Top Democrat urges progressives to deal on 'fiscal cliff'

WASHINGTON – A top Democrat pressured fellow progressives Tuesday to support – rather than fight – a far-reaching budget deal that includes cuts to entitlement programs after resolving  the upcoming fiscal cliff.

“We can't be so naive to believe that just taxing the rich will solve our problems,” said Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate. “Put everything on the table. Repeat. Everything on the table.”

The assistant majority leader’s speech at the influential Center for American Progress comes at a pivotal moment in budget talks between the White House and Congress. Progressive and labor groups have warned President Obama against cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and other government programs and to instead focus on raising tax revenue in the administration’s negotiations with congressional Republicans.

The White House and Capitol Hill are working to prevent the combination of automatic tax hikes and deep spending cuts coming at year’s end – what economists have warned would be a $500-billion hit to the economy that could spark another recession.

QUIZ: How much do you know about the 'fiscal cliff'?

Durbin, a top progressive, has long angled for a broad deficit-reduction deal after having served on the White House’s nonpartisan fiscal commission that devised $4 trillion in new taxes and spending cuts to curb the nation’s debt load. Experts say such a large package is needed to stop record deficits and improve the nation’s fiscal outlook.

In remarks that strayed from his prepared comments, Durbin told the story of a labor leader who questioned his interest in serving on that 2010 panel, asking, “What is a nice progressive like you doing in a place like that?”

Durbin responded by saying it was better to have a seat at the table, a position he reiterated as he tried to prevent a schism among Democrats’ traditional allies while talks continue toward the year-end deadline.

“Progressives cannot afford to stand on the sidelines in this fiscal debate and deny the obvious,” Durbin said.

Already, a coalition of liberal groups is running ads warning Obama against striking a deal with Republicans that would slash social safety net programs while allowing tax breaks for wealthier households to continue.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Tuesday that negotiations over Social Security should occur separately from deficit negotiations.

"We should address the drivers of the deficit," he told reporters, "and Social Security is not currently a driver of the deficit."

[For the Record, 6:02 p.m. PST  Nov. 27: This post has been updated to include the latest reaction from the White House. In addition, the lead has been corrected to make clear that Durbin wants the entitlement negotiations separate from a deal on the fiscal cliff.]

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Sprint, Chrysler Link Up With 'Velocity' In-Car System

The latest contender in the battle for your dashboard is Sprint’s Velocity, the telecommunications company’s first comprehensive in-car infotainment and telematics architecture aimed at automakers.

Sprint is unveiling Velocity this week at the Los Angeles Auto Show, which is billing itself as the place for hot new automotive tech introductions. Sprint’s lined up Chrysler as its first partner, and we got our hands on the all-new UConnect system featured in the Ram pickup truck and Dodge Viper. But the telecom plans to infiltrate the rest of Chrysler’s line-up and form partnerships with other automakers.

“Sprint Velocity is a whole new platform we built specifically for the automobile industry,” Tom Nelson, director of global wholesale and solutions marketing, told Wired. “It’s a global, end-to-end solution that simplifies the ability for manufacturers and consumers to connect devices to their cars.”

That’s a key development, because only about 4 percent of vehicles worldwide have the ability to connect with mobile devices that drivers bring into their cars. Machina Research expects that to hit 90 percent by 2020. Sprint wants a big piece of that pie.

What Velocity provides to automakers is the core technology on which to build infotainment and telematic systems. That includes remote locking and unlocking, vehicle start, 911 assist and creating a rolling Wi-Fi hotspot through an embedded modem or a tethered smartphone with a data connection. Infotainment and streaming music also is part of the puzzle, along with cloud-connected voice-activated controls for everything from navigation to texting.

Additionally, automakers are increasingly interested in getting information about customers’ cars for diagnostic and repair purposes, adding a more convenient connection between the automaker, the dealer and the driver.

“In the past, automakers had to stitch together all this stuff to create a connected technology in the vehicle,” says Nelson. With Sprint Velocity, “it’s an agile, adaptable and scalable platform.”

The scalability and — more importantly — upgradeability of an embedded system is of particular significance because the consumer electronics world moves at a much faster pace than the systems developed and deployed by automakers. One day you’ve got the latest and greatest in in-car connectivity; the next, you’re stuck with an outdated system that barely recognizes your shiny new smartphone or tablet.

Nelson insists Sprint Velocity is device-agnostic, although only two mobile operating systems came up during our conversation: iOS and Android. While Apple and Google’s operating systems dominate the mobile arena, being agnostic allows consumers to bring any device they choose into the car. That’s been an issue for every automaker trying to make a play in the connected-car space.

Further, we’re not hearing anything from Sprint about apps or courting developers, although when asked, there was mention of an SDK. However, that decision will be left to Sprint’s automotive partners to decide, as both security and safety concerns are paramount.

On the plus side for developers, having a new, standardized architecture underpinning a large swath of the automotive world would alleviate some issues about which platforms to focus on. They have to build apps for fewer operating systems, saving time and money.

While this all sounds impressive, it’s important to note that Sprint isn’t the first telecom to play the embedded telematics and infotainment game. Verizon has had a decades-long partnership with General Motors for its OnStar system, and Big Red recently acquired Hughes Telematics — a major player in the in-car connectivity space — to expand its footprint inside vehicles.

“[Sprint is] eager to play a bigger role in this segment as the telcos are looking for new growth segments in an increasingly flat market for traditional mobile phone services,” said Gartner automotive and mobility analyst Thilo Koslowski.

“The money opportunity for the automotive industry lies in providing unique customer experiences regarding consuming, creating, sharing and enriching digital content in the vehicle,” says Koslowski. “This can only be successful if the automotive industry embraces collaboration with technology companies like Sprint.”

But there’s a strong line between a partnership and ceding total control to an outside company, and automakers are intent on maintaining their own branding, ecosystems and user-interface designs. Automakers have to find their own space within these growing mobile ecosystems, and nobody – massive automakers or ambitious telecos – has cracked the code. Sprint Velocity is a step in that direction, but it all hinges on widespread adoption.

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Judge bows out of ‘pink slime’ suit over ABC ties

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — A federal judge has recused himself from presiding over a $ 1.2 billion defamation lawsuit against ABC because his daughter-in-law works as a producer on one of the network’s morning shows.

Judge Lawrence L. Piersol recused himself from hearing the defamation lawsuit filed by South Dakota-based Beef Products Inc. against ABC because his daughter-in-law works as a producer on “Good Morning America.”

The case has been reassigned to Chief Judge Karen Schreier.

Beef Products Inc. sued ABC in September over its coverage of a meat product called lean, finely textured beef. Critics have dubbed the product “pink slime.” The meat processor claims the network damaged the company by misleading consumers into believing the product is unhealthy and unsafe.

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Amid Hurricane Sandy, a Race to Get a Liver Transplant

It was the best possible news, at the worst possible time.

The phone call from the hospital brought the message that Dolores and Vin Dreeland had long hoped for, ever since their daughter Natalia, 4, had been put on the waiting list for a liver transplant. The time had come.

They bundled her into the car for the 50-mile trip from their home in Long Valley, N.J., to NewYork-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital in Manhattan. But it soon seemed that this chance to save Natalia’s life might be just out of reach.

The date was Sunday, Oct. 28, and Hurricane Sandy, the worst storm to hit the East Coast in decades, was bearing down on New York. Airports and bridges would soon close, but the donated organ was in Nevada, five hours away. The time window in which a plane carrying the liver would be able to land in the region was rapidly closing.

In a hospital room, Natalia watched cartoons. Her parents watched the clock, and the weather. “Our anxiety was through the roof,” Mrs. Dreeland said. “It just made your stomach into knots.”

The Dreelands, who are in their 60s, became Natalia’s foster parents in 2008 when she was 7 months old, and adopted her just before she turned 2. They have another adopted daughter, Dorothy Jane, who is 17.

Natalia is a “smart little cookie” who loves school and dressing up Alice, her favorite doll, her mother said. At age 3, Natalia used the word “discombobulated” correctly, Mr. Dreeland said.

Natalia’s health problems date back several years. Her gallbladder was taken out in 2010, and about half her liver was removed in 2011. The underlying problem was a rare disease, Langerhans cell histiocytosis. It causes a tremendous overgrowth of a type of cell in the immune system and can damage organs. Drugs can sometimes keep it in check, but they did not work for Natalia.

In her case, the disease struck the bile ducts, which led to progressive liver damage. “She would have eventually gone into liver failure,” said Dr. Nadia Ovchinsky, a pediatric liver transplant specialist at NewYork-Presbyterian. “And she demonstrated some signs of early liver failure.”

The only hope was a transplant.

Dr. Tomoaki Kato, Natalia’s surgeon, knew that the liver in Nevada was a perfect match for Natalia in the two criteria that matter most: blood type and size. The deceased donor was 2 years old, and though Natalia is nearly 5, she is small for her age. Scar tissue from her previous operations would have made it very difficult to fit a larger organ into her abdomen.

Though Dr. Kato had considered transplanting part of an adult liver into Natalia, a complete organ from a child would be far better for her. But healthy organs from small children do not often become available, Dr. Kato said. This was a rare opportunity, and he was determined to seize it.

But as the day wore on, the odds for Natalia grew slimmer. The operation in Nevada to remove the liver was delayed several times.

At many hospitals, surgery to remove donor organs is done at the end of the day, after all regularly scheduled operations. The Nevada hospital had a busy surgical schedule that day, made worse by a trauma case that took priority.

At the hospital in New York, Tod Brown, an organ procurement coordinator, had alerted a charter air carrier that a flight from Nevada might be needed. That company in turn contacted West Coast carriers to pick up the donated liver and fly it to New York.

Initially, two carriers agreed, but then backed out. Several other charter companies also declined.

Mr. Brown told Dr. Kato that they might have to decline the organ. Dr. Kato, soft-spoken but relentless, said, “Find somebody who can fly.”

Dr. Kato used to work in Miami, where pilots found ways to bypass hurricanes to deliver organs. Even during Hurricane Katrina, his hospital performed transplants.

“I asked the transplant coordinators to just keep pushing,” he said.

Mr. Brown said, “Dr. Kato knew he was going to get that organ, one way or another.”

As the trajectory of the storm became clearer, one of the West Coast charter companies agreed to attempt the flight. The plan was to land at the airport in Teterboro, N.J. The backup was Newark airport, and the second backup was Albany, from where an ambulance would finish the trip.

The timing was critical: organs deteriorate outside the body, and ideally a liver should be transplanted within 12 hours of being removed.

Early Monday, as the storm whirled offshore, the plane landed at Teterboro. Soon a nurse rushed to tell the Dreelands that she had just seen an ambulance with lights and sirens screech up to the hospital. Someone had jumped out carrying a container.

At about 5 a.m., the couple kissed Natalia and saw her wheeled off to the operating room.

Three weeks later, she is back home, on the mend. The complicated regimen of drugs that transplant patients need is tough on a child, but she is getting through it, her father said.

Recently, Mr. Dreeland said, he found himself weeping uncontrollably during a church service for the family of the child who had died. “Their child gave my child life,” he said.

Though only time will tell, because the histiocytosis appeared limited to Natalia’s bile ducts and had not affected other organs, her doctors say there is a good chance that the transplant has cured her.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 28, 2012

Because of an editing error, a picture caption with an article on Tuesday about a girl who received a liver transplant during Hurricane Sandy misspelled the surname of the girl’s family. As the article correctly noted, it is Dreeland, not Vreeland.

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California Shows Signs of Resurgence

Sam Hodgson/Bloomberg News

Prosperous coastal places like La Jolla, here, are better off than the state as a whole; many inland areas still have high jobless rates.

LOS ANGELES — After nearly five years of brutal economic decline, government retrenchment and a widespread loss of confidence in its future, California is showing the first signs of a rebound. There is evidence of job growth, economic stability, a resurgent housing market and rising spirits in a state that was among the worst hit by the recession.

Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Gov. Jerry Brown scored political success with passage of a tax increase that has improved the state’s budget outlook.

California reported a 10.1 percent unemployment rate last month, down from 11.5 percent in October 2011 and the lowest since February 2009. In September, California had its biggest month-to-month drop in unemployment in the 36 years the state has collected statistics, from 10.6 percent to 10.2 percent, though the state still has the third-highest jobless rate in the nation.

The housing market, whose collapse in a storm of foreclosures helped worsen the economic decline, has snapped back in many, though not all, parts of the state. Houses are sitting on the market for a shorter time and selling at higher prices, and new home construction is rising. Home sales rose 25 percent in Southern California in October compared with a year earlier.

After years of spending cuts and annual state budget deficits larger than the entire budgets of some states, this month the independent California Legislative Analyst’s Office projected a deficit for next year of $1.9 billion — down from $25 billion at one point — and said California might post a $1 billion surplus in 2014, even accounting for the tendency of these projections to vary markedly from year to year. A reason for the change, in addition to a series of deep budget cuts in recent years, was voter approval of Proposition 30, promoted by Gov. Jerry Brown to raise taxes temporarily to avoid up to $6 billion in education cuts.

“The state’s economic recovery, prior budget cuts and the additional, temporary taxes provided by Proposition 30 have combined to bring California to a promising moment: the possible end of a decade of acute state budget challenges,” the report said. “Our economic and budgetary forecast indicates that California’s leaders face a dramatically smaller budget problem in 2013-14.”

And 38 percent of Californians say the state is heading in the right direction, according to a survey this month by U.S.C. Dornsife/Los Angeles Times. For most places, that figure would seem dismal. But it is double what it was 13 months ago.

California’s recovery echoes a rebound across much of the country; the state suffered not only one of the longest downturns but also one of the most severe. Economists say the turnaround, should it continue, is a positive harbinger for the nation, given the size and diversity of the state’s economy.

Democrats here have been quick to argue that the improvements in fiscal conditions that the state is now projecting after voters approved the temporary tax increase may embolden other states, and Congress, to raise some taxes rather than turn to a new round of cuts.

Yet California still faces major problems. The economic recovery is hardly uniform. Central California and the Inland Empire — the suburban sprawl east of Los Angeles — continue to stagger under the collapse of the construction market, and some economists wonder if they will ever join the coastal cities on the prosperity train. Cities, most recently San Bernardino, are facing bankruptcy, and public employee pension costs loom as a major threat to the state budget and those of many municipalities, including Los Angeles.

A federal report this month said that by some measures, California has the worst poverty in the nation. The river of people coming west in search of the economic dream, traditionally an economic and creative driver, has slowed to a crawl.

Still, the fear among many Californians that the bottom had fallen out appears to be fading. Economists said they were spotting many signs of incipient growth, including a surge in rental costs in the Bay Area, which suggests an influx of people looking for jobs.

“I think the state is turning a corner,” said Enrico Moretti, a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley. He said that the recovery was creating regional lines of economic demarcation — “We are going to see a more and more polarized state,” he said — but that over all, California was emerging from the recession.

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Congress returns as 'fiscal cliff' talks slow

WASHINGTON – Congress returned in a lame duck session with no signs of quick compromise to prevent a tax hike for most Americans early next year.

Talks between the White House and Republican leaders in the House continued behind closed doors. Current tax rates expire Dec. 31.

Emboldened by his re-election, President Obama took his case for raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans to the public on Monday. He warned that the threat of higher taxes on middle-class Americans could dampen the Christmas shopping season.

"The President has called on Congress to take action and stop holding the middle class and our economy hostage over a disagreement on tax cuts for households with incomes over $250,000 per year," the White House said in a statement.

Quiz: How much do you know about the fiscal cliff?

The White House got a boost from billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who said the wealthy – himself included – should pay more. Noting the nation’s growing gap in income disparity, Buffett dismissed the Republican argument that tax hikes would hamper investments.

“In recent years, my gang has been leaving the middle class in the dust,” Buffett said. “So let’s forget about the rich and ultrarich going on strike and stuffing their ample funds under their mattresses if — gasp — capital gains rates and ordinary income rates are increased.”

Key Republicans, including House Speaker John A. Boehner, have signaled they are willing to put new tax revenues on the table, creating the outlines of a possible deal. Several Republican lawmakers used the Sunday talk shows to distance themselves from their party’s anti-tax pledge, publicly breaking with conservative stalwart Grover Norquist, although they insisted any agreement must include spending cuts.

A so-called grand bargain of tax hikes and spending cuts has eluded Washington in the past, but both political parties are wary of rattling the financial markets and sparking a crisis in consumer spending. Wall Street has signaled a bold deficit-reduction plan is needed to prevent a credit downgrade.

PHOTOS: 2016 presidential possibilities

No talks between the president and congressional leaders have been scheduled. The parties had agreed to meet this week to put the framework of a two-part deal on the table.

If Republicans continue to fight higher tax rates for the wealthy, Boehner will face pressure to propose an alternative way to raise new revenue – either by closing individual loopholes or capping deductions in a way that produces new money.

“Congressional and White House staff continue to work to find common ground that is consistent with the ‘balanced approach’ the White House says it wants – with significant spending cuts, and without job-killing small business tax hikes,” said a senior House leadership aide.

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Elon Musk Wants to Build 80,000-Person Mars Colony

Elon Musk doesn’t just want to send a person to Mars — he wants to send 80,000. According to Space.com, the billionaire founder and CEO of the private spaceflight company SpaceX spilled details about his hopes for a future Mars colony during a talk at the Royal Aeronautical Society in London on Nov. 16.

Earlier this year, SpaceX became the first private U.S. company to deliver cargo to the International Space Station. Musk has never been shy about his ambitions to take human colonists to another planet, mentioning in the past that he wants to provide flights to Mars for about $500,000 a person. But now he’s talking about building a small-city-sized settlement on the Red Planet, starting with a 10-person crew in the coming decades to begin establishing and building infrastructure.

That first flight would be expensive and risky but “once there are regular Mars flights, you can get the cost down to half a million dollars for someone to move to Mars,” Musk told Space.com. ”Then I think there are enough people who would buy that to have it be a reasonable business case.” Musk added that he sees the future 80,000-person colony as a public-private enterprise costing roughly $36 billion.

Science-fiction inspired plans are one thing. Musk still has many challenges ahead of him before such a scheme could become reality, including figuring out exactly how to deal with radiation on the way to Mars, how to land humans on the planet’s surface, and how to keep them alive once there. Wired Magazine Editor Chris Anderson interviewed Musk in the November issue, where he outlines a few ways that could help us get there:

Chris Anderson: How were you drawn to space as your next venture?

Elon Musk: In 2002, once it became clear that PayPal was going to get sold, I was having a conversation with a friend of mine, the entrepreneur Adeo Ressi, who was actually my college housemate. I’d been staying at his home for the weekend, and we were coming back on a rainy day, stuck in traffic on the Long Island Expressway. He was asking me what I would do after PayPal. And I said, well, I’d always been really interested in space, but I didn’t think there was anything I could do as an individual. But, I went on, it seemed clear that we would send people to Mars. Suddenly I began to wonder why it hadn’t happened already. Later I went to the NASA website so I could see the schedule of when we’re supposed to go. [Laughs.]

Anderson: And of course there was nothing.

Musk: At first I thought, jeez, maybe I’m just looking in the wrong place! Why was there no plan, no schedule? There was nothing. It seemed crazy.

Anderson: NASA doesn’t have the budget for that anymore.

Musk: Since 1989, when a study estimated that a manned mission would cost $500 billion, the subject has been toxic. Politicians didn’t want a high-priced federal program like that to be used as a political weapon against them.

Anderson: Their opponents would call it a boondoggle.

Musk: But the United States is a nation of explorers. America is the spirit of human exploration distilled.

Anderson: We all leaped into the unknown to get here.

Musk: So I started with a crazy idea to spur the national will. I called it the Mars Oasis missions. The idea was to send a small greenhouse to the surface of Mars, packed with dehydrated nutrient gel that could be hydrated on landing. You’d wind up with this great photograph of green plants and red background—the first life on Mars, as far as we know, and the farthest that life’s ever traveled. It would be a great money shot, plus you’d get a lot of engineering data about what it takes to maintain a little greenhouse and keep plants alive on Mars. If I could afford it, I figured it would be a worthy expenditure of money, with no expectation of financial return.

Read the rest of the interview.

Image: SpaceX

Source: Space.com

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Berry’s ex says he was threatened before fight

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Halle Berry‘s ex-boyfriend claims the actress’s fiance threatened to kill him during a Thanksgiving confrontation that left him with a broken rib, bruised face and under arrest.

Gabriel Aubry‘s claims are included in court filings that led a judge Monday to grant a restraining order against actor Olivier Martinez, who is engaged to the Oscar-winning actress.

Aubry, 37, was arrested on suspicion of misdemeanor battery after his confrontation with Martinez on Thursday, but he states in the civil court filings that he was not the aggressor and that he was threatened and attacked without provocation. Martinez told police that Aubry had attacked first, the filings state.

A representative for Martinez could not be immediately reached for comment.

Aubry’s filing claims Martinez threatened him the day before the fight at an event at his daughter’s school that he and the actors attended. Aubry, a model, has a 4-year-old daughter with Berry and the former couple have been engaged in a lengthy custody battle.

The proceedings have been confidential, but Aubry states a major aspect of the case was Berry’s wish to move to Paris and take her daughter with her. The request was denied Nov. 9, Berry’s court filings state, and Aubry shares joint custody of the young girl.

Aubry claims Martinez told him, “You cost us $ 3 million,” while he was punched and kicked him in the driveway of Berry’s home. Aubry had gone to the home to allow his daughter to spend Thanksgiving with her mother, the filings state. Aubry claims Martinez threatened to kill him if Aubry didn’t move to Paris.

Berry was not in the driveway during the confrontation and neither was their daughter, the documents state.

Photos of Aubry’s face with cuts and a black eye were included in his court filing.

A judge set a hearing for Dec. 17 to consider whether a three-year restraining order should be granted. Aubry has a Dec. 13 court date for the possible battery case, which has not yet been filed by prosecutors.

___

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

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Panel Lukewarm on Hepatitis C Screening for Baby Boomers

An influential advisory committee has given only lukewarm support to a government recommendation that all baby boomers be tested for hepatitis C.

In a draft opinion Monday, the United States Preventive Services Task Force said that clinicians may “consider offering” hepatitis C screening to adults born between 1945 and 1965.

That falls short of the recommendation made in August by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that all adults in that age group should get a one-time test to see if they are infected.

The task force is made up of outside experts appointed by the government, and its recommendations can in some cases carry more weight than those of the C.D.C. Had hepatitis C screening for baby boomers received a stronger recommendation from the task force, health plans would have been required to pay for it under the 2010 Affordable Care Act, with no charge to the patient.

Some advocates of wider screening said they feared the new opinion would be used by insurers to deny reimbursement for testing and would slow efforts to ferret out hidden cases of hepatitis C at a time when more effective and tolerable treatments are being developed.

The recommendation “could derail the hard work that the C.D.C. has put in in proving the case that it’s smart for baby boomers to get a one-time hepatitis C test,” said Martha B. Saly, director of the National Viral Hepatitis Roundtable, a coalition of more than 200 groups dedicated to eradicating hepatitis. Some drug companies, which would benefit from wider screening, are associate members of the round table.

Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, of the University of California, San Francisco, and a member of the task force, said differences in the recommendations were merely a matter of degree. “I would say our findings are compatible,” she said.

The C.D.C. declined to comment, saying the opinion was still a draft.

About 3 million Americans are infected with hepatitis C, but 45 percent to 85 percent of them do not know it, according to the C.D.C. The virus can cause scarring of the liver and liver cancer, though typically not until decades after the initial infection, and not in everyone. About 15,000 people a year die from hepatitis C.

The C.D.C. used to recommend screening only for people most likely to be infected: intravenous drug users or people who got blood transfusions before 1992 when testing of donated blood for the virus began.

But a lot of cases were missed because people did not remember risky behaviors from decades ago or did not tell their doctors.

So in August the C.D.C. recommended that all baby boomers be tested. Although only about 3 percent of this age group is infected, they account for about three quarters of all cases. Screening them would detect more than 800,000 infections, which could then potentially be treated, averting many cases of liver disease and about 120,000 deaths.

But the task force said there were no clinical trials or studies directly proving that screening asymptomatic adults would reduce liver disease or deaths.

It noted that the C.D.C. recommendation was based partly on computer models that might have overestimated how many people with hepatitis C would develop liver cirrhosis or die, and therefore overstated the number of cases or deaths that could be prevented.

The task force concluded that there would be at least a small benefit from screening baby boomers and gave the recommendation a grade of C, meaning “for most individuals without signs or symptoms there is likely to be only a small benefit from this service.”

The task force provoked controversy in the past with recommendations against screening for prostate cancer and against routine mammograms for women under 50.

In 2004, the task force recommended against hepatitis C screening of adults not considered at high risk.

The draft, posted on the task force Web site, will be open for comment until Dec. 24. The evidence behind the recommendation is being published in The Annals of Internal Medicine.

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DealBook: Lehman Estate to Sell Archstone for $6.5 Billion

It was the deal that helped sink Lehman Brothers. Now, it will play an important role in paying off the failed investment bank’s creditors.

The Lehman estate agreed on Monday to sell Archstone, a sprawling apartment complex company, to its two biggest real estate rivals — Equity Residential, a company run by the investor Samuel Zell, and AvalonBay Communities — for about $6.5 billion in cash and stock.

The sale will dispose of the Lehman estate’s single biggest asset as it continues efforts to wind itself down and pay off the firm’s legions of creditors. And it will end the estate’s plans to take Archstone public, which had been expected to raise $3.45 billion in an offering on the New York Stock Exchange.

While the acquisition of Archstone by Lehman came just as the housing market was slipping from its lofty peak, its sale follows a recovery from the market’s lows. Residential apartment values have surpassed their 2007 peak, and occupancy rates are strong. Still, the market for rental apartments has taken a breather.

Even with the collapse of its Wall Street parent, Archstone has been held in high regard among investors and analysts for the high quality of its properties and the abilities of its management team. The company, based in Englewood, Colo., owns or has a stake in 181 developments with 57,948 apartment units, as of Sept. 30. Its apartments are largely in metropolitan areas in the Northeast, California and southeast Florida.

“Archstone is a highly sophisticated and very well thought-of manager of apartment assets,” said Craig Leupold, the president of Green Street Advisors, a research firm. “If it’s not the highest-quality portfolio around, it’s certainly up there.”

More than four years ago, it was a millstone around the neck of a foundering Lehman. In 2007, the Wall Street firm teamed up with Tishman Speyer to buy Archstone for more than $23 billion, having triumphed in a contest for one of the nation’s premier apartment landlords. The deal was led by Mark Walsh, then Lehman’s head of real estate and considered one of the smartest investors on Wall Street, fond of complex transactions that yielded big profits.

But it meant taking on huge amounts of debt as the housing boom was showing signs of deflating, leaving Lehman significantly weakened as the market turmoil was escalating in 2008. Lehman filed for bankruptcy on Sept. 15 of that year.

During the bankruptcy and as Lehman emerged with a liquidation plan earlier this year, Archstone was identified as an asset that could yield a significant payday for creditors. Even as the Lehman estate sold off other high-quality holdings, including the asset manager Neuberger Berman, it held onto Archstone. It also sold off about $3.6 billion worth of lower-quality assets from the Archstone business.

The stock component of the transaction announced on Monday will give make the Lehman estate the single biggest investor in Equity Residential, with a 9.8 percent stake, and in AvalonBay, with a 13.2 percent stake.

The business attracted suitors, and one of the most persistent was Equity Residential, which had long followed the path set by Mr. Zell: serial deal-making that made it one of the biggest apartment investors in the country.

Another was AvalonBay, an apartment company known for developing properties rather than buying them.

Both companies began talking to the Lehman estate as far back as the summer of 2011, though the talks were in fits and starts, according to people with direct knowledge of the process.

Among the primary concerns within the Lehman real estate team was fetching the highest possible value for Archstone. And that meant buying out the other partners in Archstone: Bank of America and Barclays.

Lehman spent about $2.88 billion to acquire their stakes earlier this year to simplify matters for any new owner.

Yet at the same time, the estate also began an initial offering process for Archstone in case the sales talks broke down. An I.P.O. would have been one of the biggest staged this year, trailing only the likes of Facebook.

In recent weeks, talks between Lehman and the real estate investors picked up steam, these people said. The partnering of Equity Residential and AvalonBay proved especially reassuring, as it reduced the risks that either company would have taken on.

So while Lehman periodically updated Archstone’s offering documents — the most recent update was filed with regulators just last week — teams worked around the clock to secure a transaction.

The Lehman team finally breathed a sigh of relief when most of the major legal paperwork was signed around 1:30 a.m. on Monday.

Under the terms of the deal, Equity Residential and AvalonBay will pay $2.685 billion in cash and about $3.8 billion in stock. That represents a roughly 17 percent premium to what Lehman had valued the company earlier this year. The two companies will also assume Archstone’s roughly $9.5 billion in debt.

Equity Residential, which is run by Mr. Zell, will own about 60 percent of Archstone’s assets and liabilities. AvalonBay will own the remainder.

In return, the Lehman estate will become the single biggest shareholder in each company, holding a 9.8 percent stake in Equity Residential and a 13.2 percent stake in AvalonBay.

“The sale of Archstone to Equity Residential and Avalon Bay is a very positive outcome for our creditors,” Owen Thomas, the chairman of Lehman’s board of directors, said in a statement.

But the Lehman real estate team’s work is not finished: the estate still owns several major properties in New York City and on the West Coast that must be sold.

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