities knew of no threats connected to the shooting.

Adam Watkins, a 20-year-old who said he has attended the church his entire life, said he was sitting in the middle of the congregation when he heard a small pop at the start of the service.

“We just thought a child had come in with a balloon and it had popped, had gone up and hit the ceiling and popped,” Watkins said.

Another usher came in and told the congregation to remain seated, then escorted Tiller’s wife out.

“When she got to the back doors, we heard her scream, and so we knew something bad had happened,” Watkins said.

Church members said anti-abortion protesters have shown up outside the church on Sundays regularly.

“They’ve been out here for quite a few years. We’ve just become accustomed to it. Just like an everyday thing, you just looked over and see them and say, ‘Yup they’re back again.”‘

He added: “We had no idea that someone would come into our church and do such a bad thing like that — inside of a church.”

The last killing of an abortion doctor was in October 1998 when Dr. Barnett Slepian was fatally shot in his home in a suburb of Buffalo, N.Y. A militant abortion opponent was convicted of the murder.

Federal marshals protected Tiller during the 1991 Summer of Mercy protests, and he was protected again between 1994 and 1998 after another abortion provider was assassinated and federal authorities reported finding Tiller’s name at the top of an assassination list.

One of Tiller’s lawyers and friends, Dan Monnat, told ABC’s “Good Morning America” that Tiller had been supported by his wife and children in his decision to continue providing abortion services.

“If Dr Tiller is not going to service a woman’s right to chose, who will do it?” Monnat said.

“Many of those have been terrorized and run off by protesters,” he said about other abortion providers.

One of the few remaining late-term abortion clinics is in Boulder, Colo., where Dr. Warren Hern denounced Tiller’s killing as the “inevitable and predictable consequence of decades of anti-abortion” rhetoric and violence.

“Dr. Tiller’s assassination is not the lone and inexplicable action of one deranged killer,” Hern said Sunday. “This was a political assassination in a historic pattern of anti-abortion political violence. It was terrorism.”

GeoEye via Reuters

April 5: A North Korean missile launch facility at Musudan-Ri is spied from 423 miles in space.

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SEOUL, South Korea —  North Korea has transported its most advanced missile, believed to be capable of reaching Alaska, to a site where it could be ready for launch in a week or two, news reports said Monday.

The reclusive communist country was also reportedly strengthening its defenses and conducting amphibious assault exercises along its western shore, near disputed waters where deadly naval clashes with South Korea have occurred in the past.

With the launch, Pyongyang could also thumb its nose at U.N. Security Council attempts to rein it in after last week’s nuclear test and a series of short-range missile launches.

South Korean media have speculated that the North wants to time the launch for around June 16, when South Korean President Lee Myung-bak has a summit in Washington with President Barack Obama.

South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said the missile had been sent by train to the newly completed missile facility of Dongchang-ni, about 40 miles from the Chinese border.

Yonhap, quoting government sources, said the missile could be ready to launch in a week or two. South Korean defense and intelligence officials refused to comment.

U.S Defense Secretary Robert Gates, speaking at a news conference in the Philippines, said North Korea appears to be working on a long-range missile, but it’s not clear yet what they plan to do with it.

Lee, hosting a conference of Southeast Asian leaders, warned the North against any provocation.

“If North Korea turns its back on dialogue and peace and dares to carry out military threats and provocations, the Republic of Korea will never tolerate that,” Lee said in his regular radio address.

Adding to tensions this week, the trial starts Thursday in Pyongyang of two American journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, accused of entering the country illegally and engaging in “hostile acts.”

North Korea faced strong international criticism after its last long-range missile launch, on April 5. The North said the launch was of a rocket intended to put a satellite in orbit. That modified version of the Taepodong-2 rocket flew about 2,000 miles, crossing over Japan before crashing into the Pacific Ocean.

The North later threatened to conduct nuclear and long-range missile tests unless the Security Council apologized for criticizing the launch. On Friday, it warned it would take a further “self-defense” measure if the Security Council provokes it.

Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Miliband said Monday the U.K. and other members of the council were drafting tough sanctions to rebuke North Korea over its “wrong, misguided, dangerous” nuclear test.

Officials say financial sanctions, a toughened arms embargo and searches of ships carrying suspected nuclear cargo could be included.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov discussed the progress of the Security Council response during a telephone conversation Sunday, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Monday.

The North’s missile and nuclear programs have been considered a top regional security concern, though the regime is not yet believed to have mastered the technology to make a nuclear warhead small enough to mount on a missile.

In another sign that a new launch is in the works, the North has designated a large area off its west coast as a “no-sail” zone through the end of next month, the Chosun Ilbo newspaper said, citing unidentified intelligence officials.

Yonhap said North Korean troops conducted amphibious assault maneuvers along with west coast.

Experts said the North’s preparations were especially significant because it has never launched a long-range missile from the northwestern base.

Kim Tae-woo, vice president of Seoul’s state-run Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, said he thinks the North chose the site because of its proximity to China, making it more risky for the U.S. to strike.

The missile being prepared for launch is believed to be an intercontinental ballistic missile with a range of up to 4,000 miles, the JoongAng Ilbo newspaper reported, citing an unnamed South Korean official.

That would put Alaska within striking range.

On Monday, the North again said it is being provoked by South Korea and the United States, saying the number of spy planes operating in its airspace has risen dramatically.

“The U.S. imperialists and the South Korean puppets perpetrated at least 200 cases of aerial espionage against the DPRK in May, or 30 cases more than those in the same month of last year,” it said in a report in its official Korean Central News Agency.

The DPRK is an abbreviation of North Korea’s official name.

In the black market of prison life, cell phones have become perhaps the hottest commodity. Now, Texas is among a growing number of state governments going after them.

Hundreds of contraband cell phones were found behind bars or in transit to Texas inmates in 2008.

Tiny, easy to hide and an unmonitored link for convicts to the outside world, cell phones are valuable contraband, fetching a greater asking price from convicts than some shipments of illegal drugs.

John Moriarty, inspector general for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, said that one phone can fetch as much as $2,000.

“It takes one crooked prison worker to populate a whole prison unit with them,” he said.

More than 1,200 wireless phones sit in law enforcement evidence rooms, all found behind bars or in transit to Texas inmates in 2008.

Moriarty is the investigator and bloodhound the state of Texas uses to trail the illegal traffic.

“These are not stupid people,” he said of the coordinated efforts to slip phones into the prison and hide them. “There are a lot of hands in between and they all want a piece of the action.”

Accomplices on the outside vary from family members, to friends to fellow criminals who buy or steal the phones and charge them with minutes.

The contraband is then moved through an elaborate series of drop points and usually ferried into the walls of a prison by a guard or trustee — an escape engineered in reverse. Finding the dirty prison employee is often the key.

“Some of these guys make next to nothing, so you can see how easy it could be to corrupt them,” Moriarty said.

State Sen. John Whitmire, a Houston Democrat and the chair of the state senate’s Criminal Justice Committee, became an ally of Moriarty’s after one phone call in October.

He picked up a phone slip from his secretary and called the number on it — only to realize he had returned a call to a death row inmate’s cell phone.

The inmate, he said, was Richard Tabler — a convicted double murderer who was sharing a wireless phone with nine other inmates.

“At first I thought it was a hoax,” said Whitmire, who said he called the state justice board and “read them the riot act.”

Whitmire is one of the sponsors of a bill in the Texas Legislature that would crack down on convicts caught with phones and allow prison systems to monitor and detect cell signals. It’s en route to Gov. Rick Perry’s desk after clearing both houses of the legislature this week.

Other efforts are under way at both the state and federal level.

In January, U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady, a Texas Republican, introduced legislation that would let prisons jam cell-phone signals within their walls.

Last month, Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley asked the federal government for permission to do so in his state.

Prison officials in Arizona are training dogs to sniff out cell phones.

Denis Menchov survived a dramatic high-speed crash in the final kilometer of the closing individual time trial stage to win the centenary edition of the Giro d’Italia in Rome on Sunday.

Denis Menchov (left) and Danilo Di Luca (right) battled to the last in the Giro.

The Russian was protecting a 20 second lead over home hope Danilo Di Luca on a twisting and treacherous 14.4 kilometers against the clock in the Italian capital.

After an initial scare as Di Luca powered to the fastest time at the first checkpoint, Rabobank rider Menchov appeared to be riding to a comfortable win.

But over wet cobbles he slid off with his time trial bike careering up the road.

Only quick work by helpers in his team car behind saved the day for Menchov who was able to remount and cross the line battered and bruised in 10th on the stage.

It left him with a 41 second advantage over Di Luca, one of the closest finishes in Giro history.

Franco Pellizzoti rounded off the podium finishers while Lance Armstrong took no chances in the conditions and remained in 12th place overall.

Armstong was using the Giro as preparation for his bid to win his eighth Tour de France on his comeback to cycling.

Lithuanian Ignatas Konovalovas of the Cervelo team won the final stage in a time of 18 minutes 42 seconds.

Garmin rider Bradley Wiggins of Britain was unlucky not to claim victory as he finished just a second behind after being held up by a rider who crashed in front of him.

Norway’s Edvald Boasson Hagen of Team Columbia finished third, but the spotlight fell on Menchov and Di Luca who had battled throughout the closing stages for the coveted Maglia Rosa.

Menchov may well have taken the stage honors but for his horror fall, but it mattered little as he crossed the line in triumph, quickly jumping off his bike and running to supporters.

Steve Stricker rolled home a birdie putt on the second extra hole to beat South African Tim Clark and fellow American Steve Marino in a three-way playoff for the Colonial in Texas on Sunday.

Stricker sports the winning trophy after his Colonial playoff win.

It was cruel on Clark who has won over $12 million on the PGA Tour but is still searching for his first win in America.

He led by two shots with five holes left but bogeyed the final hole while Stricker chipped in for a birdie on the 17th. Marino and Stricker both shot 68 on the final day to join Clark (70) on 17-under 263.

Australian Jason Day carded a 69 to finish alone in fourth on 264, one shot in front of England’s Paul Casey, the world number three continuing his fine form with a closing 66.

At the second extra hole, Marino was on trouble from the start with a poor tee shot and ended up making a bogey.

Both Stricker and Clark hit superb approach shots into the green, but Clark’s hit the flag and went 20-feet away while Stricker was left with a short putt for birdie.

Clark missed with his attempt and 42-year-old Stricker kept his nerve to clinch The $1.16 million first prize.

“I’ve had a lot of close calls this year and I finally pulled one out,” Stricker told the official Tour Web site www.pgatour.com.

Clark was left to reflect on his seventh runner-up spot on the PGA Tour, including last year at the Colonial to Phil Mickelson who is taking a break from tournament golf as his wife Amy battles breast cancer.

English Premer League side Chelsea have confirmed the appointment of former AC Milan coach Carlo Ancelotti as the club’s new manager.

Ancelotti spent eight years in charge at AC Milan, winning one leageu title and two European Cups.

Ancelotti, who confirmed Sunday he was leaving AC Milan, has signed a three-year contract and will start work in London on July 1, Chelsea said.

“Carlo was the outstanding candidate for the job. He has proved over a long period his ability to build teams that challenged for, and have been successful in, major domestic and European competitions,” Chelsea said in a statement.

“He also had a highly successful playing career in those competitions and therefore brings unparalleled all round experience to the job.”

Ancelotti steps into the vacancy left by the departure of Dutch coach Guus Hiddink, a temporary appointment following Luiz Felipe Scolari’s dismissal in February, who led Chelsea to a 2-1 win over Everton in Saturday’s FA Cup final.

Speaking after Milan’s final game of the season on Sunday, a 2-0 win over Fiorentina, Ancelotti, 49, said he’d had “eight great years” at the club, which he led to one Serie A title and two Champions League successes.

Milan vice-president Adriano Galliani confirmed Sunday that Ancelotti would be replaced by former Brazilian international Leonardo.

Nadya Suleman, who gave birth to octuplets in January, will star in a reality television series about her family, a TV executive said.

Nadya Suleman will star in a “quasi-reality TV series,” says a TV executive.

The Eyeworks executive, who asked not to be named, confirmed a Us magazine report that quoted Suleman’s lawyer, Jeff Czech, saying a deal has been reached after months of negotiations.

The “quasi-reality TV series” would be “an arrangement whereby several events in the children’s lives would be filmed in a documentary series,” Czech told Us.

Eyeworks’ British division will produce the show, the Eyeworks executive said.

“There is a story to be told” about the family, he said.

“They might be several shows aired during a year. There are all kinds of possibilities. It really depends on what the networks want,” Czech was quoted as saying.

Though he said the show has not been named, Suleman has sought to trademark her media nickname — Octomom — for a TV show and a line of diapers.

Suleman has six other children. All 14 were conceived through in-vitro fertilization.

The daughter of actor Billy Bob Thornton has been arrested in Florida on charges of child neglect resulting in the death of an infant, police said Sunday.

Friday’s arrest of Amanda Brumfield stemmed from an incident in which a child fell, said Officer Lee Stevens of the Ocoee, Florida, police. No other details were available Sunday.

Thornton’s publicist, Arnold Robinson, said the actor is estranged from his daughter “and has had no contact with her for quite some time.”

“When informed about this situation, he [Thornton] commented that, ‘Anytime a baby’s life is lost is an unimaginable tragedy and my heart goes out to the baby’s family and loved ones,’ ” Robinson told CNN in a written statement.