Nation roundup for April 28

Technician falsified mammogram reports

PERRY, Ga. (AP) — Sharon Holmes found a lump in her left breast quite by accident. At work one day as a high school custodian, her hand brushed up against her chest and she felt a knot sticking out. She was perplexed. After all, just three months earlier, she had been given an all-clear sign from her doctor after a mammogram.

A new mammogram in February 2010 showed she in fact had an aggressive stage 2 breast cancer. The horror of the discovery was compounded by the reason: The earlier test results she had gotten weren’t just read incorrectly. They were falsified.

She wasn’t alone in facing this news. The lead radiological technologist at Perry Hospital in Perry, a small community about 100 miles south of Atlanta, had for about 18 months been signing off on mammograms and spitting out reports showing nearly 1,300 women were clear of any signs of breast cancer or abnormalities.

Except that she was wrong. Holmes and nine other women were later shown to have lumps or cancerous tumors growing inside them.

Holmes said the discovery was horrific enough. With a son in his 20s and another in high school at the time, she trembled at the thought of leaving them without a mother. “To me, that meant a death sentence,” she said. She underwent successful surgery the month after the cancer was discovered to remove the lump from her breast and followed that with chemotherapy and radiation treatments.

Her breast has been cancer-free for four years and subsequent cancers found elsewhere, in her lymph nodes and thyroid, have been successfully treated. Now she just prays it doesn’t come back.

But to find out later that she had been deceived made it even worse. “I’m thinking I’m doing what I’m supposed to do, getting my tests done, and then I find out someone else isn’t doing their job,” Holmes told The Associated Press.

The tech, Rachael Rapraeger, pleaded guilty earlier this month to 10 misdemeanor charges of reckless conduct and one felony charge of computer forgery. She was sentenced to serve up to six months in a detention center, to serve 10 years on probation during which she can’t work in the health care field and to pay a $12,500 fine.

The reasons she gave were vague. She told police she had personal issues that caused her to stop caring about her job, that she had fallen behind processing the piles of mammogram films that stacked up. So she went into the hospital’s computer system, assumed the identities of physicians, and gave each patient a clear reading, an investigative report says.

Bill: Condoms are not proof of prostitution

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — New York City spends more than a million dollars every year to distribute free condoms to combat unintended pregnancies and diseases such as AIDS. Yet city police are allowed to confiscate those very condoms as evidence of prostitution.

That conflict is behind the latest legislative proposal to make New York the first state to prohibit condoms — specifically the existence of multiple condoms — from being used as evidence in prostitution cases, a widespread practice that advocates say undermines decades of public health goals.

“There may be no actual evidence, and the condom is their only way to trying to prove it,” said Hawk Kinkaid, a former male escort who now advocates on their behalf in New York City. “The fear that this will be used against you — it prevents people from being able to protect themselves.”

The practice has come under criticism across the country, with prosecutors in San Francisco, Brooklyn and Nassau County in suburban New York City announcing last year they will no longer use condoms as evidence in prostitution cases.

Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice said she decided the benefits of condoms as evidence don’t outweigh the public health impact. Most prostitution cases don’t go to trial, and trafficking cases typically require much greater evidence.

“Sex workers are more likely victims than they are criminals, and condom evidence was rarely of any value to a prosecution,” Rice said. “If you need that condom so badly in the case against a trafficker, then you don’t have a good case.”

Legislation to formally abolish the practice across New York state has so far fallen flat.

‘Captain America’ is knocked from the top

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A femme-fueled comedy beat a superhero blockbuster at the box office this weekend.

After holding the top position for three weeks, “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” has been topped by “The Other Woman” for the No. 1 spot.

Fox’s revenge comedy, starring Cameron Diaz, Leslie Mann and Kate Upton, debuted with $24.7 million, while Disney-Marvel’s “Captain America,” led by Chris Evans, grossed $16 million in its fourth weekend, bringing its domestic total to $225 million.

The PG-13 rating of the Nick Cassavetes-directed “The Other Woman” — about three women wronged by a three-timing spouse played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau of “Game of Thrones” — helped it draw a larger audience, said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst of box-office tracker Rentrak.

“The rating was perfect,” he said. “If you are going for the mainstream audience who is looking for something that has a little bit of an edge, but not too much, you can hit that sweet spot and draw a large audience.”

The release date couldn’t have been better, Dergarabedian also noted. “This was the perfect time to release this film, between the success of ‘Captain America’ and before the official start of the summer movie season with ‘Spider-Man 2.’ “

Hollywood hasn’t yet seen a comedy do especially well at the box office in 2014 since “Ride Along,” which was released in January. Wes Anderson’s “The Grand Budapest Hotel” exceeded expectations, however, making over $131 million worldwide.

But Jason Bateman’s “Bad Words” made only $7.7 million domestically overall. Tyler Perry’s “The Single Moms Club” brought in just $16 million domestically. Most of his films have grossed over $40 million domestically. Marlon Wayans’ sequel “A Haunted House 2” opened with $8.8 million, drastically down from the original’s $18 million debut.

“Sometimes it’s about casting,” Dergarabedian said. “When you have Cameron Diaz in a comedy like this, it’s hard not to knock it out of the park. This film is right in her wheelhouse. This is what she does best.”

While Diaz’s last film, a thriller called “The Counselor,” grossed only $17 million domestically last year, her foul-mouthed 2011 comedy “Bad Teacher” earned over $100 million stateside.

“The Other Woman” scored $12.8 million internationally, bringing its worldwide total to $45.3 million.

“Captain America” has now hit over $645 million globally, surpassing its 2011 original “The First Avenger,” which earned $370 million. The sequel is the highest-grossing April release ever.

Sony’s faith-based “Heaven Is for Real,” starring Greg Kinnear, held the third-place position with $13.8 million after opening in the same slot last weekend behind leaders “Captain America” and Fox’s animated “Rio 2,” which drifted down to fourth place with $13.7 million. (Notably, Mann, who voices a character in “Rio 2,” now has two films in the top five this weekend.)

Relativity Media’s action crime drama “Brick Mansions,” starring the late Paul Walker, was No. 5 with $9.6 million. The film was one of the last Walker completed before he died in a car accident in November. It’s a solid debut for “Brick Mansions” after the film was pushed back from its original release date in February.

To finish “Fast &Furious 7,” which will be released April 2015, Walker’s brothers, Caleb and Cody Walker, have stepped in to complete their brother’s action scenes. In one of his first interviews since the announcement from Universal Pictures, the studio behind the “Fast &Furious” franchise, Cody Walker broke down in tears when talking on Fox’s Baltimore TV affiliate about his late brother’s charitable work last week.

Johnny Depp’s sci-fi disappointment “Transcendence” dropped from No. 4 to No. 6 in its second weekend, earning $4.1 million. The Warner Bros. film is Depp’s third consecutive flop after 2013’s Western “The Lone Ranger,” in which he played Tonto, and 2012 quirky vampire flick “Dark Shadows.”

Could the A-lister be losing his appeal at the box office? Depp’s last film to exceed $100 million domestically was “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” in 2011. Perhaps his upcoming Disney fantasy “Into the Woods,” also starring Meryl Streep, will fare better.

Debuting in only four locations, A24 Films’ “Locke” took the weekend’s highest per-screen average with $22,303. Overall, the drama starring Tom Hardy earned $89,210. The film, which sees Hardy spend 85 minutes in a car on the phone while tackling a series of events jeopardizing his carefully patterned existence, is being called one of his best performances. AP National Writer Jocelyn Noveck called Hardy’s portrayal of construction manager and family man Ivan Locke “admirably restrained, in a situation when overacting must have been a constant temptation.”

Also this month, A24 released the sci-fi film “Under the Skin” featuring Scarlett Johansson. It opened slightly higher with $133,154 domestically, reaching a total of over $1.5 million.

Also opening this weekend was Lionsgate’s “The Quiet Ones,” starring Jared Harris (“Mad Men”) as an Oxford professor who recruits students to conduct an experiment to prove supernatural abilities exist. The horror film’s take was a mere $4 million.

Next weekend, Sony-Marvel’s “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” kicks off the summer movie season with its domestic debut. The 18 weeks of summer constitutes on average 40 percent of the year’s box-office earnings, Dergarabedian said.