World Briefing | AFRICA: Uganda: Oil Industry Regulations Passed

Lawmakers passed legislation on Friday intended to regulate Uganda’s nascent oil industry, but critics say it gives too much authority over the industry to the nation’s energy minister.

The legislation, which has been debated for more than a year, is meant to pave the way for oil production in Uganda.

But Global Witness, a group that highlights the links between the exploitation of natural resources and human rights abuses, said that the new legislation would give the president and his energy minister “total control over the sector” and warned that it would “perpetuate the status quo of secrecy, excessive ministerial control and corruption allegations.”

Uganda is estimated to have enough oil reserves to become a middle-tier oil-producing nation. But its oil industry has been plagued by accusations of corruption and court cases that have delayed the start of production. Pumping is now expected to begin in 2014, industry officials say.

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New Sony online store offers remote downloads to PlayStation and mobile devices

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Te'o and Manziel hit Manhattan with Heisman hopes

NEW YORK (AP) — Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o was looking forward to a break after a five-city-in-five-days tour, during which he has become the most decorated player in college football.

"I'm just trying to get a workout in and get some sleep," he said Friday about his plans for the night.

Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel seemed to have more energy when he arrived at a midtown Manhattan hotel with his fellow Heisman Trophy finalist. In fairness, Johnny Football's week hasn't been nearly as hectic, though this trip to New York city is different from the first time he visited with his family when he was young.

"It's just taking it up a whole 'nother level, but happy to be here," he said.

Manziel and Te'o spent about 30 minutes getting grilled by dozens of reporters in a cramped conference room, posed for some pictures with the big bronze statue that they are hoping to win and were quickly whisked away for more interviews and photo opportunities.

Manziel, Te'o or Collin Klein, the other finalists who couldn't make it to town Friday, each has a chance to be a Heisman first Saturday night.

Manziel is trying to be the first freshman to win the award. Te'o would be the first winner to play only defense. Klein would be Kansas State's first Heisman winner.

Manziel and Te'o were on the same flight from Orlando, Fla., where several college football awards were handed out last night. The 6-foot-1, 200-pound quarterback was just happy the 255-pound linebacker didn't try to record another sack when they met.

"He's a big guy," Manziel said, flashing a big smile from under his white Texas A&M baseball cap. "I thought he might stuff me in locker and beat me up a little bit."

The two hadn't had much time for sightseeing yet, but they did walk around Times Square some, saying hello to a few fans. They probably weren't too difficult to spot in their team issued warm-up gear.

"We've just been talking about goofy stuff. Playing video games. Playing Galaga. Just some things from back in the day. Messing around with each other," Manziel said. "Kind of seeing who is going to take more pictures. He's definitely taking that award right now."

Te'o is already going to need a huge trophy case to house his haul from this week. He has won six major awards, including the Maxwell as national player of the year. He'll try to become Notre Dame's eighth Heisman winner and first since Tim Brown in 1987.

"I can only imagine how I would feel if I win the Heisman," he said.

Charles Woodson of Michigan in 1997 is the closest thing to a true defensive player winning the Heisman. Woodson was a dominant cornerback, but he also returned punts and played a little receiver. That helped burnish his Heisman credentials.

Te'o is all linebacker. He leads the top-ranked Fighting Irish with 103 tackles and seven interceptions.

Klein was the front-runner for the Heisman for a good chunk of the season, but he played his worst game late in the season — in a loss at Baylor — and the momentum Manziel gained by leading Texas A&M to victory at Alabama has been tough to stop.

Manziel's numbers are hard to deny. He set a Southeastern Conference record with 4,600 total yards, throwing for more than 3,000 and rushing for more than 1,000.

Klein, by comparison, averages about 100 fewer total yards per game (383-281) than Manziel.

A freshman has never won the Heisman. Oklahoma running back Adrian Peterson came closest in 2004, finishing second by Southern California's Matt Leinart.

Manziel is a redshirt freshman, meaning he attended Texas A&M and practiced with the team but did not play last year. Still, he'd be the most inexperienced college player to win the sport's most prestigious award.

"It's surreal for me to sit here and think about that this early in my career," he said. "With what me and my teammates have gone through, with how they've played and how they've helped me to get to this point, it's just a testament to how good they are and how good they've been this year.

"Without them I wouldn't be here and that's the real story to all this."

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Justices to Take Up Generic Drug Case

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court said on Friday that it would decide whether a pharmaceutical company should be allowed to pay a competitor millions of dollars to keep a generic copy of a best-selling drug off the market.

Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

Ralph Neas, head of the Generic Pharmaceutical Association, said the case would alter the marketing of new generics.

The case could settle a decade-long battle between federal regulators, who say the deals violate antitrust law, and the pharmaceutical industry, which contends that they are really just settlements of disputes over patents that protect the billions of dollars they pour into research and development.

Three separate federal circuit courts of appeal have ruled over the last decade that the deals were allowable. But in July a federal appeals court in Philadelphia — which covers the territory where many big drug makers are based — said the arrangements were anticompetitive.

Both sides in the case supported the petition for the Supreme Court to decide the case, each arguing that the conflicting appeals court decisions would inject uncertainty into their operations.

By keeping lower-priced generic drugs off the market, drug companies are able to charge higher prices than they otherwise could. Last year, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that a Senate bill to outlaw those payments would lower drug costs in the United States by $11 billion and would save the federal government $4.8 billion over 10 years.

Senator Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican who co-sponsored the Senate bill, which never came to the floor for a vote, praised the decision.

The Federal Trade Commission first filed the suit in question in 2009. Jon Leibowitz, chairman of the F.T.C., said, “These pay-for-delay deals are win-win for the drug companies, but big losers for U.S. consumers and taxpayers.”

Generic drug makers say that the payments preserve a system that has saved American consumers hundreds of billions of dollars.

“This case could determine how an entire industry does business because it would dramatically affect the economics of each decision to introduce a new generic drug,” Ralph G. Neas, president of the Generic Pharmaceutical Association, said in a statement. “The current industry paradigm of challenging patents on branded drugs in order to bring new generics to market as soon as possible has produced $1.06 trillion in savings over the past 10 years.”

The case will review a decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, based in Atlanta, which in the spring ruled in favor of the drug makers, Watson Pharmaceuticals and Solvay Pharmaceuticals. Watson had applied for federal approval to sell a generic version of AndroGel, a testosterone replacement drug made by Solvay.

While courts have long held that paying a competitor to stay off the market creates unfair competition, the pharmaceuticals case is different because it involves patents, whose essential purpose is to prevent competition.

When a generic manufacturer seeks approval to market a copy of a brand-name drug, it also often files a lawsuit challenging a patent that the drug’s originator says prevents competition.

Last year, for the third time since 2003, the 11th Circuit upheld the agreements as long as the allegedly anticompetitive behavior that results — in this case, keeping the generic drug off the market — is the same thing that would take place if the brand-name company’s patent were upheld.

Two other federal circuit courts, the Second Circuit and the Federal Circuit, have ruled similarly. But in July, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals said that those arrangements were anticompetitive on their face and violated antitrust law.

The agreements are also affected by a peculiar condition in the law that legalized generic competition for prescription drugs. That law, known as the Hatch-Waxman Act, gives a 180-day period of exclusivity to the first generic drug maker to file for approval of a generic copy and to file a lawsuit challenging the brand-name drug’s patent.

Brand-name drug companies have taken advantage of that law, finding that they can settle the patent suit by getting the generic company to agree to stay out of the market for a period of time. Because that generic company also has exclusivity rights, no other generic companies can enter the market.

Michael A. Carrier, a professor at Rutgers School of Law-Camden, said that while there were provisions in the law under which a generic company could forfeit that exclusivity, “they really are toothless in practice.”

One wild card could still prevent the Supreme Court from definitively settling the question. In granting the petition to hear the case, the Supreme Court said that Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. recused himself, taking no part in the consideration or decision.

That opens the possibility that a 4-4 decision could result, upholding the lower court case that went against the F.T.C. and in favor of the drug makers. But it would leave the broader question for another day.

The case is Federal Trade Commission v. Watson Pharmaceuticals et al, No. 12-416.

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Wealth Matters: Protect Yourself from Investment Fraud This Madoff Day

Left to right: Louis Lanzano/Associated Press; Stephen Chernin/Getty Images; Richard Carson/Reuters

Three men accused of defrauding clients arriving at federal court. From left, Marc Dreier in Manhattan on May 11, 2009; Bernard Madoff in Manhattan on March 12, 2009; and R. Allen Stanford in Houston last Feb. 29.

THIS is the time of year when most people think of gifts and holiday gatherings. I couldn’t help thinking of frauds past.

Four years ago this week, Marc S. Dreier, a high-flying lawyer, was arrested and later charged with defrauding his clients of $700 million. A few days later, Bernard L. Madoff’s fraud was uncovered. Totaling an estimated $65 billion, Mr. Madoff’s fraud was in a class by itself. And then, a short time afterward, some of the brokers who had been selling fraudulent certificates of deposit for R. Allen Stanford began to turn on him; he was arrested in February 2009 and later convicted of a $7 billion fraud.

These schemes collapsed with the economy in 2008. But on their anniversaries, it may be a good time to ask whether you have done all you can to lower your risk of being caught up in a similar fraud. Call it Madoff Day (celebrated on Dec. 11, the day of his arrest).

Protecting yourself against fraud, or simply bad advice, is easier said than done. The most common advice is to make sure your money is held by an independent custodian or firm whose job is to keep your money safe. That wasn’t the case with either the Madoff or Stanford fraud. But that is only one small step.

So what else can investors do to protect themselves, not only from unscrupulous advisers but also from rushing into an investment that is clearly too good to be true?

Marc H. Simon, a lawyer who lost two years of bonuses, his job and months of unreimbursed expenses when Mr. Dreier’s law firm collapsed, said he has thought a lot about what he could have done differently.

Mr. Simon said that six or seven years before the fraud was uncovered, he knew of inconsistencies in the firm’s 401(k) plans. But the big red flag should have been that Mr. Dreier had sole control over every major decision at the law firm. Still, that had been Mr. Dreier’s pitch: work for him and don’t worry about the irksome details partners typically face.

“People like Drier and Madoff were highly intelligent individuals, they were very charismatic and they were giving people what they wanted,” Mr. Simon said. “It is harder to bring into question those who are providing you something you want.”

Randall A. Pulman, a lawyer in San Antonio who represents many victims of Mr. Stanford’s fraud, agreed that the will to believe was what ensnared people.

“For you and me, it’s too good to be true,” he said. “For the guy who has been working in the oil fields, how is he supposed to know?”

Of course, fraud and just plain bad advice are not limited to the poor or unsophisticated. Robert P. Rittereiser, the former chief financial officer of Merrill Lynch and former chief executive of E. F. Hutton, is working as the receiver for two funds suing J. Ezra Merkin, a former money manager who steered money to Mr. Madoff. Mr. Rittereiser did not think investors in Mr. Merkin’s funds knew that their money was simply being passed on to Mr. Madoff. But even if they did, they may not have seen anything to be concerned about.

“They were investing money and getting appropriate returns for the kind of fund it was,” Mr. Rittereiser said. “Most of them had a relationship of some kind and confidence with Merkin and the people he was dealing with.”

So how do you protect yourself? The first step would seem to be picking an honest adviser. The good news is that only about 7 percent of advisers have disciplinary records, said Nicholas W. Stuller, president and chief executive of AdviceIQ, a company that evaluates advisers. The bad news is that those violations appear only after someone has filed a complaint.

Mr. Stuller’s company, which has now approved some 2,400 advisers, rejects anyone with any type of infraction — from a securities fine to a misdemeanor for getting into a fight. He said this policy might keep some good advisers off the site, but his goal is to search the records of federal and state regulators to find advisers he knows are clean.

“There are advisers who have significant negative disciplinary history with one regulator but appear to be pristine with another regulator,” Mr. Stuller said. “There was a guy in Minnesota who was stealing insurance premiums. In his enforcement record, it says, ‘We’re going to alert Finra,’ but his Finra record is clean,” he said, referring to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. “That’s where the regulators don’t talk to each other.”

AdviceIQ’s main competitor, BrightScope, takes a different approach. It notes disciplinary actions taken against advisers but leaves it up to the consumer to go to regulators to determine what the violations were.

“We want the consumer to go to the source data, because there is a lot of liability in publishing that,” said Mike Alfred, co-founder and chief executive of BrightScope. “Many of these folks are good advisers, and they’ll take care of you. But what if they had one crazy client who put all his money in Internet stocks in 2000 and then sued?”

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Morsi Defends Wide Authority in Egypt as Turmoil Rises

CAIRO — Egypt descended deeper into political turmoil on Thursday as the embattled president, Mohamed Morsi, blamed an outbreak of violence on a “fifth column” and vowed to proceed with a referendum on an Islamist-backed constitution that has prompted deadly street battles between his supporters and their opponents.

As the tanks and armored vehicles of the elite presidential guard ringed the palace, Mr. Morsi gave a nationally televised address offering only a hint of compromise, while standing firmly by his plan for a Dec. 15 constitutional referendum. His opponents quickly rejected, even mocked, his speech and called for new protests on Friday.

Many said the speech had echoes of his predecessor, Hosni Mubarak, who always saw “hidden hands” behind public unrest. Mr. Morsi said that corrupt beneficiaries of Mr. Mubarak’s autocracy had been “hiring thugs and giving out firearms, and the time has come for them to be punished and penalized by the law.” He added, “It is my duty to defend the homeland.”

Mr. Morsi, a former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, spoke a day after the growing antagonism between his supporters and the secular opposition had spilled out into the worst outbreak of violence between political factions here since Gamal Abdel Nasser’s coup six decades ago. By the time the fighting ended, six people were dead and hundreds were wounded.

The violence also led to resignations that rocked the government, as advisers, party members and the head of the commission overseeing the planned vote on a new constitution stepped down, citing the bloodshed.

Mr. Morsi also received a phone call from President Obama, who expressed his “deep concern” about the deaths and injuries overnight, the White House said in a statement.

“The president emphasized that all political leaders in Egypt should make clear to their supporters that violence is unacceptable,” the statement said, chastising both Mr. Morsi and the opposition leaders for failing to urge their supporters to pull back during the fight.

Prospects of a political solution also seemed a casualty, as both sides effectively refused to back down on core demands.

The opposition leadership refused to negotiate until Mr. Morsi withdrew a decree that put his judgments beyond judicial review until the referendum — which he refused to do. And it demanded that the referendum be canceled, which he also refused.

The hostilities have threatened to undermine the legitimacy of the constitutional referendum with concerns about political coercion. The feasibility of holding the vote also appears uncertain amid attacks on Brotherhood offices around the country and open street fighting in the shadow of the presidential palace.

Though Mr. Morsi spoke of opening a door for dialogue and compromise, leaders of the political opposition and the thousands of protesters surrounding his palace dismissed his conspiratorial saber rattling as an echo of Mr. Mubarak. And his tone, after a night many here view as a national tragedy, seemed only to widen the gulf between his Islamist supporters and their secular opponents over his efforts to push through the referendum on an Islamist-backed charter approved over the objections of other factions and the Coptic Christian church.

Outside the palace, demonstrators huddled around car radios to listen to Mr. Morsi’s words and mocked his attempts to blame outside infiltrators for the violence, which began when thousands of his Islamist supporters rousted an opposition sit-in.

“So we are the ones who attacked him, the ones who attacked the sit-in?” one protester asked sarcastically. “So we are the ones with the swords and weapons and money?” asked another.

Some left for the headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood, where a mob had broken in, looted offices, and made a bonfire out of the belongings of the group’s spiritual leader — until riot police officers chased them away with tear gas.

“I never thought I would say this, but even Mubarak was more savvy when he spoke in a time of crisis,” said Hossam Bahgat, executive director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.

Two employees of The New York Times contributed reporting.

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Apple to return some Mac production to U.S. in 2013

SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Apple Inc plans to move some production of Macintosh computers to the United States from China next year, Chief Executive Tim Cook said in remarks published on Thursday, in what could be a important test of the nascent comeback in U.S. electronics manufacturing.

Apple makes the majority of its products, from Macs to the iPhone and iPad, in China, the world’s factory floor for electronics. But like other U.S. corporations, it has come under fire for relying on low-cost Asian labor and contributing to the decline of the U.S. manufacturing sector.

Cook did not say which Macintosh products will be produced in the United States. But the effort is expected to go well beyond simple final assembly of devices, with Apple and unnamed partners building most or all of the components in the United States as well.

The company will spend more than $ 100 million on the U.S. manufacturing initiative, Cook said in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, published on Thursday.

“This doesn’t mean that Apple will do it ourselves, but we’ll be working with people and we’ll be investing our money,” Cook said.

He told NBC’s “Rock Center” program, in an interview to be aired later Thursday, that only one of the existing Mac product lines would be manufactured exclusively in the United States.

Apple declined to comment beyond the interview.

Apple’s decision, hailed by some analysts as an important first step even if it affected a tiny fraction of its overall output, was dismissed by others who saw it as an opportunistic public relations ploy with little effect on jobs.

Some Apple suppliers were struggling to assess its impact.

“At the end of the day, Apple knows moving production to the U.S. means lower profits for Apple,” said a senior executive at Taiwan’s Quanta Computer Inc who declined to be named because of the companies’ business relationship.

“If Apple is really serious about moving production to the U.S., they would need to invest 10 times or even 100 times of that amount. We see only a minor impact on Apple suppliers.”

Cross Research analyst Shannon Cross said it made sense for Apple to bring some manufacturing back to the United States, because some components were already being produced there.

Also, while cheaper labor costs have been a key factor in encouraging U.S. manufacturers to move production to China, wages and other costs have risen sharply – particularly in the main coastal manufacturing centers. Labor costs, moreover, account for only a tiny portion of overall expenses: the research firm iSupply says the total cost, including labor, for final manufacturing of an iPhone 5 is just $ 8.

Experts estimate that the total base cost of all components that go into the gadget, or bill of materials, comes to around $ 200.

Cross pointed to other potential benefits of U.S. manufacturing, including mitigating the risk of intellectual property theft.

Cook has said in the past that he would like to see more of the company’s products assembled back home, but declining U.S. manufacturing expertise made that difficult. Apple makes applications processors for the iPad and iPhone via Samsung Electronics in Austin, Texas, and sources glass for the same devices from a Corning facility in Kentucky.

IHS iSuppli, a research firm that tracks supply chains, said the company now outsources production of notebook personal computers to Taiwan’s Quanta Inc and Foxconn, which also makes the iPhone and iPad, and Pegatron Corp. Foxconn and Quanta have U.S. facilities.

“Apple’s move appears to be a symbolic effort to help improve its public image, which has been battered in recent years by reports of labor issues at its contract manufacturing partners in Asia,” Craig Stice, senior principal analyst for computer systems at His. “However, given Apple’s high profile in the market, the company’s ‘insourcing’ initiative could compel other companies to follow suit and transfer production to the United States over the next few years.”

Apple’s stock rose 1.6 percent on Thursday, a tepid bounceback from Wednesday’s 6.4 percent dive that was its biggest single-day loss in almost four years.

MAKING STRIDES

Analysts say the stock, which has fallen steadily since September, has come under pressure from investors worried about the rapidly intensifying competition from Google Inc’s Android products.

Samsung, in particular, has emerged as a formidable competitor, chipping away at Apple’s dominance in the tablet market and leading the smartphone pack in China, where the U.S. company’s smartphone market ranking fell to No. 6 in the third quarter from No. 4 in the previous three months, research outfit IDC estimates.

Samsung’s stock has climbed 8 percent since the end of September.

Apple’s domestic manufacturing effort will likely buy the brand some goodwill at home, where the debate about off-shoring has heated up as the economy sputters along. It has also come under fire for excessive working hours and dismal conditions at Foxconn’s plants in China, and critics have accused Apple of helping to create a high-stress environment for migrant workers.

Beyond the marketing boost, some analysts said Apple could blaze a trail should it prove that American manufacturing of electronics can be profitable.

“It seems to me like a nice time for Apple to do something,” Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi said. “If it can be a profitable business, and others follow, then Apple has shown the way.”

Others were skeptical that Apple’s latest move was much more than a symbolic gesture.

“Such a strategy has been used by other companies in the past, which had no actual impact on their outsourcing,” said Li Qiang, director of New York-based China Labor Watch, in an emailed statement.

“The key question is how many jobs (percentage of the entire workforce) and what kind of jobs (production or administration) are to be moved back. I don’t think Apple is ready to relocate a large percentage of its production jobs back to U.S.”

Earlier this year, Google made waves when it announced it would build its Nexus Q home entertainment streaming device – deemed by many analysts to be an experimental product – in the heart of Silicon Valley. Google said it hoped to speed up innovation on the device and improve time-to-market.

Lenovo Group Ltd – China’s largest PC maker – said this year it will move a limited amount of computer manufacturing to North Carolina, to be closer to the market.

“Lenovo’s announcement appears to have flown under the radar,” said Jeffrey Wu, senior analyst for OEM research at IHS.

“Apple is a company that is always in the spotlight, and the company’s image sets the standard in the PC world. If Apple is doing it, will others follow?”

(Additional reporting by Faith Hung in TAIPEI, Lucy Hornby in BEIJING and Lee Chyen Yee in HONG KONG; Editing by Maureen Bavdek, Richard Chang and Ken Wills)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Manning leads Broncos past Raiders 26-13

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — Everyone on the outside might be focusing on Peyton Manning setting more records and the Denver Broncos getting an eighth straight win to move a step closer to a first-round bye.

Manning is focused on much smaller goals — showing improvement week to week.

The Broncos managed to do just that in a short week as Knowshon Moreno sparked a struggling running game with 119 yards and a touchdown and Manning threw for 310 yards and another score to help Denver roll past the Oakland Raiders, 26-13 on Thursday night.

"We talk about getting better," Manning said. "All the other stuff, that's not what we talk about. If we get better each week, we'll see what happens from there."

Manning extended his franchise record with his 30th touchdown pass on the game's opening drive, became the fastest quarterback to reach 5,000 career completions and earned his record 12th 10-win season as a starter.

That helped the Broncos (10-3) move a half-game ahead of New England and Baltimore for the second-best record in the AFC. Denver visits Baltimore next week in a game that will help decide who gets a first-round playoff bye.

"That would be great, but we can't really concentrate on that," said cornerback Champ Bailey, who intercepted a pass. "We need to concentrate on what we need to do to get better. Just keep plugging along and that thing will take care of itself."

Carson Palmer threw one interception that thwarted a possible scoring chance for the Raiders (3-10) and lost a fumble that set up a touchdown for the Broncos as Oakland lost its sixth straight game. It is the team's longest skid since also losing six in a row in 2007.

The Raiders played the game with heavy hearts as coach Dennis Allen's father, Grady, died earlier in the week from cardiac arrest. Allen was away from the team for two days but returned Wednesday and coached the game.

"I took my father off life support (voice cracking), and that's not easy to do," Allen said. "So was it hard? Yeah, it was hard. But I know my father would want me to be here with this football team, and I wanted to be here with this football team. So I'm sure you guys can imagine it wasn't an easy situation."

The Raiders' players talked during the week about rallying around their first-year coach, but came out flat against a fierce division rival and were swept in the season series by the Broncos for the first time since 2006.

The game was mildly competitive for only a brief time as the Raiders got on the board late in the first half on a touchdown pass from Palmer to Darren McFadden and then started with the ball in the third quarter down 13-7.

McFadden, returning from a four-game absence for a sprained right ankle, broke off a 36-yard run on the first play from scrimmage, but the Raiders' drive stalled in Denver territory after that and the Broncos took the game over. McFadden later left the game after re-injuring the ankle.

Manning, who joined Brett Favre as the only quarterbacks in NFL history with 5,000 career completions, converted a third-and-11 with a perfectly placed 22-yard pass to Demaryius Thomas. Manning followed that with a 29-yard completion to Eric Decker, but the drive stalled after a pass-interference call on Matt Giordano gave the Broncos a first down at the 1. Matt Prater's 20-yard field goal made it 16-7.

Mike Goodson then made the ill-advised decision to return a kick from 8 yards deep in the end zone, forcing Oakland to start a drive at the 8. Von Miller then beat Khalif Barnes for a sack on third down, stripping the ball from Palmer. Mitch Unrein recovered at the 2 and Moreno scored two plays later to make it 23-7.

Moreno is filling in for the injured Willis McGahee and is giving the Broncos the running game they will need to be successful in the postseason.

"That's something we haven't been good on the past couple of weeks including last week," Manning said. "To do that tonight I think we can build off of that."

The only remaining drama was whether quarterback project Terrelle Pryor would get his first action of the season for Oakland. He didn't, giving the frustrated Raiders fans yet another reason to be upset even though Palmer added a 56-yard TD pass to Darrius Heyward-Bey and finished with 273 yards passing.

"To rack up this many losses in a row in the fashion that we've done is just extremely frustrating," Palmer said.

The Raiders won the coin toss but decided to defer until the second half. The decision backfired as Manning converted three third downs on a 68-yard drive that was capped by a 6-yard pass to Joel Dreessen that was Manning's 30th touchdown pass of the season.

Prater added two field goals after Broncos' drives stalled inside the Oakland 20 as Denver extended the lead to 13-0. The momentum shifted after Phillip Adams' intercepted an underthrown pass from Manning to Matthew Willis in the end zone.

Oakland responded with an 80-yard drive capped by a 6-yard screen pass to McFadden.

After the game police said a man fell from the upper deck at the stadium shortly before kickoff and was in serious condition at a hospital. Initial reports called the fall an accident, but police said it remained under investigation. The team had no comment.

NOTES: Raiders CB Michael Huff left in the first half with a wrist injury. ... Manning needed 221 games to reach 5,000 completions, 18 fewer than Favre. ... Miller has sacks in six straight games. ... WR Bubba Caldwell had his first catch as a Bronco.

___

Online: http://pro32.ap.org/poll and http://twitter.com/AP_NFL

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IHT Rendezvous: Typhoon Bopha: Hurricane Sandy Times Two

HONG KONG — The official death toll from Typhoon Bopha climbed to 325 by Thursday afternoon, and with nearly 400 Filipinos still unaccounted for, the typhoon appeared as if it would be twice as deadly as Hurricane Sandy, the storm that thrashed the Caribbean and the eastern United States six weeks ago.

Sandy killed at least 253 people, including 132 in the United States. President Obama is expected to ask Congress this week for about $50 billion to help states in their post-Sandy recovery efforts.

Typhoon Bopha, known as Pablo in the Philippines, arrived on Tuesday, packing winds up to 100 miles per hour. It washed away entire villages and hamlets; wiped out roads and bridges; flattened cornfields and banana plantations; wrecked fishing fleets; and buried homes under landslides and walls of mud.

In some towns, dead bodies were gathered together in rows, their faces covered by tarpaulins, sodden blankets or palm fronds.

“Bodies of victims were laid on the ground for viewing by people searching for missing relatives,” The Associated Press reported. “Some were badly mangled after being dragged by raging floodwaters over rocks and other debris. A man sprayed insecticide on the remains to keep away swarms of flies.”

In one village, the mud-caked body of a child lay under a sheet with a note attached. It read: “4 yrs. old, male.”

One survivor, Julius Julian Rebucas, told Reuters that his mother and brother had been swept away in a flash flood. “I no longer have a family,” he said.

He can be seen being carried to an ambulance in a BBC video here.

Bopha struck most heavily in the southern Philippines, which typically dodges the 20 or so typhoons that slam the country every year. My colleague Floyd Whaley spoke to a military official who said most of the fatalities were in the province of Compostela Valley, a mountainous gold mining area, and the adjoining province of Davao Oriental.

The Philippine news site Rappler had a live blog going, tracking the progress of the storm and giving government information on deaths, damage and where people could donate food or supplies.

The national weather agency of the Philippines was sending regular updates on its Twitter feed here. Its Web site is located here.

Twitter also assembled the addresses of accounts offering information on relief efforts, and the service recommended using the hashtag #pabloPH for storm-related tweets and searches.

A New York Times slide show of the storm’s aftermath is here.

When floods hit Manila in the summer, a quarter-million people in the capital were made homeless. But as we reported on Rendezvous, “on social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter, and through text messages, Filipinos demonstrated a remarkable civic spirit as they shared news of evacuation centers and dropoff points for donations of emergency supplies.

“They praised rescue teams, and they encouraged each other. They pleaded for calm — and there were few reported signs of panic, even from those who were stranded. And they prayed.”

Gwen Garcia, the governor of the Philippine province of Cebu, endorsed practical preparations — and prayer — in a tweet on Tuesday:

In his article, Floyd also noted that “last December, Tropical Storm Washi — another out-of-season storm that hit south of the usual Philippine typhoon belt — killed more than 1,200 people and left hundreds of thousands homeless.

“This year, officials put out strong warnings days in advance and carried out mandatory early evacuations of vulnerable communities.”

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Bryant eclipses 30,000, Lakers beat Hornets 103-87

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Before Kobe Bryant had even turned in his latest dominant performance, NBA Commissioner David Stern sought him out to offer a congratulatory hand shake for the extraordinary scoring milestone the Lakers star was about to surpass.

Stern assumed Bryant would score the 13 points he needed to become only the fifth player in NBA history to reach 30,000, and who wouldn't?

Bryant had 17 points by halftime, finished with 29, and Los Angeles snapped a two-game skid with a 103-87 victory over the New Orleans Hornets on Wednesday night.

"He just congratulated me and told me I was one of the best competitors that he's seen in this game and I really appreciated that," Bryant said of his pregame exchange with Stern.

Now Bryant in is elite company. The only other players to score more than 30,000 are Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Karl Malone, Michael Jordan and Wilt Chamberlain.

"It's pretty awesome," Bryant said. "These are players I respect tremendously and obviously grew up idolizing and watching and learned a great deal from."

When Lakers coach Mike D'Antoni was asked before tipoff about Bryant's impending milestone, the coach joked, "That just means he is old."

In fact, at 34, Bryant is younger than the other four were when they hit the mark, but Bryant also turned pro at 18, and is in his 17th season.

"Honestly, I don't know why I'm still working as hard as I am after 17 years," Bryant said. "I enjoy what I do. I think that's the thing that I'm most proud of: every year, every day working hard at it. It's a lot of years, a lot of work."

Bryant eclipsed the scoring milestone with a short jumper late in the first half that was perhaps the least spectacular of his baskets, which included the usual array of soaring dunks, demoralizing transition 3-pointers and turnaround, off-balance jumpers.

Dwight Howard added 18 points and five blocked shots for the Lakers, who trailed 48-47 at halftime but seized control with a 13-0 run to open the third quarter, and the lead grew as large as 20 in the fourth.

Ryan Anderson scored 31, hitting 5 of 8 3-pointers for the Hornets, who were playing their ninth straight game without top overall draft choice Anthony Davis. Greivis Vasquez added 16 points, while Robin Lopez scored 15 points and blocked five shots.

Anderson said Bryant "deserves all the recognition that he gets."

"He's a special guy to play against. Unfortunately, we didn't get the win," Anderson added. "I would have liked him to get the 30,000, but for us to get the win."

Antawn Jamison scored 15 and Metta World Peace 11, and Chris Duhon had 10 assists for Los Angeles, which is playing without Steve Nash and Pau Gasol and won for only the second time on the road this season. The Hornets fell to 3-7 at home and lost for the 10th time in 12 games overall.

The Hornets led from early in the first quarter until halftime, going up by as many as eight points when Al-Farouq Aminu slammed down an alley-oop lob from Vasquez, energizing the largest crowd of the season at the New Orleans Arena.

Bryant helped the Lakers trim their deficit after that, hitting five free throws and his milestone on 3-foot jumper in the last 2:15 of the second quarter.

Jamison opened the third-quarter onslaught with 3, Howard followed with a fast-break layup and Bryant had two straight fast-break dunks, one of which he created himself with a steal. Howard finished the surge with a layup.

"I just didn't think our defense was there, especially that first five or six minutes of the third quarter," Hornets coach Monty Williams said. "Our defense was really poor, and we can't afford those lapses."

Anderson's shooting helped the Hornets pull to 70-62 late in the third period, but Bryant hit an 18-footer and Jodie Meeks added one of his three 3-pointers to give Los Angeles a 13-point lead heading into the final period. Meeks and Darius Morris then added 3s early in the period and New Orleans could not recover.

Afterward, Bryant sat in his locker, reflecting on the elite company he now keeps in NBA history, and the things he sees in younger prolific scoring stars like Oklahoma City's Kevin Durant, who the Lakers will see next on Friday night, and who could very well join the 30,000-point club at the rate he's going.

One common characteristic, he said, is an apparent immunity to both pressure and criticism.

"Scorers kind of have a fighter-pilot mentality. We're a different breed," Bryant said. "But there are different positions. We scored in a myriad of ways. We all went about it differently in different situations. It's fun to see."

Notes: Stern said the scheduling that allowed him to see Bryant reach 30,000 was pure coincidence. Stern was making a regularly scheduled visit with first-year Hornets owner Tom Benson, who is also the owner of the NFL's Saints, to see how Benson's plans for the NBA franchise were taking shape. Stern visited Saints headquarters, where new construction has begun on additions that will also accommodate Hornets offices and practice courts. Stern said he was looking forward to congratulating Bryant. "As a talent, a competitor, I think that he is up there on the pedestal with Michael Jordan. He is one of the greatest," Stern said. ... Stern also discussed the possibility of a team name change, something Benson has said he wants since buying the club last spring. Stern says the club has not yet applied for a name change but that the league would likely accept whatever name the Hornets want and expedite the transition.

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Recipes for Health: Winter Squash and Walnut Spread — Recipes for Health

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

2 pounds pumpkin or winter squash, such as kabocha or butternut, seeds and membranes scraped away, cut into large pieces (if using butternut, cut in half crosswise, just above the bulbous bottom part, then cut these halves into lengthwise quarters and scrape away the seeds and membranes)

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1/2 medium onion, finely chopped

2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh mint

1/8 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

1/4 cup (1 1/4 ounces/35 g) lightly toasted walnuts, finely chopped

1 ounce Parmesan, grated (about 1/3 cup)

Salt and freshly ground pepper

1. Heat the oven to 425 degrees. Line a baking sheet with foil and oil the foil. Place the squash on the baking sheet and rub or toss with 1 tablespoon of the olive oil. Place in the oven and bake until tender, 40 to 60 minutes depending on the type of squash and the size of the pieces. Every 15 minutes use tongs to turn the pieces over so different surfaces become browned on the foil. Remove from the oven and allow to cool, then peel and place in the bowl of a food processor fitted with the steel blade. Pulse several times, scrape down the sides of the bowl, then purée until smooth.

2. Heat another tablespoon of the olive oil over medium heat in a large, heavy skillet and add the onion. Add a generous pinch of salt, turn the heat to medium low and cook, stirring often, until very tender, sweet and lightly caramelized, about 20 minutes. Remove from the heat and add to the squash. Add the mint, nutmeg, walnuts, Parmesan, and 1 tablespoon olive oil and pulse together. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve on croutons.

Yield: 2 cups

Advance preparation: This will keep for three to four days in the refrigerator and freezes well. It benefits from being made a day ahead.

Variation: Omit the Parmesan for a vegan version. If desired, blend in 1 to 2 teaspoons of light miso.

Nutritional information per tablespoon: 35 calories; 2 grams fat; 0 grams saturated fat; 1 gram polyunsaturated fat; 1 gram monounsaturated fat; 1 milligram cholesterol; 4 grams carbohydrates; 1 gram dietary fiber; 15 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 1 gram protein

Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”

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Euro Watch: Spending Data Points to Continuing Woes in Euro Zone

PARIS — European consumers continue to cut back on spending, official data showed Wednesday, indicating that the region’s financial crisis and ailing job market were weighing on hopes of an economic recovery.

Retail sales in the 17-nation euro zone fell 1.2 percent in October from September, and were down 3.6 percent from a year earlier, Eurostat, the statistical agency of the European Union, reported Wednesday.

For the entire 27-nation European Union, sales declined 1.1 percent from September and 2.4 percent from October 2011, Eurostat said.

The big dip in retail sales was partly a result of front-loading of purchases before value-added taxes rose in some countries, said James Nixon, an economist in London for Société Générale.

The fiscal crisis in the euro zone and the austerity measures employed to combat it have made companies reticent about hiring, helping to drive the euro zone into recession in the third quarter. That has created a vicious circle, in which falling consumer spending is expected to weigh further on the economy.

A reading Wednesday on euro zone activity from a private data and analysis firm also suggested the economy continued to contract. Markit Economics’ composite purchasing managers’ index for November came in at 46.5. That was a bump upward from the 40-month low of 45.7 in October, but the 10th straight month below 50, a level that suggests shrinking output.

On Friday, Eurostat reported that unemployment in the euro zone rose to a record 11.7 percent in October from 11.6 percent a month earlier, and that the jobless rate among those under 25 years of age was 23.9 percent.

The European Commission on Wednesday expressed grave concern about the problem of youth unemployment, noting that just the immediate cost to governments — in terms of lost revenue and social outlays — worked out to an estimated €150 billion, or $196 billion, a year, or 1.2 percent of E.U. gross domestic product.

It recommended a new program to address the problem, with measures including job guarantees for young people, labor market changes to reduce obstacles to hiring across European borders, and further efforts to provide high-quality training and apprenticeship programs.

The European commissioner for employment and social affairs, Laszlo Andor, said in a statement that the cost of failing to help put young people to work would be “catastrophic.”

The European Central Bank and its British counterpart, the Bank of England, will hold policy meetings Thursday, and though signs of weakness would appear to give the central banks scope for action, neither is believed to be planning any major changes to current monetary policy.

Economists expect the E.C.B. to leave its main refinancing rate at 0.75 percent, while the Bank of England is expected to stand pat at 0.5 percent.

Action by the central banks has helped to calm markets and relieve the pressure on the euro, but conditions remain unsettled. As an indication of the stresses that have sent investors scurrying for the perceived safety of major sovereign bonds, yields on France’s 10-year sovereign debt fell on Wednesday to around 2 percent, the lowest level on record.

The dismal retail sales data came as the European Stability Mechanism, the euro zone’s permanent new bailout fund, said it had issued about €39.5 billion in bonds to cover the recapitalization of Spain’s banking sector.

Euro zone leaders agreed in June to provide up to €100 billion to help Spanish banks, which have been battered in the aftermath of a property bubble collapse and economic dislocation caused by austerity measures. The funds were originally raised by the bloc’s temporary bailout fund, the European Financial Stability Facility, and the transaction Wednesday represented an effective transfer of that money from the old facility to the permanent one.

The fund said that €37 billion would be handed over some time in December to the Spanish government’s own banking rescue fund, the FROB, to cover the needs of BFA-Bankia, Catalunya Banc, NCG Banco and Banco de Valencia. The FROB will use the remaining €2.5 billion to capitalize Spain’s “bad bank,” a company called Sareb that is being used to sift through soured assets.

The action Wednesday “is an important event as the E.S.M. has now started to actively fulfill its role as the permanent rescue mechanism for the euro zone,” Klaus Regling, the head of the European Stability Mechanism, said in a statement.

Mr. Nixon, of Société Générale, predicted that the euro zone economy would shrink in the fourth quarter at an annualized 1.2 percent rate, but said he expected some of the northern European economies, including Germany, to start pulling away from the laggards in 2013.

“We may have reached a bottom,” Mr. Nixon said, citing an easing of tension in the market for sovereign debt and smoother financing conditions. “At least things aren’t getting worse any faster.”

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Changing of the Guard: How Crash Cover-Up Altered China’s Succession

BEIJING — “Thank you. I’m well. Don’t worry,” read the post on a Chinese social networking site. The brief comment, published in June, appeared to come from Ling Gu, the 23-year-old son of a high-powered aide to China’s president, and it helped quash reports that he had been killed in a Ferrari crash after a night of partying.

It only later emerged that the message was a sham, posted by someone under Mr. Ling’s alias — almost three months after his death.

The ploy was one of many in a tangled effort to suppress news of the Ferrari crash that killed Mr. Ling and critically injured two young female passengers, one of whom later died. The outlines of the affair surfaced months ago, but it is now becoming clearer that the crash and the botched cover-up had more momentous consequences, altering the course of the Chinese Communist Party’s once-in-a-decade leadership succession last month.

China’s departing president, Hu Jintao, entered the summer in an apparently strong position after the disgrace of Bo Xilai, previously a rising member of a rival political network who was brought down when his wife was accused of murdering a British businessman. But Mr. Hu suffered a debilitating reversal of his own when party elders — led by his predecessor, Jiang Zemin — confronted him with allegations that Ling Jihua, his closest protégé and political fixer, had engineered the cover-up of his son’s death.

According to current and former officials, party elites, and others, the exposure helped tip the balance of difficult negotiations, hastening Mr. Hu’s decline; spurring the ascent of China’s new leader, Xi Jinping; and playing into the hands of Mr. Jiang, whose associates dominate the new seven-man leadership at the expense of candidates from Mr. Hu’s clique.

The case also shows how the profligate lifestyles of leaders’ relatives and friends can weigh heavily in backstage power tussles, especially as party skulduggery plays out under the intensifying glare of media.

Numerous party insiders provided information regarding the episode, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals from the authorities. Officials have investigated the aftermath of the car wreck, they say, including looking into accusations that a state oil company paid hush money to the families of the two women.

Under Mr. Hu, Mr. Ling had directed the leadership’s administrative center, the General Office, but was relegated to a less influential post in September, ahead of schedule. Last month, he failed to advance to the 25-person Politburo and lost his seat on the influential party secretariat.

Mr. Hu, who stepped down as party chief, immediately yielded his post as chairman of the military, meaning he will not retain power as Mr. Jiang did. “Hu was weakened even before leaving office,” said a midranking official in the Organization Department, the party’s personnel office.

Mr. Ling’s future remains unsettled, with party insiders saying that his case presents an early test of whether Mr. Xi intends to follow through on public promises to fight high-level corruption.

“He can decide whether to go after Ling Jihua or not,” said Wu Guoguang, a former top-level party speechwriter, now a political scientist at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. “Either way, this is a big card in Xi Jinping’s hand.”

Mr. Ling, 56, built his career in the Communist Youth League. At an early age, he secured the patronage of Mr. Hu, who led the Youth League in the early 1980s and brought Mr. Ling to the General Office in 1995. “Hu didn’t come with a lot of friends, but Ling was someone he knew he could trust,” said the Organization Department official. “Officials said that if Ling called, it was like Hu calling.”

Mr. Ling played a central role in moving Youth League veterans into high offices and undermining Mr. Hu’s adversaries. Mr. Ling also wielded leverage over Internet censorship of leaders’ affairs, and sought to use it to benefit his patron.

“Negative publicity, including untruths, about Xi Jinping were not suppressed the way publicity about Hu Jintao was,” said one associate of party leaders.

As his influence grew, Mr. Ling tried to keep a low profile. About a decade ago, his wife closed a software company she owned and formed a nonprofit foundation that incubates young entrepreneurs. The couple sent their son, Ling Gu, to an elite Beijing high school under an alias, Wang Ziyun. “Ling Jihua told his family not to damage his career,” a former Youth League colleague said. “But it seems it can’t be stopped.”

Still living under an alias, Ling Gu graduated from Peking University last year with an international relations degree and began graduate studies in education. One of his instructors said his performance plunged later in his undergraduate years. “I think there were too many lures, too much seduction,” he said.

Before dawn on March 18, a black Ferrari Spider speeding along Fourth Ring Road in Beijing ricocheted off a wall, struck a railing and cracked in two. Mr. Ling was killed instantly, and the two young Tibetan women with him were hospitalized with severe injuries. One died months later, and the other is recovering, party insiders said.

Ian Johnson and Edward Wong contributed reporting.

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Amazon launches Kindle content service for kids

NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon is launching a subscription service for children’s games, videos and books aimed at getting more kids to use its Kindle Fire tablet devices.

Amazon.com Inc. plans to announce Wednesday that the Kindle FreeTime Unlimited service will be available in the next few weeks as part of an automatic software update.

Amazon said subscribers will have access to “thousands” of pieces of content, though the company did not give a specific number. Kids will be able to watch, play and read any of the content available to them as many times as they want. Parents can set time limits, however.

The service, aimed at kids aged 3 to 8, will cost $ 4.99 per month for one child. It’ll cost $ 2.99 per child for members of Amazon Prime, the company’s premium shipping service. Amazon Prime costs $ 79 per year for free shipping of merchandise purchased in the company’s online store.

Family plans for up to six kids will cost $ 9.99 per month and $ 6.99 for Prime members.

The Kindle already allows for parental controls through its FreeTime service. Parents can set up profiles for up to six children and add time limits to control how long kids can spend reading, watching videos or using the Kindle altogether. With the content subscription service, kids can browse age-appropriate videos, games and books and pick what they want to see. They won’t be shown ads and will be prevented from accessing the Web or social media. Kids also won’t be able to make payments within applications.

Amazon is launching the service as competition heats up in the tablet market among Apple, Barnes & Noble, Microsoft and Samsung. Amazon’s strategy is to offer the Kindle at a relatively low price and make money selling the content.

Offering a subscription service aimed at kids helps set the Kindle apart from its many competitors.

“We hope that our devices are really, really attractive for families,” said Peter Larsen, vice president of Amazon’s Kindle business.

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Bret Bielema leaves Wisconsin for Arkansas

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. (AP) — Bret Bielema is taking his brand of power football to Arkansas, leaving Wisconsin after seven seasons.

Arkansas released a statement Tuesday night saying Bielema has agreed to a deal to take over the program reeling following the firing of former coach Bobby Petrino.

A person familiar with the situation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the information hasn't been released publicly, says the deal is for six years and $3.2 million annually.

Bielema, Barry Alvarez's hand-picked successor at Wisconsin, was 68-24 with the Badgers, with four double-digit win seasons. He coached Wisconsin to a 17-14 victory over Arkansas in his first season at the Capital One Bowl.

"His tough, aggressive style of play has been successful and will be appealing to student-athletes and Razorback fans," Arkansas athletic director Jeff Long said in a statement. "He not only shares the vision and values for the future of Arkansas football, he embraces them."

Bielema is leaving the Big Ten for the SEC and a Razorbacks program that opened the year with hopes of challenging for a national championship only to get mired in the Petrino scandal before stumbling to a 4-8 finish.

The move was the second stunning hire this year at Arkansas, which brought in John L. Smith as the interim coach after firing Petrino for hiring his mistress to work in the athletic department. Long announced after the season that Smith wouldn't return.

Bielema seems likely to bring a far different approach than what the Razorbacks have become accustomed to. Arkansas continually ranked among the Southeastern Conference's best passing teams under Petrino while Bielema is known for his dominant offensive lines and slew of running backs.

"During my conversation with Jeff (Long), he described the characteristics for the perfect fit to lead this program," Bielema said in a statement. "It was evident we share the same mission, principles and goals."

Wisconsin running back Montee Ball tied Barry Sanders' long-standing single-season record of 39 touchdowns last year, and this year became the FBS career leader in touchdowns. He currently has 82 touchdowns after running for three Saturday night in the Big Ten title game against Nebraska — a 70-31 romp that secured the Badgers third straight trip to the Rose Bowl, where they will play Stanford on Jan. 1.

The 42-year-old Bielema was the defensive coordinator at Wisconsin for two years before being promoted to head coach in 2006. He played for Iowa and started his coaching career there as an assistant under Hayden Fry and later Kirk Ferentz.

"I was very surprised when Bret told me he was taking the offer from Arkansas," said Alvarez, Wisconsin's athletic director and former coach. "He did a great job for us during his seven years as head coach, both on the field and off. I want to thank him for his work and wish him the best at Arkansas."

The Illinois native takes over a program still reeling following the April scandal, one eager for stability and leadership.

"I'm excited about this decision," Arkansas cornerback Tevin Mitchel tweeted.

The Razorbacks improved their win total in four straight seasons under Petrino, including a 21-5 mark in 2010-11, and finished last season ranked No. 5. They had talked openly in the spring about competing for the school's first SEC championship and perhaps a national title.

Then came the April 1 motorcycle accident that led to Petrino's downfall. The married father of four initially lied about being alone during the wreck, later admitting to riding with his mistress — a former Arkansas volleyball player he had hired to work in the athletic department.

Smith, who had been an assistant the last three seasons at Arkansas under Petrino, was chosen by Long to guide a team that returned first-team All-SEC quarterback Tyler Wilson and a host of other key playmakers. The decision was lauded by the Razorbacks, who welcomed the personable Smith back with open arms.

The season hit the skids with a stunning overtime loss to Louisiana-Monroe on Sept. 8, starting a four-game losing streak that dropped Arkansas out of the rankings. The Razorbacks finished with the school's lowest win total since 2005, missing a bowl game for the first time since 2008.

"It's very difficult for me to believe that is not a bowl-eligible team," LSU coach Les Miles said following the Tigers' win over the Razorbacks in the season finale. "Watching the talent there, (it's) very capable."

Arkansas struggled to find its identity in the SEC after leaving the former Southwest Conference in 1992, but it appeared to have finally found just that under Petrino, who was hired after leaving the Atlanta Falcons during the season in 2007.

The Razorbacks turned into an offensive powerhouse under Petrino, leading the league in scoring and total offense last season. After winning 10 games and reaching the school's first BCS bowl game in 2010, losing to Ohio State, Arkansas won 11 games in 2011, capped by a Cotton Bowl win over Kansas State.

Still, Arkansas has yet to win the SEC, losing in the conference championship game three times.

While the country watched closely to see how Arkansas would react following Petrino's dismissal, Smith made headlines of his own throughout the season. The former Michigan State and Louisville coach filed for bankruptcy during the season, revealing $40.7 million in debt he blamed on bad land deals.

He was under far more fire from Arkansas fans for the mounting losses and it will be up to Bielema to turn things around in the loaded SEC West, with Alabama, LSU and now Texas A&M.

Long said during the season that the new coach would be tasked with building on the recent success at the school, which is looking into expanding the 72,000-seat Razorback Stadium and is currently building an 80,000-square-foot football operations center.

"The infrastructure in place at Arkansas shows the commitment from the administration to accomplish our goals together and I am excited to begin to lead this group of student-athletes," Bielema said. "This program will represent the state of Arkansas in a way Razorback fans everywhere will be proud of."

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Recipes for Health: Mediterranean Lentil Purée — Recipes for Health

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

The spicing here is the same as one used in a popular Egyptian lentil salad. The dish is inspired by a lentil purée that accompanies bread at Terra Bistro in Vail, Colo.

1/4 cup olive oil

1 large garlic clove, minced or pureed

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground cumin seeds

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground coriander seeds

1/8 teaspoon freshly ground cardamom seeds

1/4 teaspoon ground fenugreek seeds

3/4 cup brown or green lentils, washed and picked over

Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

1 tablespoon plain low-fat yogurt (more to taste) or additional liquid from the lentils for a vegan version

Chopped cilantro for garnish (optional)

1. Combine 2 tablespoons of the olive oil and the garlic in a small frying pan or saucepan over medium heat. When the garlic begins to sizzle, add the spices. Stir together for about 30 seconds, then remove from the heat and set aside.

2. Place the lentils in a medium saucepan, cover by 1 to 2 inches with water, add a bay leaf, and bring to a boil. Add salt to taste, reduce the heat and cook until tender, 40 to 50 minutes. Remove the bay leaf. Taste and adjust salt. Place a strainer over a bowl and drain the lentils. Transfer to a food processor fitted with the steel blade.

3. Purée the lentils along with the garlic and spices. With the machine running add the additional olive oil and the garlic. Thin out as desired with the broth from the lentils. The purée should be very smooth; if it is dry or pasty, add more yogurt, broth, or olive oil. Taste and adjust salt. If desired add a few drops of lemon juice. Transfer to a bowl and sprinkle the cilantro over the top if desired, or spread directly on croutons or pita triangles.

Advance preparation: This will keep for four days in the refrigerator. You will probably need to moisten it with additional yogurt, olive oil or broth, and you may want to warm it and drizzle on a little more olive oil before serving.

Nutritional information per tablespoon: 31 calories; 2 grams fat; 0 grams saturated fat; 0 grams polyunsaturated fat; 1 gram monounsaturated fat; 0 milligrams cholesterol; 3 grams carbohydrates; 1 gram dietary fiber; 1 milligram sodium (does not include salt to taste); 1 gram protein

Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”

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Houston Is Booming, Pushed by, Surprise, Its Energy Industry

HOUSTON — Even first-time visitors here can tell that the city is growing rapidly. Construction cranes overhang office and apartment sites all along the Katy Freeway, a stretch of Interstate 10 that connects a string of booming submarkets west of the 610 Loop. This expanse includes the Westchase neighborhood and the Energy Corridor, home to an expanding cluster of energy companies.

The energy sector drives job growth and all manner of business activity here, with the greatest demand for office space concentrated in the west side where oil and gas companies are clustered, in the medical center just south of the central business district and in the Woodlands, a master-planned community 27 miles north of downtown.

“Houston is clearly a growth leader,” said Walter Page, director of office research at Property and Portfolio Research in Boston. “It was the first major economy in the U.S. to register more jobs than it lost in the recession.” Employment here is up 3.7 percent since August 2008, when it peaked before declining during the recession. That compares with New York’s gain of just 0.7 percent from its peak in April 2008 before declining, Mr. Page said.

The city’s office vacancy rate was 11.9 percent in the third quarter, down from 13.4 percent a year earlier, according to the CoStar Group, a real estate research firm in Washington. Developers are creating new space to meet that strong demand, completing 15 major office buildings in the first three quarters of this year alone. Of the 3.9 million square feet of office space under construction, more than 90 percent is in the western submarkets or in the Woodlands, Mr. Page said.

The energy sector accounts for 3.4 percent of the city’s employment, more than five times the national average of 0.6 percent, Mr. Page said. Despite that heavy concentration, the rest of the city’s economy is diverse and helps spread the wealth that energy brings into the community to other sectors.

Brisk commercial real estate sales reflect investor interest in the market. This year, an affiliate of the Houston-based Enterprise Products Company bought the Shell Plaza, a 1.8 million-square-foot office complex in the central business district, for $550 million, CoStar reported. The seller was a fund operated by Hines, a Houston-based developer that built the property in the 1970s. Last year, Shell renewed its leases for nearly 1.3 million square feet at Shell Plaza.

Hines developed much of the city’s commercial real estate. Today the company’s projects here include multifamily construction in the shadow of office buildings that it developed in the Galleria, a group of office towers, hotels and retail on the southwestern rim of Loop 610, with a skyline that rivals downtown’s.

Mark Cover, Hines’s chief executive for the southwest region, said that energy, the medical center and the Port of Houston are the three largest engines driving the economy here. “The global energy industry is headquartered here,” he said. “It’s not just oil and gas, it’s alternatives, too. Intellectual capital in the energy field is heavily concentrated here.”

In the only major city in the United States without zoning laws, developers can, in theory, build virtually anything, anywhere in the city. In practice, however, understanding and catering to local industries is a critical element in site selection, Mr. Cover says. “When you really get down to it, the city is market-zoned, because land prices are not based on zoning rights, they’re based on purely capitalistic, highest and best use value,” he said. “If you build the wrong product or build in the wrong place, the market is going to severely punish you.”

Market forces shape the city’s development in hubs, says Jim Knight, who heads land development in Texas for Bury & Partners, an Austin-based engineering firm.

Refineries and distribution centers cluster near the port, while energy companies and other major employers tend to establish a presence, either downtown or in a submarket, and stick to that area indefinitely.

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Iraq’s Latest Crisis Is a Standoff With Northern Kurds

Azad Lashkari/Reuters

Officials in Baghdad, including American diplomats, are trying to mediate a dispute with the Kurdish government in the north.

BAGHDAD — It was just the sort of episode that observers have long worried could provoke a serious conflict: when federal police agents sought to arrest a Kurdish man last month in the city of Tuz Khurmato in the Kurdish north of the country, a gunfight ensued with security men loyal to the Kurdish regional government.

Azad Lashkari/Reuters

Kurdish security forces, called the Peshmerga, have been in a standoff with the Iraqi Army near Kirkuk, a northern city claimed by Arabs and Kurds.

When the bullets stopped flying, a civilian bystander was dead and at least eight others were wounded.

In response, the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, rushed troop reinforcements to the area, and Masoud Barzani, the president of Iraq’s semiautonomous northern Kurdish region, dispatched his own soldiers, known as the Peshmerga, and the forces remain there in a tense standoff.

Almost a year after the departure of the United States military closed a painful chapter in the histories of both nations, Iraq finds itself in a familiar position: full-blown crisis mode, this time with two standing armies, one loyal to the central government in Baghdad and the other commanded by the Kurdish regional government in the north, staring at each other through gun sights, as officials in Baghdad, including American diplomats and an American general, try to mediate.

Like bookends, Iraq is closing the year just as it began, with a major confrontation that has exposed sectarian and ethnic rifts that hundreds of billions of American dollars and thousands of lives have not reconciled. At the outset of the year, it was the sectarian divide between Shiites and Sunnis that was on vivid display when the government of Mr. Maliki, a Shiite, issued an arrest warrant on terrorism charges against the Sunni vice president, Tariq al-Hashemi.

“The year started with the warrant against Hashemi and is ending with tanks on the edge of the Kurdish mountains,” said Sarmed al-Tai, a columnist for the newspaper Al Mada, which ran a story on Sunday on the anniversary of the American military’s departure, describing the exit as “leaving a large vacuum and a significant deterioration of the national partnership.”

As American troops left at the end of 2011, Mr. Maliki sent tanks to surround Mr. Hashemi’s home in the Green Zone of Baghdad. An arrest warrant led to Mr. Hashemi’s self-imposed exile, first in the Kurdish north and then Turkey; a trial in absentia followed, then the handing down of not one but two death sentences. Mr. Hashemi now lives in a suburban high-rise apartment in Istanbul, where he is protected by Turkish guards and remains defiant.

“Legally, I am still a vice president,” he said in a recent interview, adding, “I do have a lot of time to look after the future of my country.”

The latest crisis is an ethnic one, between Kurds and Arabs, and the consequences are potentially more serious because the Kurds, in contrast to the Sunni Arabs, enjoy a measure of autonomy in the north, control their own security forces and have longstanding ambitions for independence.

Tuz Khurmato, the city where the clash occurred, is of mixed ethnicity, where Turkmens, Arabs and Kurds compete for power. It lies in a region around the city of Kirkuk, an area of vast potential oil wealth that is at the center of a longstanding power struggle between Kurds and Arabs. As part of his brutal rule, Saddam Hussein moved tens of thousands of Arabs into the area, to dilute what was historically a Kurdish stronghold. After his fall, thousands of displaced Kurds demanded the right to return to the homes they had been driven from, creating tensions that have yet to subside.

The latest crisis began after Mr. Maliki sought to consolidate his control over security in Kirkuk, where Kurdish and Iraqi forces have shared responsibility for security, and it reached a critical stage after the gunfight.

“This is a red line for the Kurds,” said Joost R. Hiltermann, an Iraq expert at the International Crisis Group. “Maliki is essentially taking control of the police. And the Kurds will never give up the city.”

Efforts at mediation, backed by the Americans, have so far failed to reach resolution. On Monday, Mr. Maliki and Mr. Barzani sent more troops to the area, with each side accusing the other of doing so first. Mr. Maliki warned the Kurds of the “seriousness of their behavior” and warned of its “consequences.” A spokesman for the Peshmerga said, “Anything is possible.”

Tim Arango reported from Baghdad, and Duraid Adnan from Baghdad and Kirkuk, Iraq.

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Judge gives initial OK to revised Facebook privacy settlement

(Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Monday gave his preliminary approval to a second attempt by Facebook Inc to settle a class action lawsuit which charges the social networking company with violating privacy rights.

U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg in California rejected a settlement in August over Facebook‘s ‘Sponsored Stories’ advertising feature, questioning why it did not award money to Facebook members for using their personal information.

But in a ruling handed down Monday, Seeborg said a revised settlement “falls within the range of possible approval as fair, reasonable and adequate.”

In a revised proposal, Facebook and plaintiff lawyers said users now could claim a cash payment of up to $ 10 each to be paid from a $ 20 million total settlement fund. Any money remaining would then go to charity.

The company also said it would engineer a new tool to enable users to view content that might have been displayed in Sponsored Stories and opt out if they desire, a court document said.

If it receives final approval, the proposed settlement would resolve a 2011 lawsuit originally filed by five Facebook Inc members.

The lawsuit alleged the Sponsored Stories feature violated California law by publicizing users’ “likes” of certain advertisers without paying them or giving them a way to opt out. The case involved over 100 million potential class members.

A spokesman for Facebook said the company was “pleased that the court has granted preliminary approval of the proposed settlement.” Lawyers for the plaintiffs weren’t immediately available for comment Monday evening.

Outside groups and class members will have a chance to object to the latest settlement before Seeborg decides whether to grant final approval. A hearing on the fairness of the deal has been set for June 28, 2013. The case in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California is Angel Fraley et al., individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated vs. Facebook Inc, 11-cv-1726.

(Reporting by Jessica Dye; Editing by Michael Perry)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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RG3, Redskins closing in on Giants with 17-16 win

LANDOVER, Md. (AP) — Robert Griffin III went down, the ball popped out, and the Washington Redskins scored a touchdown.

Look out, New York Giants and the rest of the NFC East. If Griffin keeps getting these kinds of breaks, it'll be hard to keep him out of the title hunt for years to come.

As it is, RG3 has the Redskins within a game of first place after leading a fourth-quarter rally in a 17-16 Monday night victory over the Giants.

Washington has a three-game winning streak in which it has dispatched each of its division rivals — Philadelphia, Dallas and now New York — one by one.

"We know that our backs are against the wall," Griffin said. "And even though we won tonight, our backs are still against the wall."

But it'll be hard to count them out whenever he's on the field. It was his sixth game with a 100-plus passer rating, his eighth without an interception — and his second in which one of his fumbles turned into a Redskins score.

On the way to the turf after a 12-yard run, Griffin was stripped by Stevie Brown — but the ball flew right to teammate Joshua Morgan 3 yards upfield. Morgan then ran 13 yards for a first-quarter touchdown no one would ever diagram on a whiteboard.

"We didn't run it in practice because we wanted to save it for the game," Griffin said with a grin. "I knew he was going to be there for it. ... Joshua did a good job being in the spot where he was supposed to be."

By Griffin's reckoning, the Redskins (6-6) are also where they're supposed to be after they appeared out of the running at 3-6 a month ago. One of Griffin's goals this season was to win more games than last season's 5-11 team.

"You can put a check by that one, but there's a lot more goals that this team is stretching for and striving for," Griffin said.

A division title, for instance. With the Giants (7-5) losing three of four and the Cowboys (6-6) also at .500, the NFC East is up for grabs.

"They've got a great opportunity to win the division," Giants defensive lineman Justin Tuck said, "just like we do. ... We let one slip away tonight, but if we handle business, we'll still win this division."

Griffin also broke another record, running for 72 yards to get to 714 for the season, passing Cam Newton for most by a rookie quarterback.

Griffin completed 13 of 21 passes for 163 yards and a go-ahead, 8-yard touchdown to Pierre Garcon in the fourth quarter. He finished with a 101.9 QB rating.

Washington also ended a 10-game home losing streak in Monday night games, another sign that Griffin has a knack for winning on a big stage.

"If he stays healthy, he's going to be a havoc on defenses for a long time," Tuck said.

Garcon finished with eight receptions for 106 yards, showing no signs of the painful toe injury that forced him to miss six of the season's first nine games.

Alfred Morris ran for 124 yards, reaching 1,106 for the season to break Reggie Brooks' franchise rookie rushing record of 1,063, set in 1993.

Eli Manning completed 20 of 33 passes for 280 yards and a touchdown for the Giants, who had won 26 in a row on the road when holding a halftime lead.

They were ahead 13-10 at the break Monday against the Redskins, but they failed to finish the job for the first time since blowing a 21-0 halftime lead in a 24-21 loss to Tennessee in 2006.

Ahmad Bradshaw ran for 103 yards on 24 carries for New York. Victor Cruz, who caught the game-winning score when the teams met in the Meadowlands in October, had five catches for 104 yards for the Giants.

The Giants moved the ball well all game, but the drives produced three field goals by Lawrence Tynes and only one touchdown — Manning's 4-yard pass to Martellus Bennett late in the first half.

There was also some mayhem after another Redskins fumble, this one by Morris in the third quarter. New York defensive tackle Linval Joseph yanked at Redskins center Will Montgomery's leg while players were fighting for the ball in a pile. Montgomery kicked at Joseph in response, and Joseph stomped at Montgomery. Joseph and a Redskins player were whistled for offsetting unnecessary roughness penalties.

"I was just trying to get my leg loose," Montgomery said. "And he ended up kicking me or stomping me or whatever he did."

Joseph said he acted because he saw Montgomery dive into a Giants player, and that he was kicked by Montgomery in the groin. He said he went to stomp on Montgomery but stopped himself.

"It took me everything not to kick him back because I didn't want hurt the team, and I didn't want to get fined and none of that," Joseph said. "I started, then I stopped."

Notes: Redskins coach Mike Shanahan got his 171st win (regular and postseason), tying him with Redskins' Hall of Fame coach Joe Gibbs for 12th all time. ... New York S Tyler Sash left the game with a hamstring injury, and RT Sean Locklear was carted off in the fourth quarter with a knee injury. ... The Giants were uncharacteristically penalty-prone, getting flagged nine times for 73 yards. ... The Redskins have won three division games in three weeks for the first time since 2005.

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Follow Joseph White on Twitter: http://twitter.com/JGWhiteAP

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Online: http://pro32.ap.org/poll and http://twitter.com/AP_NFL

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