Adele’s “21″ sells 10 million, Rihanna leads Billboard

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – British singer and Grammy darling Adele reached the 10 million sales mark in the United States on Wednesday with her heartbreak album “21″ becoming the first by British woman to reach the milestone, Nielsen SoundScan said.

“21,” released in February 2011, produced the hits “Someone Like You” and “Rolling In The Deep” and became the top-selling album of 2011. Earlier this year, Adele swept the Grammy Awards with six, including song, record and album of the year.

“21″ became the third album to cross 10 million in 2012, along with Linkin Park‘s “Hybrid Theory” and Usher’s “Confessions.” But it is the only album to reach the milestone in less than two years in the last decade, Nielsen said.

“What an incredible honor,” Adele said in a statement. “A huge, huge thank you to my American fans for embracing this record on such a massive level.”

“21″ will receive the diamond certification from the Recording Industry Association of America, marking its 10 million milestone, joining the ranks of albums by artists such as Michael Jackson, The Beatles and Madonna.

“Adele‘s unique talent is a gift to music fans, and her success is certainly cause for a celebration of Diamond magnitude,” Cary Sherman, RIAA’s chairman & CEO, said in a statement.

Adele, 24, is enjoying the success of her latest single “Skyfall,” the official theme song for the James Bond film of the same name. It has sold more than 2 million copies worldwide. The singer also gave birth to her first child earlier this year.

On the Billboard 200 chart this week, R&B star Rihanna scored her first No. 1 album with “Unapologetic,” selling 238,000 copies.

She held off new entries from “American Idol” winner Phillip Phillips, who landed at No. 4 with his debut album “The World From the Side of the Moon,” and country-rock singer Kid Rock, who rounded out the top five with his latest album “Rebel Soul.”

(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy Editing by Jill Serjeant, Grant McCool and Andre Grenon)

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Cutting consultations led to more Medicare spending

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Medicare unintentionally spent more money on doctor’s-office visits in 2010, the year it introduced a simplified fee schedule, according to a new study.

Researchers found that the U.S. government-run insurance for the elderly paid an average of $ 40 more per beneficiary after it stopped paying for consultations with specialists and increased its payments for regular doctors’ visits – even though the goal had been to break even while streamlining fee categories.

“It’s important to emphasize the increase is – as far as we know right now – just a onetime change… We don’t know if this change will last or if the growth rate will go back to what it was,” said the study’s lead author Zirui Song of Harvard Medical School in Boston.

Before the change, Medicare paid doctors about $ 125 for a consultation of “medium complexity,” about $ 92 for a standard first-time office visit and about $ 61 for seeing a regular patient.

Specialists, such as surgeons and obstetrician-gynecologists, typically billed for the more expensive consultations and family doctors, known as primary care physicians, billed for the cheaper office visits.

The income gap between specialists and family doctors is often cited as one reason that medical students choose not to go into primary care, which many fear will cause a doctor shortage within the next decade.

One study from 2010 found that family doctors earn as little as half what their colleagues who specialize in areas such as surgery and oncology take home. (see Reuters Health story of October 25, 2010 here: http://reut.rs/O2mVG9)

By making both family doctors and specialists charge for office visits rather than consultations, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) may have leveled the playing field somewhat, but the agency intended the policy change to be “neutral” in cost terms.

To see if that was the result, Song and his collaborators, who include a chairman of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, analyzed 2.2 million Medicare patients’ claims made from 2007 through 2010.

The study used a Thomson Reuters database and one of the co-authors is a Thomson Reuters employee.

The researchers, who published their findings in the Archives of Internal Medicine, found that Medicare paid about $ 628 annually per patient from 2007 through 2009.

After the change in 2010, the program paid about $ 668 per patient – a 6.5 percent jump.

Most of the increase can be explained by Medicare’s higher payments for office visits, they conclude, but not all of it. Doctors also started charging Medicare for more “complex” office visits.

The characterization of a patient visit is somewhat subjective, the authors explain in their report. A simple visit might involve a 10-minute exam and “straightforward” attention to a specific problem, whereas a “high-complexity” visit might last 60 minutes, entailing exhaustive history taking, examination and “decision-making.”

“You might say just from a third-party perspective, simply changing the fee schedule should not have an effect on how sick a patient is… but physicians were coding at a higher level,” Song told Reuters Health.

As for specialists being paid more than family doctors, the researchers found the change did help to narrow the payment gap.

Of the 6.5 percent extra Medicare expenditure in 2010, about $ 6 of every $ 10 went to family doctors and the rest to specialists.

“It was a noble effort on the CMS’ part to try and change incentives to improve the payment disparity between primary care physicians and specialists,” said Dr. Patrick O’Malley, an internist at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland.

But O’Malley told Reuters Health that “meddling” with fees will not solve the broader problems facing primary care, including high expectations for family doctors, increasingly complex patients and the worsening doctor shortage.

In an editorial accompanying the study, O’Malley says that doctors across specialties and organizations need to help fix these problems.

“It’s not only up to primary care providers alone to fix the primary care problem; it’s up to every physician to be responsible for helping to fix it,” he writes.

“I think it’s going to be a process of incremental change. I’m hoping the Affordable Care Act will move us in the right direction, but I think we will also hit rock bottom, where we’ll see ourselves in a desperate state,” O’Malley said.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/11cDCDk and http://bit.ly/Se1HFR Archives of Internal Medicine, online November 26, 2012.

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Cutting consultations led to more Medicare spending

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Medicare unintentionally spent more money on doctor’s-office visits in 2010, the year it introduced a simplified fee schedule, according to a new study.

Researchers found that the U.S. government-run insurance for the elderly paid an average of $ 40 more per beneficiary after it stopped paying for consultations with specialists and increased its payments for regular doctors’ visits – even though the goal had been to break even while streamlining fee categories.

“It’s important to emphasize the increase is – as far as we know right now – just a onetime change… We don’t know if this change will last or if the growth rate will go back to what it was,” said the study’s lead author Zirui Song of Harvard Medical School in Boston.

Before the change, Medicare paid doctors about $ 125 for a consultation of “medium complexity,” about $ 92 for a standard first-time office visit and about $ 61 for seeing a regular patient.

Specialists, such as surgeons and obstetrician-gynecologists, typically billed for the more expensive consultations and family doctors, known as primary care physicians, billed for the cheaper office visits.

The income gap between specialists and family doctors is often cited as one reason that medical students choose not to go into primary care, which many fear will cause a doctor shortage within the next decade.

One study from 2010 found that family doctors earn as little as half what their colleagues who specialize in areas such as surgery and oncology take home. (see Reuters Health story of October 25, 2010 here: http://reut.rs/O2mVG9)

By making both family doctors and specialists charge for office visits rather than consultations, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) may have leveled the playing field somewhat, but the agency intended the policy change to be “neutral” in cost terms.

To see if that was the result, Song and his collaborators, who include a chairman of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, analyzed 2.2 million Medicare patients’ claims made from 2007 through 2010.

The study used a Thomson Reuters database and one of the co-authors is a Thomson Reuters employee.

The researchers, who published their findings in the Archives of Internal Medicine, found that Medicare paid about $ 628 annually per patient from 2007 through 2009.

After the change in 2010, the program paid about $ 668 per patient – a 6.5 percent jump.

Most of the increase can be explained by Medicare’s higher payments for office visits, they conclude, but not all of it. Doctors also started charging Medicare for more “complex” office visits.

The characterization of a patient visit is somewhat subjective, the authors explain in their report. A simple visit might involve a 10-minute exam and “straightforward” attention to a specific problem, whereas a “high-complexity” visit might last 60 minutes, entailing exhaustive history taking, examination and “decision-making.”

“You might say just from a third-party perspective, simply changing the fee schedule should not have an effect on how sick a patient is… but physicians were coding at a higher level,” Song told Reuters Health.

As for specialists being paid more than family doctors, the researchers found the change did help to narrow the payment gap.

Of the 6.5 percent extra Medicare expenditure in 2010, about $ 6 of every $ 10 went to family doctors and the rest to specialists.

“It was a noble effort on the CMS’ part to try and change incentives to improve the payment disparity between primary care physicians and specialists,” said Dr. Patrick O’Malley, an internist at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland.

But O’Malley told Reuters Health that “meddling” with fees will not solve the broader problems facing primary care, including high expectations for family doctors, increasingly complex patients and the worsening doctor shortage.

In an editorial accompanying the study, O’Malley says that doctors across specialties and organizations need to help fix these problems.

“It’s not only up to primary care providers alone to fix the primary care problem; it’s up to every physician to be responsible for helping to fix it,” he writes.

“I think it’s going to be a process of incremental change. I’m hoping the Affordable Care Act will move us in the right direction, but I think we will also hit rock bottom, where we’ll see ourselves in a desperate state,” O’Malley said.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/11cDCDk and http://bit.ly/Se1HFR Archives of Internal Medicine, online November 26, 2012.

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Wall Street jumps in another “fiscal cliff” swing

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Stocks rallied on Wednesday after comments from House Speaker John Boehner, the top Republican in Congress, on a possible compromise to avoid the “fiscal cliff” turned the market around.

The S&P 500 rebounded from a 1 percent decline, gaining more than 20 points from its low after Boehner, an Ohio Republican, said he was optimistic that a budget deal to avoid big spending cuts and tax hikes can be worked out. President Barack Obama added to the good feelings, saying he hoped to get a deal done in the next four weeks.

Whether or not those remarks reflect the reality of negotiations is another story.

“The fiscal cliff is dominating the discussion, and short term, we’re a little bit too optimistic on it being fixed right away,” said John Manley, chief equity strategist for Wells Fargo Advantage Funds in New York.

In expectation of higher dividend tax rates in 2013, companies have been shifting dividends or announcing special payouts to shareholders.

Costco Wholesale Corp , up 6.3 percent at $ 102.58, was the S&P 500′s biggest percentage gainer after it became the latest company to announce a special dividend.

The market’s move marked the second straight day where a leading legislator dictated trading action. On Tuesday, stocks fell on pessimistic remarks from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat from Nevada.

The market has been swinging for weeks now on headlines from Washington, with Wednesday’s gyrations once again highlighting the importance that Wall Street is giving to finding a solution to avoid the series of tax increases and spending cuts that could push the U.S. economy into recession.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.DJI> rose 106.98 points, or 0.83 percent, to 12,985.11 at the close. The S&P 500 <.SPX> gained 10.99 points, or 0.79 percent, to 1,409.93. The Nasdaq Composite <.IXIC> added 23.99 points, or 0.81 percent, to close at 2,991.78.

The S&P 500 bounced off a strong support area near 1,385 that includes both its 200- and 14-day moving averages. It closed above 1,400 for the third session in four – an optimistic sign for stock bulls.

Knight Capital Group Inc shares jumped 15.2 percent to $ 3.42 on news that Getco Holding proposed a $ 1.4 billion merger with Knight, while Virtu Financial offered to buy Knight for at least $ 1.1 billion.

Apparel retailer Express Inc rose 8.9 percent to $ 14.15 after it forecast strong earnings for the current quarter as lower prices and easy-to-understand discounts led to robust Black Friday sales.

The S&P retail index <.SPXRT> gained 1.4 percent.

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters surged 27.3 percent to $ 36.86 a day after it forecast quarterly and full-year earnings well ahead of analysts’ expectations.

Nearly 6.1 billion shares changed hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT, below the daily average so far this year of about 6.48 billion shares.

On the NYSE, roughly seven stocks rose for every three that fell, and on Nasdaq, five issues rose for every three that fell.

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Jan Paschal)

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Rapper PSY wants Tom Cruise to go ‘Gangnam Style’

BANGKOK (AP) — The South Korean rapper behind YouTube’s most-viewed video ever has set what might be a “Mission: Impossible” for himself.

Asked which celebrity he would like to see go “Gangnam Style,” the singer PSY told The Associated Press: “Tom Cruise!”

Surrounded by screaming fans, he then chuckled at the idea of the American movie star doing his now famous horse-riding dance.

PSY’s comments Wednesday in Bangkok were his first public remarks since his viral smash video — with 838 million views — surpassed Justin Bieber‘s “Baby,” which until Saturday held the record with 803 million views.

“It’s amazing,” PSY told a news conference, saying he never set out to become an international star. “I made this video just for Korea, actually. And when I released this song — wow.”

The video has spawned hundreds of parodies and tribute videos and earned him a spotlight alongside a variety of superstars.

Earlier this month, Madonna invited PSY onstage and they danced to his song at one of her New York City concerts. MC Hammer introduced the Korean star at the American Music Awards as, “My Homeboy PSY!”

Even President Barack Obama is talking about him. Asked on Election Day if he could do the dance, Obama replied: “I think I can do that move,” but then concluded he might “do it privately for Michelle,” the first lady.

PSY was in Thailand to give a free concert Wednesday night organized as a tribute to the country’s revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who turns 85 next month. He paid respects to the king at a Bangkok shopping mall, signing his name in an autograph book placed beside a giant poster of the king. He then gave an outdoor press conference, as screaming fans nearby performed the pop star’s dance.

Determined not to be a one-hit wonder, PSY said he plans to release a worldwide album in March with dance moves that he thinks his international fans will like.

“I think I have plenty of dance moves left,” he said, in his trademark sunglasses and dark suit. “But I’m really concerned about the (next) music video.”

“How can I beat ‘Gangnam Style’?” he asked, smiling. “How can I beat 850 million views?”

___

Associated Press writer Thanyarat Doksone contributed to this report.

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Family learns of student’s death on Facebook

ATLANTA (AP) — The parents of a south Georgia college student first learned from Facebook that their daughter had been found dead in a dormitory study room shortly before Thanksgiving. Now, they hope that Facebook and other social media sites can help solve the death of 17-year-old Jasmine Benjamin, which police are investigating as a homicide.

The Valdosta State University freshman was found unresponsive on a study room couch on Nov. 18.

A family friend forwarded the Facebook post about the teen’s death to her parents before they were officially notified by authorities, said A. Thomas Stubbs, an attorney for the victim’s mother, Judith Brogdon, and her stepfather, James Jackson. But many questions remain unanswered about how she died.

The family has hired a private investigator, and a new Facebook site has been set up in hopes that students and others might share tips.

While some Facebook comments have already been turned over to law enforcement officers, the family hopes friends, classmates or others who noticed suspicious comments will also alert authorities.

“Anything that reveals a little more information than what’s publicly known about her death, those are the kind of comments police are looking for as someone who might warrant a closer examination,” Stubbs said.

Also of interest are “unusual comments or unusually timed comments about her death,” he said.

Police detectives have canvassed dormitories and interviewed several students on the campus, located about 250 miles south of the family’s home in Gwinnett County, outside Atlanta.

Benjamin wanted to follow the career path of her mother and become a nurse.

Police say they’re treating the case as a homicide, though autopsy results are not complete and they can’t say for certain whether she was killed. There were no obvious signs of a crime when her body was found, but an autopsy raised questions, authorities have said.

“We’re providing what resources are necessary to assist Valdosta State University police in solving this crime,” Georgia Bureau of Investigation spokesman John Bankhead said. “The crime lab is expediting evidence from this incident.”

Shortly after Benjamin’s parents learned of her death from Facebook, Lawrenceville police officers knocked on the doors of the family home to inform them officially that their daughter was dead, Stubbs said.

“As frustrating as that may be for the family to learn that way, they understand it’s a different world,” Stubbs said.

The family has yet to learn the possible timeframe of when their daughter died, and police have not shared any theories about how she was killed, Stubbs said.

“We know that they have looked at the phone records, video records that they can find in the school,” he said. Beyond that, they’ve been going through legal procedures that are required to obtain records from Facebook Inc.

The family hired Martinelli Investigations Inc. of Lawrenceville to assist in the investigation.

Private investigator Robin Martinelli said Wednesday that any video near the scene, even if may seem insignificant, could prove helpful in the investigation.

“It wouldn’t matter if it was two weeks before, two hours before or 20 minutes before,” she said.

Martinelli said she’s confident that police are working diligently to follow up on leads, but private investigators can often provide valuable assistance, she said.

“On any homicide, they’re going to work around the clock aggressively every minute, and they’re doing that,” she said.

She said Jasmine Benjamin was a strong student who showed great potential. “Her favorite color was purple, her nickname was Jazzy,” she said.

“She wanted to help people, plain and simple,” her stepfather, James Jackson, told WSB-TV. “That was her goal in life. That’s all she talked about since she was young — ‘I want to be able to help people.’”

Valdosta State campus police, city police and the GBI were working together to conduct interviews and collect evidence, the university said in a statement Tuesday. University officials said they couldn’t release any further information.

Martinelli hopes students away at college keep in touch with their parents — and give them the passwords to social networking sites and their cell phones in case anything happens.

“If you have passcodes to your computer, your phone, please tell your parents,” she said. “Don’t tell everybody in the world, but tell your parents your passcodes.”

She said some of the best advice parents can give students is this: “They should listen to their gut,” she said. “If they walk into a situation and it’s not feeling right, leave.”

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Ex-Elmo puppeteer faces new sex-with-minor allegation

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The puppeteer formerly behind the “Sesame Street” character Elmo faces a new accusation of having sex with an underage boy, a week after a similar allegation prompted him to resign from the iconic public television children’s program.

In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, a man identified only as John alleges Kevin Clash engaged in oral sex and other sex acts with him when John was 16 years old. The suit seeks at least $ 75,000 in damages.

The suit alleges the incident occurred in either 2000 or 2001 when John, who is from Florida, visited New York for modeling opportunities. John came to know Clash, then 40, through a telephone chat line for gays on which Clash claimed to be a 30-year-old named Craig, according to the suit.

John returned to New York when he turned 18, and he and Clash renewed the relationship, the lawsuit said.

“Mr. Clash believes the lawsuit has no merit,” Clash’s publicist, Risa B. Heller, said in an emailed statement.

It is the latest charge levied against Clash, now 52, who resigned on November 20 from Sesame Workshop, the company behind “Sesame Street,” after nearly 30 years on the show.

His resignation came the same day Cecil Singleton filed a claim seeking more than $ 5 million in damages from Clash. Singleton claims he met the then-32-year-old puppeteer in 1993 in a gay chat room when he was 15.

It added that on numerous occasions over a period of years Clash engaged in sexual activity with Singleton.

The newest allegation comes about two weeks after another man recanted his claims that Clash had sex with him when he was 16 years old. The man later said the relationship was consensual.

Clash had denied the allegations and acknowledged a past relationship with his first accuser. He added the pair were both consenting adults at the time.

The Elmo character debuted on “Sesame Street” in 1979, 10 years after the show premiered and introduced the now-iconic characters Big Bird, Bert and Ernie, Oscar the Grouch and Cookie Monster, among others, to American children.

While Clash was the third performer to animate the child-like shaggy red monster, Sesame Workshop credits him with turning Elmo into the international sensation he became.

(Reporting by Dan Burns; Editing by Paul Thomasch and Cynthia Osterman)

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Flu Symptoms Drove Boston Mayor to Hospital

When Boston Mayor Thomas Menino ended his vacation in Italy short this fall and checked into a Boston hospital complaining of a respiratory infection, it led doctors to find and treat a blood clot in his leg, a fracture in his back, an infection around the fracture and type 2 diabetes.

Cold and flu symptoms from respiratory infections can be a hassle, but sometimes that fever and cough can be good for just getting people to the doctor.

“That’s why every patient needs a careful evaluation because every once in a while, what the patient thinks is the flu or reports as the flu is not,” said Dr. William Schaffner, chairman of preventative medicine at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. “I would say 99 percent of people who present to the emergency room and doctor’s office with symptoms of influenza – that is cough, fever and the like – are certainly going to have influenza.”

Click here to read about cold- and flu-fighters.

Menino, 69, arrived at Brigham and Women’s Hospital on Oct. 25, complaining of fatigue and a cough, and doctors described him as “extremely washed out” with some “malaise.” In addition to the respiratory infection, doctors found a blood clot that traveled from Menino’s leg to his lungs.

Respiratory illnesses, like the one that initially drove Menino to seek medical attention, can often range from mild to severe, Schaffner said.

“He was feeling poorly enough to end what was supposed to be a very pleasant vacation, and when he got here, he was very weak and very washed out,” Dr. Dale Adler, Menino’s doctor, said during a press conference in mid-November.

Doctors can usually tell whether flu-like symptoms are the result of a respiratory infection or something else soon after the patient is admitted. If not, they can perform a series of tests to find out.

Click here to read about flu fact and fiction.

(The flu can lead to other ailments, the most common of which is pneumonia, or an infection of the lungs, Schaffner said.

About 1.1 million pneumonia patients were hospitalized and discharged in 2009, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On average, they stayed in the hospital 5.2 days.)

Weeks later, Menino was still in the hospital. Although his illness and clot had been resolved, he was complaining of back pain, which doctors discovered was the result of a compression fracture and an infection around the fracture.

Finally, doctors discovered that Menino had underlying type 2 diabetes, which may have contributed to the infection, Menino’s doctor said during a press conference on Monday.

It’s not clear how Menino’s initial flu-like symptoms tied into his other ailments, but doctors said they are positive about his prognosis. The mayor relocated to a rehabilitation center on Monday.

“It is a run of bad luck,” Morris said of Menino. “He will rebound from this.”

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Diseases/Conditions News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Flu Symptoms Drove Boston Mayor to Hospital

When Boston Mayor Thomas Menino ended his vacation in Italy short this fall and checked into a Boston hospital complaining of a respiratory infection, it led doctors to find and treat a blood clot in his leg, a fracture in his back, an infection around the fracture and type 2 diabetes.

Cold and flu symptoms from respiratory infections can be a hassle, but sometimes that fever and cough can be good for just getting people to the doctor.

“That’s why every patient needs a careful evaluation because every once in a while, what the patient thinks is the flu or reports as the flu is not,” said Dr. William Schaffner, chairman of preventative medicine at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. “I would say 99 percent of people who present to the emergency room and doctor’s office with symptoms of influenza – that is cough, fever and the like – are certainly going to have influenza.”

Click here to read about cold- and flu-fighters.

Menino, 69, arrived at Brigham and Women’s Hospital on Oct. 25, complaining of fatigue and a cough, and doctors described him as “extremely washed out” with some “malaise.” In addition to the respiratory infection, doctors found a blood clot that traveled from Menino’s leg to his lungs.

Respiratory illnesses, like the one that initially drove Menino to seek medical attention, can often range from mild to severe, Schaffner said.

“He was feeling poorly enough to end what was supposed to be a very pleasant vacation, and when he got here, he was very weak and very washed out,” Dr. Dale Adler, Menino’s doctor, said during a press conference in mid-November.

Doctors can usually tell whether flu-like symptoms are the result of a respiratory infection or something else soon after the patient is admitted. If not, they can perform a series of tests to find out.

Click here to read about flu fact and fiction.

(The flu can lead to other ailments, the most common of which is pneumonia, or an infection of the lungs, Schaffner said.

About 1.1 million pneumonia patients were hospitalized and discharged in 2009, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On average, they stayed in the hospital 5.2 days.)

Weeks later, Menino was still in the hospital. Although his illness and clot had been resolved, he was complaining of back pain, which doctors discovered was the result of a compression fracture and an infection around the fracture.

Finally, doctors discovered that Menino had underlying type 2 diabetes, which may have contributed to the infection, Menino’s doctor said during a press conference on Monday.

It’s not clear how Menino’s initial flu-like symptoms tied into his other ailments, but doctors said they are positive about his prognosis. The mayor relocated to a rehabilitation center on Monday.

“It is a run of bad luck,” Morris said of Menino. “He will rebound from this.”

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Norway Covets Its Neighbors’ Carbon

The fjords of western Norway seem an unlikely place to tackle industrial pollution. But an hour’s drive north of Bergen, the Norwegians recently inaugurated the world’s largest test facility for carbon capture, the process of trapping carbon dioxide before it spews from the stacks of power plants and factories. The Norwegian government spent more than $ 1 billion to build the facility, a tangle of pipes, scaffolding, and cooling towers overlooking the port of Mongstad. Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg has called it “Norway’s moon landing.”

That’s quite an investment considering the country’s greenhouse emissions are among the lowest in the developed world. But it’s not domestic CO₂ the Norwegians are after. It’s their neighbors’. Beneath the North Sea lie vast reservoirs that have been emptied of oil by state-owned Statoil. “The potential to store [waste CO₂] in aquifers under the sea is enormous,” says Tore Amundsen, the managing director of the Technology Centre Mongstad.

In theory, Amundsen should face no shortage of customers from countries such as Germany and the Netherlands, where plans for underground storage of waste CO₂ have run into opposition from environmental groups. Norway’s oil industry could benefit, too, as the process of undersea injection would force residual oil and gas deposits out of the seabed.

While it’s integral to the fight against global warming, carbon capture has had a slow start. The International Energy Agency says it expects the technology to account for as much as 20 percent of the emissions reductions needed to limit global warming to a maximum of two degrees by 2050. The European Union has promised more than 1 billion euros ($ 1.3 billion) in financing for carbon-capture projects, but with the region’s economy in crisis, national governments haven’t provided the loan guarantees required for the work to go forward.

Yet the need has never been greater, says Jon Gibbins, a professor at the University of Edinburgh specializing in carbon-capture and power-plant engineering. The U.S. is awash in cheap shale gas, while worldwide, coal consumption, led by China and India, has risen more than 50 percent over the past decade. “We’ve got far too much, far too cheap fossil fuel” to ignore carbon capture, Gibbins says.

To jump-start development, the Norwegians have invited companies to try out carbon-capture technologies at Mongstad. The tests are carried out using emissions from a gas-fired power plant that adjoins the facility. French engineering group Alstom (ALSMY), for example, is testing a process in which emissions are sprayed with chilled ammonia to strip out the carbon dioxide.

Even some environmental groups are willing to give carbon capture a chance. “People have rightfully worried that carbon capture is just an excuse” to avoid developing cleaner energy sources, says Mike Childs, head of policy, research, and science at Friends of the Earth in Britain. “While we want to move to a system of 100 percent renewable energy, that will take time.”

Amundsen says the processes being tested at Mongstad would add 30 percent to 50 percent to the cost of electricity generated by a conventional gas- or coal-fired power plant. That’s roughly on a par with wind- and solar-generated power, and Amundsen expects prices to come down sharply as the technology matures. Norway is considering a plan to expand Mongstad from a test site into a full-scale facility that would scrub all CO₂ emissions from the adjacent power plant and a nearby refinery, at an estimated cost of $ 4 billion.

The country can’t import CO₂, though, unless other countries come up with billions to build their own carbon-capture plants and pay the Norwegians for storage. And while existing gas pipelines could be modified to transport carbon at relatively modest cost, burying it under the seabed would be expensive. What’s more, Norway could face competition from the Dutch port of Rotterdam, which has a plan to become a hub for CO₂ transshipment to North Sea storage sites. Rotterdam has the advantage of being closer than Norway to most of Europe’s major industrial regions.

Amundsen is unfazed by these challenges. “Norway has an interest to see that oil and gas remain an important energy source for the future,” he says. “We’re so incredibly rich, we can actually afford to do it.”

The bottom line: A new $ 1 billion carbon-capture plant is the cornerstone of a plan to bury Europe’s waste CO2 beneath the North Sea.

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