Hillary Clinton Suffers a Concussion After Fainting

WASHINGTON — The State Department said Saturday that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who skipped an overseas trip this past week because of a stomach virus, had suffered a concussion after fainting.

The agency said that she was recovering at home and was being monitored by doctors.

The department said Mrs. Clinton was dehydrated because of the virus and that she fainted, causing the concussion. No further details were immediately available.

An aide, Philippe Reines, said that Mrs. Clinton would work from home next week, at the recommendation of doctors.

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App of the Week: Manilla

App Name: Manilla

Price: Free

Available Platforms: Apple’s iOS ( iPad, iPod Touch and iPhone), Android

What does this app do? Manilla provides a secure way for you manage and organize your bills on your mobile device, tablet or desktop. This finance app, of which an updated version for the iPhone 5 was released this week, allows you to link to your accounts, set up reminders to pay your bills, and keep track of household finances such as utilities and services.

From your mobile device, select the “Accounts” tab to see a queue of accounts you linked to within the app. On the bottom right, tap the settings button to add an account.The new release also lets you manage your accounts with local businesses or individuals who do not have an online payment system – the landscaper or babysitter, for example.

Press the “Reminders” tab to select a business you use, such as your wireless carrier. The app will display a screen with your account and bill information as well as let you set up reminders to pay your bill, which will be delivered through email or text message. Select, “View Bill,” to see details, such as when you made your last payment, or select “Documents” and the app’s built in PDF viewer will display your bill within the application.

You cannot pay your bill directly from the app. However, select “Go to Site” and the app will direct you to a business’s website where you can pay your bill.

Is it easy to set up? Yes. Once you download Manilla, the app requires you to register with an email and password.

Should I try it? Manilla takes all of your bill information and puts into an easy-to-use interface, and with over 3,500 businesses the app makes it easy to link to a variety of accounts. If you’re interested in building and monitoring a budget, too, you will find a better solution with Mint.com’s app. Still, Manilla makes keeping track of all of your bills simple – a sure way to stay on top of your finances.

Also Read
Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Sports world shaken by Connecticut school shooting

Oklahoma City forward Kevin Durant wrote "Newtown CT" on both of his shoes. Cleveland Cavaliers coach Byron Scott struggled with his composure as he talked about the tragedy. Boston Celtics star Kevin Garnett called it "a tough day."

The school shooting in Connecticut hit close to home for several sports stars, and they extended their condolences over social media websites such as Twitter. Some were visibly shaken as they went about their business on Friday night, and the NFL asked each of its teams to observe a moment of silence before this weekend's games.

"I'm all over the place. Today's been a crazy day," Garnett said following a 101-89 loss at Houston. "I just want to say that my condolences go out to the families that are in Connecticut. Anybody that has kids, a niece, any kind of siblings or any kind of someone that they love, it's just been a tough day. I just wanted to get it off my chest and say my condolences go out to all the parents out there. ... It's been an emotional roller-coaster today."

A man killed his mother at their home and then opened fire inside an elementary school, slaying 26 people, including 20 children. The 20-year-old killer, carrying two handguns, committed suicide at the school.

"It's a sad day. ... It has impacted all of us," Golden State Warriors coach Mark Jackson said. "I got kids, who we take for granted waking them up and sending them to school. It's just a tragedy."

Scott paused a couple of times as he talked about what happened in Newtown, a small community about 60 miles northeast of New York City.

"I have three healthy kids and a beautiful granddaughter," he said. "When you hear about kids who are that young and don't get a chance to live because of something that's so senseless as somebody going in and doing the things that this person did, I think it affects everybody. It puts everything in the right perspective as well. As much as we love this game, this doesn't mean nothing."

From the full slate of NBA games to high school and college football finals, there were moments of silences at sporting events of all sizes. The overhead videoboard at the Barclays Center showed a candle and the town seal of Newtown as the Nets and Pistons paused for reflection before their game in Brooklyn.

"I wish I could do more," Durant said of the message on his shoes. "But it hit me really hard. It's tough to see, especially kids that couldn't do anything for themselves. Words can't even describe it. I'm kind of at a loss for words right now."

The NFL sent a memo asking for each of its teams to observe a moment of silence before this weekend's games.

"This shocking event has brought the nation together in grieving for the victims and their families as well as the survivors," the note read. "We believe it is appropriate and important for us to collectively recognize and participate in the grieving process at our games this weekend, as we have done on other occasions."

The NFL dealt with a shooting tragedy a couple weeks ago when Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher killed his girlfriend before committing suicide in a parking lot at Arrowhead Stadium. Then Dallas Cowboys defensive lineman Josh Brent was charged with intoxication manslaughter on Dec. 8 after he flipped his car in a pre-dawn accident that killed teammate Jerry Brown.

Many athletes took to social media websites to process what happened in Connecticut, discussing their shock and horror, and openly worrying about their kids at school.

"Innocent victims just gone," Miami Heat star LeBron James said in a series of posts on Twitter. "This is really messing with my mind. Kids is everything to me! And of course i have 2 of my own in elementary school as well. I can't imagine it happening to my kids school. I and the rest of the families would be devastated! Something has to be done."

Golfer John Daly talked about home schooling his children, and outspoken Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe wondered about the road ahead.

"The way we deal with this tragedy in CT will tell us a lot about where we're headed as a society. Do we only address the symptoms (i.e. just gun control laws)? Or do we also address the disease — how we treat each other and those who need help," Kluwe said in a couple of posts on Twitter.

There also was some anger.

Montreal Canadiens captain Brian Gionta tweeted: "Not sure if there is anything lower than harming innocent children." He ended the tweet with a hashtag of "coward," then was critical of the media interviewing young children outside the school.

"At some point, we've got to get past bureaucracy and all the nonsense and do something about this so our kids can be safe," said New Orleans Hornets coach Monty Williams, who has five children ranging in age from 2 to 14.

"If we can go to outer space and take care of trees and rivers and animals, we can do a better job of taking care of our kids. It's just a sad situation."

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School Yoga Class Draws Religious Protest From Christians

T. Lynne Pixley for The New York Times

Miriam Ruiz during a yoga class last week at Paul Ecke Central Elementary School in Encinitas, Calif. A few dozen parents are protesting that the program amounts to religious indoctrination.

ENCINITAS, Calif. — By 9:30 a.m. at Paul Ecke Central Elementary School, tiny feet were shifting from downward dog pose to chair pose to warrior pose in surprisingly swift, accurate movements. A circle of 6- and 7-year-olds contorted their frames, making monkey noises and repeating confidence-boosting mantras.

Jackie Bergeron’s first-grade yoga class was in full swing.

“Inhale. Exhale. Peekaboo!” Ms. Bergeron said from the front of the class. “Now, warrior pose. I am strong! I am brave!”

Though the yoga class had a notably calming effect on the children, things were far from placid outside the gymnasium.

A small but vocal group of parents, spurred on by the head of a local conservative advocacy group, has likened these 30-minute yoga classes to religious indoctrination. They say the classes — part of a comprehensive program offered to all public school students in this affluent suburb north of San Diego — represent a violation of the First Amendment.

After the classes prompted discussion in local evangelical churches, parents said they were concerned that the exercises might nudge their children closer to ancient Hindu beliefs.

Mary Eady, the parent of a first grader, said the classes were rooted in the deeply religious practice of Ashtanga yoga, in which physical actions are inextricable from the spiritual beliefs underlying them.

“They’re not just teaching physical poses, they’re teaching children how to think and how to make decisions,” Ms. Eady said. “They’re teaching children how to meditate and how to look within for peace and for comfort. They’re using this as a tool for many things beyond just stretching.”

Ms. Eady and a few dozen other parents say a public school system should not be leading students down any particular religious path. Teaching children how to engage in spiritual exercises like meditation familiarizes young minds with certain religious viewpoints and practices, they say, and a public classroom is no place for that.

Underlying the controversy is the source of the program’s financing. The pilot project is supported by the Jois Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded in memory of Krishna Pattabhi Jois, who is considered the father of Ashtanga yoga.

Dean Broyles, the president and chief counsel of the National Center for Law and Policy, a nonprofit law firm that champions religious freedom and traditional marriage, according to its Web site, has dug up quotes from Jois Foundation leaders, who talk about the inseparability of the physical act of yoga from a broader spiritual quest. Mr. Broyles argued that such quotes betrayed the group’s broader evangelistic purpose.

“There is a transparent promotion of Hindu religious beliefs and practices in the public schools through this Ashtanga yoga program,” he said.

“The analog would be if we substituted for this program a charismatic Christian praise and worship physical education program,” he said.

The battle over yoga in schools has been raging for years across the country but has typically focused on charter schools, which receive public financing but set their own curriculums.

The move by the Encinitas Union School District to mandate yoga classes for all students who do not opt out has elevated the discussion. And it has split an already divided community.

The district serves the liberal beach neighborhoods of Encinitas, including Leucadia, where Paul Ecke Central Elementary is, as well as more conservative inland communities. On the coast, bumper stickers reading “Keep Leucadia Funky” are borne proudly. Farther inland, cars are more likely to feature the Christian fish symbol, and large evangelical congregations play an important role in shaping local philosophy.

Opponents of the yoga classes have started an online petition to remove the course from the district’s curriculum. They have shown up at school board meetings to denounce the program, and Mr. Broyles has threatened to sue if the board does not address their concerns.

The district has stood firm. Tim Baird, the schools superintendent, has defended the yoga classes as merely another element of a broader program designed to promote children’s physical and mental well-being. The notion that yoga teachers have designs on converting tender young minds to Hinduism is incorrect, he said.

“That’s why we have an opt-out clause,” Mr. Baird said. “If your faith is such that you believe that simply by doing the gorilla pose, you’re invoking the Hindu gods, then by all means your child can be doing something else.”

Ms. Eady is not convinced.

“Yoga poses are representative of Hindu deities and Hindu stories about the actions and interactions of those deities with humans,” she said. “There’s content even in the movement, just as with baptism there’s content in the movement.”

Russell Case, a representative of the Jois Foundation, said the parents’ fears were misguided.

“They’re concerned that we’re putting our God before their God,” Mr. Case said. “They’re worried about competition. But we’re much closer to them than they think. We’re good Christians that just like to do yoga because it helps us to be better people.”

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Microsoft Battles Google by Hiring Political Brawler Mark Penn

SEATTLE — Mark Penn made a name for himself in Washington by bulldozing enemies of the Clintons. Now he spends his days trying to do the same to Google, on behalf of its archrival Microsoft.

Since Mr. Penn was put in charge of “strategic and special projects” at Microsoft in August, much of his job has involved efforts to trip up Google, which Microsoft has failed to dislodge from its perch atop the lucrative Internet search market.

Drawing on his background in polling, data crunching and campaigning, Mr. Penn created a holiday commercial that has been running during Monday Night Football and other shows, in which Microsoft criticizes Google for polluting the quality of its shopping search results with advertisements. “Don’t get scroogled,” it warns. His other projects include a blind taste test, Coke-versus-Pepsi style, of search results from Google and Microsoft’s Bing.

The campaigns by Mr. Penn, 58, a longtime political operative known for his brusque personality and scorched-earth tactics, are part of a broader effort at Microsoft to give its marketing the nimbleness of a political campaign, where a candidate can turn an opponent’s gaffe into a damaging commercial within hours. They are also a sign of the company’s mounting frustration with Google after losing billions of dollars a year on its search efforts, while losing ground to Google in the browser and smartphones markets and other areas.

Microsoft has long attacked Google from the shadows, whispering to regulators, journalists and anyone else who would listen that Google was a privacy-violating, anticompetitive bully. The fruits of its recent work in this area could come next week, when the Federal Trade Commission is expected to announce the results of its antitrust investigation of Google, a case that echoes Microsoft’s own antitrust suit in the 1990s. A similar investigation by the European Union is also wrapping up. A bad outcome for Google in either one would be a victory for Microsoft.

But Microsoft, based in Redmond, Wash., has realized that it cannot rely only on regulators to scrutinize Google — which is where Mr. Penn comes in. He is increasing the urgency of Microsoft’s efforts and focusing on their more public side.

In an interview, Mr. Penn said companies underestimated the importance of policy issues like privacy to consumers, as opposed to politicians and regulators. “It’s not about whether they can get them through Washington,” he said. “It’s whether they can get them through Main Street.”

Jill Hazelbaker, a Google spokeswoman, declined to comment on Microsoft’s actions specifically, but said that while Google also employed lobbyists and marketers, “our focus is on Google and the positive impact our industry has on society, not the competition.”

In Washington, Mr. Penn is a lightning rod. He developed a relationship with the Clintons as a pollster during President Bill Clinton’s 1996 re-election campaign, when he helped identify the value of “soccer moms” and other niche voter groups.

As chief strategist for Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful 2008 campaign for president, he conceived the “3 a.m.” commercial that raised doubts about whether Barack Obama, then a senator, was ready for the Oval Office. Mr. Penn argued in an essay he wrote for Time magazine in May that “negative ads are, by and large, good for our democracy.”

But his approach has ended up souring many of his professional relationships. He left Mrs. Clinton’s campaign after an uproar about his consulting work for the government of Colombia, which was seeking the passage of a trade treaty with the United States that Mrs. Clinton, then a senator, opposed.

“Google should be prepared for everything but the kitchen sink thrown at them,” said a former colleague who worked closely with Mr. Penn in politics and spoke on condition of anonymity. “Actually, they should be prepared for the kitchen sink to be thrown at them, too.”

Hiring Mr. Penn demonstrates how seriously Microsoft is taking this fight, said Michael A. Cusumano, a business professor at M.I.T. who co-wrote a book about Microsoft’s browser war.

“They’re pulling out all the stops to do whatever they can to halt Google’s advance, just as their competition did to them,” Professor Cusumano said. “I suppose that if Microsoft can actually put a doubt in people’s mind that Google isn’t unbiased and has become some kind of evil empire, they might very well get results.”

Nick Wingfield reported from Seattle and Claire Cain Miller from San Francisco.

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Susan Rice’s Bluntness Endeared Her to President

Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press

Susan E. Rice before a cabinet meeting last month at which President Obama lauded the job she was doing. She will now, presumably, stay in her job.

WASHINGTON — For President Obama, the decision to forgo the fight to make Susan E. Rice his secretary of state was a deeply painful one. It required publicly abandoning one of his most loyal aides, who had broken with the Democratic foreign policy establishment early to side with his improbable candidacy, and whose blunt-speaking style — which helped cost her the job — had always been, for Mr. Obama, a part of her appeal.

Typically, just hours before she called Mr. Obama to tell him she had decided to withdraw from contention as Hillary Rodham Clinton’s successor, she rebuked her Chinese counterpart in an informal meeting of the United Nations Security Council, telling him his views excusing a North Korean missile launching this week were “ridiculous.”

He shot back, according to witnesses, that she “better watch your language.”

It was the latest example of why Ms. Rice, the American ambassador to the United Nations, has so often been criticized as being an unusually undiplomatic diplomat, direct to the point of rudeness. But friends and former White House aides say that Ms. Rice’s style is a reflection of Mr. Obama’s own: impatient with niceties, uninterested in small talk or long dinners, focused solely on results.

“They share a common vision and a common style,” said Madeleine Albright, the former secretary of state, who has known Ms. Rice since she was 4 years old and a schoolmate of Ms. Albright’s children. “Some of it is a generational thing, and some of it is life’s experiences.”

“She is incredibly bright, but lots of people in Washington are bright,” Ms. Albright added. “What separates people out here is that some are loyal.”

By the account of White House aides, it is loyalty that led Ms. Rice to conclude that a confirmation battle would be long, bloody and harmful to both her and the president. Pundits will long argue about whether she was pushed into her decision or jumped. But it is clear that for Mr. Obama, giving up on Ms. Rice’s appointment was far different than accepting the resignation of David H. Petraeus, his C.I.A. director, or firing Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, his commander in Afghanistan.

She began advising Mr. Obama after he was elected to the Senate. When he started his run for president in 2007, she took a significant career risk for a woman who had served in the Clinton administration as an assistant secretary of state and was presumed by her friends to be a supporter of Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy. Instead, she left the fold, backing an upstart candidate and substituting her own foreign policy experience for his lack of it.

Mark Alexander, an early campaign adviser and distant cousin of Ms. Rice’s, remembers Mr. Obama saying back then, “I have Susan Rice, and she’s going to be getting her networks going and making sure I have top-notch foreign policy people.” Before making a decision involving foreign policy, “she was the last call he would make.”

For two years, she spent untold hours advising Mr. Obama without pay, appearing on television, organizing position papers and counseling a candidate who often found himself on the defensive. He had opposed the Iraq war and she had been a skeptic; they jointly developed the argument that the United States should quickly end its involvement in Iraq, bolster the American presence in Afghanistan and focus on a “light footprint” strategy elsewhere.

Together they contended that there was no reason the United States should avoid negotiating with Iranian or North Korean dictators, taking on, among others, Mrs. Clinton, then Mr. Obama’s chief Democratic rival for the presidential nomination.

“Throughout the campaign, Susan was making an argument about challenging conventions, whether it was about Iraq or diplomacy with Iran,” Benjamin J. Rhodes, a deputy White House national security adviser and Mr. Obama’s national security speechwriter, said Thursday. “Susan has the expertise that comes from being within the foreign policy establishment, but she had the willingness to challenge it. And for the president, that was a pretty attractive quality.”

David E. Sanger reported from Washington, and Jodi Kantor from New York.

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Hamilton agrees to $125M, 5-year deal with Angels

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Josh Hamilton is heading to the Los Angeles Angels, lured with a $125 million, five-year contract that steps up the migration of high-profile stars to Southern California.

The Angels persuaded the free-agent outfielder to leave the Texas Rangers with their third big-money offseason signing in as many years. Hamilton heads to Anaheim after first baseman Albert Pujols came West for $240 million last December along with pitcher C.J. Wilson — Hamilton's Texas teammate — for $77.5 million.

Still, the Angels failed to make the playoffs for the third straight year.

They had bulked up their pitching staff earlier in the offseason with the additions of pitchers Joe Blanton and Tommy Hanson, along with relievers Sean Burnett and Ryan Madson.

General manager Jerry Dipoto had said Wednesday that he didn't think a major move was "imminent or required."

But owner Arte Moreno pulled off another coup by getting Hamilton. The 2010 AL MVP, Pujols and AL Rookie of the Year Mike Trout combined for 103 home runs and 316 RBIs last season.

"It's a great day to be an Angel/Angel fan!" Wilson said on his Twitter account.

Rangers general manager Jon Daniels said Hamilton had reached a deal with the AL West rival Angels. Two people familiar with the talks disclosed the amount and length of the contract, speaking on condition of anonymity because the agreement was not yet final.

Hamilton's $25 million average salary matches Philadelphia first baseman Ryan Howard for the second-highest in baseball, trailing only Alex Rodriguez's $27.5 million average with the New York Yankees.

Since the contract wasn't final, the Angels didn't comment publicly. The team said in a statement, "We continue to look for ways to improve our team. As soon as we have something formal to announce, we will do so."

Moreno and manager Mike Scioscia didn't immediately respond to phone messages.

The Angels allowed free agent outfielder Torii Hunter to sign with Detroit, and he reacted to his former team's latest move on his Twitter account.

"I was told money was tight but I guess the Arte had money hidden under a Mattress. Business is business but don't lie," Hunter wrote.

He followed up with the comment, "Great signing for the Angels. One of the best players in baseball."

Texas had hoped to re-sign Hamilton, who led the Rangers to consecutive World Series appearances in 2010 and 2011. They made a $13.3 million qualifying offer at the Nov. 2 deadline, ensuring the team draft-pick compensation if Hamilton signed elsewhere. The Rangers will receive an extra selection immediately following the first round of June's amateur draft. The deal cost the Angels a first-round selection in the draft.

Speaking Thursday after a Rangers' holiday luncheon, Daniels said he had just been informed of the decision by Hamilton's agent, Michael Moye.

Daniels said he was disappointed "to some degree," especially since the Rangers never got a chance to match any offer during the process, as they had expected. Or at least get contacted before Hamilton agreed with another team.

"I never expected that he was going to tell us to the dollar what they had, and a chance to offer it. Our full expectation, the phone call was going to be before he signed, and certainly not after," Daniels said. "Everybody's got to make their own calls.

"He's a tremendous talent and I think that they've shown they're going to be in on a lot of the best players out there. No sugarcoating it, we wanted the player back. And he signed with the Angels. They're better," Daniels said.

The agreement came days after the Los Angeles Dodgers added pitchers Zack Greinke and Ryu Hyun-jin, boosting their payroll over $200 million. Greinke, another offseason target, said he chose the Dodgers over the Rangers.

Hamilton's addition to the Angels outfield means Mark Trumbo could be moved to third base or traded. Peter Bourjos and Vernon Wells also are among the outfielders competing for time unless a trade is made.

Scioscia will have an interesting decision to make on where in the batting order to slot in Pujols, Trout and Hamilton, a five-time All-Star. He has a .260 career average at Angel Stadium with five home runs and 19 RBIs in 150 at-bats.

Daniels met with Moye last week at the winter meetings in Nashville, Tenn., and had talked about the parameters of a new contract along with numbers. While Daniels wouldn't get into any specifics, he said his understanding is the deal with the Angels "is certainly more guaranteed money."

The move keeps Hamilton in the same division with plenty of opportunities to play against his team — the first one coming fast next season. After the Rangers open with three games at new division foe Houston, they play their first home series April 5-7 against the Angels.

The 31-year-old slugger was considered a risk by some teams because of his history of alcohol and substance abuse, which derailed his career before his surge with the Rangers over the past five seasons.

"Josh has done a lot for the organization, the organization has done a lot for Josh, a lot of things that aren't public and things of that nature," Daniels said. "I'm a little disappointed how it was handled, but he had a decision to make and he made it."

Hamilton had a career-high 43 home runs with 128 RBIs in 148 games last season, when the Rangers struggled down the stretch and lost the division to Oakland on the final day of the regular season.

Texas then lost in the winner-take-all wild-card game against Baltimore, and Hamilton was lustily booed by Rangers fans while going 0-for-4 — twice striking out on three pitches, including an inning-ending out in the eighth with a runner in scoring position when it was still a 3-1 game.

That came two days after Hamilton dropped a routine popup in the regular-season finale, a two-out tiebreaking miscue that allowed the A's to score two runs and go ahead to stay. He missed five games on a September trip because of a cornea problem he said was caused by too much caffeine and energy drinks — and had one homer with 18 strikeouts in the final 10 regular-season games after returning.

Hamilton hit .304 with 161 homers in his six major league seasons, the first with Cincinnati. In May against Baltimore, he became only the 16th major league with a four-homer game as part of a 5-for-5 night that included a double.

"Josh had indicated recently ... told us that he felt it might be time to move on, but that we were still talking," said Daniels, who wouldn't elaborate on the reasons. "We had additional conversations this week that I thought had moved it along in a positive direction, but apparently not."

___

AP Sports Writers Stephen Hawkins in Fort Worth, Texas, and Ronald Blum in New York contributed to this report.

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Life Expectancy Rises Around World, Study Finds

A sharp decline in deaths from malnutrition and infectious diseases like measles and tuberculosis has caused a shift in global mortality patterns over the past 20 years, according to a report published on Thursday, with far more of the world’s population now living into old age and dying from diseases mostly associated with rich countries, like cancer and heart disease.

Tony Karumba/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Children in Nairobi, Kenya. Sub-Saharan Africa lagged in mortality gains, compared with Latin America, Asia and North Africa.

The shift reflects improvements in sanitation, medical services and access to food throughout the developing world, as well as the success of broad public health efforts like vaccine programs. The results are striking: infant mortality declined by more than half from 1990 to 2010, and malnutrition, the No. 1 risk factor for death and years of life lost in 1990, has fallen to No. 8.

At the same time, chronic diseases like cancer now account for about two out of every three deaths worldwide, up from just over half in 1990. Eight million people died of cancer in 2010, 38 percent more than in 1990. Diabetes claimed 1.3 million lives in 2010, double the number in 1990.

“The growth of these rich-country diseases, like heart disease, stroke, cancer and diabetes, is in a strange way good news,” said Ezekiel Emanuel, chairman of the department of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania. “It shows that many parts of the globe have largely overcome infectious and communicable diseases as a pervasive threat, and that people on average are living longer.”

In 2010, 43 percent of deaths in the world occurred at age 70 and older, compared with 33 percent of deaths in 1990, the report said. And fewer child deaths have brought up the mean age of death, which in Brazil and Paraguay jumped to 63 in 2010, up from 30 in 1970, the report said. The measure, an average of all deaths in a given year, is different from life expectancy, and is lower when large numbers of children die.

But while developing countries made big strides the United States stagnated. American women registered the smallest gains in life expectancy of all high-income countries’ female populations between 1990 and 2010. American women gained just under two years of life, compared with women in Cyprus, who lived 2.3 years longer and Canadian women who gained 2.4 years. The slow increase caused American women to fall to 36th place in the report’s global ranking of life expectancy, down from 22nd in 1990. Life expectancy for American women was 80.5 in 2010, up from 78.6 in 1990.

“It’s alarming just how little progress there has been for women in the United States,” said Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, a health research organization financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation at the University of Washington that coordinated the report. Rising rates of obesity among American women and the legacy of smoking, a habit women formed later than men, are among the factors contributing to the stagnation, he said. American men gained in life expectancy, to 75.9 years from 71.7 in 1990.

Health experts from more than 300 institutions contributed to the report, which provided estimates of disease and mortality for populations in more than 180 countries. It was published in The Lancet, a British medical journal.

The World Health Organization issued a statement on Thursday saying that some of the estimates in the report differed substantially from those done by United Nations agencies, though others were similar. All comprehensive estimates of global mortality rely heavily on statistical modeling because only 34 countries — representing about 15 percent of the world’s population — produce quality cause-of-death data.

Sub-Saharan Africa was an exception to the trend. Infectious diseases, childhood illnesses and maternity-related causes of death still account for about 70 percent of the region’s disease burden, a measure of years of life lost due to premature death and to time lived in less than full health. In contrast, they account for just one-third in South Asia, and less than a fifth in all other regions. Sub-Saharan Africa also lagged in mortality gains, with the average age of death rising by fewer than 10 years from 1970 to 2010, compared with a more than 25-year increase in Latin America, Asia and North Africa.

Globally, AIDS was an exception to the shift of deaths from infectious to noncommunicable diseases. The epidemic is believed to have peaked, but still results in 1.5 million deaths each year.

Over all, the change means people are living longer, but it also raises troubling questions. Behavior affects people’s risks of developing cancer, heart disease and diabetes, and public health experts say it is far harder to get people to change their ways than to administer a vaccine that protects children from an infectious disease like measles.

“Adult mortality is a much harder task for the public health systems in the world,” said Colin Mathers, a senior scientist at the World Health Organization.

Tobacco use is a rising threat, especially in developing countries, and is responsible for almost six million deaths a year globally. Illnesses like diabetes are also spreading fast.

Donald G. McNeil Jr. contributed reporting.

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Top Russian Envoy for Syria and NATO Leader Say Assad Losing Control

Manu Brabo/Associated Press

Free Syrian Army fighters warmed themselves in the northern province of Aleppo on Wednesday.

MOSCOW — Russia’s top Middle East diplomat and the leader of NATO offered dark and strikingly similar assessments of the embattled Syrian president’s future on Thursday, asserting that he was losing control of the country after a nearly two-year conflict that has taken 40,000 lives and has threatened to destabilize the Middle East.

The bleak appraisals — particularly from Russia, a steadfast strategic Syrian ally — amounted to a new level of pressure on the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, who has been resorting to increasingly desperate military measures, including the use of Scud ballistic missiles, to contain an armed insurgency that has encroached on the capital, Damascus.

The Russian diplomat, Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, acknowledged that Mr. Assad’s forces could be defeated by rebels, whom the Syrian leader has repeatedly dismissed as ragtag foreign-backed terrorists with no popular support.

“Unfortunately, it is impossible to exclude a victory of the Syrian opposition,” said Mr. Bogdanov — the clearest indication to date that Russia believed that Mr. Assad could lose.

Mr. Bogdanov’s remarks, reported by Russia’s Interfax news service, came as the secretary general of NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, told reporters in Brussels that Mr. Assad’s use of ballistic missiles, which Western officials monitoring the Syrian conflict reported on Wednesday — and which Syria has denied — reflected his “utter disregard” for Syrian lives. Mr. Rasmussen also predicted the demise of Mr. Assad’s government.

“I think the regime in Damascus is approaching collapse,” he told reporters after a meeting with the Dutch prime minister at NATO headquarters. “I think now it is only a question of time.”

While the leaders of NATO member states have made similar predictions before, the assertion by Mr. Rasmussen, the leader of the Western military alliance, reinforced a growing consensus that Mr. Assad’s options for remaining in power had been all but exhausted — a view now apparently shared by Russia.

Throughout the Syria crisis, as it has grown from peaceful protests in March 2011 to engulf the country in armed conflict, Russia has acted as Syria’s principal international shield, protecting Mr. Assad diplomatically from Western and Arab attempts to oust him and holding out the possibility of his staying in power during a transition.

Only in recent days has Russia’s view seemed to shift, while Mr. Assad’s foes, grouped in a newly minted and still uncertain coalition, have garnered ever broader international support as the legitimate representatives of the Syrian people.

“We must look squarely at the facts, and the trend now suggests that the regime and the government in Syria are losing more and more control and more and more territory,” Mr. Bogdanov said in remarks to Russia’s Public Chamber, a Kremlin advisory group, according to Interfax.

Russia, he said, was preparing to evacuate its citizens — a complex task, since for decades, Russian women have married Syrian men sent to study in Russia and returned to Syria with them to raise families.

It was the first time an official at Mr. Bogdanov’s level had announced plans for an evacuation, which sent a message to the Syrian government that Russia no longer held out hope that the government could prevail. He said Russia had a plan to withdraw its personnel from its embassy in the Syrian capital, Damascus, but that was s not yet necessary. Russia’s press attaché in Damascus confirmed this, telling Interfax that there was “no sharp deterioration” in conditions there.

Mr. Bogdanov offered a dark view of how the conflict would unfold from this point, saying that it took two years for the rebels to control 60 percent of Syria’s territory, and another year and a half will pass before they control the rest.

“If up until now 40,000 people have died, then from this point forward it will be crueler, and you will lose dozens or many hundreds of thousands of people,” he said. “If you accept this price to topple the president, what can we do? We of course consider this totally unacceptable.”

As the Russian official spoke, fresh evidence of the intensity of the battle emerged. During the civil war, Moscow has been the principal arms supplier for the Damascus government, as it has been for decades. Obama administration and NATO officials said on Wednesday that Syrian government forces had resorted to firing Scud missiles at rebel fighters as the government struggled to slow the momentum of the insurgency.

Ellen Barry reported from Moscow, and Rick Gladstone from New York. Alan Cowell contributed reporting from London and Anne Barnard from Beirut, Lebanon.

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Review: PlayStation icons join in ‘Battle Royale’

The holiday season is a good time to catch up with old friends. If you’re an Xbox fan, you’re probably getting reacquainted with galactic warrior Master Chief in his new adventure, “Halo 4.” If you’re a Nintendophile, you’re probably frolicking with Mario on your new Wii U.

Sony, meanwhile, has expanded its holiday guest list to invite nearly two decades worth of characters to mix it up in “PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale” (for the PlayStation 3, $ 59.99; Vita, $ 39.99). Fans of the original PlayStation can welcome back old pals like Sir Daniel Fortesque of “MediEvil” and the title character of “Parappa the Rapper.” Younger gamers who have only known the PS3 will be happy to see Nathan Drake from “Uncharted” and Cole MacGrath from “Infamous.” Turn them loose in an assortment of game-inspired arenas and you’ve got chaos.

It’s not an original idea: Nintendo has been pitting its lovable characters against each other since 1999′s “Super Smash Bros.” As you’d expect, “All-Stars” lets up to four players choose their favorite personalities and pound on each other until one is left standing.

The technique is a change from most fighting games. Most of the time, kicking or punching your opponent doesn’t do much damage. Instead, each blow adds to an attack meter; build up enough energy and you can unleash three levels of truly deadly moves. There’s a little more strategy, but most players won’t find it too complicated.

The solo campaign is awfully skimpy, but “All-Stars” makes for a lively party when you have a few friends over. Two-and-a-half stars out of four.

— Sony’s burlap-clad goofball Sackboy is part of the “All-Stars” lineup, but he takes center stage in “LittleBigPlanet Karting” ($ 59.99).

Yes, it’s a go-kart racer — a genre that has already made room for Mario, Donkey Kong and Sonic the Hedgehog — but Sony freshens it up by giving you the ability to build your own racetracks and share them online. By exploring the game’s built-in courses, you can find hundreds of elements to add to your own, and they all share the homespun “arts-and-crafts” aesthetic of the original “LittleBigPlanet.”

Unfortunately, “LBP Karting” also revives the weird, floaty physics of its parent. That worked fine in the two-dimensional fantasy world of “LBP,” but it’s annoying when you’re behind the wheel. The tracks are filled with the power-ups, obstacles and gravity-defying leaps you’d expect in a kart racer, but the vehicles themselves feel sluggish and unresponsive. Two stars.

—Insomniac Games’ popular “lombax”-robot buddies are celebrating their 10th anniversary, both in “All-Stars” and their own “Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault” ($ 19.99). The latter game, however, is a big disappointment, stripping away most of what made the team so endearing.

It’s a “base defense” game, meaning you’re plopped down on a planet and then have to protect your turf from waves of invading enemies. That eliminates the exploration and discovery that made most of the “R&C” games so absorbing, replacing it with a tiresome cycle of building fortifications, having them destroyed, then rebuilding them. Instead of the comedy that was once this series’ trademark, you get drudgery. One star.

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Follow Lou Kesten on Twitter at http://twitter.com/lkesten

Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Watson returns as Ryder Cup captain

NEW YORK (AP) — The Americans are bringing back Tom Watson as Ryder Cup captain with hopes of ending two decades of defeats in Europe.

"We're just really tired of losing Ryder Cup," PGA of America President Ted Bishop said Thursday during a news conference at the Empire State Building.

Watson faces a tall order.

The Americans have lost seven of the last nine Ryder Cups and have not won away from home since 1993, when Watson was the captain at The Belfry in England. They are coming off a staggering loss this year at Medinah, where Europe strung together a remarkable rally from a 10-6 deficit going into the final day to win by one point.

Watson is the first repeat captain for the U.S. team since Jack Nicklaus in 1987, when the Ryder Cup was played on his home course of Muirfield Village in Ohio. Watson, one of the most respected figures in golf worldwide, becomes the seventh U.S. captain to get more than one shot.

His selection received an immediate endorsement from Tiger Woods, whom Watson has strongly criticized because of Woods' behavior.

"I'd like to congratulate Tom Watson on his selection as Ryder Cup captain," Woods said in a statement. "I think he's a really good choice. Tom knows what it takes to win, and that's our ultimate goal. I hope I have the privilege of joining him on the 2014 United States Team."

Watson had said Woods needs to "clean up his act" in the months after Woods' personal life fell apart after being caught in multiple extramarital affairs, though the Stanford alums have never been particularly close.

Watson went out of his way Thursday to praise Woods as "the best player maybe in the history of the game."

"My relationship with Tiger is fine," he said. "Whatever has been said before is water under the bridge. No issues."

Watson breaks the PGA of America's prototype in a big way. The eight-time major champion will be 65 when the 2014 Ryder Cup is played at Gleneagles in Scotland, making him the oldest captain in Ryder Cup history. Sam Snead was 57 when he was captain in 1969, and the oldest European captain was John Jacobs (56) in 1981.

Watson has not been back to the Ryder Cup since that '93 victory at The Belfry, though he sounded as if he couldn't wait to get started.

The PGA of America first contacted him more than a year ago about the job, Watson, with that familiar gap-tooth grin, replied: "Boy, I've been waiting for this call for a long time."

The matches will be played in Scotland, contributing to Watson's selection. As much as he is beloved around the world for his timeless game, epic duels with Nicklaus and graciousness in any outcome, the Scots consider him one of their own. Watson won his first major at Carnoustie in 1975 when he quickly understood how to play links golf. He won five British Open titles, the most of any American, with four of those in Scotland.

He nearly made it six claret jugs three years ago, when at 59, he came within an 8-foot par putt on the last hole from winning at Turnberry. Watson missed the putt, and then lost to Stewart Cink in a playoff.

The ovation he heard that week in Turnberry might be different at Gleneagles.

"They're going to be cheering against me," he said during a brief appearance on the "Today" show to announce his captaincy.

The PGA of America broke from its model of taking former major champions in their late 40s who still play the PGA Tour and are in touch with the players. Watson last played a full schedule in 1998, though the PGA of America had to wonder if perhaps the young captains were too close to the players.

As for the pressure of bringing back the Ryder Cup?

"This responsibility is a challenge," Watson said. "But I've been there before, and I love it."

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AP Golf Writer Doug Ferguson contributed to this report.

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World’s Population Living Longer, New Report Suggests

A sharp decline in deaths from malnutrition and diseases like measles and tuberculosis has caused a shift in global mortality patterns over the past 20 years, according to a new report, with far more of the world’s population now living into old age and dying from diseases more associated with rich countries, like cancer and heart disease.

The shift reflects improvements in sanitation, medical services and access to food throughout the developing world, as well as the success of broad public health efforts like vaccine programs. The results are dramatic: infant mortality has declined by more than half between 1990 and 2010, and malnutrition, the No. 1 risk factor for death and years of life lost in 1990, has fallen to No. 8.

At the same time, chronic diseases like cancer now account for about two out of every three deaths worldwide, up from just over half in 1990. Eight million people died of cancer in 2010, 38 percent more than in 1990. Diabetes claimed 1.3 million lives in 2010, double the number in 1990.

But while developing countries made big strides – the average age of death in Brazil and Paraguay, for example, jumped to 63 in 2010, up from 28 in 1970 – the United States stagnated. American women registered the smallest gains in life expectancy of all high-income countries between 1990 and 2010. The two years of life they gained was less than Cyprus, where women gained 2.3 years of life and Canada, where women gained 2.4 years. The slow increase caused American women to fall to 36th place in the report’s global ranking of life expectancy, down from 22nd in 1990.

“It’s alarming just how little progress there has been for women in the United States,” said Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, a health research organizationfinanced by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation at the University of Washington that coordinated the report. Rising rates of obesity among American women and the legacy of smoking, a habit women in this country formed later than men, are among the factors contributing to the stagnation, he said.

The World Health Organization issued a statement Thursday saying that some of the estimates in the report differ substantially from those done by United Nations agencies, though others are similar. All comprehensive estimates of global mortality rely heavily on statistical modeling because only 34 countries – representing about 15 percent of the world’s population – produce quality cause-of-death data.

Health experts from more than 300 institutions contributed to the report, which measured disease and mortality for populations in more than 180 countries. It was published Thursday in the Lancet, a British health publication.

The one exception to the trend was sub-Saharan Africa, where infectious diseases, childhood illnesses and maternal causes of death still account for about 70 percent of all illness. In contrast, they account for just one-third in South Asia, and less than a fifth in all other regions. Sub-Saharan Africa also lagged in mortality gains, with the average age of death there rising by fewer than 10 years from 1970 to 2010, compared to a more than 25-year increase in Latin America, Asia and North Africa.

The change means that people are living longer, an outcome that public health experts praised. But it also raises troubling questions. Behavior affects people’s risks of developing noncommunicable diseases like cancer, heart disease and diabetes, and public health experts say it is far harder to get people to change their ways than to administer a vaccine that protects children from an infectious disease like measles.

“Adult mortality is a much harder task for the public health systems in the world,” said Colin Mathers, a senior scientist at the World Health Organization in Geneva. “It’s not something that medical services can address as easily.”

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E.U. Leaders Hail Accord on Banking Supervision

BRUSSELS — European Union leaders on Thursday hailed an agreement to place banks in the euro area under a single supervisor, calling it a concrete measure to maintain the viability of the currency as well as a step toward a broader economic union.

The deal’s importance “cannot be appreciated highly enough,” Chancellor Angela Merkel told the Bundestag, the lower house of the German Parliament.

“Europe and the euro area are providing proof that they are able to meet the challenges they face,” François Hollande, the French president, said in a statement.

In another sign of renewed efforts to shore up the euro, finance ministers and international officials approved the release of further aid to Greece, including long-delayed payments and other aid totaling nearly €50 billion, or $65 billion, that is crucial for the government to avoid defaulting on its debts.

“The sacrifices of the Greek people have not been in vain,” Prime Minister Antonis Samaras said, referring to stringent austerity measures Greece had adopted in order to obtain the aid.

“Today is not only a new day for Greece, it is indeed a new day for Europe,” Mr. Samaras said in Brussels ahead of a two-day summit meeting of European leaders.

The agreement on new banking supervision would put between 100 and 200 major banks under the direct oversight of the European Central Bank, leaving thousands of smaller institutions to be overseen primarily by national regulators.

But E.U. finance ministers, who reached a deal after meeting for 14 hours late Wednesday and early Thursday, insisted that the E.C.B. would be able to take over supervision of any bank in the euro area at any time.

Mario Draghi, the president of the central bank, said the agreement “marks an important step towards a stable economic and monetary union, and toward further European integration.”

Mr. Draghi added that governments and the European Commission still had to work on the details of the supervision mechanism, which is to be fully operational by March 2014.

The system must also be approved by the European Parliament and national legislatures before it goes into effect.

The new system is intended to strengthen oversight of a sector that, under the supervision of national regulators, failed to prevent banks from accumulating so much debt that they put at risk the finances of euro zone states including Ireland and Spain, in turn threatening the future of the currency.

The agreement on banking supervision was expected to act as a springboard for European leaders to discuss later on Thursday steps leading to a broader banking union. Such measures would include a unified system, and perhaps shared resources, to ensure failing banks are closed in an orderly fashion. This would be followed, in time, by measures intended to reinforce economic and monetary union, including, possibly, the creation of a fund that could be used to shore up the economies of vulnerable members of the euro zone.

To win France’s agreement on the new banking supervisor, finance ministers agreed that only banks holding more than €30 billion in assets, or assets greater than 20 percent of their country’s gross domestic product, would be directly regulated by the E.C.B. Previously, France and the European Commission had asked that all 6,000 banks in the euro area should be closely regulated by the central bank.

Germany, facing pressure from a powerful domestic banking lobby trying to shield many small savings banks from closer scrutiny, had sought a reduced remit for the E.C.B. In the end, Germany agreed to allow the central bank to step in and take over supervision of any bank in the euro area at its discretion.

The Germans also had concerns that the central bank could be tempted to alter its decisions on monetary policy to make its supervisory job easier. As a compromise, Germany agreed that member states would be given greater scope than originally foreseen to challenge central bank decisions.

“We succeeded in securing Germany’s key demands,” Ms. Merkel said in Berlin. There would be a “clear separation” between the central bank’s responsibility for monetary policy and for oversight, she added.

Britain, which is not a member of the euro zone, had sought assurances that the new banking supervisor would not have influence over British banks operating abroad or banks operating in the City of London.

Britain agreed to a formula that should free it and other E.U. members outside the euro zone from most, but probably not all, rule-making by the E.C.B. These countries will also be able to challenge E.C.B. decisions on cross-border banking.

“The safeguards we have secured protect Britain’s interests and the integrity of the European single market,” said the chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne. “It shows that when Britain takes a tough stance but based on strong principle, Britain can win the argument and protect our interests.”

For countries including Spain and Ireland, the supervisor is a prerequisite for a new European bailout fund to provide aid directly to their troubled banks. That would allow those governments to avoid weighing down their national balance sheets with yet more debt..

But any direct recapitalization of banks is only likely to go ahead during 2014, once the supervisor is fully operating, and well after a German general election in October 2013. Still to be clarified is whether the aid could go to banks that have already run into trouble, or whether it would be used only to help lenders that falter in the future.

Providing direct support to banks is a sensitive matter for German taxpayers, who have grown weary of footing most of the bill for the euro zone’s bailouts.

Melissa Eddy contributed reporting from Berlin and Niki Kitsantonis from Athens.

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Facebook revises privacy controls in effort to make them more accessible, comprehensible

SAN FRANCISCO – Facebook is trying to make its privacy controls easier to find and understand in an effort to turn the world’s largest social network into a more discreet place.

The fine-tuning announced Wednesday will include several revisions that will start rolling out to Facebook Inc.‘s more than 1 billion users in the next few weeks.

The biggest change will be a new “privacy shortcuts” section that will appear as a tiny lock on the right-hand side at the top of people’s news feeds. This feature offers a drop-down box where users will be able to get answers to common questions such as “Who can see my stuff?”

Other updates will include a tool that will enable individuals to review all the publicly available pictures identifying them on Facebook.

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Lawmaker: NFL players 'trying to back out' on HGH

WASHINGTON (AP) — A congressman accused the NFL Players Association of "trying to back out" of an agreement to start testing for human growth hormone in pro football.

Speaking at a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing about the science behind the testing, Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the panel's ranking Democrat, noted Wednesday that nearly two full NFL seasons have passed since the league and the players' union signed a labor deal in August 2011 that set the stage for adding HGH to the sport's drug program.

The NFLPA won't concede the validity of a test that's used by Olympic sports and Major League Baseball, and the sides haven't been able to agree on a scientist to help resolve that impasse. HGH is a banned substance that is hard to detect and used by athletes for what are believed to be a variety of benefits, whether real or only perceived — such as increasing speed or improving vision.

"They say they need more time ... before doing what they agreed to do. To me, it seems obvious the Players Association is simply running out the clock," Cummings said in his opening statement. "Although they agreed to HGH testing, they are now trying to back out of the contract."

Cummings and committee chairman Darrell Issa, a California Republican, both said additional hearings are expected.

"It is our hope (to) move these parties closer together," Issa said.

Issa also said there could be a connection between head injuries in football and the use of HGH, "based in part on the strength of the players hitting each other."

The committee did not ask anyone from the league or union to testify Wednesday. Witnesses included Pro Football Hall of Fame member Dick Butkus, U.S. Anti-Doping Agency Chief Science Officer Larry Bowers, and National Institutes of Health Deputy Director Lawrence Tabak.

Bowers told the committee "there is a broad consensus among scientific experts who regularly work in the growth hormone field" that the test is reliable and valid, and that "the chances of an athlete who has not used synthetic growth hormone testing positive are comparable to the chance of that same athlete being struck by lightning during his or her lifetime."

He closed by saying: "I would like to point out that the only people who are still questioning the methodology and validity of the ... test are lawyers, not scientists."

Tabak said many studies vouch for the reliability of HGH testing, even though the naturally occurring hormone and the artificial form are tough to tell apart.

He also pointed out the "serious risks" to athletes who give themselves HGH.

Even once scientific issues are resolved, there will be other matters the league and union need to figure out, including who administers the test and what the appeals process will be. The latter could be of particular import in the aftermath of the decision in the New Orleans Saints' bounty case Tuesday, when NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell's suspensions of four players were tossed aside by former Commissioner Paul Tagliabue.

The collective bargaining agreement that ended the NFL lockout 16 months ago included a provision for HGH testing — but only once the NFLPA approved the process.

"First, I applaud the NFL and players for taking a bold and decisive position on HGH in their 10-year agreement. Now let's get on with it," Butkus told the committee. "The HGH testing process is proven to be reliable. It's time to send a clear message that performance-enhancing drugs have no place in sports, especially the NFL."

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Connect with Howard Fendrich on Twitter at http://twitter.com/HowardFendrich

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

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IHT Rendezvous: Why Everyone Is So Certain About Hillary 2016

NEW YORK — The Hillary-in-2016 buzz has hit overdrive, and the political speculation game has gone viral. By ten o’clock Monday, I’d watched a variety of commentators on three cable news programs speculate, guess, opine and bet on the real and imaginary future of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

“Everyone’s in fear of Hillary,” said one anchor, announcing a “Hillary Watch.”

“Wait, it’s too early,” one female guest advised Hillary. “Don’t believe the hype.”

“There’s no limit to her potential,” crowed a partisan.

“It’s a coronation,” said another, meeting no contradiction.

A few hours of this chatter, and everyone is echoing each other, every segment similar to the one an hour earlier, but we keep listening, just in case something new drops in.

Some try to guess what brave soul in the currently down-at-the-mouth Republican Party would dare to come up against a world heroine like Hillary. (The secretary of state, who is leaving her job in January, has forged an incontestable global position, especially among women, as my latest Female Factor column attests.)

So who would face off against Hillary?

There’s Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida who is known as “the good Bush,” a more people savvy and centrist politician than his brother, the former president. There’s Marco Rubio, the great Republican Hispanic hope, who may break ground as the first Latino presidential candidate. But can he beat Hillary? Really?

As for Vice President Joseph Biden, a onetime presidential candidate, few believe he would want to challenge her in a primary (a recent PPP poll said she would receive 58 percent of the vote in the Iowa Democratic caucuses, traditionally the first in the nation, while Mr. Biden trails far behind).

The way many Democrats and pundits see it is this: She declares her candidacy, and the waters part. That’s how far out they’re going on a limb.

Rampant guesswork — “she’s going to go off the grid” — is totally permissible, and fun. Being on a bandwagon like the one that’s off and roaring for Hillary is de rigueur. Pity the Republican (or clueless Democrat) who dares to suggest that she may not run at all. Buzz killer!

It’s a pretty diverse crew, this political class. There are serious, bespectacled veterans and graying pols and a raft of lilting-voiced, sharp-tongued and clip-talking thirty-somethings whose eyes are on the shining prize, a cable political show of their own. There are familiar bylines from major newspapers and magazines, and Washington authors and Beltway insiders.

Political chatter is an industry all its own. It is Washington’s obsession but it also infects power-mad New York, where politics meets fame, fashion and money.

An addictive parlor game, it’s played in front of millions of political fanatics, like me, who can’t resist tuning in and feasting on the dish. Like sports, politics offers plenty of opportunities to blow hard, to bet on the wrong team and to lose miserably.

But you can’t help playing the game, even when your speculation, usually tinged with certitude, is often dead wrong.

All the talk today about the 2016 election — a veritable thousand lifetimes away in politics — is a little crazy. But for political junkies this is the stuff of life. Not to know the latest on such a riveting and important figure like Hillary Clinton can prove embarrassing, not to say unforgivable, in a place like Washington that breathes that air and drinks that water.

So I’ve got to go. “Andrea Mitchell Reports” is coming on.

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No. 2 Alabama places 4 on AP All-America team

NEW YORK (AP) — Alabama is No. 1 when it comes to All-Americans.

The second-ranked Crimson Tide placed four players on The Associated Press All-America team released Tuesday. Among them was center Barrett Jones, who became a two-time first-team selection.

No other team had more than one player selected to the first team. The Tide also led with six players chosen to all three teams.

Notre Dame, Texas A&M, Stanford and Florida were second with four players on the three teams, though linebacker Manti Te'o was the only Fighting Irish player to make the first team.

Alabama faces top-ranked Notre Dame in the BCS championship game Jan. 7.

Texas A&M Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Manziel was the first-team quarterback.

Wisconsin running back Montee Ball and Georgia linebacker Jarvis Jones also became two-time All-Americans.

Nine Southeastern Conference players made the first team, more than any other conference. The Pac-12 was second with six players on the first team. No other conference had more than two.

The team was voted on by a panel of 16 AP college football poll voters.

Barrett Jones, a senior who made the All-America team as a tackle last season, was joined on the first team by Alabama teammates guard Chance Warmack, linebacker C.J. Mosley and cornerback Dee Milliner. Offensive tackle D.J. Fluker was picked to the second team and quarterback AJ McCarron was selected to the third team.

Te'o, the Heisman finalists and winner of seven other awards — including the Maxwell, Nagurski and Butkus — is the first Notre Dame defensive player to be an AP All-American since defensive back Shane Walton in 2002.

Manziel is the first freshman to make the first team at quarterback. On Saturday, the redshirt freshman know as Johnny Football became the first freshman to win the Heisman Trophy.

Manziel set an SEC record with 4,600 total yards to rank second in the nation.

Heisman finalist Collin Klein of Kansas State was the second-team quarterback.

Ball repeated as an All-American, despite a slow start to the season and some early injuries. The senior is seventh in the nation in rushing at 133 yards per game, scored 21 touchdowns, and set the major college football record for career touchdowns. He has 82 going into the Rose Bowl.

Arizona's Ka'Deem Carey, the nation's leading rusher at 146 yards per game, was the other first-team running back.

The receivers were Southern California's Marqise Lee, who leads the nation in catches (112) and was second in yards receiving (1,680), and Baylor's Terrance Williams, who leads in yards with 1,764.

Stanford's Zach Ertz was the tight end.

Joining Jones and Warmack on the offensive line were two junior tackles projected to be high first-round NFL draft picks: Texas A&M's Luke Joeckel and Michigan's Taylor Lewan.

North Carolina's Jonathan Cooper was the other first-team guard.

West Virginia's Tavon Austin was selected as the all-purpose player, a perfect description of the do-it-all speedster.

Austin was primarily a receiver and racked up 1,259 yards through the air. Late in the season, coach Dana Holgorsen used Austin as a running back and against Oklahoma he the senior set a school-record with 344 yards rushing. He finished second in the nation in all-purpose yards with 230 per game, and returned a punt and a kickoff for touchdowns.

Tulane's Cairo Santos was the All-American kicker after making all 21 of his field goal attempts.

On the defensive side, Te'o and Mosley were joined at linebacker by the other two-time All-American. Jones followed-up his sensational sophomore season with 12.5 sacks and 22.5 tackles for loss.

Another SEC pass rusher highlighted the defensive line.

South Carolina defensive end Jadeveon Clowney had 13.5 sacks, tied for the most in the nation, playing in only 11 games.

Florida State Bjoern Werner was the other end. He also had 13 sacks.

At defensive tackle was a pair of Pac-12 players: Utah's Star Lotulelei and Arizona State's Will Sutton, who was the conference defensive player of the year.

In the secondary, Jordan Poyer of Oregon State, who had seven interceptions, was the cornerback opposite Milliner.

Fresno State safety Phillip Thomas was voted to the first team after leading the nation with eight interceptions, including three returned for touchdown. Florida's Matt Elam was the other safety.

The punter was Ryan Allen, who won his second straight Ray Guy Award last week.

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Follow Ralph D. Russo at www.Twitter.com/ralphdrussoap

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Rate of Childhood Obesity Falls in Several Cities

Jessica Kourkounis for The New York Times

At William H. Ziegler Elementary in Northeast Philadelphia, students are getting acquainted with vegetables and healthy snacks.

PHILADELPHIA — After decades of rising childhood obesity rates, several American cities are reporting their first declines.

The trend has emerged in big cities like New York and Los Angeles, as well as smaller places like Anchorage, Alaska, and Kearney, Neb. The state of Mississippi has also registered a drop, but only among white students.

“It’s been nothing but bad news for 30 years, so the fact that we have any good news is a big story,” said Dr. Thomas Farley, the health commissioner in New York City, which reported a 5.5 percent decline in the number of obese schoolchildren from 2007 to 2011.

The drops are small, just 5 percent here in Philadelphia and 3 percent in Los Angeles. But experts say they are significant because they offer the first indication that the obesity epidemic, one of the nation’s most intractable health problems, may actually be reversing course.

The first dips — noted in a September report by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation — were so surprising that some researchers did not believe them.

Deanna M. Hoelscher, a researcher at the University of Texas, who in 2010 recorded one of the earliest declines — among mostly poor Hispanic fourth graders in the El Paso area — did a double-take. “We reran the numbers a couple of times,” she said. “I kept saying, ‘Will you please check that again for me?’ ”

Researchers say they are not sure what is behind the declines. They may be an early sign of a national shift that is visible only in cities that routinely measure the height and weight of schoolchildren. The decline in Los Angeles, for instance, was for fifth, seventh and ninth graders — the grades that are measured each year — between 2005 and 2010. Nor is it clear whether the drops have more to do with fewer obese children entering school or currently enrolled children losing weight. But researchers note that declines occurred in cities that have had obesity reduction policies in place for a number of years.

Though obesity is now part of the national conversation, with aggressive advertising campaigns in major cities and a push by Michelle Obama, many scientists doubt that anti-obesity programs actually work. Individual efforts like one-time exercise programs have rarely produced results. Researchers say that it will take a broad set of policies applied systematically to effectively reverse the trend, a conclusion underscored by an Institute of Medicine report released in May.

Philadelphia has undertaken a broad assault on childhood obesity for years. Sugary drinks like sweetened iced tea, fruit punch and sports drinks started to disappear from school vending machines in 2004. A year later, new snack guidelines set calorie and fat limits, which reduced the size of snack foods like potato chips to single servings. By 2009, deep fryers were gone from cafeterias and whole milk had been replaced by one percent and skim.

Change has been slow. Schools made money on sugary drinks, and some set up rogue drink machines that had to be hunted down. Deep fat fryers, favored by school administrators who did not want to lose popular items like French fries, were unplugged only after Wayne T. Grasela, the head of food services for the school district, stopped buying oil to fill them.

But the message seems to be getting through, even if acting on it is daunting. Josh Monserrat, an eighth grader at John Welsh Elementary, uses words like “carbs,” and “portion size.” He is part of a student group that promotes healthy eating. He has even dressed as an orange to try to get other children to eat better. Still, he struggles with his own weight. He is 5-foot-3 but weighed nearly 200 pounds at his last doctor’s visit.

“I was thinking, ‘Wow, I’m obese for my age,’ ” said Josh, who is 13. “I set a goal for myself to lose 50 pounds.”

Nationally, about 17 percent of children under 20 are obese, or about 12.5 million people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which defines childhood obesity as a body mass index at or above the 95th percentile for children of the same age and sex. That rate, which has tripled since 1980, has leveled off in recent years but has remained at historical highs, and public health experts warn that it could bring long-term health risks.

Obese children are more likely to be obese as adults, creating a higher risk of heart disease and stroke. The American Cancer Society says that being overweight or obese is the culprit in one of seven cancer deaths. Diabetes in children is up by a fifth since 2000, according to federal data.

“I’m deeply worried about it,” said Francis S. Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, who added that obesity is “almost certain to result in a serious downturn in longevity based on the risks people are taking on.”

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DealBook: 3 Men Arrested in Rate-Rigging Inquiry

10:24 a.m. | Updated LONDON – British authorities made the first arrests in the global investigation into interest-rate manipulation, an inquiry that has ensnared the world’s biggest banks.

The Serious Fraud Office of Britain said on Tuesday that it had arrested three people in connection with rate rigging. The three men, who are aged between 33 and 47 and are British citizens, were taken into custody by police in early morning raids at their houses on the outskirts of London.

One of the people is Thomas Hayes, a 33-year-old former trader at Citigroup and UBS, according to people with knowledge of the matter. At least one of the other two men worked for R P Martin, a British brokerage firm that previously surfaced in the Canadian investigation into rate manipulation, another person briefed on the matter said.

British criminal authorities typically make arrests at the early stages of an inquiry, and the actions do not necessarily mean the individuals will be charged with any wrongdoing. A Citigroup spokeswoman declined to comment. A UBS spokesman declined to comment. A lawyer for Mr. Hayes could not immediately be identified.

The arrests mark a new phase of the sprawling rate-rigging inquiry.

Regulators around the world are investigating more than a dozen big banks that help set benchmarks like the London interbank offered rate, or Libor. Such benchmark rates are used to determine the borrowing costs for trillions of dollars of financial products, including credit cards, student loans and mortgages.

In June, the British bank Barclays agreed to pay $450 million to settle charges that some of its traders attempted to manipulate Libor to bolster profits. Authorities also accused Barclays of submitting low rates to deflect concerns about its health during the financial crisis. The scandal prompted the resignations of top bank officials, including the chief executive, Robert E. Diamond Jr.

Libor Explained

Regulators are now pursuing a number of criminal and civil cases.

The Royal Bank of Scotland is talks with authorities. The bank said it would likely disclose fines before its next earnings report in February.

The Swiss bank UBS is close to finalizing a settlement deal with American and British authorities. The bank is expected to pay more than $450 million to settle claims that some employees reported false rates to increase its profit. When American authorities announce their case against UBS in the coming days, Mr. Hayes is expected to figure prominently, one of the officials said.

Mr. Hayes built his reputation as a trader at UBS. He worked at the Swiss bank from about 2006 to 2009, before departing for Citigroup.

But his career at Citi was short-lived. In 2010, the bank suspended him after he approached a London trading desk about improperly influencing the Yen-denominated Libor rates, a person briefed on the matter said. He was fired in September 2010, and the bank reported his suspected actions to authorities.

UBS also implicated Mr. Hayes to authorities, according to another person briefed on the matter. The Swiss bank discovered that Mr. Hayes worked with traders at other banks to influence rates, according to officials and court documents.

Mr. Hayes emerged in court documents this year filed by Canadian authorities. The documents — collected by Canada’s Competition Bureau, the country’s anti-trust authority – highlight an alleged scheme in which Mr. Hayes and other traders colluded to push Yen Libor rates up and down. The Canadian investigation, which spans conduct from 2007 to 2010, also referenced traders at JPMorgan Chase HSBC, Deutsche Bank and the Royal Bank of Scotland.

The traders, the documents said, at times corresponded via instant messages on Bloomberg machines. While the flurry of activity took place outside Canada, the trading affected financial contracts in the country that were pegged to Yen Libor.

“Traders at participants banks communicated with each other their desire to see a higher or lower Yen Libor to aid their trading positions,” the Canadian documents said.

The traders also relied on middlemen at brokerage firms “to use their influence” on other banks that set Libor, according to the documents. The brokers included employees at R P Martin, a person briefed on the matter said.

Under British law, Mr. Hayes and the other men can be held for 24 hours. The authorities can then apply for an extension if they need more time for questioning.

The Serious Fraud Office started a criminal investigation into Libor manipulation in July, in response to the furor over the rate-rigging scandal at Barclays. The criminal investigations by the British authorities and their counterparts at the Justice Department parallel similar civil inquiries by international authorities, including the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Financial Services Authority, the British regulator.

The arrests come as the agency tries to repair it reputation. In April, the new director of the Serious Fraud Office, David Green, pledged overhaul the office after a series of mistakes by the organization.

Legal professionals say the appointment is a step toward rejuvenating the agency, which has lacked significant firepower to police London’s financial services section. The Serious Fraud Office has been given extra resources by the British government to pursue a criminal investigation related to Libor.

“The S.F.O. works incredibly slowly,” said a defense lawyer representing individuals implicated in the Libor inquiry, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation. “It’s not surprising that people have been arrested. But how long it will take to lead to criminal charges is another matter.”

Azam Ahmed contributed reporting.

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Chávez Put Party Unity Before Another Cancer Surgery

LA PAZ, Bolivia — President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela has flown repeatedly to Cuba this year for cancer treatments, but the flight that took him back to Caracas on Friday may have been the most meaningful of all.

Mr. Chávez postponed emergency cancer surgery to return home, meet with his inner circle and announce on television on Saturday, for the first time, that he had picked the man he wanted to lead his socialist revolution when he is gone — something he seemed to suggest might come sooner than his millions of followers would hope.

He flew to Cuba again on Monday to prepare for surgery, news agencies reported. 

Mr. Chávez could well recover and remain a potent force, but on Saturday night he seemed intent on smoothing over factions within his party and solidifying support for the man he chose to succeed him, Vice President Nicolás Maduro.

Mr. Chávez, 58, spoke the word “unity” several times during Saturday’s somber, symbolically weighted appearance. To his left sat Mr. Maduro, and behind both of them viewers could see a bust of Mr. Chávez’s hero, the South American independence leader Simón Bolívar (who never realized his dream of unifying a fractious continent).

Mr. Chávez, a charismatic and polarizing leader who has crafted his own brand of socialist revolution in this oil-rich country, has been vague about the nature of his illness since it was first disclosed in June last year. Since then, he has had at least two operations, chemotherapy and radiation treatment. Yet he said on Saturday that doctors had once again found malignant cells, necessitating a new operation.

The fact that he chose to go home to put his political house in order and clear up the long-unresolved line of succession — rather than write about it on Twitter or report it by calling in to a government television show, as he so often has done with lesser policy decisions during his many medical absences — suggests that his doctors have told him that the news is not good.

“This is a huge passing of the torch,” said Javier Corrales, a political science professor at Amherst College.

Even if Mr. Chávez makes a strong recovery after his surgery, Mr. Corrales said, “there’s no question we are in the transition stage, and that’s always incredibly uncertain.”

Mr. Chávez, who has been president for nearly 14 years, was re-elected in October to another six years. His new term is to begin on Jan. 10.

But if he dies or cannot continue to govern before then, the Constitution states that the vice president, Mr. Maduro, would become president and finish out the last days of the current term.

If Mr. Chávez is unable to begin his new term, or if he leaves office within the first four years, then new elections would be called, according to the Constitution.

In that case, Mr. Chávez said on Saturday that he wanted Mr. Maduro to be his party’s candidate, and he asked his supporters to elect him.

“I ask it from my heart,” he said.

New elections could open the way for a new run by Henrique Capriles Radonski, a young state governor who opposed Mr. Chávez in October. Mr. Capriles received 44 percent of the vote and 6.5 million votes, far more than any previous candidate against Mr. Chávez.

But Mr. Capriles is now running a difficult race for re-election as governor of Miranda, which includes part of Caracas, the captial, and one of the country’s most populous states. The election is on Sunday.

He is being challenged by a former vice president, Elías Jaua, and the government and Mr. Chávez’s socialist party have made it a priority to defeat Mr. Capriles, hoping that it will weaken him politically and remove him as a threat.

“If Capriles loses, there will be a battle in the opposition, a struggle for power, and the leaders will call for a change,” said Luis Vicente León, a pollster close to the opposition.

Some polls taken earlier this year showed that Mr. Capriles could beat Mr. Maduro if they ran against each other.

But Mr. León said conditions had changed with Mr. Chávez’s endorsement of Mr. Maduro. If Mr. Chávez were to die or become too ill to continue in office, it could give Mr. Maduro’s candidacy an emotional boost, he said.

But Mr. Maduro, 50, will have difficulties of his own in having to rein in factions within Mr. Chávez’s party. That could include the military and former military officers to whom Mr. Chávez has given a major role in his government.

For the time being, Venezuelans can look forward to more uncertainty.

The country has been obsessed with Mr. Chávez’s illness since it was first revealed. It has been the source of endless speculation and conspiracy theories. Some people even insist that he is not sick and has invented the illness to throw his opponents off guard. His fiercest opponents see his cancer as a sign of hope that his days as president are numbered; his supporters insist that he will recover, and they condemn such grim speculation as necrophilia.

But the last announcement of his need for another surgery, coupled with his call to rally behind Mr. Maduro, takes the nervous focus on Mr. Chávez’s cancer and what it means for the country’s future to a new level.

Several hundred supporters of Mr. Chávez congregated on Sunday in Bolívar Plaza in central Caracas in what was an uncharacteristically subdued gathering, by the standards of his followers. But also on display was their quasi-religious connection with the president — and the refusal among many to acknowledge his mortality.

“He is going to overcome this difficult time,” said Israel Pérez, 32, a law student. “He will be with us forever.”

Nonetheless, would he support Mr. Maduro as Mr. Chávez’s replacement?

“Venezuelans would support any proposal the president asks them to,” Mr. Pérez said.

Andrew Rosati contributed reporting from Caracas, Venezuela.

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