Falcons top Lions 31-18 for home-field advantage

DETROIT (AP) — Matt Ryan got what he wanted.

Calvin Johnson was forced to settle for what he could get.

Ryan matched a career high with four touchdown passes, two to Roddy White, to help the Atlanta Falcons beat the Detroit Lions 31-18 Saturday night and earn home-field advantage throughout the NFC playoffs.

"It's great," Ryan said. "Our confidence is high and our experience — good and bad — has helped us. The key is to keep the focus where it's been."

In yet another loss, Johnson had a record-breaking night.

Johnson broke Jerry Rice's NFL single-season yards receiving mark of 1,848. After making the record-breaking catch in the fourth quarter, Johnson jogged over to the sideline and handed the football to his father.

"That was a very special moment," he said.

Johnson also became the only player with 100 yards receiving in eight straight games and the first with 10 receptions in four games in a row in league history. He had 11 receptions for 225 yards, giving him 1,892 this season.

"I've been an NFL fan my whole life, dating back to watching Johnny Unitas and Raymond Berry as a kid, and I've coached in this league for 19 years," Detroit coach Jim Schwartz said. "I've seen a lot of Hall of Famers, but I've never seen a better player than Calvin Johnson.

"He just broke a record set by Jerry Rice, who is arguably the best player in this history of this league."

The Falcons (13-2) pulled away with Ryan's fourth TD pass to wide-open tight end Michael Palmer in the fourth quarter and Matt Bryant's 20-yard field goal with 3:05 left that gave them a 15-point lead.

Ryan was 25 of 32 for 279 yards without a turnover.

The Falcons hope playing at home, potentially throughout the conference playoffs, helps them more than it did after the 2010 and 1980 seasons. The Falcons failed to win a game in either postseason, getting routed by Green Bay two years ago and blowing a double-digit, fourth-quarter lead to Dallas three decades ago.

Atlanta advanced to its only Super Bowl with a win at Minnesota after winning a franchise-record 14 games during the 1998 season.

The Falcons won't have much incentive to match that mark next week at home against Tampa Bay, when they'll have nothing to gain and something to lose if a key player or more gets hurt.

Detroit (4-11) has been relegated to playing for pride this month and that hasn't been going very well.

The Lions, whose seven-game losing streak is the longest skid in the league, haven't struggled this much since the laughingstock of a franchise became the league's first to go 0-16 in 2008.

The Falcons led 21-3 at halftime before letting the Lions pull within five points early in the fourth quarter.

Ryan dashed Detroit's comeback hopes.

Facing intense pressure, he converted a third down in Atlanta territory with a pass to White, picked on rookie cornerback Jonte Green by throwing to Jones to pick up more first downs and found Tony Gonzalez open to convert another third down to set up his fourth TD pass.

"We didn't play well in the third quarter," Atlanta coach Mike Smith said. "Matt made some big throws on that drive."

Stafford was clearly trying to get the ball to Johnson on the next drive and cornerback Asante Samuel figured that out, stepping in front of the receiver for an interception to set up Bryant's field goal.

Atlanta running back Michael Turner was tackled in the end zone, after Detroit turned the ball over on downs, to give the Lions two meaningless points.

Ryan went deep to White for the first score, connecting with him on a 44-yard TD strike with 5:50 left in the first quarter. Ryan threw a short pass to him early in the second quarter and the standout receiver did the rest on a 39-yard sprint down the sideline.

Ryan put his third TD pass where only Julio Jones could catch it a corner of the end zone, and he did on a 16-yard reception that put Atlanta up 21-3.

Detroit didn't give up, a game after being accused of doing just that in a 38-10 loss at Arizona.

Jason Hanson kicked a second field goal late in the first half to make it 21-6.

After Atlanta opened the second half with a three-and-out drive, Mikel Leshoure scored on a 1-yard run midway through the third quarter to pull the Lions with eight points.

Hanson's third field goal made it 21-16.

Stafford finished 37 of 56 for 443 yards with an interception and the Lions say he set an NFL record for the most yards passing in a game without throwing a TD pass.

Detroit dug a big hole because the Falcons scored two TDs off turnovers in the first half.

Defensive end Kroy Biermann forced running Leshoure to fumble, giving the Falcons the ball at their 31 and they took advantage. Ryan's perfectly lofted pass to White's fingertips converted a third-and-1 in a big way, putting the Falcons ahead.

The Lions responded with another drive into Atlanta territory, but stalled and had to settle for Hanson's 34-yard field goal in the final minute of the opening quarter to pull within four points.

Atlanta earned a double-digit lead on the ensuing drive.

Ryan threw a screen pass to his left to White, who got a great block from tight end Gonzalez, and the receiver raced untouched for a score that put the Falcons ahead 14-3.

White finished with eight receptions for 153 yards and two TDs. Jones had seven receptions for 71 yards and a score.

Ryan completed his first 12 attempts and, after his first incomplete pass, he converted a third-and-10 with an 11-yard toss to Jacquizz Rodgers. Two plays later, Ryan matched a season high with a third TD pass on the connection with Jones. Prior to the game, Ryan hadn't started a game with more than 10 consecutive completions, according to STATS LLC. He started 10 for 10 last month against Tampa Bay.

Johnson had three receptions for 70 yards in the first quarter, breaking Herman Moore's single-season franchise record for yards receiving.

By halftime, Johnson had 117 yards receiving. He had 100 yards receiving for an eighth straight game, breaking a record set by Charley Hennigan in 1961 and matched by Michael Irvin in 1995. It was Johnson's 11th game with 100 yards receiving this season, tying Irvin's NFL mark.

"Calvin is one of the best players in the game and I think everybody is a big fan of his," Ryan said. "He's one of the most genuinely nice people you could meet."

Stafford connected with Johnson on a short crossing route and the receiver did the rest, outrunning Falcons on a 49-yard gain. Fittingly, the Lions turned the ball over on the next snap in the latest lowlight in a season full of them.

The Lions, Falcons and fans at Ford Field in Detroit honored the victims of the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School before the game. Players had memorial decals on their helmets that read "S.H.E.S." in white on a black background, and Detroit's coaches wore pins with a similar design. There was also a moment of silence before the national anthem while the names and ages of each victim were shown on the videoboards. Twenty children and six adults were killed in the Dec. 14 shooting in Newtown, Conn. Adam Lanza killed his mother, shot students and staff, then killed himself.

NOTES: Stafford, in his fourth season, has 1,090 career completions to surpass Bobby Layne's franchise record of 1,074. Stafford is seven attempts away from surpassing the NFL's single-season mark of 691 set by Drew Bledsoe with New England in 1994. ... Backup Falcons CB Christopher Owens had a hamstring injury.

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

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Genetic Gamble : Drugs Aim to Make Several Types of Cancer Self-Destruct

C.J. Gunther for The New York Times

Dr. Donald Bergstrom is a cancer specialist at Sanofi, one of three companies working on a drug to restore a tendency of damaged cells to self-destruct.

For the first time ever, three pharmaceutical companies are poised to test whether new drugs can work against a wide range of cancers independently of where they originated — breast, prostate, liver, lung. The drugs go after an aberration involving a cancer gene fundamental to tumor growth. Many scientists see this as the beginning of a new genetic age in cancer research.

Great uncertainties remain, but such drugs could mean new treatments for rare, neglected cancers, as well as common ones. Merck, Roche and Sanofi are racing to develop their own versions of a drug they hope will restore a mechanism that normally makes badly damaged cells self-destruct and could potentially be used against half of all cancers.

No pharmaceutical company has ever conducted a major clinical trial of a drug in patients who have many different kinds of cancer, researchers and federal regulators say. “This is a taste of the future in cancer drug development,” said Dr. Otis Webb Brawley, the chief medical and scientific officer of the American Cancer Society. “I expect the organ from which the cancer came from will be less important in the future and the molecular target more important,” he added.

And this has major implications for cancer philanthropy, experts say. Advocacy groups should shift from fund-raising for particular cancers to pushing for research aimed at many kinds of cancer at once, Dr. Brawley said. John Walter, the chief executive officer of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, concurred, saying that by pooling forces “our strength can be leveraged.”

At the heart of this search for new cancer drugs are patients like Joe Bellino, who was a post office clerk until his cancer made him too sick to work. Seven years ago, he went into the hospital for hernia surgery, only to learn he had liposarcoma, a rare cancer of fat cells. A large tumor was wrapped around a cord that connects the testicle to the abdomen. “I was shocked,” he said in an interview this summer.

Companies have long ignored liposarcoma, seeing no market for drugs to treat a cancer that strikes so few. But it is ideal for testing Sanofi’s drug because the tumors nearly always have the exact genetic problem the drug was meant to attack — a fusion of two large proteins. If the drug works, it should bring these raging cancers to a halt. Then Sanofi would test the drug on a broad range of cancers with a similar genetic alteration. But if the drug fails against liposarcoma, Sanofi will reluctantly admit defeat.

“For us, this is a go/no-go situation,” said Laurent Debussche, a Sanofi scientist who leads the company’s research on the drug.

The genetic alteration the drug targets has tantalized researchers for decades. Normal healthy cells have a mechanism that tells them to die if their DNA is too badly damaged to repair. Cancer cells have grotesquely damaged DNA, so ordinarily they would self-destruct. A protein known as p53 that Dr. Gary Gilliland of Merck calls the cell’s angel of death normally sets things in motion. But cancer cells disable p53, either directly, with a mutation, or indirectly, by attaching the p53 protein to another cellular protein that blocks it. The dream of cancer researchers has long been to reanimate p53 in cancer cells so they will die on their own.

The p53 story began in earnest about 20 years ago. Excitement ran so high that, in 1993, Science magazine anointed it Molecule of the Year and put it on the cover. An editorial held out the possibility of “a cure of a terrible killer in the not too distant future.”

Companies began chasing a drug to restore p53 in cells where it was disabled by mutations. But while scientists know how to block genes, they have not figured out how to add or restore them. Researchers tried gene therapy, adding good copies of the p53 gene to cancer cells. That did not work.

Then, instead of going after mutated p53 genes, they went after half of cancers that used the alternative route to disable p53, blocking it by attaching it to a protein known as MDM2. When the two proteins stick together, the p53 protein no longer functions. Maybe, researchers thought, they could find a molecule to wedge itself between the two proteins and pry them apart.

The problem was that both proteins are huge and cling tightly to each other. Drug molecules are typically tiny. How could they find one that could separate these two bruisers, like a referee at a boxing match?

In 1996, researchers at Roche noticed a small pocket between the behemoths where a tiny molecule might slip in and pry them apart. It took six years, but Roche found such a molecule and named it Nutlin because the lab was in Nutley, N.J.

But Nutlins did not work as drugs because they were not absorbed into the body.

Roche, Merck and Sanofi persevered, testing thousands of molecules.

At Sanofi, the stubborn scientist leading the way, Dr. Debussche, maintained an obsession with p53 for two decades. Finally, in 2009, his team, together with Shaomeng Wang at the University of Michigan and a biotech company, Ascenta Therapeutics, found a promising compound.

The company tested the drug by pumping it each day into the stomachs of mice with sarcoma.

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Midge Turk Richardson, Ex-Nun Who Edited Seventeen Magazine, Dies at 82

Midge Turk Richardson, who spent 18 years as a nun before spending 18 years as the editor of Seventeen magazine, a redoubt of worldly concerns like clothes, makeup and dating, died last weekend at her home in Manhattan. She was 82.

Mrs. Richardson, whose body was found by family members on Monday, apparently died in her sleep sometime during the weekend, her stepson Kevin Richardson said.

A former Roman Catholic nun, Mrs. Richardson left her order in 1966, a journey she recounted in a memoir, “The Buried Life,” published in 1971. In secular life, she became a member of New York’s social set, and was married for three decades to Ham Richardson, a tennis star who later ran his own investment concern, with homes on Park Avenue and in Bridgehampton, on Long Island.

At Seventeen, which she edited from 1975 until her retirement in 1993, Mrs. Richardson was known for introducing frank discussions of delicate subjects — including sex, anorexia and suicide — from which the magazine, aimed at teenage girls and long considered a bastion of wholesomeness, had traditionally shied away.

Under Mrs. Richardson’s stewardship, certain aspects of the magazine remained comfortably familiar. “Secrets of Staying Thin,” promised one cover, from 1980; “Those Dreamy Summer Romances,” proclaimed another that year.

But other cover lines betrayed her resolve to address modern readers’ concerns: “Teen Suicide: The Danger Signals,” “What You Must Know About Herpes.”

In 1982, Mrs. Richardson instituted a regular column, “Sex and Your Body,” which explored subjects like gynecological health, sexual relations and birth control.

“We’ve been talking about it for years and trying to figure out how to go at it in a tasteful manner,” she told The Chicago Tribune in 1983. “We don’t want to be frightening to a young girl, or permissive. But the demands of the time finally brought us around to it.”

All this was a far cry from her life as Sister Agnes Marie, and from the quiet routine of her days in the convent, where she had lived from the ages of 18 to 36.

Agnes Theresa Turk, known as Midge because of her petite stature, was born in Los Angeles on March 26, 1930, the youngest daughter of a Roman Catholic family. As a girl, she worked as an extra in more than a hundred Hollywood films, sometimes appearing opposite Shirley Temple.

At 18, wanting a life of service, she forsook her lively home, her active social life and her boyfriend to enter the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, a teaching order with a motherhouse in the Hollywood hills.

Sister Agnes Marie, as she was known in religion, earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Immaculate Heart College, run by her order. She embarked on a career as an educator, teaching English, French and drama in local parochial schools and later becoming the principal of a Catholic high school in a blighted, largely Latino section of Los Angeles.

She loved the life, but by the mid-1960s she had become depressed and exhausted — frustrated, she wrote, by what she saw as the failure of diocesan hierarchy to meet the needs of the impoverished community she served. She suffered two bouts of temporary blindness, brought on, her doctors told her, by strain.

In 1966, after much soul-searching, Sister Agnes Marie asked to be released from her vows. (In 1970, Anita Caspary, the mother superior of the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart, led an exodus of 300 nuns from the order in response to what they described as the failure of the diocese to lift outmoded restrictions on nuns’ lives.)

At 36, Agnes Turk found herself on her own for the first time. Carrying a single suitcase, she made for New York: it was one place, she reasoned, that offered career opportunities for women. She found a job as an assistant to a dean at New York University, sleeping on the floor of her tiny Greenwich Village apartment because she could not afford furniture.

She learned to navigate an alien social world. Once, preparing for a date, she washed her hair only to realize she did not own a hair dryer. She stuck her head pragmatically in the oven, emerging with singed hair.

After working as the college editor of Glamour magazine and at Scholastic Publications, she joined Seventeen as executive editor, becoming editor in chief in 1985.

Mrs. Richardson’s husband, whom she married in 1974, died in 2006. The No. 1-ranked tennis player in the United States in 1956 and 1958, he won 17 national titles and played on seven Davis Cup teams.

Besides her stepson Kevin, survivors include another stepson, Ken Richardson; a stepdaughter, Kit Sawers; two sisters, Gwendolyn Tighe and Marie Smith; and five step-grandchildren.

Mrs. Richardson was also the author of a children’s biography of a friend, the photographer Gordon Parks.

In an interview with The New York Times in 1970, she described the forces that led her first to take the veil and later to relinquish it:

“I entered the convent not so much because I believed in the church as that I believed in helping people,” she said. “I’d never had any great thing about dressing up in those clothes and jangling my rosary beads.”

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In Islamist Bastion, Support Ebbs for Egypt’s Brotherhood

Tara Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times

A school with old posters of Mohamed Morsi, now the president, in Al Talbeya, a neighborhood in Giza, where disaffection with the government is growing. More Photos »

AL TALBEYA, Egypt — Mohamed Salamah used to vote with the Muslim Brotherhood. But in Saturday’s referendum on the Islamist-backed constitution, Mr. Salamah says he is voting against it, mainly because he no longer trusts the movement.

“They aren’t even doing anything very Islamic,” said Mr. Salamah, a 24-year-old waiter in a cafe in Al Talbeya, a working-class neighborhood in Giza across the Nile from Cairo that was an Islamist stronghold in previous votes. “They are just doing things that aren’t very competent.”

Throughout the neighborhood, both loyal supporters and critics of the Brotherhood described a deep erosion in the group’s street-level support. That was evident, they said, even before the low turnout and narrow margin in last weekend’s first round of voting on what residents here call “the Brotherhood constitution.”

The results so far appear to have surprised leaders of the Brotherhood and their opposition. And even if the draft constitution is approved, as expected, on Saturday in the second half of the vote, the new questions about the charter’s popularity and the Brotherhood’s mandate could prolong Egypt’s political turbulence and, as a result, defer badly needed economic reforms as well.

Residents here and around Cairo say the damage to the Brotherhood’s popularity is unrelated to its religious ideology. It reflects a consistent trio of complaints: confusing economic policies of the Brotherhood-led government, a near-monopoly on power and civilian supporters’ use of force against opponents in a street battle two weeks ago. Even so, many say the Brotherhood remains the most potent political force, in part because of the incoherence of the opposition, which has often focused on accusing the Brotherhood of imposing religious rule.

But for now economists say the battle for power is jeopardizing progress on the bread-and-butter issues that are paramount across the ideological spectrum. “What the economy needs are decisions that are politically courageous and credible, and no government can do that now,” said Ragui Assaad, an economist at the University of Minnesota with an office in Cairo.

A critical loan of more than $4 billion from the International Monetary Fund, expected to be signed this month, has been delayed until the political situation settles. The Egyptian pound is slipping against the dollar. And the most obvious step to improve the growth and fairness of the economy requires a government with credibility and political skill. Attempts at overhauling Egypt’s vast subsidies to energy prices have in the past set off riots.

“What we have now is a government that lacks legitimacy but also economic competence,” Mr. Assaad said. “I don’t see anything better coming out of this government.”

Brotherhood leaders have acknowledged the emergence of hostility against them. Mobs attacked more than three dozen Brotherhood offices, including its headquarters, in the prelude to the first round of voting on the constitution. “I am telling everyone, do not hate the Muslim Brotherhood so much that you forget Egypt’s best interest,” said Mohamed Badie, the group’s spiritual leader. “You can be angry at us and hate us as much as you want; we cannot control affection. But I say to you, be rational. Protect Egypt. Its unity cannot survive what is happening.”

For many in Al Talbeya, the defining moment of the prelude to the referendum was the night of Dec. 5, when the Brotherhood called its supporters to defend President Mohamed Morsi against protesters outside his office. Ten died in the fight. And although the Brotherhood has claimed all those killed were its members, seemingly everyone in Al Talbeya still blamed the group for the violence.

“People don’t like the Muslim Brotherhood as much as they used to, because they saw how they tried to control everything and how they beat people up,” said Emad Mohamed Yosri, 37, a tailor who still counts himself a supporter of the group.

Omar Ateh, 30, a shopkeeper and Islamist, said he was trying to defend the Brotherhood. “We are trying to make people understand, they are not from another planet,” he said, “they just like politics more than we do.”

But Ahmed Ragab, 14, interjected, “If they are such good people, why are they beating people up in the streets?”

Mayy El Sheikh contributed reporting from Cairo.

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Red Hat shares up on acquisition and 3Q results

Red Hat Inc.‘s shares jumped Friday on the software company‘s solid third-quarter results and plans to acquire cloud-based software company ManageIQ.

THE SPARK: Red Hat said late Thursday that it would buy privately held ManageIQ for $ 104 million in cash.

The Raleigh, N.C., company also reported that it earned 29 cents per share for its fiscal third quarter on an adjusted basis, up a penny from the prior year and in line with analyst expectations. Its revenue for the period increased 18 percent to $ 343.6 million, which beats the $ 338 million that analysts polled by FactSet had forecast.

THE BIG PICTURE: ManageIQ’s software helps businesses deploy and manage private clouds. Red Hat said the deal will expand the reach of its public-private cloud setups for its customers. The acquisition is expected to have no material impact to Red Hat’s revenue for its fiscal year ending in February.

THE ANALYSIS: Stifel Nicolaus analyst Brad R. Reback said that the company has been able to maintain momentum even in a difficult environment and he thinks the latest deal offers an interesting longer-term angle for its business. He thinks the company is well positioned to generate at least 15 to 20 percent billings growth in the future. He reiterated a “Buy” rating and a $ 65 price target on its shares.

SHARE ACTION: Shares gained $ 2.25, or more than 4 percent, to $ 54.86 in afternoon trading. Shares have traded between $ 39.19 and $ 62.75 in the past 52 weeks.

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Douglas wins AP female athlete of the year honors

When Gabby Douglas allowed herself to dream of being the Olympic champion, she imagined having a nice little dinner with family and friends to celebrate. Maybe she'd make an appearance here and there.

"I didn't think it was going to be crazy," Douglas said, laughing. "I love it. But I realized my perspective was going to have to change."

Just a bit.

The teenager has become a worldwide star since winning the Olympic all-around title in London, the first African-American gymnast to claim gymnastics' biggest prize. And now she has earned another honor. Douglas was selected The Associated Press' female athlete of the year, edging out swimmer Missy Franklin in a vote by U.S. editors and news directors that was announced Friday.

"I didn't realize how much of an impact I made," said Douglas, who turns 17 on Dec. 31. "My mom and everyone said, 'You really won't know the full impact until you're 30 or 40 years old.' But it's starting to sink in."

In a year filled with standout performances by female athletes, those of the pint-sized gymnast shined brightest. Douglas received 48 of 157 votes, seven more than Franklin, who won four gold medals and a bronze in London. Serena Williams, who won Wimbledon and the U.S. Open two years after her career was nearly derailed by a series of health problems, was third (24).

Britney Griner, who led Baylor to a 40-0 record and the NCAA title, and skier Lindsey Vonn each got 18 votes. Sprinter Allyson Felix, who won three gold medals in London, and Carli Lloyd, who scored both U.S. goals in the Americans' 2-1 victory over Japan in the gold-medal game, also received votes.

"One of the few years the women's (Athlete of the Year) choices are more compelling than the men's," said Julie Jag, sports editor of the Santa Cruz Sentinel.

Douglas is the fourth gymnast to win one of the AP's annual awards, which began in 1931, and first since Mary Lou Retton in 1984. She also finished 15th in voting for the AP sports story of the year.

Douglas wasn't even in the conversation for the Olympic title at the beginning of the year. That all changed in March when she upstaged reigning world champion and teammate Jordyn Wieber at the American Cup in New York, showing off a new vault, an ungraded uneven bars routine and a dazzling personality that would be a hit on Broadway and Madison Avenue.

She finished a close second to Wieber at the U.S. championships, then beat her two weeks later at the Olympic trials. With each competition, her confidence grew. So did that smile.

By the time the Americans got to London, Douglas had emerged as the most consistent gymnast on what was arguably the best team the U.S. has ever had.

She posted the team's highest score on all but one event in qualifying. She was the only gymnast to compete in all four events during team finals, when the Americans beat the Russians in a rout for their second Olympic title, and first since 1996. Two nights later, Douglas claimed the grandest prize of all, joining Retton, Carly Patterson and Nastia Liukin as what Bela Karolyi likes to call the "Queen of Gymnastics."

But while plenty of other athletes won gold medals in London, none captivated the public quite like Gabby.

Fans ask for hugs in addition to photographs and autographs, and people have left restaurants and cars upon spotting her. She made Barbara Walters' list of "10 Most Fascinating People," and Forbes recently named her one of its "30 Under 30." She has deals with Nike, Kellogg Co. and AT&T, and agent Sheryl Shade said Douglas has drawn interest from companies that don't traditionally partner with Olympians or athletes.

"She touched so many people of all generations, all diversities," Shade said. "It's her smile, it's her youth, it's her excitement for life. ... She transcends sport."

Douglas' story is both heartwarming and inspiring, its message applicable those young or old, male or female, active or couch potato. She was just 14 when she convinced her mother to let her leave their Virginia Beach, Va., home and move to West Des Moines, Iowa, to train with Liang Chow, Shawn Johnson's coach. Though her host parents, Travis and Missy Parton, treated Douglas as if she was their fifth daughter, Douglas was so homesick she considered quitting gymnastics.

She's also been open about her family's financial struggles, hoping she can be a role model for lower income children.

"I want people to think, 'Gabby can do it, I can do it,'" Douglas said. "Set that bar. If you're going through struggles or injuries, don't let it stop you from what you want to accomplish."

The grace she showed under pressure — both on and off the floor — added to her appeal. When some fans criticized the way she wore her hair during the Olympics, Douglas simply laughed it off.

"They can say whatever they want. We all have a voice," she said. "I'm not going to focus on it. I'm not really going to focus on the negative."

Besides, she's having far too much fun.

Her autobiography, "Grace, Gold and Glory," is No. 4 on the New York Times' young adult list. She, Wieber and Fierce Five teammates Aly Raisman and McKayla Maroney recently wrapped up a 40-city gymnastics tour. She met President Barack Obama last month with the rest of the Fierce Five, and left the White House with a souvenir.

"We got a sugar cookie that they were making for the holidays," Douglas said. "I took a picture of it."

Though her busy schedule hasn't left time to train, Douglas insists she still intends to compete through the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in 2016.

No female Olympic champion has gone on to compete at the next Summer Games since Nadia Comaneci. But Douglas is still a relative newcomer to the elite scene — she'd done all of four international events before the Olympics — and Chow has said she hasn't come close to reaching her full potential. She keeps up with Chow through email and text messages, and plans to return to Iowa after her schedule clears up in the spring.

Of course, plenty of other athletes have said similar things and never made it back to the gym. But Douglas is determined, and she gets giddy just talking about getting a new floor routine.

"I think there's even higher bars to set," she said.

Because while being an Olympic champion may have changed her life, it hasn't changed her.

"I may be meeting cool celebrities and I'm getting amazing opportunities," she said. "But I'm still the same Gabby."

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AP Projects Editor Brooke Lansdale contributed to this report.

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Alabama to End Isolation of Inmates With H.I.V.

Jamie Martin/Associated Press

The H.I.V. ward of an Alabama women's prison in 2008. The state was ordered to stop segregating inmates with the virus.

A federal judge on Friday ordered Alabama to stop isolating prisoners with H.I.V.

Alabama is one of two states, along with South Carolina, where H.I.V.-positive inmates are housed in separate prisons, away from other inmates, in an attempt to reduce medical costs and stop the spread of the virus, which causes AIDS.

Judge Myron H. Thompson of the Middle District of Alabama ruled in favor of a group of inmates who argued in a class-action lawsuit that they had been stigmatized and denied equal access to educational programs. The judge called the state’s policy “an unnecessary tool for preventing the transmission of H.I.V.” but “an effective one for humiliating and isolating prisoners living with the disease.”

After the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, many states, including New York, quarantined H.I.V.-positive prisoners to prevent the virus from spreading through sexual contact or through blood when inmates tattooed one another. But most states ended the practice voluntarily as powerful antiretroviral drugs reduced the risk of transmission.

In Alabama, inmates are tested for H.I.V. when they enter prison. About 250 of the state’s 26,400 inmates have tested positive. They are housed in special dormitories at two prisons: one for men and one for women. No inmates have developed AIDS, the state says.

H.I.V.-positive inmates are treated differently from those with other viruses like hepatitis B and C, which are far more infectious, according to the World Health Organization. Inmates with H.I.V. are barred from eating in the cafeteria, working around food, enrolling in certain educational programs or transferring to prisons near their families.

Prisoners have been trying to overturn the policy for more than two decades. In 1995, a federal court upheld Alabama’s policy. Inmates filed the latest lawsuit last year.

“Today’s decision is historic,” said Margaret Winter, the associate director of the National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented the inmates. “It spells an end to a segregation policy that has inflicted needless misery on Alabama prisoners with H.I.V. and their families.”

Brian Corbett, a spokesman for the Alabama Department of Corrections, said the state is “not prejudiced against H.I.V.-positive inmates” and has “worked hard over the years to improve their health care, living conditions and their activities.”

“We will continue our review of the court’s opinion and determine our next course of action in a timely manner,” he wrote.

During a monthlong trial in September, lawyers for the department argued that the policy improved the treatment of H.I.V.-positive inmates. Fewer doctors are needed if specialists in H.I.V. focus on 2 of the 29 state’s prisons.

The state spends an average of $22,000 per year on treating individual H.I.V.-positive inmates. The total is more than the cost of medicine for all other inmates, said Bill Lunsford, a lawyer for the Corrections Department.

South Carolina has also faced legal scrutiny. In 2010, the Justice Department notified the state that it was investigating the policy and might sue to overturn it.

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Park Geun-hye, South Korean President-Elect, Calls for Reconciliation

Ahn Young-Joon/Associated Press

President-elect Park Geun-hye during a news conference at her party's headquarters on Thursday in Seoul.

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea’s president-elect, Park Geun-hye, called for national reconciliation on Thursday, a day after she was elected as the country’s first female leader in a close contest that reflected generational divides and growing unease over North Korea’s military threat.

Ms. Park, 60, the daughter of South Korea’s longest-ruling dictator, won 51.6 percent of the votes cast on Wednesday to choose a successor to President Lee Myung-bak, who was barred by law from seeking a second term.

“I will reflect various opinions of the people, whether they have supported or opposed me,” Ms. Park said in a speech Thursday. She pledged “impartiality,” “national harmony” and “reconciliation,” saying she would bring people into her government “regardless of their regional background, gender and generation.”

She also promised “the sharing of fruits of economic growth,” mindful of doubts that her conservative party, the governing Saenuri Party, would address the widening income gap that was one of the biggest issues in the campaign.

Ms. Park on Wednesday became the first presidential candidate to win a majority of the vote since South Korea adopted a democratic constitution in 1987. But the campaign hardly put the country’s divisions to rest. It rekindled a dispute over the legacy of Ms. Park’s father, Park Chung-hee, who remains a polarizing figure 33 years after his iron-fisted rule ended with his assassination in 1979.

It also highlighted a generational divide over issues like North Korea and the powerful, family-controlled business conglomerates known as chaebol. Exit polls indicated that Ms. Park won twice as many votes among people 50 and older than did her main rival, Moon Jae-in, but only half as many among voters in their 20s and 30s.

She defeated Mr. Moon in most provinces and big cities. But Seoul and the southwestern provinces of North and South Jeolla, traditionally a progressive stronghold, chose the liberal Mr. Moon, who championed bold economic investment in North Korea as a means of inducing denuclearization and more aggressive measures to tame the conglomerates, which have been widely blamed for growing economic inequality. Mr. Moon won 48 percent of the vote nationwide.

Ms. Park met Thursday with the ambassadors from the United States, China, Japan and Russia, the four other countries involved with the two Koreas in talks over the North’s nuclear weapons programs.

Worries over the North’s weapons programs flared again last week with the launching of a long-range rocket that many saw as a test of its missile capabilities. Such missiles could eventually be used to deliver a nuclear weapon.

Ms. Park on Thursday referred to the launching as “a symbolic demonstration of how serious a challenge we face in national security.”

She has, however, promised to be more open to the North than Mr. Lee, who took a hard-line approach that many South Koreans felt proved to be counterproductive.

“North Korea will wait a few months to see if Park Geun-hye will appease it with money,” said Andrei Lankov, a North Korea specialist at Kookmin University in Seoul. “If she does not — and it looks unlikely that she will, given her statements so far and the hard-liners surrounding her — then North Korea will launch provocations.”

With Ms. Park’s election, South Korea extended the tenure of its staunchly pro-American governing party and handed power to the first woman to win the post in a deeply patriarchal part of Asia. Voters appeared to prefer stability over Mr. Moon’s calls for radical change.

“This is a victory for the people’s wish to overcome crises and revive the economy,” Ms. Park told her cheering supporters after the results came in, a crowd that had gathered in freezing weather in downtown Seoul to celebrate a woman whose steeliness in the face of adversity is legend. According to her memoir, when told of her father’s assassination in 1979, she responded, “Is everything all right along the border with North Korea?”

In its starkest terms, this election was about South Korea’s continuing confrontation with its authoritarian past, and confusion over whether a conservative or liberal approach would best serve the country as it tries to stop North Korea’s excesses and to handle growing frustration over economic inequality without derailing the country’s economic miracle. Mr. Moon, a former human rights lawyer who was once imprisoned for opposing the authoritarian rule of Ms. Park’s father, campaigned on restoring liberal policies from the early 2000s, including a warm embrace of North Korea as a way of trying to curb its aggression.

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Insiders steal a march in leak prone Asian markets

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – When South Korean automaker Hyundai Motor Co announced last month it had overstated the fuel efficiency levels on around one million of its cars in the United States and Canada some investors were left fuming more than others.

Some had already sold their shares before the announcement on November 2. The stock fell 4 percent on November 1 with about 2.2 million shares changing hands, the highest trading volume of the year at that point.

“This smells pretty bad,” said Robert Boxwell, director of consulting firm Opera Advisors in Kuala Lumpur who has studied insider dealing patterns.

“It would have fallen into our suspect trading category,” he added.

Boxwell spots suspect trading by looking at how much the volume diverges from the average level in the days before a market moving announcement. In the Hyundai instance, the volume was more than five standard deviations, a measure of variation, away from the daily average of 598,741 shares over the past year.

A Hyundai spokeswoman declined to comment.

Research from the Capital Markets Co-operative Research Centre (CMCRC), an academic centre in Sydney that studies financial market efficiency, found that 26 percent of price-sensitive announcements in Asia Pacific markets showed signs of leakage in the first quarter of this year, the most recent period for which data was available.

That compared with 13 percent in North American markets.

The CMCRC says it looks for suspected information leaks by examining abnormal price moves and trading volumes ahead of price-sensitive announcements.

Investors say one reason for leaks in Asia has been low enforcement rates for insider trading and breaches of disclosure rules. Enforcement in some markets is virtually non-existent.

There are also misconceptions about whether trading on non-public information is a crime.

“The idea that insider trading is wrong rather than smart is only being ingrained in the current generation of Asian players, not the older generation who are often still in the driving seat,” said Peter Douglas, founder of GFIA, a hedge fund consultancy in Singapore.

LOSS OF CONFIDENCE

Japan’s largest investment bank Nomura Holdings was embarrassed this year after regulatory investigations found it leaked information to clients ahead of three public share offerings.

Nomura has acknowledged that its employees leaked information on three share issues it underwrote in 2010. In June, it published the results of an internal investigation that found breaches of basic investment banking safeguards against leaking confidential information and announced a raft of measures to prevent recurrence.

The bank was also fined 200 million yen ($ 2.37 million) by the Tokyo Stock Exchange and 300 million yen by the Japan Securities Dealers Association.

Such leaks hurt companies’ share prices in the long run because investors put in less money if they feel they are not on a level playing field.

“It is very damaging. You may not know how much money you’ve lost but if there is not confidence that the regulators are prosecuting and enforcing the rules on this then it undermines investor confidence and liquidity,” said Jamie Allen, secretary general of the Asian Corporate Governance Association.

The issue isn’t being ignored. Many Asian markets such as Hong Kong and China have tightened their rules on insider trading over the past decade.

Indeed some investors feel that while leaks and insider dealing are unfair, regulators in the region have more serious issues they should be tackling.

“I would like to see the regulators spend more resources on investigating and prosecuting fraud against listed companies, which severely damages shareholder value,” said David Webb, a corporate governance activist in Hong Kong, arguing insider dealing as less of an impact on a company’s long-term share price.

HTC AND APPLE

A week after Hyundai’s announcement about its problems in the United States, there was an unexpected move on the Taiwan Stock Exchange.

Shares in smartphone maker HTC Corp jumped almost seven percent on Friday, November 9, hitting the daily upper trading limit. On Sunday came the surprise announcement that the company was ending its long-running patent dispute with Apple Inc , a move seen as a positive for the stock.

The Taiwan bourse announced it was investigating the trading patterns to see if there was a possible leak.

When asked for comment, HTC referred back to a November 13 statement in which the company said it had kept the Apple settlement process confidential and has strict controls on insider trading.

Michael Lin, a spokesman for the Taiwan Exchange, told Reuters on Friday that the bourse is still working with the regulator on the case.

‘ENORMOUS LOSSES’

Michael Aitken, who oversees research at the CMCRC, said many other Asian markets lack tough enough rules to force information to be released as efficiently and timely as possible, a primary reason for the prevalence of leaks.

“Poor regulation hampers enforcement efforts,” he said pointing out that few markets have the “continuous disclosure” rules used in Australia which require listed companies to release material information as soon as possible.

In Korea, when Hyundai shares started to fall, rumours began swirling that news about a problem with some of its cars was on its way, but investors say it took the company too long to disclose what exactly was happening.

“Hyundai at that time did not confirm the rumours. We suffered enormous losses because of this,” said one fund manager, who declined to be named because he was not authorised to speak to the media.

An official from Korea Exchange declined to comment on whether it was investigating this case, saying only that the exchange looks carefully into possible cases of insider trading.

Across Asia, regulators concede that many company executives and insiders still do not appreciate that leaking or trading on material, non-public information is an offence.

“People don’t even know they are engaging in insider trading, for example if their friends are talking about it on the golf course,” said Tong Daochi director-general for international affairs at the China Securities Regulatory Commission, during a regulation conference last month.

“We try to tell society, what are the criminal issues, what are the insider trading issues? For example we have held 27 press conferences to tell the public what kind of activities are involved in insider trading and to let people know that this is an active crime.” ($ 1 = 84.2600 Japanese yen) ($ 1 = 0.6147 British pounds)

(Reporting by Rachel Armstrong; additional reporting by Nishant Kumar in HONG KONG and Hyunjoo Jin in SEOUL; Editing by Emily Kaiser)

Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Michael Phelps voted AP male athlete of year

Now that he's away from the pool, Michael Phelps can reflect — really reflect — on what he accomplished.

Pretty amazing stuff.

"It's kind of nuts to think about everything I've gone through," Phelps said. "I've finally had time to myself, to sit back and say, '... that really happened?' It's kind of shocking at times."

Not that his career needed a capper, but Phelps added one more honor to his staggering list of accomplishments Thursday — The Associated Press male athlete of the year.

Phelps edged out LeBron James to win the award for the second time, not only a fitting payoff for another brilliant Olympics (four gold medals and two silvers in swimming at the London Games) but recognition for one of the greatest careers in any sport.

Phelps finished with 40 votes in balloting by U.S. editors and broadcasters, while James was next with 37. Track star Usain Bolt, who won three gold medals in London, was third with 23.

Carl Lewis is the only other Olympic-related star to be named AP male athlete of the year more than once, taking the award for his track and field exploits in 1983 and '84. The only men honored more than twice are golf's Tiger Woods and cyclist Lance Armstrong (four times each), and basketball's Michael Jordan (three times).

"Obviously, it's a big accomplishment," Phelps said. "There's so many amazing male athletes all over the world and all over our country. To be able to win this is something that just sort of tops off my career."

Phelps retired at age 27 as soon as he finished his final race in London, having won more gold medals (18) and overall medals (22) than any other Olympian.

No one else is even close.

"That's what I wanted to do," Phelps said. "Now that it's over, it's something I can look back on and say, 'That was a pretty amazing ride.'"

The current ride isn't so bad either.

Set for life financially, he has turned his fierce competitive drive to golf, working on his links game with renowned coach Hank Haney as part of a television series on the Golf Channel. In fact, after being informed of winning the AP award, Phelps called in from the famed El Dorado Golf & Beach Club in Los Cabos, Mexico, where he was heading out with Haney to play a few more holes before nightfall.

"I can't really complain," Phelps quipped over the phone.

Certainly, he has no complaints about his swimming career, which helped turn a sport that most Americans only paid attention to every four years into more of a mainstream pursuit.

More kids took up swimming. More advertisers jumped on board. More viewers tuned in to watch.

While swimming is unlikely to ever match the appeal of football or baseball, it has carved out a nice little niche for itself amid all the other athletic options in the United States — largely due to Phelps' amazing accomplishments and aw-shucks appeal.

Just the fact that he won over James shows just how much pull Phelps still has. James had an amazing year by any measure: The league MVP won his first NBA title with the Miami Heat, picking up finals MVP honors along the way, and then starred on the gold medal-winning U.S. basketball team in London.

Phelps already had won the AP award in 2008 after his eight gold medals in Beijing, which broke Mark Spitz's record. Phelps got it again with a performance that didn't quite match up to the Great Haul of China, but was amazing in its own right.

After the embarrassment of being photographed taking a hit from a marijuana pipe and questioning whether he still had the desire to go on, Phelps returned with a vengeance as the London Games approached. Never mind that he was already the winningest Olympian ever. Never mind that he could've eclipsed the record for overall medals just by swimming on the relays.

He wanted to be one of those rare athletes who went out on top.

"That's just who he is," said Bob Bowman, his longtime coach. "He just couldn't live with himself if knew he didn't go out there and give it good shot and really know he's competitive. He doesn't know anything else but to give that kind of effort and have those kind of expectations."

Phelps got off to a rocky start in London, finishing fourth in the 400-meter individual medley, blown out of the water by his friend and rival, Ryan Lochte. It was only the second time that Phelps had not at least finished in the top three of an Olympic race, the first coming way back in 2000 when he was fifth in his only event of the Sydney Games as a 15-year-old.

To everyone looking in, Lochte seemed poised to become the new Phelps — while the real Phelps appeared all washed up.

But he wasn't going out like that.

No way.

Phelps rebounded to become the biggest star at the pool, edging Lochte in the 200 IM, contributing to a pair of relay victories, and winning his final individual race, the 100 butterfly. There were two silvers, as well, leaving Phelps with a staggering resume that will be awfully difficult for anyone to eclipse.

His 18 golds are twice as many as anyone else in Olympic history. His 22 medals are four clear of Larisa Latynina, a Soviet-era gymnast, and seven more than the next athlete on the list. Heck, if Phelps was a nation, he'd be 58th in the medal standings, just one behind India (population: 1.2 billion).

"When I'm flying all over the place, I write a lot in my journal," Phelps said. "I kind of relive all the memories, all the moments I had throughout my career. That's pretty special. I've never done that before. It's amazing when you see it all on paper."

Four months into retirement, Phelps has no desire to get back in the pool. Oh, he'll swim every now and then for relaxation, using the water to unwind rather than putting in one of his famously grueling practices. Golf is his passion at the moment, but he's also found time to cheer on his hometown NFL team, the Baltimore Ravens, and start looking around for a racehorse that he and Bowman can buy together.

Phelps hasn't turned his back on swimming, either. He's got his name attached to a line of schools that he wants to take worldwide. He's also devoting more time to his foundation, which is dedicated to teaching kids to swim and funding programs that will grow the sport even more.

He's already done so much.

"His contribution to the way the world thinks about swimming is so powerful," Bowman said. "I don't think any other athlete has transformed his sport the way he's transformed swimming."

Phelps still receives regular texts from old friends and teammates, asking when he's going to give up on this retirement thing and come back the pool as a competitor.

He scoffs at the notion, sounding more sure of himself now than he did in London.

And if there's anything we've learned: Don't doubt Michael Phelps when he sets his mind on something.

"Sure, I could come back in another four years. But why?" he asked, not waiting for an answer. "I've done everything I wanted to do. There's no point in coming back."

___

Follow Paul Newberry on Twitter at www.twitter.com/pnewberry1963

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