China's smog taints economy, health

BEIJING — When a thick quilt of smog enveloped swaths of China earlier this month, it set in motion a costly chain reaction for the world's No. 2 economy.

Authorities canceled flights across northern China and ordered some factories shut. Hospitals were flooded with hacking patients.

A fire in an empty furniture factory in eastern Zhejiang province went undetected for hours because the smoke was indistinguishable from the haze. In coastal Shandong province, most highways were closed for fear that low visibility would cause motorists to crash. And in Beijing, the local government urged residents to remain indoors and told construction sites to scale back activity.

Photos: Smog in China

"These are emergency measures that have the same economic impact as a strike or severe weather," said Louis Kuijs, a Hong Kong-based economist with the Royal Bank of Scotland and formerly of the World Bank. "They're very painful."

Residents in the capital have taken to mocking their famously filthy air and its attendant health hazards with the expression "Beijing cough." Meanwhile, Shanghai's Environmental Protection Bureau has introduced a cartoon mascot to communicate daily air quality on its website: a pig-tailed girl who bursts into tears when smog reaches hazardous levels.

But economists say China's smog is no joke. As air pollution continues to obscure China's cities, the cost to the nation in lost productivity and health problems is soaring. The World Bank estimates sickness and early death sapped China of $100 billion in 2009, or just under 3% of gross domestic product. China is now home to seven of the 10 most-polluted cities in the world, according to a report by the Asian Development Bank and Beijing's Tsinghua University.

A study by Greenpeace and Peking University's School of Public Health put the cost of healthcare to treat pollution-related ailments in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Xian at more than $1 billion last year.

Beijing resident Zhang Jian takes his 2-year-old son to a doctor regularly to treat the toddler's chronic sinus infection.

"It's definitely related to the pollution," said Zhang, 35, who wore a disposable mask at an overcrowded children's hospital recently. "My son snores and his nose is blocked constantly. It's a problem because he's too young to clear his nose like adults."

The doctor's visit and treatment cost Zhang about $320 — nearly a week's pay for the IT professional.

The Beijing government says it's considering a host of emergency measures to clear the air. Among them: limiting vehicle usage, spraying building sites to reduce dust and restricting outdoor barbecue grills.

Even China's next premier, Li Keqiang, weighed in recently on the issue. "This is a problem accumulated over a long period of time, and solving the problem will also require a long time. But we need to take action."

China's smog crisis is not unlike those experienced in London and Los Angeles in the 1950s. Public outcry ultimately led to cleaner air and tougher environmental regulations.

Environmental activists hope the same happens in China. The official response in recent weeks has raised optimism that authorities will begin addressing pollution more openly.

Until recently, state media was loathe to use the word "pollution," opting instead for the euphemism "fog."

But popular pressure is building, making it harder for policymakers to ignore the foul air in many of China's largest cities.

After the staggeringly bad bout of air pollution in the middle of this month, micro-bloggers took to posting pictures of themselves online wearing masks.

Some held handwritten signs that read, "I don't want to be a human vacuum cleaner."

The phrase became the top-trending topic on the Twitter-like Sina Weibo, attracting several million hits.

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Crazy Alien Weather: Lightning-Filled Rocket Dust Storms of Mars

Scientists have modeled the internal workings of lightning-filled “rocket dust storms” on Mars that rise at speeds 100 times faster than ordinary storms and inject dust high into the Martian atmosphere.

The Red Planet is a very dry and dusty place, with global storms that sometimes obscure the entire surface. Satellites orbiting Mars have seen persistent dust layers reaching very high altitudes, as much as 30 to 50 km above the ground, though scientists are at a loss to explain exactly how the dust got there.

Using a high-resolution model, researchers have shown that a thick blob-like dust pocket inside a storm may become heated by the sun, causing the surrounding atmosphere to warm quickly. Because hot air rises, these areas will shoot skyward super fast, much like a rocket launching into space, hence “rocket dust storms.”

“The vertical transport was so strong we want to come up with a kind of spectacular name, to give an idea of the very powerful rise,” said planetary scientist Aymeric Spiga from the Institut Pierre Simon Laplace in Paris, France, who is lead author on a paper describing the phenomena in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets on Jan. 14.

These speedily rising dust blobs can soar from near the surface to 30 or 40 km into the atmosphere in a matter of hours at speeds in excess of 10 meters per second (22 mph). This is far faster than the typical convection speeds in a dust storm of 0.1 meters per second (0.2 mph). Since the dust particles rub up against one another and create friction, the rocket dust storms may become charged with electrostatic forces, which could which could trigger fantastic lightning bolts.

Spiga and his team used detailed models of winds and dust on Mars to determine exactly how these rocket dust storms behave. Most previous models of Mars’ climate simulate large-scale global dust storms with fairly coarse resolution and so have not noticed the rocket storms. The team seeded their model with data from a dust storm observed by the OMEGA instrument aboard ESA’s Mars Express orbiting satellite and watched the rise of rocket storms.

Similar dust storms can’t happen on Earth. This is mainly because Mars’ atmosphere is about 100 times thinner than our own, meaning that it gets quickly and efficiently heated when dust particles absorb sunlight and then emit thermal radiation.

But a comparable phenomenon occurs in grey cumulonimbus thunderstorm clouds on Earth. The large accumulations of water particles in such clouds release latent heat, causing strong vertical motions and an extensive tall structure. Spiga’s team has used this Earthly analogy in the rocket dust storm’s more technical name, conio-cumulonimbus, from the Greek conious, which means dust.

“But I prefer to call them rocket dust storms,” Spiga said. “Then everyone knows what I’m talking about.”

Other researchers are impressed with the physical modeling done in the work. “I was a little surprised that such a small dust disturbance could remain intact over such long distances,” said planetary atmospheres scientist Scot Rafkin from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. The mechanism could help explain how long-lasting layers of dust climb so high in the Martian atmosphere, he says. 

Because they appear to be relatively rare, it may take a while to track down more rocket dust storms. But Spiga is hopeful they will be found by orbiting satellites, which may even image the lightning flashes inside them.

Video: Spiga, Aymeric, et al. “Rocket dust storms and detached dust layers in the Martian atmosphere,” JGR:Planets, DOI: 10.1002/jgre.20046

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Singer Barry Manilow ill, Broadway comeback delayed

(Reuters) – Singer Barry Manilow on Thursday canceled the opening night and three other performances of his Broadway comeback run after coming down with bronchitis, according to Manilow‘s website.

The cancellations threaten to upend the “Could It Be Magic” singer’s return to Broadway following a more than two-decade absence.

The concerts, which had been slated for Thursday through Sunday, will be made up in February and March, his website said. Manilow, 69, will try to perform on Tuesday, the next scheduled show.

Manilow canceled two preview shows earlier in the week because of the illness, after which his website promised the singer would be ready for opening night “come hell or high water.”

“It turns out the only thing worse than hell and high water is bronchitis,” Manilow‘s website said of the cancellations. “Barry is deeply sorry to disappoint his fans and is doing everything he can to ensure a speedy recovery.”

Manilow has signed on for a 25-show run at the St. James Theatre in New York. The native New Yorker typically performs long-running shows at Las Vegas hotels.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey; Editing by Jill Serjeant and Xavier Briand)

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Religious Groups and Employers Battle Contraception Mandate

Shawn Thew/European Pressphoto Agency

President Obama, with his health secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, offering a compromise on the contraception mandate last year.

In a flood of lawsuits, Roman Catholics, evangelicals and Mennonites are challenging a provision in the new health care law that requires employers to cover birth control in employee health plans — a high-stakes clash between religious freedom and health care access that appears headed to the Supreme Court.

In recent months, federal courts have seen dozens of lawsuits brought not only by religious institutions like Catholic dioceses but also by private employers ranging from a pizza mogul to produce transporters who say the government is forcing them to violate core tenets of their faith. Some have been turned away by judges convinced that access to contraception is a vital health need and a compelling state interest. Others have been told that their beliefs appear to outweigh any state interest and that they may hold off complying with the law until their cases have been judged. New suits are filed nearly weekly.

“This is highly likely to end up at the Supreme Court,” said Douglas Laycock, a law professor at the University of Virginia and one of the country’s top scholars on church-state conflicts. “There are so many cases, and we are already getting strong disagreements among the circuit courts.”

President Obama’s health care law, known as the Affordable Care Act, was the most fought-over piece of legislation in his first term and was the focus of a highly contentious Supreme Court decision last year that found it to be constitutional.

But a provision requiring the full coverage of contraception remains a matter of fierce controversy. The law says that companies must fully cover all “contraceptive methods and sterilization procedures” approved by the Food and Drug Administration, including “morning-after pills” and intrauterine devices whose effects some contend are akin to abortion.

As applied by the Health and Human Services Department, the law offers an exemption for “religious employers,” meaning those who meet a four-part test: that their purpose is to inculcate religious values, that they primarily employ and serve people who share their religious tenets, and that they are nonprofit groups under federal tax law.

But many institutions, including religious schools and colleges, do not meet those criteria because they employ and teach members of other religions and have a broader purpose than inculcating religious values.

“We represent a Catholic college founded by Benedictine monks,” said Kyle Duncan, general counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which has brought a number of the cases to court. “They don’t qualify as a house of worship and don’t turn away people in hiring or as students because they are not Catholic.”

In that case, involving Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina, a federal appeals court panel in Washington told the college last month that it could hold off on complying with the law while the federal government works on a promised exemption for religiously-affiliated institutions. The court told the government that it wanted an update by mid-February.

Defenders of the provision say employers may not be permitted to impose their views on employees, especially when something so central as health care is concerned.

“Ninety-nine percent of women use contraceptives at some time in their lives,” said Judy Waxman, a vice president of the National Women’s Law Center, which filed a brief supporting the government in one of the cases. “There is a strong and legitimate government interest because it affects the health of women and babies.”

She added, referring to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Contraception was declared by the C.D.C. to be one of the 10 greatest public health achievements of the 20th century.”

Officials at the Justice Department and the Health and Human Services Department declined to comment, saying the cases were pending.

A compromise for religious institutions may be worked out. The government hopes that by placing the burden on insurance companies rather than on the organizations, the objections will be overcome. Even more challenging cases involve private companies run by people who reject all or many forms of contraception.

The Alliance Defending Freedom — like Becket, a conservative group — has brought a case on behalf of Hercules Industries, a company in Denver that makes sheet metal products. It was granted an injunction by a judge in Colorado who said the religious values of the family owners were infringed by the law.

“Two-thirds of the cases have had injunctions against Obamacare, and most are headed to courts of appeals,” said Matt Bowman, senior legal counsel for the alliance. “It is clear that a substantial number of these cases will vindicate religious freedom over Obamacare. But it seems likely that the Supreme Court will ultimately resolve the dispute.”

The timing of these cases remains in flux. Half a dozen will probably be argued by this summer, perhaps in time for inclusion on the Supreme Court’s docket next term. So far, two- and three-judge panels on four federal appeals courts have weighed in, granting some injunctions while denying others.

One of the biggest cases involves Hobby Lobby, which started as a picture framing shop in an Oklahoma City garage with $600 and is now one of the country’s largest arts and crafts retailers, with more than 500 stores in 41 states.

David Green, the company’s founder, is an evangelical Christian who says he runs his company on biblical principles, including closing on Sunday so employees can be with their families, paying nearly double the minimum wage and providing employees with comprehensive health insurance.

Mr. Green does not object to covering contraception but considers morning-after pills to be abortion-inducing and therefore wrong.

“Our family is now being forced to choose between following the laws of the land that we love or maintaining the religious beliefs that have made our business successful and have supported our family and thousands of our employees and their families,” Mr. Green said in a statement. “We simply cannot abandon our religious beliefs to comply with this mandate.”

The United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit last month turned down his family’s request for a preliminary injunction, but the company has found a legal way to delay compliance for some months.

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Diner’s Journal Blog: PepsiCo Will Halt Use of Additive in Gatorade

PepsiCo announced on Friday that it would no longer use an ingredient in Gatorade after consumers complained.

The ingredient, brominated vegetable oil, which was used in citrus versions of the sports drink to prevent the flavorings from separating, was the object of a petition started on Change.org by Sarah Kavanagh, a 15-year-old from Hattiesburg, Miss., who became concerned about the ingredient after reading about it online. Studies have suggested there are possible side effects, including neurological disorders and altered thyroid hormones.

The petition attracted more than 200,000 signatures, and this week, Ms. Kavanagh was in New York City to tape a segment for “The Dr. Oz Show.” She visited The New York Times on Wednesday and while there said, “I just don’t understand why they can’t use something else instead of B.V.O.”

“I was in algebra class and one of my friends kicked me and said, ‘Have you seen this on Twitter?’ ” Ms. Kavanagh said in a phone interview on Friday evening. “I asked the teacher if I could slip out to the bathroom, and I called my mom and said, ‘Mom, we won.’ ”

Molly Carter, a spokeswoman for Gatorade, said the company had been testing alternatives to the chemical for roughly a year “due to customer feedback.” She said Gatorade initially was not going to make an announcement, “since we don’t find a health and safety risk with B.V.O.”

Because of the petition, though, Ms. Carter said the company had changed its mind, and an unidentified executive there gave Beverage Digest, a trade publication, the news for its Jan. 25 issue.

Previously, a spokesman for PepsiCo had said in an e-mail, “We appreciate Sarah as a fan of Gatorade, and her concern has been heard.”

Brominated vegetable oil will be replaced by sucrose acetate isobutyrate, an emulsifier that is “generally recognized as safe” as a food additive by the Food and Drug Administration. The new ingredient will be added to orange, citrus cooler and lemonade Gatorade, as well Gatorade X-Factor orange, Gatorade Xtremo citrus cooler and a powdered form of the drink called “glacier freeze.”

Ms. Carter said consumers would start seeing the new ingredient over the next few months as existing supplies of Gatorade sell out and are replaced.

Health advocates applauded the company’s move. “Kudos to PepsiCo for doing the responsible thing on its own and not waiting for the F.D.A. to force it to,” said Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

Mr. Jacobson has championed the removal of brominated vegetable oil from foods and beverages for the last several decades, but the F.D.A. has left it in a sort of limbo, citing budgetary constraints that it says keep it from going through the process needed to formally ban the chemical or declare it safe once and for all.

Brominated vegetable oil is banned as a food ingredient in Japan and the European Union. About 10 percent of drinks sold in the United States contain it, including Mountain Dew, which is also made by PepsiCo; some flavors of Powerade and Fresca from Coca-Cola; and Squirt and Sunkist Peach Soda, made by the Dr Pepper Snapple Group.

PepsiCo said it had no plans to remove the ingredient from Mountain Dew and Diet Mountain Dew, both of which generate more than $1 billion in annual sales.

Heather White, executive director at the Environmental Working Group, said of PepsiCo’s decision, “We can only hope that other companies will follow suit.” She added, “We need to overhaul how F.D.A. keeps up with the latest science on food additives to better protect public health.”

Ms. Kavanagh agreed. “I’ve been thinking about ways to take this to the next level, and I’m thinking about taking it to the F.D.A. and asking them why they aren’t doing something about it,” she said. “I’m not sure yet, but I think that’s where I’d like to go with this.”

---

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 26, 2013

An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of the 15-year-old who started a petition on Change.org to end the use of brominated vegetable oil in Gatorade. She is Sarah Kavanagh, not Kavanaugh.

A version of this article appeared in print on 01/26/2013, on page B1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: PepsiCo Will Halt Additive Use In Gatorade.

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Protesters slam Egypt government two years after revolution

CAIRO -- Young men and boys clashed with security forces as tens of thousands of Egyptians protested Friday against the Islamist-led government’s failure to fix the economy and heal the politically divided nation two years after the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak.

The anniversary of the revolution that led to Mubarak’s downfall was marked more by rancor than joy as familiar and troubling scenes played out across the country: Rock-throwing youths lunging at police through clouds of tear gas while peaceful demonstrators waved banners and shouted epithets against those in power.

President Mohamed Morsi has been engulfed by months of anger from secularists, who claim he and his Muslim Brotherhood party have turned increasingly authoritarian in a bid to advance an Islamic state at the expense of social justice. The protests were the latest reminder of the volatile politics and persistent mistrust that threaten Egypt’s transition.

PHOTOS: 2011 Egyptian protests

“Morsi is finished,” said Tarik Salama, an activist. “A big part of the population hates him now. It’s too late for him to turn around and say, ‘Hey guys, I love you.’ He’s in the same place as Mubarak was two years ago.

"Morsi’s biggest problem is that he failed to unify the country. A lot of people voted for him, but he failed.”

One banner raised in Tahrir read: "Two years since the revolution, and Egypt still needs another revolution." Protest chants harked back to the 18-day revolt that toppled Mubarak but were now directed at Morsi: “Leave, leave.”

The days ahead may prove more violent. Many of the youths clashing with police in Cairo, Alexandria and other cities are angry over an economy that offers little hope. They have been joined by hard-core soccer fans, known as Ultras, demanding that police officials be held accountable in the deaths of 74 soccer fans killed last year in a stadium riot.

A court verdict in that case is expected Saturday.

In recent days, youths in Cairo have battled police with stones and gasoline bombs around high cement barricades blocking streets leading from Tahrir Square to the parliament. Young men pulled part of the wall down but police drove them back, firing steady volleys of tear gas that cloaked the square and drifted over the Nile.

“These young men and kids have no jobs,” said Salama. “The young in Egypt feel there is no future for them. This is the big danger.”

By dusk Friday, youths with rags and scarves over their faces hurled stones and rushed barriers, preparing for another night of clashes. The unrest spurred the emergence of an anarchist group, known as the Black Bloc, whose masked, black-clad members threw Molotov cocktails and attempted to overrun the presidential palace and the upper house of parliament or Shura Council.  

More than 60 protesters and at least 30 police have been injured nationwide since early Friday in clashes that also led to attacks on offices of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The backlash against Morsi intensified in November when he expanded his presidential powers and, sidestepping the courts, pushed through a referendum on an Islamist-backed constitution. The liberal opposition, which has long been disorganized, attacked him for spoiling promises of democracy that inspired the 2011 revolution.

Morsi has said his actions were an effort to root out Mubarak-era loyalists from the government and propel the country toward parliamentary elections in the spring. But his biggest challenge, perhaps, is Egypt’s troubled economy that has lost more than half of its foreign reserves and worsened conditions for about 40% of Egyptians who live on $2 a day.

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How Volkswagen Turns Tennessee Sunshine Into Passats

Volkswagen has been dedicated to getting solar power at its plants around the world, and now it can stake a claim to the single largest solar installation of any automotive manufacturing facility in the U.S. at the company’s compound in Chattanooga. And it’s also VW’s largest photovoltaic array anywhere in the world.

During a dedication ceremony at the site this week, VW executives, the designer and builder of the sprawling solar power complex and local dignitaries flipped a ceremonial giant light switch to mark the official opening of the Volkswagen Chattanooga Solar Park. It occupies 33 acres, or half of a 66-acre parcel adjacent to VW’s massive Tennessee manufacturing plant that covers 1.9 million square feet, employs more than 3,000 people and produces the Passat sedan.

The solar park includes 33,600 solar modules designed to produce 13.1 gigawatt hours of electricity per year, equal to the energy consumed annually by approximately 1,200 homes in the area, according to VW. The automaker says that the electricity produced by the solar park is estimated to supply 12.5 percent of the Chattanooga manufacturing plant’s energy needs during full production and 100 percent when the assembly lines are idle. VW adds that it will consume all the electricity generated from the array of polycrystalline solar modules instead selling it back to utilities, and 10 inverters will convert the solar energy from DC to AC so that it can be used to supply plant with power.

The developer of the solar park, Silicon Ranch, will own and operate the facility and sell the electricity to Volkswagen under a 20-year agreement. Phoenix Solar built the park over the last six months.

In late 2011, Volkswagen Chattanooga was the first – and is still the only – car factory in the world to receive LEED Platinum certification by the U.S Green Building Council, which dubbed the facility “the world’s greenest auto plant.” Now if VW and other European automakers could just convince U.S. car buyers that “clean diesel” isn’t an oxymoron either.

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Veteran showman Dick Van Dyke reflects on lifetime’s work

(Reuters) – From “Mary Poppins” to “Night at the Museum” and his own long-running TV comedy, Dick Van Dyke has done it all during a show business career spanning seven decades.

On Sunday, Van Dyke, 87, gets a lifetime achievement award from the Screen Actors Guild in Los Angeles, just a year after his 1960s “Dick Van Dyke Show” co-star Mary Tyler Moore received the same honor.

Reuters spoke to Van Dyke about his career, his thoughts on today’s comedies and being a newlywed in his 80s.

Q: Was it really as much fun working on “The Dick Van Dyke Show” as it seemed?

A: “It was just absolutely wonderful. (Co-star) Morey Amsterdam used to say it was like going to a party every morning. It was the perfect improv group. I think it was the best five years of all of our lives.”

Q: Do you have a favorite episode?

A: “‘Coast-to-Coast Big Mouth,’ where Mary gives away that Alan Brady, Dick’s boss (played by show creator Carl Reiner) is bald, is one that comes to mind. I tend to like the ones that I had the most fun on, and I think the one I recall immediately is ‘Where Did I Come From?,’ the story of Richie’s birth, and all the hijinks that happen with the nervous father. A lot of crazy things happened, a lot of slapstick, which, of course, I love to do. It was a farce, but I just had so much fun on that one.”

Q: How have sitcoms changed since “The Dick Van Dyke Show’s” run from 1961-66?

A: “I think the big change is that 10 minutes of every 30 are commercials. We had 28 minutes to tell our story. Today they get 20 minutes. It’s just a one-line joke and a canned laughter, and a one-line joke and a canned laughter. I won’t say it’s bad, it’s just that I have trouble understanding it.

“It seems to me that relationships are what’s missing. I think back to ‘All in the Family,’ when you knew what those relationships were and the comedy that came out of that. Today it’s just one line after another, and they seem to try to cover too much in the way of story in a short time. Then I think they signal when they’re trying to be funny, and the minute I catch someone trying to be funny, then I won’t laugh.”

Q: What do you watch on television?

A: “I have to admit, I don’t get the comedies today. Maybe it’s just my vintage. Actually I stick pretty much with the news, and I love ‘Jeopardy!’ I watch Al Jazeera. They have news that you can’t find anywhere else. They do great documentaries, too.”

Q: Do children tend to recognize you from your earlier roles in film classics such as “Mary Poppins” (1964), or for your more recent work in the 2006 family film “Night at the Museum“?

A: “It’s just thrilling. I get little kids who recognize me from ‘Mary Poppins,’ and it just delights me because it’s our third generation. I was in the market the other day and a woman said to her daughter, ‘Honey, that’s the man who played Bert.’ And she ran over to her little brother and said, ‘I just met Bert’s grandpa!’ So to be recognized by kids is just wonderful. Kids have all seen ‘Mary Poppins,’ almost every family has a copy of it, and the children have come up and sung all the words from the songs of ‘Mary Poppins‘ for me. It’s amazing.”

Q: You’re a member of the barbershop quartet, Dick Van Dyke and the Vantastix. Where do you perform?

A: “We sing mostly at fundraisers and benefits. We also sing the opening theme song from “The Dick Van Dyke Show.” Morey Amsterdam wrote the lyrics, but I don’t think they’ve ever been published. I sing with guys half my age in the group, so they keep me young. A couple years ago we sang at Ford’s Theater for the president, so that was a big thrill for us.”

Q: You married makeup artist Arlene Silver last February. You two met at the SAG awards seven years ago. How’s married life treating you?

A: “Absolutely wonderful! She sings and dances, so there is a lot of that going on around our house. She’s a joy and she just lights up my life!”

(Reporting by Jill Jacobs in New York; Editing by Eric Kelsey and Eric Beech)

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F.D.A. to Vote on Restricting Hydrocodone Products Like Vicodin

Trying to stem the scourge of prescription drug abuse in the United States, an advisory panel of experts to the Food and Drug Administration plans to vote Friday on whether to toughen restrictions on hydrocodone products like Vicodin, the most widely used narcotic painkillers in the country.

The recommendation, which the F.D.A. would likely follow, would limit access to the drugs by making them harder to prescribe, a major policy change that advocates said could help ease the growing problem of addiction to painkillers.

The change would have sweeping consequences for doctors, pharmacists and patients. Under the new rules, refills without a new prescription would be forbidden, as would faxed prescriptions and those called in by phone. Only written prescriptions from a doctor would be allowed and pharmacists and distributors would be required to store the drugs in special vaults. The vote comes after similar legislation in Congress failed last year, after intense lobbying by pharmacists and drugstores.

Prescription drugs account for about three-quarters of all drug overdoses in the United States, with the number of deaths more than tripling since 1999, according to federal data. Since 2008, deaths from overdoses have outpaced deaths from car accidents.

The F.D.A. convened the panel, made up of scientists and other experts, after a request by the Drug Enforcement Administration, which contends that the drugs are among the most frequently abused painkillers in the country.

“This is the federal government saying, ‘we need to tighten the reins on this drug,'” said Scott R. Drab, associate professor of pharmacy and therapeutics at the University of Pittsburgh. “Pulling in the rope is a way to rein in abuse, and consequently, addiction.”

At a two-day hearing at F.D.A. headquarters in Silver Spring, Md., many speakers opposed the change, including advocates for nursing home patients, who said older, frail residents needing pain medication would be required to make the arduous trip to a doctor’s office to continue using hydrocodone products. Other experts questioned how effective the change would be. Oxycodone, another highly abused painkiller, has been in the more restrictive category since it came on the market, but the limited access does not seem to have stemmed abuse, they said.

But others including parents who had lost their children to prescription drug abuse, as well as doctors and pharmacists, testified, sometimes emotionally. . Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat of West Virginia, where the scourge has been particularly deadly, made an impassioned plea for tougher restrictions.

“When I go back to West Virginia, I hear how easy it is for anybody to get their hands on hydrocodone drugs,” Mr. Manchin said on Friday. “For underage children, these drugs are easier to get than beer or cigarettes.”

He added that the current, less restrictive status “is fueling the prescription drug epidemic today.”

Dr. James P. Rathmell, chief of the division of pain medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, said hydrocodone products have similar biological effects as oxycodone products, and should unquestionably be in the same category of restrictiveness.

“Knowing what we know today, it was a mistake,” Dr. Rathmell said, referring to hydrocodone products being placed in the looser category when they came to market. “It should be corrected.”

Dr. Timothy Deer, chief doctor at the Center for Pain Relief in Charleston, W.Va., said that he feared for older patients, particularly in rural areas, who would have to drive great distances to get prescriptions renewed. But, he said, hydrocodone products have been by far the most widely prescribed painkiller because the restrictions were so loose. And on balance, particularly in a hard-hit state like his, the public health benefits of a recommendation to toughen restrictions on the drug probably outweigh the harm of additional burdens on legitimate pain patients.

“At the end of the day, the benefits of reducing abuse will outweigh the harm to legitimate pain patients,” he said. “This will likely reduce the amount of drug falling into the wrong hands.”

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DealBook: Rumble on Basic Cable, as Ackman Takes on Icahn Live

For about 15 minutes on Friday afternoon, all of Wall Street was tuned into the battle that everyone wanted to see: William A. Ackman taking on Carl C. Icahn, live on air.

And the battle proved even stranger than anyone would have expected: Profanities were dropped; old battles were refought; taunts were slung.

Years of bad blood between the two hedge fund magnates spilled publicly onto CNBC’s airwaves, with Mr. Icahn deriding his younger counterpart as a “crybaby,” and Mr. Ackman declaring the veteran investor a “bully.” It was a smackdown that regularly prompted whoops from traders on the New York Stock Exchange floor, especially on the occasions that Mr. Icahn flung an occasional reference to bovine excrement.

Nominally, the two were set to talk about Herbalife, the health supplements company in which Mr. Ackman has publicly bet against. Speculation has ripped across Wall Street that Mr. Icahn has taken a contrary bullish bet on the company.

Of course, that’s not all that they argued about.

Instead, the two men squabbled over a nearly decade-old court case involving a real estate company, where Mr. Ackman sold his investment to Mr. Icahn. (You can read all about the lengthy battle here.) Mr. Ackman to this day alleges that Mr. Icahn reneged on a deal to share profits from a stock sale; the elder investor sees things differently.

How did that shape the battle between the two rich men? It became perhaps the financial world’s most-watched schoolyard match, in which Mr. Icahn shouted repeatedly and Mr. Ackman passionately argued his position at length.

Mr. Icahn dubbed Mr. Ackman “the crybaby in the schoolyard” and called his opponent “the quintessential example of on Wall Street, if you want a friend get a dog.” Clearly the more inflamed combatant, Mr. Icahn declared to his foe, “I wouldn’t want to invest with you if you were the last man on Earth.” He even picked a fight with CNBC host Scott Wapner, declaring him the bully. “I don’t give a damn what you want to know, I came on to talk about what I want to talk about,” the investor thundered, refusing to declare his position on Herbalife. [That said, Mr. Icahn mused that Herbalife could be "the mother of all short squeezes."]

For his part, Mr. Ackman repeatedly argued that Mr. Icahn was a bully who had taken advantage of a young investor stumbling in the early part of his career. The younger hedge fund manager repeatedly defended his bet against Herbalife, positing himself as the target of a major campaign by the health products marketer.

“He’s not an honest guy, he doesn’t live up to his word, and he takes advantage of little people,” Mr. Ackman flatly declared of Mr. Icahn.

Later in the exchange, Mr. Icahn sneered to his opponent, “I appreciate you called me a great investor.” Then he added, “I can’t say the same about you.”

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