Euro Official, in New Role, Aims to Mend Rift Over Austerity

BRUSSELS — Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the newly elected president of the group of ministers overseeing the euro, said on Monday he wanted to heal the rift over austerity policies that had bred mistrust between southern and northern nations using the currency.

Mr. Dijsselbloem, 46, the Dutch finance minister, also said he wanted to improve the stature of the group, and the image of the currency, after three years of near-constant crises and moments of deep division.

The only opposition during the vote to elect Mr. Dijsselbloem, held late Monday, came from Luis de Guindos, the Spanish economy minister. Mr. Dijsselbloem, whose term lasts two-and-a-half years, told a news conference that Mr. de Guindos offered no explanation for the decision but he said the Spanish move should not “lead to dramatic consequences.”

Spain is among the countries in southern Europe to have been hardest hit by the austerity policies that northern nations like Finland, Germany and the Netherlands have insisted on as an important solution to the euro crisis.

Spanish officials have been irritated by the preponderance of representatives from so-called Triple-A rated countries, which pay less to borrow than countries with weaker ratings, in top economy jobs in Europe. Spanish officials were particularly angered by a decision last year not to select a Spaniard for a seat on the executive board of the European Central Bank.

In a sign of his concern about fractures in the euro zone, Mr. Dijsselbloem pledged to do what he could to assuage those tensions in his new role coordinating meetings of finance ministers when they make decisions like giving political approval for bailouts and pressing governments to shore up their finances.

“If we are going to approach the euro zone and the euro area as a zone with a harsh line in the middle between Triple-A and non-Triple-A, between the north and the south, there’s no way we’re going to move forward and no way are we going to reach decisions that are so much needed,” Mr. Dijsselbloem said. “So that will definitely not be my approach,” he said.

The French also had concerns about putting a representative from the Netherlands in charge of the group and they insisted that Mr. Dijsselbloem explain to the other 16 finance ministers in the Eurogroup how he intended to carry out the job before the vote was held.

But the French finance minister, Pierre Moscovici, told a news conference that he was satisfied with the outcome because he expected Mr. Dijsselbloem to act fairly. “It’s a Dutchman who is president; it’s not a Dutch presidency,” Mr. Moscovici said.

Mr. Moscovici said he expected other top finance jobs, including the job of overseeing a new banking supervisor based at the European Central Bank, would be allocated to French candidates. But he insisted that was not a reason he voted in favor of Mr. Dijsselbloem’s appointment.

Allies of Mr. Dijsselbloem also have sought to ease fears that his presidency would be divisive, saying that his membership of a left-leaning social democratic party could help him mediate between nations like France with different views to many in the Netherlands on how to stabilize the euro.

“Jeroen should be able, within financial sound limits, to bridge the debate between those who criticize budget cuts and those who emphasize the need to enforce the treaties on budgetary controls,” Thijs Berman, the leader of the Dutch social democrats in the European Parliament, said Monday.

Another goal of Mr. Dijsselbloem is to reform the way the group operates to cut down on the need for emergency sessions and all-night meetings.

In a letter sent to ministers on the eve of the vote, Mr. Dijsselbloem suggested that the group hash out their views in “discussion papers” to make decision-making smoother. He also said he wanted a “clear mandate” to represent the Eurogroup “on an international stage,” including at Group of 20 meetings and in international financial institutions.

“Our focus needs to shift from crisis management to delivering and implementing sound medium-term policies,” Mr. Dijsselbloem said in his letter to ministers.

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Sony to sell new Xperia tablet in Japan: Nikkei

(Reuters) – Sony Corp’s Sony Mobile Communications Inc said it will sell the new version of its Xperia tablet in Japan this spring, the Nikkei reported, citing Kyodo News.

The Xperia Tablet Z, whose price has not been announced, has a 10.1-inch display, is 6.9 mm thin and weighs 495 grams, according to the company’s website.

Rival Google Inc’s Nexus 10 tablet is 8.9 mm thick, while Apple Inc’s iPad mini measures 7.9 mm.

Sony halted sales of Xperia in October, a month after launch, after discovering gaps between the screen and the case that made some of the machines susceptible to water damage.

The Nikkei reported on Sunday that Japanese smartphone makers seem to be regaining some market share they lost to companies like Apple and Samsung Electronics Co.

(Reporting by Krithika Krishnamurthy in Bangalore; Editing by Joyjeet Das)

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Jim, John Harbaugh ready for rematch at Super Bowl

SANTA CLARA, Calif. (AP) — Jim and John Harbaugh have exchanged a handful of text messages, and plan to leave it at that. No phone conversations necessary while the season's still going. No time for pleasantries, even for the friendly siblings.

There is work to be done to prepare for the Super Bowl, prepare for each other, prepare for a history-making day already being widely hyped as "Harbowl" or "Superbaugh" depending which nickname you prefer.

"It doesn't matter who the coach is, what relationship you have with the person on the other side," 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh said so matter-of-factly Monday afternoon.

Their parents sure aren't picking sides for the Feb. 3 matchup in New Orleans.

These days, the Harbaughs' longtime coaching father, Jack, stays away from game-planning chatter or strategy sessions with his Super Bowl-bound coaching sons. Baltimore's John Harbaugh and little brother Jim have been doing this long enough now to no longer need dad's input.

Yet, they still regularly seek it. And, their father does offer one basic mantra: "Get ahead, stay ahead."

"Probably the greatest advice that I've ever been given and the only advice that I've ever found to be true in all of coaching, I think we mentioned it to both John and Jim ... the coaching advice is, 'Get ahead, stay ahead,'" Jack Harbaugh said.

"If I'm called upon, I'll repeat that same message."

His boys still call home regularly to check in with the man who turned both on to the coaching profession years ago, and the mother who has handled everything behind the scenes for decades in a highly competitive, sports-crazed family — with all the routine sports clichés to show for it.

The Harbaugh brothers will become the first siblings to square off from opposite sidelines when their teams play for the NFL championship at the Superdome.

Not that they're too keen on playing up the storyline that has no chance of going away as hard as they try.

"Well, I think it's a blessing and a curse," Jim Harbaugh said Monday. "A blessing because that is my brother's team. And, also, personally I played for the Ravens. Great respect for their organization. ... The curse part would be the talk of two brothers playing in the Super Bowl and what that takes away from the players that are in the game. Every moment that you're talking about myself or John, that's less time that the players are going to be talked about."

Both men love history, just not the kind with them making it.

"I like reading a lot of history ... I guess it's pretty neat," John Harbaugh offered Monday. "But is it really going to be written about? It's not exactly like Churchill and Roosevelt or anything. It's pretty cool, but that's as far as it goes."

Nice try, guys.

John watched the end of Jim's game from the field in Foxborough, Mass., as Baltimore warmed up for the AFC championship game. Jim called his sister's family from the team plane before takeoff after a win at Atlanta and asked how his big brother's team was doing against New England.

The improbable Super Bowl features a set of brothers known around the NFL as fierce competitors unafraid to make a bold move during the season. Unafraid to upset anyone who stands in their way.

In fact, each one made a major change midseason to get this far — John fired his offensive coordinator, while Jim boosted his offense with a quarterback switch from Alex Smith to Colin Kaepernick.

Leading up to Sunday's games, parents Jack and Jackie said they would wait to decide whether to travel to New Orleans if both teams advanced or stick to what has been working so well — watching from the comfort of their couch in Mequon, Wis.

"We enjoy it very much. We get down in our basement, turn on the television and just have a fantastic day watching outstanding football," Jack said last week. "We share our misery with no one but ourselves. Not only the misery, but the ups and downs, the ins and outs of an outstanding professional game."

And, no, the Harbaughs weren't looking ahead to a potential big trip to the Big Easy.

Jack insists his wife is quick to pull out that old sports cliche: "It's one game at a time. I think it's very appropriate," he said.

Jim figures they won't possibly miss this history-making game.

"I think they'll be there," he said with a smile.

The brothers, separated in age by 15 months, have taken different paths to football's biggest stage — years after their intense games of knee football at the family home. They tried to beat each other at cards, or whatever other game it was at the time. Sometimes, they tried to beat each other up. Sister, Joani Crean, often got in on the fun, too.

The 49-year-old Jim never reached a Super Bowl, falling a last-gasp pass short during a 15-year NFL career as a quarterback. The 50-year-old John never played in the NFL.

Still, both will tell you, "Who's got it better than us? No-body!" — one catchphrase they got from their dad.

"We can't put into words what it means to see John and Jim achieve this incredible milestone," their brother-in-law, Indiana basketball coach Tom Crean, said on Twitter. "We talked to Jim (before) his team plane left. All he wanted to know was how was John doing? How were they playing? One incredible family who puts the care, well-being and love for each other at the forefront like most families do. Again, we are very proud of them. Going to be exciting to watch it unfold."

John worked his way up from the bottom of the coaching ranks, while Jim was the star college quarterback at Michigan, a first-round draft pick and eventual Pro Bowler who made coaching his career once he retired.

John already has the one-up, while Jim's team is the early favorite. John's Ravens beat the 49ers 16-6 on Thanksgiving night 2011, in Jim's rookie season as an NFL coach — though both know that means nothing now.

"I just want everybody to know, that was a four-day deal and every story has been told," John said. "We're not that interesting. There's nothing more to learn. The tape across the middle of the room story, OK, you got it? It's OK. It was just like any other family, really. I really hope the focus is not so much on that. We get it, it's really cool and it's exciting and all that."

Said Jim, "Completely new business."

In spite of his efforts to avoid the topic, Jim did take the opportunity to express how proud he is of John.

"He's a great football coach, a real grasp of all phases — offense, defense, special teams. I think he could coordinate at least two of those phases and do it as well as anyone in the league," Jim said. "I've got half the amount of coaching experience he does. Again, it's not about us. I keep coming back to that. I'm really proud of my brother. I love him. That's the blessing part, that this is happening to him."

And, fittingly for the big brother, John feels the exact same way.

___

AP Sports Writer Dave Ginsburg in Baltimore contributed to this story.

___

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The Week: A Roundup of This Week’s Science News

“Science,” a colleague once said at a meeting, “is a mighty enterprise, which is really rather quite topical.” He was so right: as we continue to enhance our coverage of the scientific world, we always aim to keep the latest news front and center.

His observation seemed like a nice way to introduce this column, which will highlight the week’s developments in health and science news and glance at what’s ahead. This past week, for instance, the mighty enterprise of science addressed itself to such newsy topics as the flu (there’s still time to get vaccinated!), and mental illness and gun control.

In addition to the big-headline stories that invite wisdom from scientists, each week there is a drumbeat of purely scientific and medical news that emerges from academic journals, fieldwork and elsewhere. These developments, from the quirky to the abstruse, often make their way into the daily news cycle, depending on the strength of the research behind them. (Well, that’s how we judge them, anyway.)

Many discoveries are hard to unravel. “In a way, science is antithetical to everything that has to do with a newspaper,” the same colleague observed. “You couldn’t imagine anything less consumer-friendly.”

Let’s aim to fix that. Below, a selection of the week’s stories.

DEVELOPMENTS

Health

Strange, but Effective

People with a bacterial infection called Clostridium difficile — which kills 14,000 Americans a year — have a startling cure: a transplant of someone else’s feces into their digestive system, which introduces good bacteria that the gut needs to fight off the bad. For some people, antibiotics don’t fix this problem, but an infusion of diluted stool from a healthy person seems to do the trick.

Genetics

Dig We Must

Hillery Metz and Hopi Hoekstra/Harvard University

Evolutionary biologists at Harvard took a tiny species of deer mice, known for building elaborate burrows with long tunnels, and bred it with another species of deer mice, which builds short-tunneled burrows. Comparing the DNA of the original mice with their offspring, the biologists pinpointed four regions of genetic code that help tell the mice what kind of burrow to construct.

Aerospace

Launch, Then Inflate

Uncredited/Bigelow Aerospace, via Associated Press

NASA signed a contract for an inflatable space habitat — roughly pineapple-shaped, with walls of floppy cloth — that will ideally be appended to the International Space Station in 2015. NASA aims to use the pod to test inflatable technology in space, but the company that builds these things, Bigelow Aerospace, has bigger ambitions: think of a 12-person apartment and laboratory in the sky, with two months’ rent at north of $26 million.

Biology

What’s Green and Flies?

Jodi Rowley/Australian Museum

National Geographic reported on an Australian researcher working in Vietnam who discovered a great-looking new species of flying frog. Described as having flappy forearms (the better for gliding), the three-and-a-half-inch-long frog likes to “parachute” from tree to tree, Jodi Rowley, an amphibian biologist at the Australian Museum in Sydney, told the magazine. She named it Helen’s Flying Frog, for her mother.

Privacy

That’s Joe’s DNA!

People who volunteer their genetic information for the betterment of science — and are assured anonymity — may find that their privacy is not a slam dunk. A researcher who set out to crack the identities of a few men whose genomes appeared in a public database was able to do so using genealogical Web sites (where people upload parts of their genomes to try to find relatives) as well as some simple search tools. He was trying to test the database’s security, but even he did not expect it to be so easy.

Genetics

An On/Off Switch for Disease

Geneticists have long puzzled over what it is that activates a disease in one person but not in another — even in identical twins. Now researchers from Johns Hopkins and the Karolinska Institute in Sweden who studied people with rheumatoid arthritis have identified a pattern of chemical tags that tell genes whether to turn on or not. In rheumatoid arthritis, the immune system attacks the body, and it is thought the tags enable the attack.

Planetary Science

That Red Planet

Everybody loves Mars, and we’re all secretly hoping that NASA’s plucky little rover finds evidence of life there. Meanwhile, a separate NASA craft — the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been looping the planet since 2006 — took some pictures of a huge crater that looks as if it once held a lake fed by groundwater. It is too soon to say if the lake held living things, but NASA’s news release did include the happy phrase “clues to subsurface habitability.”

COMING UP

Animal Testing

Retiring Chimps

Emily Wabitsch/European Pressphoto Agency

A lot of people have strong feelings about the use of chimpanzees in biomedical and behavioral experiments, and the National Institutes of Health has been listening. On Tuesday, the agency is to release its recommendations for curtailing chimp research in a big way. This will be but a single step in a long process and it will apply only to the chimps the agency owns, but it may well stir big reactions from many constituencies.

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Employers’ Social Media Policies Come Under Regulatory Scrutiny

As Facebook and Twitter become as central to workplace conversation as the company cafeteria, federal regulators are ordering employers to scale back policies that limit what workers can say online.

Employers often seek to discourage comments that paint them in a negative light. Don’t discuss company matters publicly, a typical social media policy will say, and don’t disparage managers, co-workers or the company itself. Violations can be a firing offense.

But in a series of recent rulings and advisories, labor regulators have declared many such blanket restrictions illegal. The National Labor Relations Board says workers have a right to discuss work conditions freely and without fear of retribution, whether the discussion takes place at the office or on Facebook.

In addition to ordering the reinstatement of various workers fired for their posts on social networks, the agency has pushed companies nationwide, including giants like General Motors, Target and Costco, to rewrite their social media rules.

“Many view social media as the new water cooler,” said Mark G. Pearce, the board’s chairman, noting that federal law has long protected the right of employees to discuss work-related matters. “All we’re doing is applying traditional rules to a new technology.”

The decisions come amid a broader debate over what constitutes appropriate discussion on Facebook and other social networks. Schools and universities are wrestling with online bullying and student disclosures about drug use. Governments worry about what police officers and teachers say and do online on their own time. Even corporate chieftains are finding that their online comments can run afoul of securities regulators.

The labor board’s rulings, which apply to virtually all private sector employers, generally tell companies that it is illegal to adopt broad social media policies — like bans on “disrespectful” comments or posts that criticize the employer — if those policies discourage workers from exercising their right to communicate with one another with the aim of improving wages, benefits or working conditions.

But the agency has also found that it is O.K. for employers to act against a lone worker ranting on the Internet.

Several cases illustrate the differing standards.

At Hispanics United of Buffalo, a nonprofit social services provider in upstate New York, a caseworker threatened to complain to the boss that others were not working hard enough. Another worker, Mariana Cole-Rivera, posted a Facebook message asking, “My fellow co-workers, how do you feel?”

Several of her colleagues posted angry, sometimes expletive-laden, responses. “Try doing my job. I have five programs,” wrote one. “What the hell, we don’t have a life as is,” wrote another.

Hispanics United fired Ms. Cole-Rivera and four other caseworkers who responded to her, saying they had violated the company’s harassment policies by going after the caseworker who complained.

In a 3-to-1 decision last month, the labor board concluded that the caseworkers had been unlawfully terminated. It found that the posts in 2010 were the type of “concerted activity” for “mutual aid” that is expressly protected by the National Labor Relations Act.

“The board’s decision felt like vindication,” said Ms. Cole-Rivera, who has since found another social work job.

The N.L.R.B. had far less sympathy for a police reporter at The Arizona Daily Star.

Frustrated by a lack of news, the reporter posted several Twitter comments. One said, “What?!?!?! No overnight homicide. ... You’re slacking, Tucson.” Another began, “You stay homicidal, Tucson.”

The newspaper fired the reporter, and board officials found the dismissal legal, saying the posts were offensive, not concerted activity and not about working conditions.

The agency also affirmed the firing of a bartender in Illinois. Unhappy about not receiving a raise for five years, the bartender posted on Facebook, calling his customers “rednecks” and saying he hoped they choked on glass as they drove home drunk.

Labor board officials found that his comments were personal venting, not the “concerted activity” aimed at improving wages and working conditions that is protected by federal law.

N.L.R.B. officials did not name the reporter or the bartender.

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Bomb Attacks in Greece Raise Fear of Revived Radicalism

Angelos Tzortzinis for the International Herald Tribune

Riot police were stationed in front of Villa Amalia, a gathering point in central Athens that has long been home to antiauthoritarian youth and some anarchists. Violence flared after police raids there.

ATHENS — When alarms jolted Christos Konstas awake at 4 a.m. recently, he thought a neighbor’s apartment had caught fire. But as he made his way to the building’s lobby, it was clear something more nefarious had taken place.

The remnants of a crude bomb lay smoldering at the front door.

A police officer, recognizing Mr. Konstas as a television commentator who had often defended the Greek government’s efforts to cope with the financial crisis, pulled him aside. “Another journalist was also just hit,” the officer told him in a low voice. Within minutes, reports emerged of explosions at the homes of three more journalists.

Greece has been dealing with an outbreak of violence in recent weeks, following several months in which such activity seemed to have calmed. On Sunday, a crude bomb exploded at the country’s largest shopping mall in a middle-class suburb of Athens, injuring two security guards and escalating a wave of attacks that have gripped the nation’s attention. No immediate claim of responsibility was made.

The government, which just secured $60 billion in aid from its international creditors, says it is determined to crack down on lawless behavior and to press a safety agenda that, as a candidate, Prime Minister Antonis Samaras had vowed to undertake.

The problem, his opponents say, is that in its bid to restore order the government is provoking exactly the violence it says it is trying to quash. They say the government’s true aim is to distract public attention from a growing tax scandal that threatens the stability of the shaky governing coalition.

They point to a police raid on Dec. 20 on the Villa Amalia, a gathering point in central Athens that has been home to antiauthoritarian youth and some anarchists for two decades. While the Greek authorities called the Villa an “anarchist stronghold,” its occupants described it as a cultural center offering free concerts, an occasional children’s nursery and a space for publishing antiauthoritarian literature.

The police evicted the squatters, arrested eight people and confiscated gas masks, propane gas and hundreds of empty beer bottles that they said could be used to make explosives and firebombs. They conducted a second raid on Jan. 9, arresting 92 squatters who had moved back in and padlocked the building.

Within days of the second raid, violence flared. Attacks were carried out on Greek government offices, banks, businesses and other establishment symbols, including the simultaneous explosions at Mr. Konstas’s building and the homes of the other journalists. The home of the government spokesman’s brother was firebombed. On Monday, unidentified gunmen strafed Mr. Samaras’s party headquarters with an AK-47.

The bomb that was ignited Sunday went off at 11 a.m. inside a shopping center run by a company belonging to one of Greece’s wealthiest men, Spiros Latsis. About 200 people were inside when news organizations received calls warning that a bomb would explode in half an hour. The police evacuated the building and said that an investigation was under way.

So far, no one has been seriously hurt in any of the attacks, which seemed intended more for effect than harm. But they raised questions, Greek antiterrorism officials said, about whether new groups of radical left militants are reviving in the wake of the Villa Amalia eviction, perpetuating a turbulent history of violent episodes that have plagued Greece since the collapse of the military junta in 1974.

To its opponents, the timing of the raids raised questions about the government’s motives. They say that Mr. Samaras’s coalition partners are trying to disentangle themselves from the so-called Lagarde list scandal, involving accusations that they failed to pursue rampant tax evasion by the wealthy and well connected. The publication of the list of more than 2,000 Greeks with bank accounts in Switzerland, which the government was given two years ago but did little with, has threatened his coalition — though on Friday the Greek Parliament voted to investigate the role played by a former finance minister, George Papaconstantinou.

Aggelos Petropoulos contributed reporting.

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BlackBerry Z10 confirmed for Verizon in new leak

Another day, another handful of BlackBerry 10 leaks to enjoy as the tech world waits for the new platform’s January 30th unveiling. Twitter user “evleaks,” who has a solid track record of leaking accurate details and images of unreleased smartphones, published a purported screenshot from Verizon Wireless (VZ) on Friday. The document confirms some details we already know — RIM’s (RIMM) first full-touch BlackBerry 10 phone will be called the BlackBerry Z10 and will feature 4G LTE, among other specs — and it also confirms Verizon will support the handset. An image of Verizon’s BlackBerry Z10 screenshot follows below.

[More from BGR: Samsung’s latest monster smartphone will reportedly have a 5.8-inch screen]

This article was originally published on BGR.com

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Flacco throws TD to Pitta, Ravens lead Pats 14-13

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. (AP) — Joe Flacco threw a 5-yard scoring pass to Dennis Pitta with just over 6 minutes left in the third quarter and the Baltimore Ravens led the New England Patriots 14-13 in the AFC championship game Sunday.

The throw capped the Ravens' best drive of the game, covering 87 yards in 10 plays. It started with a 15-yard defensive pass interference penalty. Then, Flacco completed six of his other nine passes on the series. Three of them went for first downs — 22 yards to Pitta, 15 to Ray Rice and 12 to Anquan Bolden that gave the Ravens a first-and-goal at the Patriots 10-yard line.

Flacco then connected with Pitta for a 5-yard pass and finished the drive with another 5-yarder to Pitta, who easily beat single coverage by safety Steve Gregory.

Stephen Gostkowski had given the Patriots a 3-0 lead with a 31-yard kick with 6:21 left in the first quarter. But the Ravens went ahead on Rice's 2-yard touchdown run with 9:28 to go in the second.

Wes Welker then scored with just over 4 minutes remaining in the half on a 1-yard pass from Tom Brady and the Patriots increased their lead on Gostkowski's 25-yard field goal on the final play before intermission.

But New England suffered three injuries in the first half. Cornerback Aqib Talib hurt his thigh and defensive tackle Kyle Love injured his knee. The return of both starters was questionable. Backup safety Patrick Chung was helped off the field after one play.

A win Sunday would send the Ravens (12-6) to the Super Bowl for the second time and extend the 17-year career of linebacker Ray Lewis, who has said he will retire after the season.

A victory would put the Patriots (13-4) in their eighth Super Bowl, tying the Dallas Cowboys and Pittsburgh Steelers for the most all time, and Brady in his sixth.

The winner of the game plays the San Francisco 49ers in the Super Bowl on Feb. 3.

The Patriots played without tight end Rob Gronkowski, who broke his left arm a week earlier in their 41-28 divisional win over the Houston Texans.

New England outgained Baltimore 214 yards to 130 in the half. Brady completed 14 of 24 passes for 139 yards, while Flacco went 6 for 12 for 81 yards. Neither team committed a turnover.

The Patriots began the scoring on Gostkowski's kick, ending a 13-play, 67-yard drive during which Brady completed five of seven passes for 55 yards.

Rice's touchdown ended a 13-play, 90-yard drive that lasted 5:51. Flacco threw completions for first downs of 17 yards to Pitta, 11 yards to Rice, 8 yards to Bernard Pierce and 25 yards to Torrey Smith. With a first down at the Patriots 15-yard line, Rice ran for 8 and 5 yards, giving the Ravens a first down at the 2.

After Flacco threw an incompletion out of bounds, Rice took a handoff, ran to the left and scored easily.

Welker's touchdown came 4:18 before intermission and capped an 11-play, 79-yard drive. He scored on a pass to the right as cornerbacks Corey Graham and Chykie Brown appeared to get crossed up on their assignments.

On the first play of the series, Baltimore's Dannell Ellerbe was penalized 15 yards for a blow to the head. Then a 24-yard completion from Brady to Welker gave the Patriots a first down at the Ravens 16-yard line.

Both teams punted on their first possession before the Patriots began their scoring drive at their 21-yard line after a 50-yard punt by Sam Koch.

The Patriots began the series with Brady's 8-yard completion to Brandon Lloyd. The pair teamed up for three completions, gaining 37 yards, on the drive.

The Ravens punted on their first three possessions in the first quarter. The Patriots punted on three of their four series, forcing Baltimore to start deep in its territory.

___

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Well: Holly the Cat's Incredible Journey

Nobody knows how it happened: an indoor housecat who got lost on a family excursion managing, after two months and about 200 miles, to return to her hometown.

Even scientists are baffled by how Holly, a 4-year-old tortoiseshell who in early November became separated from Jacob and Bonnie Richter at an R.V. rally in Daytona Beach, Fla., appeared on New Year’s Eve — staggering, weak and emaciated — in a backyard about a mile from the Richters’ house in West Palm Beach.

“Are you sure it’s the same cat?” wondered John Bradshaw, director of the University of Bristol’s Anthrozoology Institute. In other cases, he has suspected, “the cats are just strays, and the people have got kind of a mental justification for expecting it to be the same cat.”

But Holly not only had distinctive black-and-brown harlequin patterns on her fur, but also an implanted microchip to identify her.

“I really believe these stories, but they’re just hard to explain,” said Marc Bekoff, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Colorado. “Maybe being street-smart, maybe reading animal cues, maybe being able to read cars, maybe being a good hunter. I have no data for this.”

There is, in fact, little scientific dogma on cat navigation. Migratory animals like birds, turtles and insects have been studied more closely, and use magnetic fields, olfactory cues, or orientation by the sun.

Scientists say it is more common, although still rare, to hear of dogs returning home, perhaps suggesting, Dr. Bradshaw said, that they have inherited wolves’ ability to navigate using magnetic clues. But it’s also possible that dogs get taken on more family trips, and that lost dogs are more easily noticed or helped by people along the way.

Cats navigate well around familiar landscapes, memorizing locations by sight and smell, and easily figuring out shortcuts, Dr. Bradshaw said.

Strange, faraway locations would seem problematic, although he and Patrick Bateson, a behavioral biologist at Cambridge University, say that cats can sense smells across long distances. “Let’s say they associate the smell of pine with wind coming from the north, so they move in a southerly direction,” Dr. Bateson said.

Peter Borchelt, a New York animal behaviorist, wondered if Holly followed the Florida coast by sight or sound, tracking Interstate 95 and deciding to “keep that to the right and keep the ocean to the left.”

But, he said, “nobody’s going to do an experiment and take a bunch of cats in different directions and see which ones get home.”

The closest, said Roger Tabor, a British cat biologist, may have been a 1954 study in Germany which cats placed in a covered circular maze with exits every 15 degrees most often exited in the direction of their homes, but more reliably if their homes were less than five kilometers away.

New research by the National Geographic and University of Georgia’s Kitty Cams Project, using video footage from 55 pet cats wearing video cameras on their collars, suggests cat behavior is exceedingly complex.

For example, the Kitty Cams study found that four of the cats were two-timing their owners, visiting other homes for food and affection. Not every cat, it seems, shares Holly’s loyalty.

KittyCams also showed most of the cats engaging in risky behavior, including crossing roads and “eating and drinking substances away from home,” risks Holly undoubtedly experienced and seems lucky to have survived.

But there have been other cats who made unexpected comebacks.

“It’s actually happened to me,” said Jackson Galaxy, a cat behaviorist who hosts “My Cat From Hell” on Animal Planet. While living in Boulder, Colo., he moved across town, whereupon his indoor cat, Rabbi, fled and appeared 10 days later at the previous house, “walking five miles through an area he had never been before,” Mr. Galaxy said.

Professor Tabor cited longer-distance reports he considered credible: Murka, a tortoiseshell in Russia, traveling about 325 miles home to Moscow from her owner’s mother’s house in Voronezh in 1989; Ninja, who returned to Farmington, Utah, in 1997, a year after her family moved from there to Mill Creek, Wash.; and Howie, an indoor Persian cat in Australia who in 1978 ran away from relatives his vacationing family left him with and eventually traveled 1,000 miles to his family’s home.

Professor Tabor also said a Siamese in the English village of Black Notley repeatedly hopped a train, disembarked at White Notley, and walked several miles back to Black Notley.

Still, explaining such journeys is not black and white.

In the Florida case, one glimpse through the factual fog comes on the little cat’s feet. While Dr. Bradshaw speculated Holly might have gotten a lift, perhaps sneaking under the hood of a truck heading down I-95, her paws suggest she was not driven all the way, nor did Holly go lightly.

“Her pads on her feet were bleeding,” Ms. Richter said. “Her claws are worn weird. The front ones are really sharp, the back ones worn down to nothing.”

Scientists say that is consistent with a long walk, since back feet provide propulsion, while front claws engage in activities like tearing. The Richters also said Holly had gone from 13.5 to 7 pounds.

Holly hardly seemed an adventurous wanderer, though her background might have given her a genetic advantage. Her mother was a feral cat roaming the Richters’ mobile home park, and Holly was born inside somebody’s air-conditioner, Ms. Richter said. When, at about six weeks old, Holly padded into their carport and jumped into the lap of Mr. Richter’s mother, there were “scars on her belly from when the air conditioner was turned on,” Ms. Richter said.

Scientists say that such early experience was too brief to explain how Holly might have been comfortable in the wild — after all, she spent most of her life as an indoor cat, except for occasionally running outside to chase lizards. But it might imply innate personality traits like nimbleness or toughness.

“You’ve got these real variations in temperament,” Dr. Bekoff said. “Fish can by shy or bold; there seem to be shy and bold spiders. This cat, it could be she has the personality of a survivor.”

He said being an indoor cat would not extinguish survivalist behaviors, like hunting mice or being aware of the sun’s orientation.

The Richters — Bonnie, 63, a retired nurse, and Jacob, 70, a retired airline mechanics’ supervisor and accomplished bowler — began traveling with Holly only last year, and she easily tolerated a hotel, a cabin or the R.V.

But during the Good Sam R.V. Rally in Daytona, when they were camping near the speedway with 3,000 other motor homes, Holly bolted when Ms. Richter’s mother opened the door one night. Fireworks the next day may have further spooked her, and, after searching for days, alerting animal agencies and posting fliers, the Richters returned home catless.

Two weeks later, an animal rescue worker called the Richters to say a cat resembling Holly had been spotted eating behind the Daytona franchise of Hooters, where employees put out food for feral cats.

Then, on New Year’s Eve, Barb Mazzola, a 52-year-old university executive assistant, noticed a cat “barely standing” in her backyard in West Palm Beach, struggling even to meow. Over six days, Ms. Mazzola and her children cared for the cat, putting out food, including special milk for cats, and eventually the cat came inside.

They named her Cosette after the orphan in Les Misérables, and took her to a veterinarian, Dr. Sara Beg at Paws2Help. Dr. Beg said the cat was underweight and dehydrated, had “back claws and nail beds worn down, probably from all that walking on pavement,” but was “bright and alert” and had no parasites, heartworm or viruses. “She was hesitant and scared around people she didn’t know, so I don’t think she went up to people and got a lift,” Dr. Beg said. “I think she made the journey on her own.”

At Paws2Help, Ms. Mazzola said, “I almost didn’t want to ask, because I wanted to keep her, but I said, ‘Just check and make sure she doesn’t have a microchip.’” When told the cat did, “I just cried.”

The Richters cried, too upon seeing Holly, who instantly relaxed when placed on Mr. Richter’s shoulder. Re-entry is proceeding well, but the mystery persists.

“We haven’t the slightest idea how they do this,” Mr. Galaxy said. “Anybody who says they do is lying, and, if you find it, please God, tell me what it is.”

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Time Warner Cable Ad Campaign Aims at Regaining Customers

Cable companies big and small have been losing television subscribers — millions of them — to satellite and telecommunications competitors for years. But Time Warner Cable says it is ready to claw some of them back.

On Monday, the company — the second-largest cable provider in the country behind Comcast — will begin a marketing campaign aimed at former subscribers who might be having second thoughts about their current video service.

The company says it will spend at least $50 million on broadcast, print, online and direct mail ads for the campaign, which it is calling “The Better Guarantee.”

The ads convey the idea that while the company’s cable service did not always live up to expectations in the past, it has become better.

“We, as a company, are fundamentally different and better than we were a few years ago when these upstart competitors started coming in,” said Jeffrey A. Hirsch, the chief marketing officer for residential services at Time Warner Cable. By upstarts, he was referring to Verizon FiOS and AT&T U-verse, two relatively new fiber optic television and Internet providers that have gained subscribers at the expense of cable providers.

Some of the Time Warner Cable ads specifically challenge Verizon, saying it promised monthly savings that have not panned out.

“That promise of new isn’t such a great promise, and people are starting to come back to Time Warner Cable,” Mr. Hirsch said. “So we decided it’s time to put some muscle behind the idea.”

The campaign announcement comes a week before Time Warner Cable releases its fourth-quarter earnings, which may show deepening losses in television subscribers, known in the industry as basic video subscribers. Industry analysts at Jefferies & Company published a forecast last week that had Time Warner Cable losing 140,000 such subscribers, a slight increase from the 129,000 it lost in the same quarter of 2011. The same forecast had three other cable providers stemming their losses year-over-year.

“The Better Guarantee” is an extension of “Enjoy Better,” a brand-image campaign that Time Warner Cable began last February to retain existing subscribers as well as win new ones. The new ads point to specific improvements the company has made: smartphone apps, on-demand TV options and narrower windows of time for home service calls. Gone are the dreaded four-hour windows, the company says; two-hour windows are now the norm and one-hour windows are being put in place.

In an interview by phone, Mr. Hirsch also mentioned “much faster Internet than we had two, three years ago” and a home security service.

To entice former subscribers to try Time Warner Cable again, the ads promote a 30-day money-back guarantee. “If the consumer doesn’t see that we’ve improved our service, we’ll send them their money back,” said Gregg Fujimoto, a senior vice president for the company.

Some of the ads feature actual subscribers, explaining why they came back to the company. Mr. Fujimoto said there would be use of social networking Web sites as well as traditional advertising media.

Other cable providers, facing the same competition from satellite and telecommunications providers, have also tried to burnish their reputations lately with ad campaigns. Comcast started a new phase of its marketing for Xfinity, its consumer services, last summer. The providers have also invested an enormous amount of money in infrastructure so that their television and Internet services are on par, or better, than their competition’s.

The providers are up against persistent discontent from subscribers who say their monthly bills are too high and their set-top boxes are too slow. Surveys for the University of Michigan’s American Consumer Satisfaction Index have shown for three straight years that Verizon FiOS is the highest-regarded television provider in the country.

AT&T and two satellite providers, DirecTV and Dish Network, have also ranked above the industry average, while Time Warner Cable, Comcast and other cable providers have remained below the average. But the 2012 survey had some good news for Time Warner Cable: the company’s score ticked up four percentage points, the most of any television provider on the index.

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