Stanford holds off Wisconsin 20-14 in Rose Bowl

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) — Although Stanford didn't score many style points in the 99th Rose Bowl, the Cardinal could celebrate because they didn't let Wisconsin score any points at all after halftime.

Stepfan Taylor rushed for 89 yards and an early touchdown, Kevin Hogan passed for 123 yards, and No. 8 Stanford won its first Rose Bowl since 1972, beating the Badgers 20-14 on Tuesday night.

Usua Amanam made the decisive interception near midfield with 2:30 to play as the Pac-12 champion Cardinal (12-2) ended their four-decade drought in the Granddaddy of Them All with arguably the biggest bowl win yet during the long-struggling program's recent renaissance.

Stanford clamped down on the Big Ten champion Badgers (8-6), who lost the Rose Bowl in heartbreaking fashion for the third consecutive season. Montee Ball rushed for 100 yards and his FBS-record 83rd touchdown, but Wisconsin managed only 82 yards after halftime.

With impressive defense of its own, Wisconsin still stayed in position for an upset in the one-game return of Hall of Fame coach Barry Alvarez, who was back on the Badgers' sideline in his red sweater-vest seven years after hanging up his whistle.

When Bret Bielema abruptly left Wisconsin for Arkansas after winning the Big Ten title game, Alvarez agreed to coach his fourth Rose Bowl before handing off his program to new coach Gary Andersen, who met with Alvarez on the field before the game.

But the Badgers' third straight Rose Bowl appearance ended in much the same way as the last two: With the Wisconsin offense failing to get the late score they desperately needed.

Curt Phillips went 10 for 16 for 83 yards passing and that crucial interception for Wisconsin, doing more with 64 yards on the ground. Jordan Fredrick caught a short TD pass right before halftime, but no Badgers receiver had more than Jared Abbrederis' three catches.

And though Ball became the first player to score touchdowns in three Rose Bowls, the powerful back fell short of Ron Dayne's career Rose Bowl rushing record, swarmed under by waves of tacklers from one of the toughest defenses in the nation.

Kelsey Young rushed for a score on Stanford's opening possession, and Taylor scored on the second. Wisconsin kept the Cardinal out of the end zone for the final 51 minutes, but Stanford's defense didn't need any more help.

Stanford won its first conference title and earned its first Rose Bowl appearance in 13 years with seven straight wins. The Cardinal ousted top-ranked Oregon on the way to the biggest season yet in the improbable surge of success started by Jim Harbaugh and Andrew Luck, and extended by coach David Shaw and Hogan, who took over as the starter in November.

Wisconsin returned to Pasadena in a much more roundabout way as the first five-loss team to make it, losing three overtime games and making the Big Ten title game only because Ohio State and Penn State were ineligible. The Badgers then steamrolled Nebraska to become the first Big Ten team in three straight Rose Bowls since Michigan in the late 1970s.

The Cardinal led 14-0 on Taylor's 3-yard TD run just 8½ minutes in, but Wisconsin finally got rolling behind Ball, who rushed for 296 yards in his first two Rose Bowls. Stanford stopped James White inside the 1 on fourth down early in the second quarter after a touchdown run by Ball was wiped out by a holding penalty, but Ball scored on the next drive.

The Badgers then mounted an 85-yard drive in the waning 2 ½ minutes of the first half, with Phillips' 38-yard run setting up Fredrick's short TD catch to trim Stanford's halftime lead to 17-14.

After halftime adjustments, both defenses dominated the scoreless third quarter, allowing just three combined first downs.

Wisconsin's personal foul on a fair-catch punt return finally sparked Stanford early in the fourth quarter. Stanford got inside the Wisconsin 5 before stalling, and Jordan Williamson's short field goal put the Cardinal up by six points with 4:23 to go.

The Badgers got to midfield, but Phillips threw behind Jacob Pedersen, and Amanam easily made the pick.

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Ground Zero Volunteers Face Obstacles to Compensation

On the day the terrorists flew into the World Trade Center, the Wu-Tang Clan canceled its meeting with a record mixer named Richard Oliver, so Mr. Oliver rushed downtown from his Hell’s Kitchen apartment to help out.

He said he spent three sleepless days at ground zero, tossing body bags. “Then I went home, ate, crashed, woke up,” he said. He had left his Dr. Martens boots on the landing outside his apartment, where he said they “had rotted away.”

“That was kind of frightening,” he continued. “I was breathing that stuff.”

After the Sept. 11 attacks, nothing symbolized the city’s rallying around like many New Yorkers who helped at ground zero for days, weeks, months, without being asked. Now Mr. Oliver, suffering from back pain and a chronic sinus infection, is among scores of volunteers who have begun filing claims for compensation from a $2.8 billion fund that Congress created in 2010.

But proving they were there and eligible for the money is turning out to be its own forbidding task.

The other large classes of people who qualify — firefighters, police officers, contractors, city workers, residents and students — have it relatively simple, since they are more likely to have official work orders, attendance records and leases to back them up. But more than a decade later, many volunteers have only the sketchiest proof that they are eligible for the fund, which is expected to make its first awards early this year. (A separate $1.5 billion treatment fund also was created.)

They are volunteers like Terry Graves, now ill with lung cancer, who kept a few business cards of people she worked with until 2007, then threw them away. Or Jaime Hazan, a former Web designer with gastric reflux, chronically inflamed sinuses and asthma, who managed to dig up a photograph of himself at ground zero — taken from behind.

Or Mr. Oliver, who has a terse two-sentence thank-you note on American Red Cross letterhead, dated 2004, which does not meet the requirement that it be witnessed or sworn.

“For some people, there’s great records,” said Noah H. Kushlefsky, whose law firm, Kreindler & Kreindler, is representing volunteers and others who expect to make claims. “But in some respects, it was a little bit of a free-for-all. Other people went down there and joined the bucket brigade, talked their way in. It’s going to be harder for those people, and we do have clients like that.”

As documentation, the fund requires volunteers to have orders, instructions or confirmation of tasks they performed, or medical records created during the time they were in what is being called the exposure zone, including the area south of Canal Street, and areas where debris was being taken.

Failing that, it will be enough to submit two sworn statements — meaning the writer swears to its truth, under penalty of perjury — from witnesses describing when the volunteers were there and what they were doing.

Proving presence at the site might actually be harder than proving the illness is related to Sept. 11, since the rules now allow a host of ailments to be covered, including 50 kinds of cancer, despite an absence of evidence linking cancer to ground zero.

A study by the New York City health department, just published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found no clear association between cancer and Sept. 11, though the researchers noted that some cancers take many years to develop.

Unlike the original compensation fund, administered by Kenneth Feinberg, which dealt mainly with people who were killed or maimed in the attack, “This one is dealing with injuries that are very common,” said Sheila L. Birnbaum, a former mediator and personal injury defense lawyer, who is in charge of the new fund. “So it’s sort of a very hard process from the fund’s point of view to make the right call, and it requires some evidence that people were actually there.”

Asked how closely the fund would scrutinize documents like sworn statements, Ms. Birnbaum said she understood how hard it was to recreate records after a decade, and was going on the basic assumption that people would be honest.

In his career as a record mixer, Mr. Oliver, 56, has been associated with 7 platinum and 11 gold records, and 2 Grammy credits, which now line the walls of his condominium in College Point, Queens. He said he first got wind of the Sept. 11 attacks from a client, the Wu-Tang Clan. “One of the main guys called me: ‘Did you see what’s on TV? Because our meeting ain’t going to happen,’ ” he recalled.

Having taken a hazmat course after high school, he called the Red Cross and was told they needed people like him. “I left my soon-to-be-ex-wife and 1-year-old son and went down,” he said. “I came back three days later,” after surviving on his own adrenaline, Little Debbie cakes handed out to volunteers and bottled water. After working for three days setting up a morgue, he was willing to go back, he said, but “they said we have trained people now, thank you very much for your service.”

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Laos May Bear Cost of Planned Chinese Railroad

OUDOM XAI, Laos — Wang Quan, the new Chinese owner of a hotel in this farm town tucked into the tropical mountains of northern Laos, is hoping that the first of 20,000 Chinese workers will arrive here soon to start construction on a new railroad.

The Chinese-financed railway is to snake its way through dozens of tunnels and bridges, eventually linking southern China to Bangkok, the capital of Thailand, and then on to the Bay of Bengal in Myanmar, significantly expanding China’s already enormous trade with Southeast Asia.

But Mr. Wang may have to wait a little longer to make his fortune from all the Chinese expected to descend on this obscure corner of Laos about 50 miles from the nearest border with China. Even though the project has run into some serious objections from international development organizations, most experts expect it to go ahead anyway. That is because China considers it vital to its strategy of pulling Southeast Asia closely into its orbit and providing Beijing with another route to transport oil from the Middle East.

The crucial connection would run through Oudom Xai between Kunming, the capital of China’s southern province of Yunnan, and the Laotian capital, Vientiane.

“China wants a fast-speed rail — Kunming to Vientiane,” George Yeo, a former foreign minister of Singapore, said in a recent speech to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Business Club in Bangkok.

Mr. Yeo, chairman of Kerry Logistics Network, a major Asian freight and distribution company, is considered one of the best-informed experts on the expansion of new Asia trading routes. “The big objective is Bangkok,” he said. “It’s a huge market, lots of opportunities. From there, Bangkok to Dawei in Myanmar — that will enable China to bypass the Malacca Straits,” a potential choke point between the Indian Ocean and China’s east coast.

But China is not particularly interested in sharing much of the wealth the railroad would generate. Most of the benefits, critics say, would flow to China while most of the costs would be borne by the host nation. The price tag of the $7 billion, 260-mile rail project, which Laos will borrow from China, is nearly equal to the tiny $8 billion in annual economic activity in Laos, which lacks even a rudimentary railroad and whose rutted road system is largely a leftover from the French colonial era.

In mid-November, when Prime Minister Wen Jiabao of China visited Vientiane for a summit meeting of European and Asian leaders, he was expected to attend a groundbreaking for the railroad. The ceremony did not take place.

An assessment of the rail project by a consultant for the United Nations Development Program said the terms of the financing offered by China’s Export-Import Bank were so onerous they put Laos’s “macroeconomic stability in danger.” At the same time, construction through northern Laos would turn the countryside into “a waste dump,” the consultant’s report said. “An expensive mistake” if signed under the terms offered, the report concluded. As collateral for the loan, Laos was bound to provide China with minerals, including potash and copper.

Other international donors echoed the findings. “Partners, including the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank, expressed concern, and the International Monetary Fund was here and said, ‘You have to be very careful,’ ” said an Asian diplomat briefed on the reservations expressed to the Laotian government.

Nonetheless, the National Assembly has approved the project as part of a much broader trans-Asian rail agreement signed by nearly 20 Asian countries in 2006. While the workings of the Communist Party that runs Laos are extremely opaque, diplomats here said, the project is most strongly backed by the pro-China deputy prime minister, Somsavat Lengsavad. Efforts to interview Mr. Somsavat were unsuccessful.

China’s exploding trade with Southeast Asia reached nearly $370 billion in 2011, double that of the United States in the same year. By 2015, when the Southeast Asian countries aim to have completed an economic community, China projects that its trade with the region will equal about $500 billion.

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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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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)

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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.

___

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

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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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