It wasn't a glamorous life, and it certainly wasn't going to make him rich. But it was a chance to race and, man, did Leffler love racing.

"We'd talked a lot about these cars and the dangers involved and Jason accepted it because he said all the time, 'I'd rather my son see me live a happy life then see me sitting in a job I hate being miserable,'" Julianna Patterson told The Associated Press on Monday. "Jason was amazing. He was ornery. His life was Charlie, racing, family and friends. In that order. But Charlie was the most important. Charlie was his entire world."

That was evident long before Leffler's death in an accident at a dirt track in New Jersey last Wednesday. The 37-year-old divorced father's Twitter feed and Instagram account were a loving tribute to 5-year-old Charlie Dean, his only child. There were photos of the first day of school, the two eating ice cream together, playing on the floor, hanging out at a race track, wearing matching sunglasses and, last month, Charlie's kindergarten graduation.

"Everybody knows how racers are, it's all they focus on," Leffler's older brother, Chris, told AP. "But fatherhood really changed him, that's for sure. It was all about Charlie. Jason took Charlie wherever he could, tried to show him everything. He really grew as an adult after Charlie was born because all his best intentions were for Charlie. He wasn't worried so much for himself anymore."

Although Leffler spent a decade racing in NASCAR, he wasn't a star and he certainly wasn't a household name. But he was extremely popular among his peers and everyone knew about his love for Charlie. It was plain to see on Sunday, as Greg Biffle held his own daughter in Victory Lane at Michigan, lamenting how Leffler didn't get to spend Father's Day with his son, and after Kasey Kahne climbed from his burning car he spoke not of the cut tire that cost him a win, but of the friend he lost.

"Jason Leffler was a good buddy of mine and it's neat to see how the racing world and the fans and his friends and everybody has supported him for the last four or five days," Kahne said. "That showed the person and the racer that he was."

Far more important than a racer was Leffler's job as father.

On Monday, Leffler's girlfriend, brother and representatives at Spire Sports discussed his financial situation to clear up growing misconceptions and rumors about the estate he left behind for Charlie.

His former sister-in-law told Sporting News on Friday that Leffler did not have life insurance when he died. But it's not that simple and some believe that was a deliberate attempt to solicit donations to an account that had been established for both Charlie and Leffler's ex-wife.

"It's insane that someone would bring this up, would bring up life insurance, within a day of this happening. We haven't even had the funeral yet," Patterson said. "Jason would never have left Charlie with nothing. Never. To suggest otherwise is not true and it's evil.

"I remember he went into Charlie's room one night before bed and said to him, 'Everything I do is for you,' and Charlie hugged him and said, 'You almost made me cry, Dad.' Those two loved each other more than anything in the entire world."

The reality is that disability and life insurance for race car drivers are expensive and difficult to get usually issued only by Lloyds of London and the premiums are substantial. Leffler's last full Nationwide season was in 2011, and he'd run just 12 NASCAR races in 2012.

He didn't have deep resources to buy insurance anymore; the night he was killed, the winner was guaranteed just $7,000. So perhaps Leffler didn't think life insurance was the best investment for Charlie Dean's future.

But Leffler still invested specifically with his son in mind, his loved ones say, and took steps to ensure his son would be cared for before his death and in the event of his death. He had disability insurance and other policies, and funds established for Charlie.

"He absolutely bent over backward to do whatever was best for Charlie," said Chris Leffler, executor of the drivers' will. "He probably could have held on to a lot more in the divorce. But he sacrificed, did without, and has done whatever necessary to make sure Charlie is taken care of. I've seen a little bit of what's been insinuated and it's disappointing."

Although Leffler made sure Charlie was provided for, The Charlie Dean Leffler Discretionary Trust was announced Saturday with three trustees. It was created in part because the racing community and fans often contribute regardless of need more than $650,000 was raised for two-time Indianapolis 500 winner Dan Wheldon's family following his 2011 death and to ensure any money donated went solely to Charlie's needs.

Leffler, Charlie and Patterson had planned to move into a new apartment this weekend, and Charlie had been so excited for his new bed and the flags that were going to be hung in his new room. He'd only in the last year begun to understand his father's place in the racing world, and at Christmas when he was given Jimmie Johnson and Kasey Kahne trading cards, Charlie only wanted cards of his dad.

He'd recently learned how to Google his father, Patterson said, and once even asked Leffler for his autograph. They lived together as a little family for two years, baking cookies and making every color of Jell-O possible, taking long walks with Charlie's compass and binoculars and playing sprint cars on the floor.

"All Jason would want now is for Charlie to know who his dad was, to be cared for and to know how much he loved his little dude," Patterson said. "He wasn't irresponsible, he wasn't careless and he wasn't reckless. He took every step possible because Charlie was his world."

The summit took note of a ruling by Zimbabwe's highest court ordering Mugabe to hold crucial polls by July 31 but "agreed on the need for Zimbabwe to engage the Constitutional Court to seek more time beyond July 31," said Tomaz Salomao, secretary general of the regional economic and political bloc known as the Southern Africa Development Community, or SADC.

They also endorsed a report presented by South Africa President Jacob Zuma, the chief regional mediator on Zimbabwe, on the need for media reform and the "upholding of the rule of law and the validity of electoral regulations" along with the adequate deployment of regional poll monitors and consensus on an election date ahead of voting, Salomao said, quoting from the summit's closing communique.

No comment was immediately available from Mugabe or members of his delegation.

Zimbabwe Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai said on Friday that Mugabe's unilateral proclamation of the July 31 election date breached terms of the power sharing agreement forged by regional leaders after the last violent and disputed elections in 2008. That agreement required the coalition partners to agree on policy decisions and the holding of elections, he said.

Tsvangirai said democratic reforms also demanded in a new constitution and by mediators ensuring free and fair polls cannot be completed by July.

Zuma said in a statement earlier Saturday the regional leaders were to consider "a roadmap" to elections in Zimbabwe. But a top Mugabe party official told South African state radio Saturday the summit will only seek financial help from the region to fund polls in July.

The Crisis Coalition, an alliance of Zimbabwean pro-democracy and rights groups in the Mozambique capital said at the beginning of the talks, that early elections risked not being recognized regionally or by Zimbabweans themselves unless reforms are in place and political violence and intimidation are brought to an end.

"Conditions are not ripe for free and fair elections. The security situation is not good ...we want SADC to ensure that violence is stopped and the media is free to report without intimidation," MacDonald Lewanika, the Crisis Coalition director, told reporters.

A new constitution, overwhelmingly accepted in a referendum in March, has demanded reforms to sweeping media and security laws along with reforms within Mugabe's loyalist police and military blamed for state orchestrated violence in previous polls.

None of those reforms have been completed, Tsvangirai's party says.

Mugabe's party insists he was abiding by the ruling of the Constitutional Court, the nation's highest court, ordering him to hold presidential and parliamentary elections by the end of July, linked to the automatic dissolution of the Harare parliament on June 29, the end of its current five year term.

Independent lawyers' groups say that ruling does not follow provisions in the new constitution and can only be rescinded by the same court on an application from Mugabe.

Continuing amendments to electoral laws called for in the constitution and by regional leaders were effectively blocked by Mugabe's announcement of the poll date on Thursday, said Veritas, a legal research group.

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The new possible spacepeople were chosen from a pool of over 6,000 applicants. Given that NASA retired all their space shuttles, the first missions for the new astronaut candidates could be aboard a commercial vessel launched in the U.S. Eventually, they could be part of a planned mission to an asteroid, and possibly Mars, NASA told the . 

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Their backgrounds range from Harvard med school professor to fighter pilot. Here's the full list: 

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—, 39, and , 37, naval aviators.

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—, 37, of the US Air Force.

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—, 34, from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

—, 35, from the US Marines.

—, 34, a former helicopter pilot.

—, 35, a professor at Harvard University. 

—, 37, a West Point graduate and emergency surgeon for the army.

According to, the new potential crew will start training in August, in Houston. 

The study may help explain why black women have higher rates of breast cancer at young ages and a worse chance of survival.

Doctors say these patients should be offered genetic counseling and may want to consider more frequent screening and prevention options, which can range from hormone-blocking pills to breast removal, as Jolie chose to do.

"We were surprised at our results," said the study leader, Dr. Jane Churpek, a cancer specialist at the University of Chicago. Too few black women have been included in genetic studies in the past and most have not looked for mutations to the degree this one did, "so we just don't have a good sense" of how much risk there is, she said.

Churpek gave results of the study Monday at an American Society of Clinical Oncology conference in Chicago. The researchers include Mary-Claire King, the University of Washington scientist who discovered the first breast cancer predisposition gene, BRCA1.

Jolie revealed a few weeks ago that she carries a defective BRCA1 gene, giving her up to an 87 percent risk of developing breast cancer and up to a 54 percent risk for ovarian cancer. The actress's mother had breast cancer and died of ovarian cancer, and her maternal grandmother also had ovarian cancer. An aunt recently died of breast cancer.

Children of someone with a BRCA mutation have a 50 percent chance of inheriting it.

In the U.S., about 5 to 10 percent of breast cancers are thought to be due to bad BRCA genes. Among breast cancer patients, BRCA mutations are carried by 5 percent of whites and 12 percent of Eastern European (Ashkenazi) Jews. The rates in other groups are not as well known.

The study involved 249 black breast cancer patients from Chicago area hospitals. Many had breast cancer at a young age, and half had a family history of the disease.

They were given complete gene sequencing for all 18 known breast cancer risk genes rather than the usual tests that just look for a few specific mutations in BRCA genes.

Gene flaws were found in 56, or 22 percent, of study participants; 46 of them involved BRCA1 or BRCA2 and the rest were less commonly mutated genes.

Harmful mutations were found in 30 percent of black women with "triple-negative breast cancer" tumors whose growth is not fueled by estrogen, progesterone or the gene that the drug Herceptin targets. Doctors have long known that these harder-to-treat cases are more common in black women.

The National Cancer Institute, the Breast Cancer Research Foundation and Komen for the Cure paid for the study.

It included many younger women and those with a family history of cancer, and they are known to have higher rates of gene mutations that raise risk, said Rebecca Nagy, a genetics counselor at Ohio State University and president of the National Society of Genetic Counselors.

Still, "it has always stumped us" to see black families with lots of breast cancer but no mutations that can be found in ordinary testing for BRCA genes, she said.

That was the situation for Alicia Cook, 44, a Chicago woman whose grandmother died of breast cancer, mother died of ovarian cancer and two sisters have had breast cancer. When she was first diagnosed with breast cancer nearly 10 years ago, a test for BRCA mutations was negative.

Doctors said, "I'm sure there's something going on genetically" but they didn't have the tools to find it, Cook said.

Last year, she had a recurrence and a sister who was diagnosed with the disease learned she carried a BRCA1 mutation. Cook was retested for the same mutation and found to have it. Now she is telling her relatives in hopes that more of them will seek genetic counseling and be aware of their risk.

"You don't want to put people in fear, but knowledge is power," she said.

___

Online:

Breast cancer: http://www.cancer.net/cancer-types/breast-cancer

and http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/risk/brca

___

Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

NEW YORK (Reuters) - American actress Amanda Bynes appeared in court on Friday and denied charges of possessing marijuana and tossing a bong out of the window of her 36th-floor Manhattan apartment.

The former Nickelodeon child star, who appeared in court dressed in gray sweatpants, a long-sleeved black shirt and a disheveled platinum blonde wig, was released on her own recognizance after spending a night in jail after her arrest on Thursday.

She was charged with unlawful possession of marijuana, reckless endangerment and attempted tampering with physical evidence, according to court documents. All the alleged offenses are classified as misdemeanors rather than felonies.

Her attorney at the hearing denied the charges and accused police of entering the actress' apartment illegally.

"Clearly a search was made for the bong and nothing was recovered," attorney Andrew Friedman told the court. "My client completely denies ever having thrown anything out the window. She was followed illegally into her apartment for no reason."

The actress, 27, who has had several brushes with the law in the past year and is on probation for driving on a suspended license in California, was ordered to return to court on July 9.

Bynes said, "Thank you, sir," to the judge before leaving court and entering a taxi cab, flanked by paparazzi.

New York police were called to Bynes' 47th Street midtown high-rise building after an employee there reported that someone was smoking marijuana in the building's lobby.

Police said they were then directed to Bynes' apartment, where the actress invited them in.

Officers said they detected a strong smell of marijuana in the apartment and observed the bong - a tube-shaped water pipe commonly used for smoking marijuana - in the apartment.

Bynes then grabbed the bong and threw it out the window and the actress was taken into custody, police said.

Bynes, who had her own TV comedy sketch show on Nickelodeon at the age of 13, has gained a strong Internet following for her recent bizarre behavior and statements on her Twitter social media account.

The actress has not appeared in a film since 2010's "Easy A" and has appeared in court over a slew of driving violations in the past year, including drunk driving, and hit and run.

(Additional reporting by Eric Kelsey in Los Angeles; Editing by David Brunnstrom)

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc is planning a major roll-out of an online grocery business that it has been quietly developing for years, targeting one of the largest retail sectors yet to be upended by e-commerce, according to two people familiar with the situation.

While food is a low-margin business, Amazon could outperform similar online grocery services by delivering orders for higher-margin items like electronics at the same time.

One of the people familiar with AmazonFresh's expansion plans said new warehouses will have refrigerated areas for food, but also space nearby to store up to one million general merchandise products, in some cases.

The company has been testing AmazonFresh in its hometown of Seattle for at least five years, delivering fresh produce such as eggs, strawberries and meat with its own fleet of trucks.

Amazon is now planning to expand its grocery business outside Seattle for the first time, starting with Los Angeles as early as this week and the San Francisco Bay Area later this year, according to the two people who were not authorized to speak publicly.

If those new locations go well, the company may launch AmazonFresh in 20 other urban areas in 2014, including some outside the United States, said one of the people.

Bill Bishop, a prominent supermarket analyst and consultant, said the company was targeting as many as 40 markets, without divulging how he knew of Amazon's plans.

An Amazon spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.

Amazon is searching for new, large markets to enter as the company tries to maintain a growth rate that has fueled a 220 percent surge in its shares over the past five years. The grocery business in the United States, which generated $568 billion in retail sales last year, may be a ripe target.

Amazon's expansion plans are a potential threat to grocery chains such as Kroger Co, Safeway Inc and Whole Foods Market, as well as general-merchandise retailers Wal-Mart Stores Inc and Target Corp, which also sell a lot of groceries.

"Amazon has been testing this for years and now it's time for them to harvest what they've learned by expanding outside Seattle," said Bishop, chief architect at Brick Meets Click, a consulting firm focused on retail technology.

"The fear is that grocery is a loss leader and Amazon will make a profit on sales of other products ordered online at the same time," he said. "That's an awesomely scary prospect for the grocery business."

Kroger, Whole Foods, Supervalu and Safeway did not respond to requests for comment on Tuesday. Target declined to comment.

A successful foray into groceries could also help underwrite the development of a broad-based delivery service employing Amazon trucks to deliver directly to homes, which could have implications for UPS, FedEx and other package delivery companies that currently ship Amazon goods.

Still, groceries have proven to be one of the most difficult sectors for online retailers to crack. One of the most richly funded start-ups of the dot-com era, Webvan, was a spectacular failure as the cost of developing the warehouse and delivery infrastructure proved overwhelming.

Roger Davidson, a former grocery executive at Wal-Mart and Supervalu, said Amazon will struggle to make money from AmazonFresh because fresh produce can easily go out of date in storage warehouses and get damaged during delivery - something known as "shrink" in the business.

"Will it work? I would bet against it," Davidson said. "The reasons these businesses have failed in the past have not gone away."

COMPETITION

Still, Amazon is not alone in wanting to expand in the online grocery business.

Wal-Mart is testing same-day and next-day delivery of online grocery and general merchandise orders in the San Francisco Bay Area and operates a grocery delivery business in Britain.

"We are ready and able to expand grocery delivery in the U.S. as the market demands," Wal-Mart spokesman Dan Toporek said.

FreshDirect says it delivers food to millions of customers in New York, New Jersey and the Philadelphia area.

Peapod, owned by international food giant Royal Ahold NV, says on its website that it is the largest Internet grocer in the United States, delivering more than 23 million orders across 24 markets.

Davidson, who worked with Peapod for several years during stint at Ahold USA, said Peapod struggled to make money for most of its existence. But he believes it now turns a small profit due to supply chain efficiencies, population density in Chicago and its connection to brick and mortar stores on the east coast.

Davidson favors a strategy he called "Click and Connect" which is being used by Harris Teeter, a food and pharmacy chain on the East Coast of the United States. Customers order food online and choose a time to pick up the produce from designated areas outside the company's stores. There is a $4.95 service fee for this.

"Traditional grocery retailers will likely fight back against Amazon with Click and Connect," he added.

It is not clear whether AmazonFresh in Seattle is profitable because Amazon does not disclose results from the business.

Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos was asked about the business during the company's annual shareholder meeting last month and he said that the team had "made progress on the economics over the last year."

"They've been doing a lot of experiments and trying to get the right mixture of customer experience and economics," he added.

COMBINED ORDERS

If online orders also include higher-margin general merchandise such as digital cameras, then AmazonFresh has a chance at profitability, said Manfred Bluemel of Zeitgeist Research, who was head of market research worldwide at Amazon until late 2010.

"Grocery is a frequency business. If Amazon can deliver to consumers' homes two or three times a week, they can up-sell other items," he said.

Bluemel said AmazonFresh's expansion will likely focus on areas where Amazon already offers same-day delivery, or will do so soon.

Amazon offers same-day delivery in several cities including New York, Washington D.C. and Chicago, and since last year the company has been building new distribution warehouses on the outskirts of the Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay areas.

(This story, published on June 4, has been fixed to correct the description of FreshDirect in the 20th paragraph to reflect that it serves customers in New Jersey and Philadelphia, in addition to New York)

(Reporting by Alistair Barr; Additional reporting by Dhanya Skariachan and Lisa Baertlein; Editing by Jonathan Weber and Tim Dobbyn)

(Logo:)

In conjunction withJune 17-21, CompTIA is spotlighting issues affecting its small business members and offering solutions to address those challenges.

Overlapping state taxes have created an excessive compliance burden for companies like , Inc., a managed network services company in Greensboro, N.C.

"As with many small IT businesses, we provide goods and service into many states and this requires us to understand and be compliant with multiple state tax requirements," said Ron Culler, chief technology officer, Secure Designs.

In fact, Secure Designs provides managed internet security services and currently manages more than 6,000 firewall appliances in all 50 states.

Consider the case of just one customer: a managed services provider based in New Hampshire, but doing business in several states across New England.

"My customer, their customers and I are all based in different locations," Culler noted. "Who is ultimately responsible for collecting and remitting any required tax? Unless you have a lot of money to do research on every location in which you do business, you just have to struggle through it. The risk is a large, unexpected tax bill."

The proposed MFA takes a "one size fits all" approach, requiring every business to collect and remit state sales taxes on sales of goods and services made into other states.

"The legislation does not consider the size of the business and its ability to absorb these new compliance requirements; it only considers the gross amount of interstate sales," Culler said. "Rather than a small seller exemption, we believe that the exemption should apply to a small business.

"I support the position of CompTIA and TechVoice that the MFA should balance the rights of states to collect sales taxes with the ability of small businesses to cover these new compliance costs," Culler continued. "We certainly agree that we should pay taxes where our office and sales people reside, but requiring us to file sales tax returns with every state where we have a single customer is just too costly."

For more on the tax burden facing small IT businesses and tech entrepreneurs, visit the . To learn more about Capitol Hill issues affecting small businesses, visit .

TechVoice is a partnership of the CompTIA, the Technology Councils of North America (TECNA), and participating regional technology associations. For more information, visit .

CompTIA is the voice of the world's information technology industry. Visitor follow CompTIA atand .

SOURCE CompTIA

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Guys Choice Awards will recognize "Man of Steel" with the honor of Most Manticipated Movie of the Year, Spike TV announced on Wednesday.

Director Zack Snyder will accept the manly honor with three key cast members - Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, and Russell Crowe - when the annual awards show tapes on Saturday at Sony Pictures Studios.

Cavill plays Superman in Warner Bros. highly-anticipated June 14 release, while Adams plays Lois Lane and Crowe plays Jor-El, Clark Kent's biological father from the planet Krypton.

The network also announced on Wednesday that "Smokey and the Bandit" star Burt Reynolds will be honored during the show, and Jennifer Aniston will present Jimmy Kimmel with this year's "Funniest M.F." award.

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin will be presenting Felix Baumgartner witht he "Mankind" award. Last October, the daredevil set the world record for skydiving an estimated 24 miles while becoming the first person to break the sound barrier without vehicular power after reaching speeds up to 843.6 mph during his descent.

Spike has also added additional presenters, including Jake Gyllenhaal, Jessica Alba, Snoop Lion, Randy Couture, Quinton Rampage' Jackson and Jon Taffer.

The 2013 Guys Choice Awards premieres June 12 at 9:00 p.m., ET/PT on Spike TV.

The order Wednesday was met with praise from advocates for girls' and women's rights and scorn from social conservatives and other opponents, who argue the drug's availability takes away the rights of parents of girls who could get it without their permission. It is the latest in a series of rulings in a complex back-and-forth over access to the drug.

The brief order issued by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan permitted two-pill versions of emergency contraception to immediately be sold without restrictions, but the court refused to allow unrestricted sales of the Plan B One-Step contraceptive until it decides the merits of the government's appeal. It did not specify why the two-pill versions were being allowed now, though it said the government failed to meet the requirements necessary to block the lower-court decision.

Department of Justice spokeswoman Allison Price said the government was reviewing the court's order.

Anna Higgins, director of the Family Research Council's Center for Human Dignity, where she focuses on issues including conception and end-of-life care, said the ease of access to the drug was a problem. She described the court's order Wednesday as "confounding."

"Our reaction in general is a concern for the safety of young girls and the rights of parents," she said.

Center for Reproductive Rights President Nancy Northup called the day of the court's order a "historic day for women's health."

"Finally, after more than a decade of politically motivated delays, women will no longer have to endure intrusive, onerous and medically unnecessary restrictions to get emergency contraception," she said in a statement.

The center's litigation director, Julie Rickelman, said the government has two weeks to decide whether to appeal the 2nd Circuit's decision on the stay to the full appeals court or the Supreme Court. Even if there is no appeal of the stay ruling, it was unclear how soon drugstores would move the two-pill emergency contraception from behind the counter. She said she hoped the pills would be available without restriction within a month.

"What it does mean is that generic two-pill products are going to be readily available to women without age restrictions, on any drugstore shelf," Rickelman said. "It'll be like buying Tylenol. You'll be able to go get it off the drugstore shelf, no ID, at the regular counter."

Dr. Georges Benjamin, of the American Public Health Association, said the court was right to allow women of child-bearing age to have access to emergency contraception, saying he was "hopeful that the full appeals court, when it finally decides, will have the same view."

The government has appealed U.S. District Judge Edward Korman's underlying April 5 ruling, which ordered emergency contraceptives based on the hormone levonorgestrel be made available without a prescription, over the counter and without point-of-sale or age restrictions.

The government asked the judge to suspend the effect of that ruling until the appeals court could decide the case, but the judge declined, saying the government's decision to restrict sales was "politically motivated, scientifically unjustified and contrary to agency precedent." He also said there was no basis to deny the request to make the drugs widely available.

The government had argued that "substantial market confusion" could result if the judge's ruling were enforced while appeals were pending, only to be later overturned.

The morning-after pill contains a higher dose of the female progestin hormone than is in regular birth control pills. Taking it within 72 hours of rape, condom failure or just forgetting regular contraception can cut the chances of pregnancy by up to 89 percent. But it works best within the first 24 hours. If a girl or woman already is pregnant, the pill has no effect. It prevents ovulation or fertilization of an egg.

The Food and Drug Administration was preparing in 2011 to allow over-the-counter sales of the morning-after pill with no limits when Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius overruled her own scientists in an unprecedented move.

The FDA announced in early May that Plan B One-Step could be sold without a prescription to those 15 and older. Its maker, Teva Women's Health, plans to begin those sales soon. Sales had previously been limited to those who were at least 17.

Korman, the judge, later ridiculed the FDA changes, saying they established "nonsensical rules" that favored sales of the Plan B One-Step morning-after pill and were made "to sugarcoat" the government's appeal.

He also said they place a disproportionate burden on blacks and the poor by requiring a prescription for less expensive generic versions of the drug bought by those under age 17 and by requiring those over age 17 to show proof-of-age identification at a pharmacy.

Plan B One-Step is the newer version of emergency contraception the same drug but combined into one pill instead of two.

___

Neergaard reported from Washington.

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The Hill :

BuzzFeed's John Stanton  that the conference at issue isn't clear:

That conference was the subject of , which found that it cost $4.1 million. If it wasn't that conference at which Schindler took the improper gifts, it could have been any of the 151 other conferences the agency held that year. In total, the inspector general found that the IRS spent $37.5 million on conferences in 2010.

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Rep. Darrell Issa of California has been leading the push to investigate IRS spending, predicated on the IG's report. Tomorrow, the House Oversight committee (which he chairs) willon it and the IRS' "spending culture." Before this revelation, it seemed likely that the hearing would be treading well-worn ground. In the autumn of 2011, President Obama signed an executive order curtailing the sort of spending demonstrated at the IRS conference. Now, there's something to talk about, albeit a bit off-topic.

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But that's not the only reason Issa has to celebrate. Since the IRS first admitted tofor additional scrutiny, Republicans have been . Following the Supreme Court's determination that the Affordable Care Act — Obamacare in the common parlance — must be administered through Congress' taxing authority, the IRS was given responsibility for administering 47 different provisions of the complex law. In order to do so, the agency appointed a Director of Implementation Oversight for the ACA office. That person was Schindler.

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Schindler and Koda weren't the first administrators to be put on leave. Lois Lerner, who ran the office of tax-exempt organizations at the heart of the Tea Party scandal, wasat the end of last month. As with Lerner, Schindler's leave will be paid, by IRS policy.

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How the IRS determined Schindler's improper behavior isn't clear. If it stemmed directly from the IG's report, Schindler isn't mentioned, nor are any gifts. Hotels did offer the IRS perks during the aforementioned conference, but the inspector general determined that those were appropriate. It's not clear, then, that Issa deserves much credit for Schindler's ouster, but that hasn't served as much deterrent from his doing so in the past.

A request for response from Rep. Issa was not returned, perhaps because his office was occupied with popping champagne corks.

Photo: Rep. Issa shows someone else (Rep. John Lewis) the way out. (AP)