The drug maker Pfizer said Wednesday that it was recalling packets of birth control pills because some had been packaged incorrectly, potentially causing women to take an inadequate dose and possibly become pregnant.

The recall involves about a million packets, although only about 30 may actually have been affected, the company said Wednesday in a prepared statement.

The pills are the kind that come in a “blister” pack, which contains 21 active, hormone-containing pills and seven inactive pills, which women take to help stay on track. But Pfizer said that in some packages, the inactive pills may have been “placed out of order.”

Pfizer said in a news release that “as a result of this packaging error, the daily regimen for these oral contraceptives may be incorrect and could leave women without adequate contraception, and at risk for unintended pregnancy.” The release lists details of the pills in question. Women using the affected packets should begin using a “nonhormonal” form of contraception immediately, the company said. (The pills were made and packaged by Pfizer and marketed by Akrimax Rx Products.)

Now, that’s not what you want to hear, is it? It’s hard enough to remember to take the pills every day, and then you find that — surprise! — even if you’ve been following the schedule, they still may not work.

Which raises a serious question: What if you end up pregnant because of the packaging mix-up? Is Pfizer offering to cover the cost of the pregnancy or terminating the pregnancy? Or to pay for other health-related costs, like the cost of buying another form of birth control?

When we posted that question to Pfizer, a spokeswoman e-mailed a statement that didn’t directly answer the question. “We understand that this news can be very concerning and confusing for any woman who takes birth control pills to protect against unintended pregnancies,” it said in part.

We’ve asked again, and will update the post when we get an answer.

Last September, Qualitest Pharmaceuticals, a unit of Endo Pharmaceuticals, voluntarily recalled “multiple lots” of contraceptive pills — also because of a “packaging error” that could put women at risk for pregnancy. A Qualitest spokesman didn’t immediately return a call seeking comment.

What do you think? What is Pfizer’s responsibility to the women who took the pills?

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By Michael Levenson and Matt Viser, Globe Staff

TAMPA, Fla. – Just as Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney were planning to meet in a debate tonight, the former House speaker got some good news: the wife of a casino mogul is giving his allies $5 million to spend, crucial reinforcements as Gingrich comes under renewed assaults from Romney.

Miriam Adelson, whose husband Sheldon earlier donated $5 million, is giving the money to Winning Our Future, an independent group that is supporting Gingrich’s campaign, according to the Associated Press.

The group aired a controversial documentary in South Carolina that skewered Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital, but was also judged to be inaccurate and Gingrich called for it to be changed or taken down.

The new donations will help fuel more ads in Florida, an expensive state with multiple media markets, but the Associated Press reported that Miriam Adelson had asked for her money to only be used on ads that support Gingrich.

The donations will fuel a fight that has become increasingly vitriolic. The candidates were scheduled planning to meet tonight for the first time since Gingrich won the South Carolina primary on Saturday and reshaped the presidential nominating contest.

The debate, airing at 9 p.m. on NBC, is expected to be heated with few words minced.

Romney is calling on Gingrich to release a variety of documents, and Gingrich planned to release some of them related to his Freddie Mac consulting work before the debate begins. Gingrich has tweaked Romney for not releasing his tax returns, which Romney plans to do tomorrow morning.

The debate will also feature Rick Santorum and Ron Paul, whose campaigns have faded in recent days as the contest has increasingly featured Romney and Gingrich facing off with contrasting visions and styles for Republican voters to consider.

Hours before the debate began, Romney began ramping up his criticism of Gingrich, calling him an unstable leader and suggesting that the former House speaker could have engaged in “potentially wrongful activity” by not registering as a federal lobbyist. In the past, Romney has relied on his supporters to make those arguments. Now, he is doing it himself, an indication that he needs to confront Gingrich more directly and more urgently to stop his momentum from South Carolina.

“He’s gone from pillar to post almost like a pinball machine — from item to item in a way which is highly erratic,” Romney said at a press conference in Tampa. “It does not suggest a stable, thoughtful course which is normally associated with leadership.”

Romney also renewed calls for Gingrich to return the $1.6 million he received from Freddie Mac, and called on him to release records of any advice he provided to the mortgage giant.

“We could see an October surprise a day from Newt Gingrich,” Romney said. “So let’s see the records.”

“Let’s see who his clients were,” he added. “At the time he was lobbying Republican congressmen for Medicare Part D, was he working, or were his entities working with any health care companies that could have benefited from that? That could represent not just evidence of lobbying but potentially wrongful activity of some kind.”

In attack mode since losing South Carolina to Gingrich, Romney’s campaign is trying to cast the former speaker as a Washington influence-peddler. The campaign yesterday launched its first negative ad, featuring a deep-voiced narrator saying, “While Florida families lost everything in the housing crisis, Newt Gingrich cashed in.”

Gingrich has insisted that he was not lobbying on behalf of Freddie Mac, and was instead doing consulting work. Appearing on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” yesterday, Gingrich called Romney’s attacks false.

“I did no lobbying, period,” Gingrich said. “It’s not true. He knows it’s not true. He is deliberately saying things he knows are false. I just think that’s what the next week will be like.”

Before the debate begins, Gingrich is scheduled to release contracts related to his work at Freddie Mac. Romney has called for far more documents to be released, but Gingrich’s move amounted to an effort to diffuse controversy over his work with the mortgage giant that contributed to the housing crisis.

The documents were to be released through the Center for Health Transformation, a group that Gingrich helped create and was at while he provided the consulting work.

Appearing at his first event in Florida yesterday, Gingrich described Romney’s new onslaught as the work of a desperate candidate.

“It’s such baloney,” Gingrich told several hundred voters in a plaza outside a Tampa church yesterday. “It used to be pious baloney. But now it’s just desperate baloney… Pretty soon, he’ll be able to work in a delicatessen.”

“Pious baloney” was the memorable phrase Gingrich used several weeks ago during a debate in New Hampshire to mock Romney’s claim that he wasn’t a career politician.

“If you’ve been campaigning for six years, and you begin to see it slip away, you get desperate, and when you get desperate, you say almost anything,” Gingrich said of Romney. “And I think, in tonight’s debate, he will probably stretch the barrier of almost anything.”

Michael Levenson can be reached at mlevenson@globe.com. Matt Viser can be reached at maviser@globe.com.

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Posted on16 November 2011.

By Matt Ward

An upcoming trial is set to shine a spotlight on the work of a high-ranking, longtime county official.

Bob Jones, the county’s facilities manager, head of buildings and grounds and a former public administrator, will likely face intense scrutiny in the upcoming trial of a former county worker, Nicholas James Willing, 43, when testimony begins on Jan. 17.

Willing is facing the possibility of life in prison for allegedly orchestrating the December 2010 home invasion robbery of Jones’ home on Black Street.

Jones, along with his wife and then 7-year-old daughter, were held hostage while four weapon-toting thugs ransacked his home. All four have pleaded guilty.

Two are supposedly ready to finger Willing as the robbery’s mastermind.

Willing’s Las Vegas defense attorney, Donald Green, plans to make Jones’ purported history of engaging in questionable behavior as a county employee a centerpiece of his client’s defense.

The Pahrump Valley Times sought Willing out recently when rumors emerged that a hornet’s nest of allegations — and subpoenas — were set to send county managers reeling.

These involved stories of abuse of authority, misuse of government property, performing work in exchange for political perks, theft, allowing people to live in houses secured by the county through the public administrator’s office and assorted other tales, all focusing on one central character — Jones.

From a jail cell in Tonopah, Willing told this newspaper that his arrest in the Jones break-in amounted to official kidnapping. He denied having anything to do with the robbery.

“I was supposed to be moving to Texas, and this all happened. I was leaving town,” he said.

About Jones, he said, “He’s a power trip guy. It’s all about power for him… He thinks he’s untouchable.”

Willing, who worked for the county off and on for about 15 years, started his employment about the same time Jones did. A number of sources confirmed that Willing and Jones worked closely together on numerous projects. The working relationship soured after a time, however, as Jones was continuously promoted and Willing stayed at the same level. Prosecutors plan to use this fact, among others, to show that Willing had a motive to rob Jones.

Deputy District Attorney Wes White, who will try the case, said he is looking forward to presenting his evidence to a jury.

“Often in criminal cases, the defense will attack the victim’s credibility and character. The state believes in this case that Willing had motive and intent to do what we are alleging,” he said.

District Attorney Brian Kunzi said nothing the defense could bring forward about Jones’ work with the county would change the facts of the case and the community’s need for justice.

When confronted on Tuesday with the allegations likely to be leveled at him, Jones reacted in measured tones.

Surprisingly, he also admitted that some of what Willing will likely allege at trial is true.

A man named Burniss

Probably the most problematic allegation for Jones, at least as far as Willing’s trial is concerned, involves a man named Burniss Yarbrough.

Yarbrough was found at a residence on West Ricksue with a gunshot wound to his head and chest in August 2010.

Deputies found him while responding to a 911 call from a woman claiming Yarbrough had held her hostage for two days, raped her repeatedly, threatened to kill her, attempted to strangle her and perpetrated other brutal acts upon her.

Yarbrough shot himself in the head as he was playing a game of forced Russian roulette with the victim. Inexplicably, he shot himself in the chest right after.

Yarbrough was care-flighted to a Las Vegas hospital that night. The victim was lucky to be alive, police having rescued her by cutting a hole in a fence surrounding the property.

Jones had nothing to do with this crime, but his seat at the periphery is interesting nonetheless. First, Yarbrough was living in a room behind Jones’ house at the time.

Second, the woman was nearly killed at a home she had no business being in — it was a residence placed under county control after the homeowner died in December 2009. The person who took control of that home — and let the woman live rent free for two months — was none other than Jones.

Asked whether it was something he did often as a public administrator, Jones said no, that he may have allowed people to stay in county-controlled homes only a few times.

Yarbrough’s victim, contacted to confirm Willing’s account of how she got to move into the home, said Jones was merely doing her a favor during a tough time in her life. She said Yarbrough victimized the Joneses, too, when he did what he did.

Yarbrough is in prison today, looking at six years. Judging from his white supremacist tattoos and previous arrests for assault and kidnapping in 1988 in Santa Rosa County, Calif., as well as charges in other jurisdictions in the 1990s, Yarbrough could become an easy foil for Willing’s defense lawyer.

Willing plans to argue that it was Yarbrough, not he, who told the four people who robbed Jones’ house what they could find inside.

Jamie Ann Sexton, one of the four robbers, confronted with Willing’s assertion on Monday said she had never even heard of Yarbrough.

Patios and permits

Other allegations Willing will likely lodge at Jones in his upcoming trial involve the misuse of county equipment and facilities and even a strange tale of a stolen lawn mower.

Whether it will assist Willing’s defense remains to be seen, but the allegations do raise some questions about a pattern of mismanagement over the years from both county managers and county commissioners, mostly because what Willing shared with the Pahrump Valley Times are stories that have been bandied about in the corridors of Nye County power for years.

Among these, and the most easily verifiable, was that Jones had used county equipment to pour concrete slabs at his home in 2004. Buildings and grounds workers under his supervision performed the work. He admitted Tuesday that he paid the workers from his own pocket and that the work was done on a weekend so as not to interfere with the regular work week. He also admitted to using county-owned equipment to do the work.

“When it comes to county equipment, it has been kind of loose. I did use the county’s forms. But, you have to understand that we all have tools that the county has the use of,” he said.

Jones cited as an example a scissor lift he owns that he recently used on the current remodeling effort at the courthouse.

Another potential sore point with this concrete work, though, is that it was done building an enclosed porch and an attached garage for which Jones did not obtain the proper permits.

“I did not permit them, that’s true,” he said.

Willing said Jones and other county officials believe rules about getting building permits don’t apply to them. A quick check of county records revealed Jones is not the only buildings and grounds official with unpermitted home improvements on their property. Joe Walker, a 14-year building and grounds employee, had a 576-square-foot detached garage built in 2005 without a permit. County Commissioner Gary Hollis’ tax records indicate he has improvements on his residential property that don’t have the required permits, including an 832-square-foot detached garage. The local permitting office when asked to check their files reported that all buildings built after 1998 that are over 200 square feet, such as detached garages, require a building permit.

The lawn mower investigation

Two weeks before Willing was arrested he called the Nye County Sheriff’s Office. He wanted to report a crime. His allegation: He wanted to report a stolen county lawn mower.

Willing had been on disability for a while at this point — he injured his back wheelbarrowing rocks on a county project thanks to Jones relieving him of his backhoe duties, he says.

In an effort at what one might call revenge, Willing wanted to blow the whistle on a suspected switcheroo — the county’s brand new $2,500 lawn mower was switched out for Jones’ old broken down lawn mower of the same make and model.

Willing says the same detective, who two weeks later would arrest him, came and picked up the complaint. Sheriff Tony DeMeo says the complaint was forwarded to the county manager, who promised that it would be handled internally. A detective says he thought a complaint was referred to the DA’s office. The DA says he never got anything about a sheriff’s investigation.

When asked whether he ever looked into the matter, Kunzi said, “I will neither confirm nor deny any investigation being conducted by this office.”

Jones says the lawn mower allegation is ridiculous.

“What happened is, that particular year we were in a budget shortage. I let the service go that was doing the Calvada Eye. I put Nick Willing to doing this lawn down here. We didn’t have the money in the budget to buy a lawn mower.

“We went to my house, I had bought a brand new garden tractor. I brought in a receipt showing the county manager that I purchased that as well as about $1,000 worth of attachments. When I took Nick out there and picked that lawn mower up, I said ‘you see this lawn mower, it’s brand new, there’s not a scratch on it, that’s how I expect it to stay.’

“By July he had pretty much beat the lawn mower up. I bought a new lawn mower, the county bought a new lawn mower, and I kept it. It’s still at my house. It’s my lawn mower. It’s a replacement for my brand new lawn mower. It’s the exact same model. I took the new one because mine was brand new when Nick started using it,” Jones said.

Willing’s description of what happened is different. He says Jones switched out the lawn mowers when the old one started breaking down.

“Bob brought his tractor, which was a couple of years old, to the shop to be fixed, right. It needed a new gas tank, it was cracked. It needed new tires, the rubber was bad on it and some of the pulleys were bad on it and all that. This is his personal property. So he brings it over to get it fixed. And sends it to work with me. The county has plenty of money, this is just a ploy. He goes and buys an identical tractor, three, four months later, identical. So he keeps the identical brand new one at his house and leaves that one his personal tractor at work. This is documented. Every time that tractor the old one broke down, you will see that that tractor was not capable of doing the job. I got a write-up because of it,” he said.

Asked whether he ever used the county shop or county garage facilities to fix his personal vehicles, Jones said he and many of his employees had indeed often used county facilities to fix their personal vehicles.

“I’m not going to say we haven’t brought … all of the employees there at one time or another have had something looked at while it’s on premise. As far as having mechanics work on them, no. The mechanics work on county equipment. But, yeah, have I looked at my car there, the bay’s there, yeah sure. So has virtually everyone in the department,” he said.

The guns, the guns, the guns

A persistent allegation that continues to crop up, and will likely rear its head again in Willing’s pending trial, is a story about an eccentric accountant dying in Pahrump and leaving county officials to sort through an estate that included thousands and thousands of guns.

The home where all the guns were stored was secured by the public administrator’s office sometime in 2006. It was Jones’ first job as public administrator.

The Pahrump Valley Times was made aware of an FBI investigation last year involving the claims of a fired NCSO auxiliary officer who has long claimed that local deputies and other county employees may have walked away with some of the decedent’s gun collection before an official inventory was made.

The FBI supposedly investigated and found no merit to the claims. The PVT has interviewed numerous sources about these allegations, including Jones on more than one occasion.

For the first time on Tuesday, Jones admitted that he caught one of his former buildings and grounds employees stealing guns from this house — someone he later fired for, ironically, using county equipment on a private concrete job. That person, who was never charged, was one of several sources for this story.

“He wanted a couple of guns. And I told him, name redacted you can come look and pick out a couple. I said I would ask the guy the homeowner’s next of kin , he’ll probably give you a couple, he has 6,000 guns,” Jones said.

“My wife went over and let them in two former county employees . And my wife came home and I asked if he had picked out a few guns, and she said yeah, he took about eight of them out of there. My wife was just livid. She didn’t realize that he was supposed to pick out two guns and set them aside, not take them.”

Jones said he made the employee put the guns back. Asked if he thought some still walked away, especially since the home was broken into after NCSO deputies supposedly secured it, he said “I can’t say that some didn’t. But then you had every cop in town out there.

“So then, do you want to accuse every cop in town? They had it a few days before they gave it to me. But, do I want to go there? Absolutely not. Do I think our sheriffs are straight up people, for the most part. I’m not going to say everybody in the sheriff’s department is a crook, they all steal guns. I’m not going there.”

Swan song cancelled

Jones says he has felt a bit under siege lately. The upcoming trial comes on the heels of allegations he moved into the new buildings and grounds offices before obtaining the proper certificate of occupancy.

Before that he was under fire when a county commissioner questioned why a new contract for a leased impound lot was entered into without commission approval.

On Tuesday, county commissioners held their regular meeting. On the agenda was an item that would approve a purchase of five years worth of PERS retirement for Jones.

He said he was looking forward to retiring in March and moving to West Virginia, where his mother lives.

At the end of a long interview, Jones was a bit introspective.

He said, “To be honest with you, I think I’ve done a good job with the county for the last 17 years I’ve been here. I’ve always watched after the taxpayers’ money. I always give them the best deal …”

Later, not a single commissioner made a motion to approve Jones’ buyout. The item died.

Jones said he could retire anyway in about 18 months.