Times Reporter in China Is Forced to Leave Over Visa Issue

BEIJING — A correspondent for The New York Times was forced to leave mainland China on Monday after the authorities declined to issue him a visa for 2013 by year’s end.

Chris Buckley, a 45-year-old Australian who has worked as a correspondent in China since 2000, rejoined The Times in September after working for Reuters. The Times applied for Mr. Buckley to be accredited to replace a correspondent who was reassigned, but the authorities did not act before Dec. 31, despite numerous requests. That forced Mr. Buckley, his partner and their daughter to fly to Hong Kong on Monday.

Normally, requests to transfer visas are processed in a matter of weeks or a couple of months.

The Times is also waiting for its new Beijing bureau chief, Philip P. Pan, to be accredited. Mr. Pan applied in March, but his visa has not been processed.

The visa troubles come amid government pressure on the foreign news media over investigations into the finances of senior Chinese leaders, a delicate subject. Corruption is widely reported in China, but top leaders are considered off limits.

On the day that The Times published a long investigation into the riches of the family of Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, both its English-language Web site and its new Chinese-language site were blocked within China, and they remain so.

In June, the authorities blocked the English-language site of Bloomberg News after it published a detailed investigation into the family riches of China’s new top leader, Xi Jinping. Chinese financial institutions say they have been instructed by officials not to buy Bloomberg’s computer terminals, a lucrative source of income for the company.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs declined to comment on Mr. Buckley’s forced departure. Ministry officials have not said if they are linking Mr. Buckley’s visa renewal or Mr. Pan’s press accreditation to the newspaper’s coverage of China. In a statement, The Times urged the authorities to process Mr. Buckley’s visa as quickly as possible so that he and his family could return to Beijing.

“I hope the Chinese authorities will issue him a new visa as soon as possible and allow Chris and his family to return to Beijing,” Jill Abramson, the executive editor of The Times, said in the statement. “I also hope that Phil Pan, whose application for journalist credentials has been pending for months, will also be issued a visa to serve as our bureau chief in Beijing.”

The Times has six other accredited correspondents in China, and their visas were renewed for 2013 in a timely manner. David Barboza, the Shanghai bureau chief, who wrote the articles about Mr. Wen’s family, was among those whose visas were renewed.

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Zynga carries out planned games shutdown, including “Petville”

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Social games publisher Zynga Inc confirmed on Monday that it has carried out 11 of the planned shutdowns of 13 game titles, with “Petville” being the latest game on which it pulled the plug.

Zynga in October said it would shut down 13 underperforming titles after warning that its revenues were slowing as gamers fled from its once-popular titles published on the Facebook platform in large numbers and sharply revised its full-year outlook.

The San Francisco-based company announced the “Petville” shutdown two weeks ago on its Facebook page. All the 11 shutdowns occurred in December.

The 11 titles shut down or closed to new players include role-playing game “Mafia Wars 2,” “Vampire Wars,” “ForestVille” and “FishVille.”

“In place of ‘PetVille,’ we encourage you to play other Zynga games like ‘Castleville,’ ‘Chefville,’ ‘Farmville 2,’ ‘Mafia Wars’ and ‘Yoville,’” the company told players on its ‘PetVille’ Facebook page. “PetVille” players were offered a one-time, complimentary bonus package for virtual goods in those games.

“Petville,” which lets users adopt virtual pets, has 7.5 million likes on Facebook but only 60,000 daily active users, according to AppData. About 1,260 users commented on the game’s Facebook page, some lamenting the game’s shutdown.

Zynga has said it is shifting focus to capture growth in mobile games. It also applied this month for a preliminary application to run real-money gambling games in Nevada.

Zynga is hoping that a lucrative real-money market could make up for declining revenue from games like “FarmVille” and other fading titles that still generate the bulk of its sales.

Zynga shares were up 1 percent at $ 2.36 in afternoon trade on Monday on the Nasdaq.

(Reporting By Malathi Nayak; Editing by Leslie Adler)

Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Redskins win NFC East, Broncos get top seed in AFC

RG3 and the Washington Redskins are heading to the playoffs as NFC East champions.

By winning their seventh straight game, the Redskins rolled to their first division title in 13 years with a 28-18 victory over the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday night. Next up for Robert Griffin III & Co.: a home playoff matchup next Sunday with the Seahawks — the third straight postseason game for Washington against Seattle.

"It's just a mindset change," the rookie quarterback said. "When you have all these guys coming to work every day, putting it on the line, we knew we couldn't afford to lose one game, we made sure we didn't"

Thanks to Houston's late-season slump, Denver and New England will have byes when the AFC playoffs begin next week.

The Texans fell from first to third in the conference Sunday when they lost 28-16 at Indianapolis, which welcomed back coach Chuck Pagano after nearly three months of treatments for leukemia.

AFC West champion Denver won its 11th straight game, 38-3 over Kansas City to secure the top seed. New England blanked Miami 28-0 for the second spot.

Minnesota edged Green Bay 37-34 to grab the final NFC wild card, sinking the Packers to the third seed. Those teams will meet again next Saturday night at Lambeau Field.

The other NFC matchup will have Seattle (11-5), which beat St. Louis 20-13, at Washington on Sunday at 4:30 p.m. ET.

Cincinnati (10-6) will be at Houston on Saturday at 4:30 p.m. ET, and Indianapolis (11-5) goes to at Baltimore (10-6) on Sunday at 1 p.m. in the AFC wild-card rounds.

The divisional round games will be hosted by Denver on Saturday, Jan. 12, followed by San Francisco (11-4-1) at night. On Sunday, Jan. 13, Atlanta (13-3) will host the early game, followed by New England (12-4).

Peyton Manning threw for three touchdowns as Denver (13-3) routed the Chiefs. New England got the second seed despite having the same record as Houston because it beat the Texans, who lost three of their final four games.

Adrian Peterson had 199 yards against the Packers, finishing with 2,097 — Dickerson's single-season rushing mark in 2,105. But it was rookie kicker Blair Walsh who won it with a 29-yard field goal as time expired.

"Ultimately we got the 'W,'" Peterson said. "I told myself to come into this game focused on one thing, and that's winning."

Green Bay would have been seeded second in the NFC by beating Minnesota.

"The road got a little tougher having to play on opening weekend, but we've got a home game and that's why you win the division," Aaron Rodgers said. "We get to go back home, and the game will be different. They won't have home-crowd advantage, and hopefully that will make a difference."

Baltimore Pro Bowl safety Ed Reed is looking forward to a reunion with Pagano. He wishes it would come a little later in the postseason.

"Chuck's like a dad to me," Reed said "He means a lot to me. I would have much rather seen them in the AFC championship game than the first game."

But Reed will see him next week at Baltimore.

The Ravens had a chance to move up to the AFC's third seed with a win and a New England loss. But Baltimore lost at Cincinnati as both teams played backups for much of the game.

Pagano coached the Ravens' secondary for three seasons and was promoted to coordinator last year. Players and coaches in Baltimore have kept in touch, offering encouragement as he fought through the cancer treatments.

"Going back to Baltimore, obviously there's some familiarity there," Pagano said. "We had four great years there as a family. It's a top-notch organization, you know, really good football club. It's a great challenge and they have a great team and they have great players all over the place."

The Colts were 2-14 last season and chose quarterback Andrew Luck with the top selection in the draft. Luck and offensive coordinator Bruce Arians, who stepped in as interim coach with Pagano sidelined, led the turnaround.

Next week, Pagano goes up against former boss John Harbaugh.

"I love his family, and he's one of my closest personal friends in coaching," Harbaugh said. "What he's been through is phenomenal, but we're all competitors so that gets set aside."

Houston beat Cincinnati in the opening round of last year's playoffs.

"I think it will be good," said Bengals QB Andy Dalton, who grew up in suburban Houston. "We played there last year and know the atmosphere and what it's going to be like. The experience last year will definitely help us."

The defending Super Bowl champion Giants are out of contention. When Chicago beat Detroit 26-24, the Giants (9-7) were eliminated, even though they routed Philadelphia 42-7.

"It hurts," said Eli Manning. "Each year you want to make the playoffs to give yourself an opportunity to win a championship; 9-7 last year was good enough. It wasn't good enough this year and we knew it wouldn't be."

Minnesota's win eliminated Chicago.

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F.D.A. Approves Sirturo, a New Tuberculosis Drug

The Food and Drug Administration announced on Monday that it had approved a new treatment for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis that can be used as an alternative when other drugs fail.

The drug, to be called Sirturo, was discovered by scientists at Janssen, the pharmaceuticals unit of Johnson & Johnson, and is the first in a new class of drugs that aims to treat the drug-resistant strain of the disease.

Tuberculosis is a highly infectious disease that is transmitted through the air and usually affects the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body, including the brain and kidneys. It is considered one of the world’s most serious public health threats. Although rare in the United States, multidrug-resistant tuberculosis is a growing problem elsewhere in the world, especially in poorer countries. About 12 million people worldwide had tuberculosis in 2011, according to Johnson & Johnson, and about 630,000 had multidrug-resistant TB.

A study in September in The Lancet found that almost 44 percent of patients with tuberculosis in countries like Russia, Peru and Thailand showed resistance to at least one second-line drug, or a medicine used after another drug had already failed.

Treating drug-resistant tuberculosis can take years and can cost 200 times as much as treating the ordinary form of the disease

“This is quite a milestone in the story of therapy for TB,” Dr. Paul Stoffels, the chief scientific officer at Johnson & Johnson, said in an interview. He said the approval was the first time in 40 years that the agency had approved a drug that attacked tuberculosis in a different way from the current treatments on the market. Sirturo works by inhibiting an enzyme needed by the tuberculosis bacteria to replicate and spread throughout the body.

Sirturo, also known as bedaquiline, would be used on top of the standard treatment, which is a combination of several drugs. Patients with drug-resistant tuberculosis often must be treated for 18 to 24 months.

Even as it announced the approval, however, the F.D.A. also issued some words of caution.

“Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis poses a serious health threat throughout the world, and Sirturo provides much-needed treatment for patients who have don’t have other therapeutic options available,” Edward Cox, director of the office of antimicrobial products in the F.D.A.’s center for drug evaluation and research, said in a statement. “However, because the drug also carries some significant risks, doctors should make sure they use it appropriately and only in patients who don’t have other treatment options.”

The consumer advocacy group Public Citizen opposed approval in a letter to the F.D.A. in mid-December, saying that the results of a limited clinical trial showed that patients using bedaquiline were five times as likely to die than those on the standard drug regimen to treat the disease.

“Given that bedaquiline belongs to an entirely new class of drugs, it is entirely feasible that death in some cases was due to some unmeasured toxicity of the drug,” the letter said.

Sirturo carries a so-called black box warning for patients and health care professionals that the drug can affect the heart’s electrical activity, which could lead to an abnormal and potentially fatal heart rhythm. The warning also notes deaths in patients treated with Sirturo. Nine patients who received Sirturo died compared with two patients who received a placebo. Five of the deaths in the Sirturo group and all of the deaths in the placebo arm seemed to be related to tuberculosis, but no consistent reason for the deaths in the remaining Sirturo-treated patients could be identified.

Doctors Without Borders and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, both active in the fight against tuberculosis and other global diseases, applauded the F.D.A.’s decision.

Jan Gheuens, interim director of the TB Program for the Gates Foundation, called it a “long-awaited event” and said the fight against TB had not benefited from new drugs in the way H.I.V. had. Beyond the benefits of the drug itself, he said the quick approval process could be a model for other drugs sorely needed in the developing world.

He also suggested, however, that more trials should be conducted to get a better understanding of the side effects that led to the black box warning.

The F.D.A. approved bedaquiline under an accelerated program that allows the agency to conditionally approve drugs that are viewed as filling unmet medical needs with less than the usual evidence that they work. The drug’s approval was based on studies that showed it killed bacteria more quickly than a control group taking the standard regimen, but it did not measure whether in the end patients actually fared better on bedaquiline. Johnson & Johnson will conduct larger clinical trials to investigate whether the drug performs as predicted.

In a statement responding to Public Citizen’s letter, a spokeswoman for Johnson & Johnson said the company was committed to supporting appropriate use of Sirturo and would “work to ensure Sirturo is used only where treatment alternatives are not available.”

Dr. Stoffels said the hope was that other new tuberculosis drugs would also be approved that, when used in combination with bedaquiline, could shorten and simplify the current standard of treatment. “That is still a long time away,” he acknowledged, but “this is a first step in a new regimen for TB.”

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Times Reporter in China Is Forced to Leave Over Visa Issue

BEIJING — A correspondent for The New York Times was forced to leave mainland China on Monday after the authorities declined to issue him a visa for 2013 by year’s end.

Chris Buckley, a 45-year-old Australian who has worked as a correspondent in China since 2000, rejoined The Times in September after working for Reuters. The Times applied for Mr. Buckley to be accredited to replace a correspondent who was reassigned, but the authorities did not act before Dec. 31, despite numerous requests. That forced Mr. Buckley, his partner and their daughter to fly to Hong Kong on Monday.

Normally, requests to transfer visas are processed in a matter of weeks or a couple of months.

The Times is also waiting for its new Beijing bureau chief, Philip P. Pan, to be accredited. Mr. Pan applied in March, but his visa has not been processed.

The visa troubles come amid government pressure on the foreign news media over investigations into the finances of senior Chinese leaders, a delicate subject. Corruption is widely reported in China, but top leaders are considered off limits.

On the day that The Times published a long investigation into the riches of the family of Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, both its English-language Web site and its new Chinese-language site were blocked within China, and they remain so.

In June, the authorities blocked the English-language site of Bloomberg News after it published a detailed investigation into the family riches of China’s new top leader, Xi Jinping. Chinese financial institutions say they have been instructed by officials not to buy Bloomberg’s computer terminals, a lucrative source of income for the company.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs declined to comment on Mr. Buckley’s forced departure. Ministry officials have not said if they are linking Mr. Buckley’s visa renewal or Mr. Pan’s press accreditation to the newspaper’s coverage of China. In a statement, The Times urged the authorities to process Mr. Buckley’s visa as quickly as possible so that he and his family could return to Beijing.

“I hope the Chinese authorities will issue him a new visa as soon as possible and allow Chris and his family to return to Beijing,” Jill Abramson, the executive editor of The Times, said in the statement. “I also hope that Phil Pan, whose application for journalist credentials has been pending for months, will also be issued a visa to serve as our bureau chief in Beijing.”

The Times has six other accredited correspondents in China, and their visas were renewed for 2013 in a timely manner. David Barboza, the Shanghai bureau chief, who wrote the articles about Mr. Wen’s family, was among those whose visas were renewed.

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Mexico City Journal: Mobile Factory With Hope for a Better Life – Mexico City Journal

MEXICO CITY — The sound of a surprising opportunity rose above the tumult of traffic. “Factory for electronic textiles offering work,” came the message, shouted from a megaphone that sat in the basket of a white bicycle pedaled by Amor Muñoz, an artist in a black jumpsuit. “One hundred pesos an hour!”

Even on the streets of this busy capital, where sales pitches flow from speakers attached to anything with wheels, the offer stood out. Work? For about $7.50 an hour, a little above the American minimum wage?

The rush was on. By the time Ms. Muñoz parked in her usual spot outside a hospital in one of Mexico City’s peripheral neighborhoods, a line had already formed. Women of all ages squeezed together — one held a baby, another was nearly too old to walk — as Ms. Muñoz opened up a white wooden box revealing thread, needles, cloth, timecards and employment contracts. The work involved creating interactive art pieces that combine the old craft of sewing with 20th-century electronics and 21st-century tags allowing smartphone users to look up who worked on a given piece.

“It’s about community,” Ms. Muñoz said. “I’m interested in sharing the experience of art.”

If that were her only interest, it would be enough to make alpha geeks swoon; a local glossy magazine and the technology Web site Ars Technica recently honored Ms. Muñoz with their annual awards. But behind her vintage glasses and dimpled smile, Ms. Muñoz has a sharper message.

Her maquiladora, or factory, she said, is a “fantasy” meant to condemn the harsh reality of a global economy that uses and discards poor workers, especially women, to keep prices low.

In Mexico these days the project amounts to artistic subversion. At a time when the country’s new president, Enrique Peña Nieto, is trying to recast Mexico as an economic marvel, with growth rates surpassing Brazil, Ms. Muñoz’s factory is a countervailing force — a mobile reality check highlighting Mexico’s darker economic truths.

Take wages. The minimum wage in Mexico is about 60 cents an hour, and while the average pay in manufacturing has grown over the past decade, it is still only about $3.50 an hour, according to government statistics. Even according to higher estimates by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in Washington, Mexico’s hourly compensation costs are still only two-thirds of those found in Brazil, where the benefits of economic growth have helped a larger share of workers rise from poverty.

Economists recognize the problem. “We need to increase wages to become a true modern country,” said Luis de la Calle, a former Mexican government official who helped negotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement. But as Mexico tries to improve its image and gloss over its violent drug war, government officials have mostly described Mexico’s low wages in positive terms, as a way to compete with China. The market, it is generally assumed, will eventually drive up wages.

Ms. Muñoz is unwilling to wait. She described Mexican wages as an insult to human dignity, and every time her mobile factory appears, the power of work for reasonable pay goes on display. The crowds that gather are typically large. Sometimes people push and shove for two hours of work and $15, though once the day’s employees are selected (first come first hired), a calm tends to follow.

Earlier this month, the team included nearly a dozen women and one young man, all that Ms. Muñoz could afford. Many, like Sara Peregrino, 50, were homemakers with sewing experience. Others, like David Quiróz, 18, a taxi dispatcher, struggled to thread a needle without drawing blood.

Nearly everyone said the money they earned would go to one of two things — food or Christmas presents. “For women, it’s very hard to find a good job,” said Patricia Zamora, 33, a mother of two who arrived with Ms. Peregrino, one of her neighbors. “There is a lot of work for not much pay.”

Many of the women seemed to appreciate a chance to be involved in an art project. María González, 75, smiled widely when handed a needle and adjusted her purple scarf, excited to be creating something rather than worrying about her husband in the hospital. “This,” she said, sewing without looking down, “is a wonderful distraction.”

Ms. Muñoz seemed to agree. She stood nearby, waiting for her favorite time of day — when she paid the workers and took their photographs, which she would post online, linked to the artwork. It is an effort to make the workers more visible, she said, but also hints at her working-class past.

She grew up playing among the hammers and nails of the hardware store her parents owned in a marginal neighborhood like the one with her factory. She said she always appreciated manual labor and never felt comfortable in an office, even after receiving a law degree.

Textiles had once been a hobby — she used to collect huipiles, the traditional woven tunics of Mexico and Central America — but when she decided to become an artist in 2006, she returned to cloth and sewing. Her work now involves a mixture of textiles and technology. Many of her pieces involve sewn images with circuits that let users push buttons for sounds or displays of light.

Completed works from the mobile maquiladora project, for example, will create the whine of an ambulance siren.

Like many other young artists in the capital, she is trying to push Mexico forward by combining older traditions with the interactivity of social media and open-source software development. She dreams of finding financing for more mobile factories, and her lack of faith in government and industry is matched only by the optimism she expresses when discussing the power of networked youth.

“With technology, everything can be democratized,” she said. “It’s fabulous.”

Still, the human interactions are what she values most, so when Ms. Peregrino suddenly appeared and presented her with a pink plastic bag after being paid, Ms. Muñoz was visibly touched. The two women hugged as Ms. Muñoz put the gift in into the bicycle basket with the megaphone. Only later did she look inside, finding a hand-sewn purple scarf that must have taken days to complete.

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Kobe Bryant Finally Joins Twitter — Kind Of

Long among the sports world’s biggest Twitter holdouts, Kobe Bryant has finally joined the social network. But he hasn’t opened an account, and won’t be around for long.

Social savvy fans are being blessed with his presence thanks to Nike Basketball, which has turned over its account to Bryant since Tuesday.

[More from Mashable: Avery Johnson’s Teenage Son Unloads on Twitter After NBA Firing]

Nike Basketball, which sponsors Bryant and produces his official sneaker, announced the Kobe takeover in a Christmas Day tweet. The account’s name is now “Kobe Bryant” although its handle remains @nikebasketball. Kobe has spent the past few days tweeting about a variety of subjects using a series of hashtags that play off the theme #counton-fill-in-the-blank.

He’s tweeted about the Lakers progress as a team:

[More from Mashable: FanDuel Is Fantasy Sports With a Twist]

He’s tweeted behind-the-scenes snippets of training and treatment:

And he’s tweeted a totally normal, typical, everyday holiday family portrait:

Bryant actually joined Twitter for realsies back in 2011, but then deleted the account after racking up more than 35,000 followers in a just a few hours. He’s one of the NBA’s few stars without a Twitter presence. Nearly 90% of the league’s players are on the social network, according to Twitter.

But Bryant did become much more active on Facebook this summer, especially while traveling with the United States’ Olympic basketball team. He has nearly 15 million fans there, and reportedly writes his status updates and messages himself, with editing and actual posting done by support staff. In November he asked Facebook fans whether to join Instagram or Twitter next, and on Monday hinted in a status update that he may soon open an Instagram account.

What athletes would you most like to see get more active on social media? Let us know in the comments.

BONUS: 30 Must-Follow Twitter Accounts This NBA SEASON

1. @NBA

The NBA is arguably the world’s most engaging sports league on social media. Follow its official Twitter account for news, highlights and promotions.

Click here to view this gallery.

Thumbnail image courtesy Flickr, Keith Allison

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Peterson, Vikings top Pack 37-34 to make playoffs

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Adrian Peterson picked up the Minnesota Vikings and gave them a ride to the playoffs, where the first stop on this improbable journey is, yes, Green Bay.

Peterson came up 9 yards shy of breaking Eric Dickerson's single-season record, but he still powered the Vikings past the Packers 37-34 Sunday with 199 yards to set up a rematch next weekend in a first-round playoff game.

Peterson sliced through the line for a 27-yard gain in the closing seconds, his career-high 34th carry. That set up Blair Walsh's 29-yard field goal as time expired and put the Vikings (10-6) in the postseason after consecutive last-place finishes.

The division champion Packers (11-5) dropped to the NFC's No. 3 seed.

Aaron Rodgers completed 28 of 40 passes for 365 yards and four touchdowns and no turnovers, connecting with Jordy Nelson from 2 yards to tie the game with 2:54 remaining. But Christian Ponder threw for three scores, including one to Peterson, providing the necessary balance.

Ponder didn't turn over the ball, either, and went 16 for 28 for 234 yards, including a 65-yard zinger in stride to Jarius Wright midway through the fourth quarter that set up Ponder's third touchdown toss.

Peterson finished with 2,097 yards, becoming the seventh player in NFL history to reach the 2,000 mark. He had to work for it, pulling out all the cutbacks, stutter-steps and spins he could find in his exceptional skill set. His longest run was only 28 yards against a defense geared to slow him down, and the first contact often came at, near or behind the line of scrimmage.

The Packers cut the lead to 27-24 late in the third quarter on a touchdown reception by James Jones. The on-field ruling was a fumble at the goal line, triggering an automatic review. Because the Packers threw the challenge flag after the replay process began, however, they were only penalized for unsportsmanlike conduct, not prevented from benefiting from the overturned call.

That's what happened to Detroit infamously on Thanksgiving, when a disputed score by Houston was prevented from review.

Vikings executives hollered at the officials' supervisor in the press box, and mild-mannered coach Leslie Frazier was screaming at referee Mike Carey in search of an explanation.

After posting a 9-23 record over the last two years, the Vikings made so many strides in 2012 that the season was already a success. But no NFL team would ever be satisfied by finishing in defeat against a division rival, and the emotion and energy behind the quest was palpable all afternoon.

The NFC North was sewn up by the Packers two weeks earlier. Even though the bye remained in the balance the top seed didn't do the Packers any good last season. They went 15-1 and lost their opener at home to the eventual champion Giants, the year after winning three straight games on the road to reach and win the Super Bowl.

Rodgers played without injured leading receiver Randall Cobb, so Greg Jennings was the main guy instead, grabbing eight passes for 120 yards and two touchdowns. But the Vikings sacked Rodgers five times, recovering a fumble on one of them. And the defense did just barely enough to keep up with Peterson and end a five-game losing streak to the Packers.

Rodgers has 24 touchdowns, only four interceptions and a 70 percent completion rate over 10 career starts against the Vikings. His poise, arm strength and savvy came through clear against them as much as any other team. Plus, cornerback Antoine Winfield's aggravated hand injury kept him on the sideline for most of the game, a big loss for the Minnesota secondary.

Just as Ponder capably complemented Peterson to give the Vikings a chance, DuJuan Harris came out of nowhere to provide Rodgers some help for the Packers. Green Bay has been proving lately it's not as one-sided an offense as previously believed. Harris rushed 14 times for 70 yards.

With the catch-and-run game they orchestrate so well, finding the soft spots in coverage, the Packers zoomed 80 yards in six plays to pull within 20-17 early in the third quarter. Jennings had a 45-yard gain and the 5-yard grab for a score. He was wide open on both.

But Peterson churned closer to Dickerson on the next drive. Second-and-27? He surged off right tackle and bounced outside for 28 yards. To cap that march, he caught a 2-yard toss from Ponder to push the lead back to 10 points. The "MVP" chants from the crowd rang out in earnest after that.

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Dr. Rita Levi-Montalcini, a Revolutionary in the Study of the Brain, Dies at 103

Fabio Campana/European Pressphoto Agency

Rita Levi-Montalcini, the Italian Nobel laureate, in 2007.

Dr. Rita Levi-Montalcini, a Nobel Prize-winning neurologist who discovered critical chemical tools that the body uses to direct cell growth and build nerve networks, opening the way for the study of how those processes can go wrong in diseases like dementia and cancer, died on Sunday at her home in Rome. She was 103.

Her death was announced by Mayor Gianni Alemanno of Rome.

“I don’t use these words easily, but her work revolutionized the study of neural development, from how we think about it to how we intervene,” said Dr. Gerald D. Fishbach, a neuroscientist and professor emeritus at Columbia.

Scientists had virtually no idea how embryo cells built a latticework of intricate connections to other cells when Dr. Levi-Montalcini began studying chicken embryos in the bedroom of her house in Turin, Italy, during World War II. After years of obsessive study, much of it at Washington University in St. Louis with Dr. Viktor Hamburger, she found a protein that, when released by cells, attracted nerve growth from nearby developing cells.

In the early 1950s, she and Dr. Stanley Cohen, a biochemist also at Washington University, isolated and described the chemical, known as nerve growth factor — and in the process altered the study of cell growth and development. Scientists soon realized that the protein gave them a new way to study and understand disorders of neural growth, like cancer, or of degeneration, like Alzheimer’s disease, and to potentially develop therapies.

In the years after the discovery, Dr. Levi-Montalcini, Dr. Cohen and others described a large family of such growth-promoting agents, each of which worked to regulate the growth of specific cells. One, called epidermal growth factor and discovered by Dr. Cohen, plays a central role in breast cancer; in part by studying its behavior, scientists developed drugs to combat the abnormal growth.

In 1986, Dr. Levi-Montalcini and Dr. Cohen shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work.

Dr. Cohen, now an emeritus professor at Vanderbilt University, said Dr. Levi-Montalcini possessed a rare combination of intuition and passion, as well as biological knowledge. “She had this feeling for what was happening biologically,” he said. “She was an intuitive observer, and she saw that something was making these nerve connections grow and was determined to find out what it was.”

One of four children, Rita Levi-Montalcini was born in Turin on April 22, 1909, to Adamo Levi, an engineer, and Adele Montalcini, a painter, both Italian Jews who traced their roots to the Roman Empire. In keeping with the Victorian customs of the time, Mr. Levi discouraged his three daughters from entering college, fearing that it would interfere with their lives as wives and mothers.

It was not a future that Rita wanted. She had decided to become a doctor and told her father so. “He listened, looking at me with that serious and penetrating gaze of his that caused me such trepidation,” she wrote in her autobiography, “In Praise of Imperfection” (1988). He also agreed to support her.

She graduated summa cum laude from the University of Turin medical school in 1936. Two years later, Mussolini issued a manifesto barring non-Aryan Italians from having professional careers. She began her research anyway, setting up a small laboratory in her home to study chick embryos, inspired by the work of Dr. Hamburger, a prominent researcher in St. Louis who also worked with the embryos.

During World War II, the family fled Turin for the countryside, and in 1943 the invasion by Germany forced them to Florence. The family returned at the close of the war, in 1945, and Dr. Hamburger soon invited Dr. Levi-Montalcini to work for a year in his lab at Washington University.

She stayed on, becoming an associate professor in 1956 and a full professor in 1958. In 1962, she helped establish the Institute of Cell Biology in Rome and became its first director. She retired from Washington University in 1977, becoming a guest professor and splitting her time between Rome and St. Louis.

Italy honored her in 2001 by making her a senator for life.

An elegant presence, confident and passionate, she was a sought-after speaker until late in life. “At 100, I have a mind that is superior — thanks to experience — than when I was 20,” she said in 2009.

She never married and had no children. In addition to her autobiography, she was the author or co-author of dozens of research studies and received numerous professional awards, including the National Medal of Science.

“It is imperfection — not perfection — that is the end result of the program written into that formidably complex engine that is the human brain,” Dr. Levi-Montalcini wrote in her autobiography, “and of the influences exerted upon us by the environment and whoever takes care of us during the long years of our physical, psychological and intellectual development.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 30, 2012

An earlier version of this obituary misstated the year Mussolini issued a manifesto barring non-Aryan Italians from having professional careers. It was 1938, not 1936.

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Day Laborers at Premium on Storm-Wrecked Coast

Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times

Reina Vega and Victoriano de la Cruz worked in the cellar of a home in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

The day after the storm, Manuel Sinchi, like some other New Yorkers, gathered a few friends, hopped on his bicycle and headed down to badly stricken Coney Island to volunteer his services.

The next day, however, he started offering his services at his usual rate of $15 an hour.

A day laborer for whom making a living in recent years has meant often pointless idling on street corners for increasingly hard-to-get construction work, Mr. Sinchi said that owners of houses ravaged by Hurricane Sandy were now searching him out seven days a week. In the first weeks after the storm, he performed work that required muscle and a strong back, hauling waterlogged sofas and broken refrigerators out of flooded basements, stripping mold-infested walls and sweeping away mounds of sand from front yards. But, as homeowners turned to rebuilding, he has performed more skilled jobs, installing new wallboard, wood floors and bathroom tiles.

There has been so much demand that he was able to buy his two sons in Ecuador a computer, bicycles and new shoes.

“While we have lots of sorrow for those who lost everything, at the same time Sandy has done us a favor by creating jobs that were not there,” Mr. Sinchi said, speaking in Spanish.

His tale of finding fortune along the streets of ruined homes and upended lives is similar to those of hundreds of day laborers in New York City and its coastal suburbs. For a population accustomed to scraping by, Hurricane Sandy has been a boon, conjuring up demolition and construction work that has been mostly absent since the housing market’s collapse and providing a spike in remittances to families in Mexico, Central America and South America.

These mostly Hispanic workers, some of whom are in the country illegally, have suddenly become a ubiquitous and indispensable presence in seaside communities in New York and New Jersey, where residents who might once have spurned hiring them are racing to make their homes livable again as soon as possible. Despite the influx of volunteers — sometimes regarded as competitors by the day laborers — there is so much demand for their services that even women who have typically made a living as domestics are gathering on street corners and in front of hardware stores to help with the grueling work.

“Day laborers are like first responders to this crisis,” said Ligia M. Guallpa, director of the Workers Justice Project, which operates a shack alongside a shopping plaza in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, where day laborers gather and contractors and homeowners come to hire them. Before the storm, fewer than 15 workers a week were sent out on jobs. Now that number has grown to 45.

In the first week after the storm hit, homeowners were desperate for help getting their lives back to something approaching normal. Some day laborers like Carmelo Hernandez, 46, a Mexican immigrant and tile installer, even bought headlamps so they could work at night, so great was the demand.

More recently, some workers said that jobs had slowed as cleaning up shifted to rebuilding, which had prompted homeowners to turn to licensed professionals for skilled tasks like plumbing, carpentry and electrical work. But other laborers said they expected the volume of work to pick up when homeowners received money from their insurance companies or from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Standing on a corner of 69th Street in Woodside, Queens, dozens of men waited in the early morning cold for contractors’ trucks to pass by. Each time a car stopped, the men would sprint to the window. After a brief negotiation — $15 an hour was the going rate, though some agreed to work for less — a few would climb inside and speed off.

One of them, Pedro Cabrera, 28, who is from Mexico, had worked 10 straight days in the Rockaways. Even though one homeowner vanished without paying him, he had made enough to buy new gloves to work in the wet and freezing buildings. Some owners told him to take anything he found, since it was all headed for the trash anyway — even a ring that he was able to pawn for $200 at a jewelry store. Still, it was painful, he said, being watched by a family whose hard-earned belongings he was throwing into the garbage.

Sarah Maslin Nir and Jessica Weisberg contributed reporting.

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India Ink: Delhi Rape Victim's Trauma 'Too Severe to Overcome'

A 23-year-old woman, whose rape in Delhi on Dec. 16 galvanized thousands to protest for better treatment of women, died on Saturday morning. The full statement from Kelvin Loh, chief executive of Mount Elizabeth Hospital, where she was being treated, is below:

“We are very sad to report that the patient passed away peacefully at 4.45am on 29 Dec 2012 (Singapore time). Her family and officials from the High Commission of India were by her side. The Mount Elizabeth Hospital team of doctors, nurses and staff join her family in mourning her loss.”

“The patient had remained in an extremely critical condition since admission to Mount Elizabeth Hospital in the morning of 27 Dec (Singapore time). Despite all efforts by a team of eight specialists in Mount Elizabeth Hospital to keep her stable, her condition continued to deteriorate over these two days. She had suffered from severe organ failure following serious injuries to her body and brain. She was courageous in fighting for her life for so long against the odds but the trauma to her body was too severe for her to overcome.”

“We are humbled by the privilege of being tasked to care for her in her final struggle. We acknowledge the faith the Indian Government and the patient’s family have placed with us to ensure the best care possible was indeed provided to her at Mount Elizabeth Hospital. We share their huge sadness at her passing and will work with the High Commission of India to provide the family support in this time of grief.”

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China tightens Internet controls, legalizes post deletion

BEIJING (Reuters) – China unveiled tighter Internet controls on Friday, legalizing the deletion of posts or pages which are deemed to contain “illegal” information and requiring service providers to hand over such information to the authorities for punishment.

The rules signal that the new leadership headed by Communist Party chief Xi Jinping will continue muzzling the often scathing, raucous online chatter in a country where the Internet offers a rare opportunity for debate.

The new regulations, announced by the official Xinhua news agency, also require Internet users to register with their real names when signing up with network providers, though, in reality, this already happens.

Chinese authorities and Internet companies such as Sina Corp have long since closely monitored and censored what people say online, but the government has now put measures such as deleting posts into law.

“Service providers are required to instantly stop the transmission of illegal information once it is spotted and take relevant measures, including removing the information and saving records, before reporting to supervisory authorities,” the rules state.

The restrictions follow a series of corruption scandals amongst lower-level officials exposed by Internet users, something the government has said it is trying to encourage.

Li Fei, deputy head of parliament’s legislative affairs committee, said the new rules did not mean people needed to worry about being unable to report corruption online. But he added a warning too.

“When people exercise their rights, including the right to use the Internet, they must do so in accordance with the law and constitution, and not harm the legal rights of the state, society … or other citizens,” he told a news conference.

Chinese Internet users already cope with extensive censorship measures, especially over politically sensitive topics like human rights and elite politics, and popular foreign sites Facebook, Twitter and Google-owned YouTube are blocked.

Earlier this year, the government began forcing users of Sina’s wildly successful Weibo microblogging platform to register their real names.

The new rules were quickly condemned by some Weibo users.

“So now they are getting Weibo to help in keeping records and reporting it to authorities. Is this the freedom of expression we are promised in the constitution?” complained one user.

“We should resolutely oppose such a covert means to interfere with Internet freedom,” wrote another.

The government says tighter monitoring of the Internet is needed to prevent people making malicious and anonymous accusations online, disseminating pornography and spreading panic with unfounded rumors, pointing out that many other countries already have such rules.

Despite periodic calls for political reform, the party has shown no sign of loosening its grip on power and brooks no dissent to its authority.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard and Sally Huang; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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NHL makes new offer; lockout enters critical stage

NEW YORK (AP) — The NHL made a new offer to the players' association, hoping to spark talks toward ending the long lockout and saving the hockey season.

Deputy commissioner Bill Daly said Friday the league presented its proposal Thursday and was waiting for a response. The sides haven't met in person since a second round of talks with a federal mediator broke down Dec. 13.

The lockout has reached its 104th day, and the NHL said it doesn't want a season of less than 48 games. That means a deal would need to be reached mid-January.

"We delivered to the union a new, comprehensive proposal for a successor CBA," Daly said in a statement Friday. "We are not prepared to discuss the details of our proposal at this time. We are hopeful that once the union's staff and negotiating committee have had an opportunity to thoroughly review and consider our new proposal, they will share it with the players. We want to be back on the ice as soon as possible."

A person familiar with key points of the offer told The Associated Press that the league proposed raising the limit of individual free-agent contracts to six years from five — seven years if a team re-signs its own player; raising the salary variance from one year to another to 10 percent, up from 5 percent; and one compliance buyout for the 2013-14 season that wouldn't count toward a team's salary cap but would be included in the overall players' share of income.

The person spoke on condition of anonymity because details of the new offer were not being discussed publicly.

The NHL maintained the deferred payment amount of $300 million it offered in its previous proposal, an increase from an earlier offer of $211 million. The initial $300 million offer was pulled off the table after negotiations broke off earlier this month.

The latest proposal is for 10 years, running through the 2021-22 season, with both sides having the right to opt out after eight years.

A conference call with the players' association's negotiating committee and its executive board was scheduled for Friday afternoon and was expected to last several hours.

The lockout has reached a critical stage, threatening to shut down a season for the second time in eight years. All games through Jan. 14, plus the Winter Classic and the All-Star game already have been called off. The next round of cuts could claim the entire schedule.

The NHL is the only North American professional sports league to cancel a season because of a labor dispute, losing the 2004-05 campaign to a lockout. A 48-game season was played in 1995 after a lockout stretched into January.

It is still possible this dispute could eventually be settled in the courts if the sides can't reach a deal on their own.

The NHL filed a class-action suit this month in U.S. District Court in New York in an effort to show its lockout is legal. In a separate move, the league filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board, contending bad-faith bargaining by the union.

Those moves were made because the players' association took steps toward potentially filing a "disclaimer of interest," which would dissolve the union and make it a trade association. That would allow players to file antitrust lawsuits against the NHL.

Union members voted overwhelmingly to give their board the power to file the disclaimer by Jan. 2. If that deadline passes, another authorization vote could be held to approve a later filing.

Negotiations between the NHL and the union have been at a standstill since talks ended Dec. 6. One week later, the sides convened again with federal mediators in New Jersey, but still couldn't make progress.

The sides have been unable to reach agreement on the length of the new deal, the length of individual player contracts, and the variance in salary from year to year. The NHL is looking for an even split of revenues with players.

The NHL pulled all previous offers off the table after the union didn't agree to terms on its last proposal without negotiation.

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Surgery Returns to NYU Langone Medical Center

Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Senator Charles E. Schumer spoke at a news conference Thursday about the reopening of NYU Langone Medical Center.

NYU Langone Medical Center opened its doors to surgical patients on Thursday, almost two months after Hurricane Sandy overflowed the banks of the East River and forced the evacuation of hundreds of patients.

While the medical center had been treating many outpatients, it had farmed out surgery to other hospitals, which created scheduling problems that forced many patients to have their operations on nights and weekends, when staffing is traditionally low. Some patients and doctors had to postpone not just elective but also necessary operations for lack of space at other hospitals.

The medical center’s Tisch Hospital, its major hospital for inpatient services, between 30th and 34th Streets on First Avenue, had been closed since the hurricane knocked out power and forced the evacuation of more than 300 patients, some on sleds brought down darkened flights of stairs.

“I think it’s a little bit of a miracle on 34th Street that this happened so quickly,” Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York said Thursday.

Mr. Schumer credited the medical center’s leadership and esprit de corps, and also a tour of the damaged hospital on Nov. 9 by the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, W. Craig Fugate, whom he and others escorted through watery basement hallways.

“Every time I talk to Fugate there are a lot of questions, but one is, ‘How are you doing at NYU?’ ” the senator said.

The reopening of Tisch to surgery patients and associated services, like intensive care, some types of radiology and recovery room anesthesia, was part of a phased restoration that will continue. Besides providing an essential service, surgery is among the more lucrative of hospital services.

The hospital’s emergency department is expected to delay its reopening for about 11 months, in part to accommodate an expansion in capacity to 65,000 patient visits a year, from 43,000, said Dr. Andrew W. Brotman, its senior vice president and vice dean for clinical affairs and strategy.

In the meantime, NYU Langone is setting up an urgent care center with 31 bays and an observation unit, which will be able to treat some emergency patients. It will initially not accept ambulances, but might be able to later, Dr. Brotman said. Nearby Bellevue Hospital Center, which was also evacuated, opened its emergency department to noncritical injuries on Monday.

Labor and delivery, the cancer floor, epilepsy treatment and pediatrics and neurology beyond surgery are expected to open in mid-January, Langone officials said. While some radiology equipment, which was in the basement, has been restored, other equipment — including a Gamma Knife, a device using radiation to treat brain tumors — is not back.

The flooded basement is still being worked on, and electrical gear has temporarily been moved upstairs. Mr. Schumer, a Democrat, said that a $60 billion bill to pay for hurricane losses and recovery in New York and New Jersey was nearing a vote, and that he was optimistic it would pass in the Senate with bipartisan support. But the measure’s fate in the Republican-controlled House is far less certain.

The bill includes $1.2 billion for damage and lost revenue at NYU Langone, including some money from the National Institutes of Health to restore research projects. It would also cover Long Beach Medical Center in Nassau County, Bellevue, Coney Island Hospital and the Veterans Affairs hospital in Manhattan.

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Obama to Urge Vote in Senate if Parties Fail in Fiscal Talks

Luke Sharrett for The New York Times

In a televised statement at the White House after meeting with Congressional leaders on Friday, President Obama said he was “modestly optimistic” that an agreement could be reached.

WASHINGTON — President Obama said Friday evening that progress had been made in make-or-break talks on the fiscal crisis and pronounced himself cautiously “optimistic,” as Senate leaders worked furiously toward an agreement to avert the worst of the economic punch from landing Jan. 1.

But after a one-hour meeting with Congressional leaders at the White House, Mr. Obama warned that if the two sides did not agree on a bill, he would urge the Democratic-controlled Senate to put forward a measure anyway, in essence daring Republicans in the House and Senate to block a floor vote on tax cuts.

“I believe such proposals could pass both houses with a bipartisan majority as long as both leaders will allow it to come to a vote,” Mr. Obama said. “If members want to vote no, they can.”

Senators broke from a long huddle on the Senate floor with Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, to say progress had been made. Mr. McConnell, White House aides, and Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, were set to continue talks on Saturday aiming for a breakthrough as soon as Sunday.

“We’re working with the White House, and hopefully we’ll come up with something we can recommend to our respective caucuses,” Mr. McConnell told reporters.

Mr. Reid also said that there had been some progress but he warned that in assembling a measure that can win support from both parties, “what we come up with is going to be imperfect.”

For all the cautious optimism, the president also expressed exasperation that four days before a looming deadline, which lawmakers have known about for a year and a half, the two sides are still far apart.

“This is déjà vu all over again,” he said. “America wonders why it is that in this time, you can’t get stuff done in an organized timetable. The American people are not going to have any patience for a politically self-inflicted wound to our economy.”

Mr. Obama took steps to keep the pressure on throughout the weekend, scheduling an appearance on Sunday’s “Meet the Press” on NBC.

The emerging path to a possible resolution, at least Friday, appeared to mirror the protracted stalemate over the payroll tax cut last year. In that conflict, House Republicans refused to go along with a short-term extension of the cut, but Mr. McConnell struck a deal that permitted such a measure to get through the Senate, and Speaker John A. Boehner essentially forced members of the House to accept it from afar, after members had left for Christmas recess.

This time, the consequences are even more significant, with more than a half-trillion dollars of tax increases and across-the-board spending cuts just days from going into force, an event most economists warn would send the economy back into recession if not quickly reversed. With the House set to return to the Capitol on Sunday, Mr. Boehner has said he would place any Senate-passed bill before his chamber — perhaps amended — and let the chips fall, with or without Republicans on board.

“I’ve got a positive feeling now,” said Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas, who said a burst of deal-making talk broke out as soon as the leaders returned to the Capitol.

This was the first time in weeks that Mr. Obama met with the four Congressional leaders — Mr. Reid, Mr. McConnell, Mr. Boehner and Representative Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader.

The meeting started with the president reiterating his demand for an extension of tax cuts on incomes below $250,000.

That opening offer lowered expectations on Capitol Hill that a breakthrough could be pending, but behind the scenes, talks continued, focusing on a possibly higher threshold of $400,000. Senator Max Baucus of Montana, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said sentiment is “jelling” around a new offer, and a source familiar with the negotiations said the president would ask Republican and Democratic leaders what proposal could win majority support in the House and Senate.

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Iran’s Slowing of Enrichment Efforts May Show It Wants Deal

WASHINGTON — By subtly putting its hands on the brakes of its uranium enrichment efforts, Iran may be signaling that it wants to avoid a direct confrontation over its nuclear program, at least in the near term, according to United States and other Western officials.  The action has also led some analysts to conclude that Iran’s leaders are showing signs that they may be more interested in a deal to end the nuclear standoff with the West.  

Evidence began emerging last summer that the Iranians were diverting a significant portion of their medium-enriched uranium for use in a small research reactor, converting it into a form that cannot easily be used in a weapon.

One American official said the move amounted to trying to “put more time on the clock to solve this,” characterizing it as a step “you have to assume was highly calculated, because everything the Iranians do in a negotiation is highly calculated.” Israel’s departing defense minister, Ehud Barak, came to a similar conclusion when he said in October that his country could safely back away from threats of military action against Iran, at least until the late spring or summer of 2013.

But White House, State Department and Pentagon officials all cautioned against drawing firm conclusions about Iran’s ultimate intentions.

A new session of talks involving Iran and six major powers, including the United States, is expected next year, and American officials say they still cannot determine whether Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is ready to strike a deal.

A quiet feeler seeking direct talks with Iran that the administration put out after President Obama’s re-election last month resulted in “no real response,” another senior official said, adding: “It wasn’t that they said yes or no. They said nothing.”

These uncertainties underlie the hunger in Western countries to understand why Iran appears to be keeping its stockpile of medium-enriched uranium — which could be converted to bomb fuel in weeks or months — to a level below the amount necessary to build a single weapon.

Evidence from a variety of sources, including the International Atomic Energy Agency, suggests that as Iran produced more uranium enriched to near 20 percent purity, a process that takes it most of the way to bomb-grade fuel, it began diverting some into an oxide powder that could be used in a small research reactor in Tehran. That diversion is believed to have begun in August.

Iran had been complaining for years that the research reactor, which was supplied by the United States during the rule of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi to produce isotopes for medical purposes, was running out of fuel, and that the West refused to sell it more. So it decided to make the fuel itself. Now, even though it has enough fuel to keep the reactor running for at least a decade, it may be making more, several sources indicate.

The statistics released in quarterly reports by the atomic energy agency show that if Iran had not diverted fuel to that project, it would have enough medium-enriched fuel for one bomb and would be on its way to enough for a second. Instead, as of the agency’s last report, in November, Iran had enriched 232 kilograms (about 511 pounds) of the fuel, nearly enough to produce a weapon. But more than 96 kilograms (almost 212 pounds) had been sent off for fabrication into fuel plates for the reactor. Once turned to that purpose, the fuel is very difficult to use in a bomb.

The diversion “was a move to take heat away so that things didn’t go over the tipping point,” said Olli Heinonen, the former head of inspections for the atomic energy agency, who dealt with Iran extensively. Mr. Heinonen, now a senior fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, said that since the diversion, the Iranians had continued to produce about 15 kilograms (about 33 pounds) a month of medium-enriched fuel. So unless they slow that pace, or divert more fuel to the reactor program, “they are going back up to the tipping point,” he said.

Iran could use that to its advantage in negotiations. “I think it is hard to understand what Iran was doing if not sending a deliberate signal, signaling some cautiousness,” said Greg Thielmann, a former State Department intelligence analyst who is now at the Arms Control Association. “I think it is reasonable to see the diversion as a negotiating signal, and a note of moderation.”

Ray Takeyh, an Iran specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that “the sanctions policy that the United States has pursued over the past decade is beginning to bear fruit.” He said that the steps, which have led to a huge devaluation of the Iranian currency and a sharp decline in Iranian oil exports, “have seemingly succeeded in convincing influential sectors of the theocracy to reconsider their options.”

Some Arab officials agree, though they warn that it could be three years before the sanctions hurt Iran enough to bring about a change of position. “The problem is we don’t have three years,” a senior Arab diplomat said recently.

The big question is whether any of this is more than tactical positioning. “Tehran almost certainly hopes the diversion will be read in Western capitals as a sign of its willingness to reach a deal,” said Paul R. Pillar, a former C.I.A. analyst who is now at Georgetown University.

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Net loss: Brooklyn fires coach Avery Johnson

NEW YORK (AP) — Coach of the month in November, out of a job by New Year's.

The Brooklyn Nets have elevated expectations this season, and a .500 record wasn't good enough. Coach Avery Johnson was fired Thursday, his team having lost 10 of 13 games after a strong start to its first season in Brooklyn.

"We don't have the same fire now than we did when we were 11-4," general manager Billy King said at a news conference in East Rutherford, N.J. "I tried to talk to Avery about it and we just can't figure it out. The same pattern kept on happening."

Assistant P.J. Carlesimo will coach the Nets on an interim basis, starting Friday night with a home game against Charlotte. King said the Nets might reach out to other candidates, but for now the job was Carlesimo's. The GM wouldn't comment on a report that the team planned to get in touch with former Lakers coach Phil Jackson.

King said the decision to dismiss Johnson was made by ownership after a phone discussion Thursday morning. Owner Mikhail Prokhorov had expressed faith in Johnson before the season.

"With the direction we were going we felt we had to make a change," King said.

Johnson was in the final year of a three-year, $12 million contract.

"It's a really disappointing day for me and my family. It's my wife's birthday. It's not a great birthday gift," Johnson said. "I didn't see this coming. But this is ownership's decision. It's part of the business. Fair or unfair, it's time for a new voice and hopefully they'll get back on track."

The Nets have fallen well behind the first-place New York Knicks, the team they so badly want to compete with in their new home. But after beating the Knicks in their first meeting Nov. 26, probably the high point of Johnson's tenure, the Nets went 5-10 and frustrations have been mounting.

"Our goal is to get to the conference finals," King said. "We started out good and then we stumbled. We have to get back to playing winning basketball. It's the entire team. It's not like golf, where Tiger Woods can blame the caddie. It takes five guys on the court and they're all struggling. We have to figure out the ways to get back to winning. I don't know what happened. I'm not sure. But unfortunately, it did happen."

The Nets were embarrassed by Boston on national TV on Christmas, then were routed by Milwaukee 108-93 on Wednesday night for their fifth loss in six games.

Star guard Deron Williams recently complained about Johnson's offense, and Nets CEO Brett Yormark took to Twitter after the loss to Celtics to voice his displeasure with the performance.

King said the change was not made because Williams was unhappy, and he added the point guard himself has to play better.

Johnson also stood by Williams.

"From Day One, I always had a really good relationship with him. I don't think it's fair for anyone to hang this on Deron," Johnson said. "We were just going through a bad streak, a bad spell. It's not time for me to be down on one player. That would be the easy way."

Brooklyn started the season 11-4, winning five in a row to end November, when Johnson was Eastern Conference coach of the month. But he couldn't do anything to stop this slump, one the Nets never anticipated after a $350 million summer spending spree they believed would take them toward the top of their conference.

Johnson has been the Nets' coach for a little more than two seasons. He went 60-116 with the Nets, who moved from New Jersey to Brooklyn to start the season. Johnson coached the Dallas Mavericks to a spot in the NBA Finals in 2006.

"You don't always get a fair shake as a coach," Johnson said. "I'm not the owner. If I were the owner, I wouldn't have fired myself today. But life is not always necessary fair. It's a business and in this business, the coach always gets blamed."

This is the NBA's second coaching change this season following the dismissal of Mike Brown by the Los Angeles Lakers.

Johnson arrived in New Jersey with a 194-70 record, a .735 winning percentage that was the highest in NBA history, but had little chance of success in his first two seasons while the Nets focused all their planning on the move to Brooklyn.

They looked to make a splash this summer when they re-signed Williams and fellow starters Gerald Wallace, Brook Lopez and Kris Humphries, traded for Atlanta All-Star Joe Johnson, and added veteran depth with players such as Reggie Evans, C.J. Watson and Andray Blatche.

Johnson didn't have a contract beyond this season but seemed to have the confidence of Prokhorov, the Russian billionaire who before the season said he had faith in "the Avery defense system."

Some thought the Nets would finish as high as second in the East behind defending champion Miami, and the predictions seemed warranted when the Nets started quickly amid much fanfare. But all the good publicity faded in recent weeks once the losing started.

Williams, who has struggled this season, stirred the waters when he expressed his preference for the offense he ran under Jerry Sloan in Utah before a loss to the Jazz. Williams and Johnson, nicknamed "Brooklyn's Backcourt" and expected to be one of the best in the NBA, have shot poorly and rarely meshed.

The Nets were embarrassed near the end of their 93-76 loss to Boston, when fans exited early amid a chant of "Let's go Celtics!"

"Nets fans deserved better," Yormark tweeted after the game. "The entire organization needs to work harder to find a solution. We will get there."

Not under Johnson, though.

The Nets should be able to entice a big-name coach with Prokhorov's billions and the chance to play in a major market at Barclays Center, the $1 billion arena that has drawn praise in the city and from visiting teams.

Carlesimo has previous NBA head coaching experience in Portland, Golden State and Seattle/Oklahoma City. He has a career coaching record of 204-296 in the regular season and 3-9 in the playoffs.

"Right now, P.J. is our coach and I told him to coach the team like he'll be here for the next 10 years," King said.

___

AP Sports Writer Tom Canavan in East Rutherford and AP freelancer Jim Hague contributed to this report.

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Syrian General in Charge of Stopping Defections Becomes a Defector

Aref Heretani/Reuters.

Mannequins were set up to confuse snipers loyal to President Bashar al-Assad in the old city of Aleppo on Sunday.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Syria’s government suffered an embarrassing new setback as the top general responsible for preventing defections within the military became a defector himself, making what insurgents described on Wednesday as a daring back-roads escape by motorcycle across the border into Turkey.

The defector, Maj. Gen. Abdul Aziz Jassem al-Shallal, the chief of the military police, was one of the highest-ranking military officers to abandon President Bashar al-Assad in the nearly two-year-old uprising against him.

His departure, first reported by Al Arabiya late on Tuesday evening and confirmed by opposition figures on Wednesday, came as a flurry of diplomatic activity suggested the possibility of movement toward a political solution to the Syrian crisis. A deputy Syrian foreign minister flew to Moscow for meetings with Kremlin officials, and the international envoy who met with Mr. Assad in Damascus earlier this week was planning to visit Moscow this weekend. Russia, one of Mr. Assad’s most ardent foreign defenders, has in recent weeks suggested it was open to a negotiated transition that would ease him out of power.

Opposition figures said General Shallal’s defection had taken weeks to prepare and ended with a four-hour sprint by motorcycle to the Turkish border, driving through woods and on muddy roads. In a video broadcast by Al Arabiya, the general said that he had taken the step because the Syrian military had deviated from its mission to protect the country, and had transformed into “a gang for killing and destruction.”

“The regime army has lost control over most of the country,” the general said in an interview on the Saudi-owned channel, which has heavily criticized the Syrian government.

Opposition fighters embraced the defection as more than a symbolic blow to the government because of the general’s primary responsibility as an enforcer of Mr. Assad’s repression of dissent and guarantor of loyalty by the armed forces. As head of the military police, General Shallal was responsible for the department that was supposed to stop defections. He also presided over a force that guarded prisons where civilian dissidents were held.

Maj. Ibrahim Moutawe, who defected from the Syrian Army a year ago, said defection was a “last resort” for high-ranking officials like General Shallal. “They only consider it when fear and danger begin to threaten them directly, and when the regime can no longer protect them,” he said.

General Shallal was not a member of Mr. Assad’s inner circle, and analysts said that the defections of other officials with impressive titles — including the prime minister, a brigadier general and a well-known government spokesman — had done little to shake Mr. Assad’s basic hold on power.

More critically, the opposition has failed to attract either officers or rank-and-file soldiers belonging to Syria’s Alawite minority, the sect that Mr. Assad belongs to, doing little to assuage fears among Alawites that the Sunni-led insurgency threatens their existence, analysts said.

But the departure of a major general who publicly condemned the armed forces seemed likely to undercut Mr. Assad’s attempts to maintain morale.

The negotiations for the general’s defection began weeks ago, after members of his tribe reached out to opposition commanders, according to Louay Mekdad, the political and media coordinator for the Free Syrian Army, an umbrella organization for rebel fighting groups. Mr. Mekdad said that the general had tried to defect several times before, but had been prevented for what he called “technical reasons,” without giving any more detail.

Rebel commanders gave differing accounts of how much power the general had held in Syria. One commander said he had been a member of Mr. Assad’s “crisis team” of top military, security and intelligence officials coordinating the government’s response to the war. Capt. Adnan Dayoub, a rebel commander in Hama, said that General Shallal had been responsible for prisons — “God knows how many,” he said — and was almost certainly guilty of crimes.

“He’s contaminated from top to bottom,” the captain said. “Tomorrow he will be a hero.”

Kareem Fahim reported from Beirut, and Rick Gladstone from New York. Reporting was contributed by Hwaida Saad from Beirut, Ellen Barry from Moscow, Hala Droubi from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Eric Schmitt from Washington.

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Peyton Manning, Peterson make Pro Bowl

NEW YORK (AP) — Peyton Manning and Adrian Peterson want to cap their sensational comebacks with Super Bowl appearances. For now, they can be proud of Pro Bowl spots.

So can Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III, one of two rookies chosen Wednesday for the Jan. 27 NFL all-star game.

Manning missed all of the 2011 season with neck and back problems that required several operations. He then signed with Denver as a free agent and has led the Broncos on a 10-game winning streak to take the AFC West.

"I know there's great players out there in the NFL, but there's some great players on this team this year that deserve to go," said Manning, whose 12th Pro Bowl is a record for quarterbacks. He ranks fourth in league passing this year, has thrown 34 touchdowns and 11 interceptions.

Four other Broncos made the AFC roster: DE Elvis Dumervil, linebacker Von Miller, CB Champ Bailey and tackle Ryan Clady. Bailey's 12th appearance is a record for defensive backs.

"My goal has always been to go out and help the team win and play at a high level," Manning added. "Anything that comes along with that, like being honored as a Pro Bowl selection, is very humbling."

Minnesota's Peterson tore up his left knee on Christmas Eve last year, underwent major surgery, then was back for the season opener. He's gone from uncertain to unstoppable, running away with the rushing title with a career-high 1,898 yards and lifting the Vikings toward an NFC wild card.

"Coming into the season after going through the rehab process, I just told myself that I wanted to lead my team to a championship and make sure that I contribute and do my part," Peterson said. "I've been doing it."

Griffin is one of three rookie QBs who had superb debut seasons, along with Andrew Luck of Indianapolis and Russell Wilson of Seattle. Luck and Wilson weren't voted to the Pro Bowl by players, coaches and fans, although their teams are in the playoffs; Griffin can get to the postseason if Washington beats Dallas on Sunday.

"You can't play down those kind of things," Griffin said. "I've always said my whole football career that you don't play for awards. They just come. You don't say you're going to win the Heisman. You don't say you're going to win MVP. You go out and you prove it on the field, and if everyone feels that way then they'll give you that award."

San Francisco had the most players selected, nine, including six from its second-ranked defense. Houston was next with eight, six on offense.

Kansas City, despite its 2-13 record that is tied with Jacksonville for worst in the league, had five Pro Bowlers, including RB Jamaal Charles, who like Peterson is coming back from a torn ACL.

One other rookie, Minnesota kicker Blair Walsh, was chosen. Walsh has nine field goals of at least 50 yards, an NFL mark.

The AFC kicker is at the other end of the spectrum: Cleveland's Phil Dawson earned his first selection in his 14th NFL season.

Another record setter will be heading to Honolulu: Detroit WR Calvin Johnson.

Johnson broke Jerry Rice's single-season yards receiving record and has 1,892 yards with a game left.

Falcons tight end Tony Gonzalez set the record for Pro Bowls at his position by being chosen for the 13th time.

The league's top two sackmasters, DEs Aldon Smith of San Francisco and J.J. Watt of Houston, were first-time selections. Watt has 20 1-2 sacks, one ahead of Smith; the NFL record is 22 1-2.

Other newcomers, along with Griffin, Walsh and Dawson, were AFC players tackle Duane Brown and guard Wade Smith of Houston; safety LaRon Landry of the Jets; kick returner Jacoby Jones of Baltimore; and punter Dustin Colquitt of Kansas City.

For the NFC, first-timers were Giants WR Victor Cruz; Atlanta WR Julio Jones; Seattle tackle Russell Okung and center Max Unger; San Francisco guard Mike Iupati, linebacker NaVorro Bowman and safety Donte Whitner; Chicago cornerback Tim Jennings and defensive tackle Henry Melton; Washington tackle Trent Williams and special teamer Lorenzo Alexander; Minnesota fullback Jerome Felton; Tampa Bay DT Gerald McCoy; and New Orleans punter Thomas Morstead.

Eight teams had no Pro Bowl players: Carolina, Philadelphia and St. Louis in the NFC, Tennessee, Buffalo, Jacksonville, San Diego and Oakland in the AFC.

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

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