U.N. Predicts 1 Million Syrian Refugees by Mid-2013

GENEVA — The United Nations appealed on Wednesday for $1.5 billion in new aid to handle the steadily worsening humanitarian crisis created by spiraling violence in Syria and predicted that the number of refugees fleeing the conflict would double to more than 1 million in the next six months.

The increased refugee estimate represents at least the fourth time the United Nations has revised its projections upward on refugees in the nearly two-year-old uprising against the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, which has turned into a civil war that has left at least 40,000 people dead and has threatened to destabilize the Middle East. The revised figures came as both Syrian antigovernment activists and state media in Syria reported new mayhem convulsing the capital, Damascus, and other areas.

Meeting representatives of donor governments here in Geneva, United Nations agencies said they were seeking $1 billion to assist Syrian refugees in five neighboring countries and a further $519 million to provide emergency aid to four million people inside Syria over the same period. There are 20.8 million people living in Syria, according to the World Bank.

“This massive humanitarian crisis requires urgent support from governments, businesses and private individuals,” Panos Moumtzis, the United Nations regional coordinator for Syrian refugees, said in a statement. “Unless these funds come quickly we will not be able to fully respond to the lifesaving needs of civilians who flee Syria every hour of the day — many in a truly desperate condition.”

More than 525,000 Syrians have now registered as refugees, the United Nations refugee agency reported, roughly double the number it had recorded in early September. These include approximately 160,000 in Lebanon, 150,000 in Jordan, 140,000 in Turkey and more than 65,000 in Iraq. The agency also included Egypt for the first time as a sanctuary for fleeing Syrians, reporting more than 10,000 had registered there.

The refugee agency now expects the number to double again within the next six months, Mr. Moumtzis said.

He based that forecast on present trends in the conflict, with 2,000 to 3,000 Syrians crossing into neighboring countries every day. Under a worst-case outcome, in which the conflict results in a massive exodus of civilians, the number of refugees could rise to 1.85 million, he said.

As it is, “the violence in Syria is raging across the country, there are nearly no more safe areas where people can flee,” Radhouane Nouicer, the coordinator of United Nations humanitarian aid based in Damascus, told journalists in Geneva, citing daily shelling and bombings in the suburbs of the capital.

The needs of Syria’s increasingly desperate population, facing winter cold and shortages of basics like food, were much greater than the aid sought by the United Nations, Mr. Nouicer said, but the appeal was “realistic assessment of what we can achieve” in the complex and dangerous conditions prevailing in the country.

Among the immediate concerns is the fate of around half a million Palestinian refugees in Syria, a legacy of the Arab-Israeli conflict, mostly living in Damascus. An aerial assault on Yarmouk, a vast Palestinian neighborhood in the south of the capital on Sunday, had caused many to flee. Hundreds are known to have crossed into Lebanon while others sought protection with relatives living elsewhere in Syria, but the whereabouts of many Yarmouk inhabitants as of Wednesday was unclear.

“We don’t know where they are, it’s a humanitarian crisis that still playing itself out,” said Martha Myers, director of relief and social services for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which administers aid to Palestinian refugees.

In Syria, the state-run SANA news agency reported that military forces had attacked insurgent positions in and around Damascus, Idlib, Hama and Dara, and had seized weapons and “eliminated a number of terrorists,” the government’s generic term for Mr. Assad’s armed opponents.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a group based in Britain with a network of contacts in Syria, said much of the fighting on Wednesday was in districts adjoining the Yarmouk neighborhood, which insurgents have sought to occupy as part of their stated intention to seize control of the central part of the capital.

Nick Cumming-Bruce reported from Geneva, and Rick Gladstone from New York

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Shooting renews argument over video-game violence

WASHINGTON (AP) — In the days since the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., a shell-shocked nation has looked for reasons. The list of culprits include easy access to guns, a strained mental-health system and the “culture of violence” — the entertainment industry’s embrace of violence in movies, TV shows and, especially, video games.

“The violence in the entertainment culture — particularly, with the extraordinary realism to video games, movies now, et cetera — does cause vulnerable young men to be more violent,” Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., said.

“There might well be some direct connection between people who have some mental instability and when they go over the edge — they transport themselves, they become part of one of those video games,” said Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado, where 12 people were killed in a movie theater shooting in July.

White House adviser David Axelrod tweeted, “But shouldn’t we also quit marketing murder as a game?”

And Donald Trump weighed in, tweeting, “Video game violence & glorification must be stopped — it is creating monsters!”

There have been unconfirmed media reports that 20-year-old Newtown shooter Adam Lanza enjoyed a range of video games, from the bloody “Call of Duty” series to the innocuous “Dance Dance Revolution.” But the same could be said for about 80 percent of Americans in Lanza’s age group, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Law enforcement officials haven’t made any connection between Lanza’s possible motives and his interest in games.

The video game industry has been mostly silent since Friday’s attack, in which 20 children and six adults were killed. The Entertainment Software Association, which represents game publishers in Washington, has yet to respond to politicians’ criticisms. Hal Halpin, president of the nonprofit Entertainment Consumers Association, said, “I’d simply and respectfully point to the lack of evidence to support any causal link.”

It’s unlikely that lawmakers will pursue legislation to regulate the sales of video games; such efforts were rejected again and again in a series of court cases over the last decade. Indeed, the industry seemed to have moved beyond the entire issue last year, when the Supreme Court revoked a California law criminalizing the sale of violent games to minors.

The Supreme Court decision focused on First Amendment concerns; in the majority opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that games “are as much entitled to the protection of free speech as the best of literature.” Scalia also agreed with the ESA’s argument that researchers haven’t established a link between media violence and real-life violence. “Psychological studies purporting to show a connection between exposure to violent video games and harmful effects on children do not prove that such exposure causes minors to act aggressively,” Scalia wrote.

Still, that doesn’t make games impervious to criticism, or even some soul-searching within the gaming community. At this year’s E3 — the Electronic Entertainment Expo, the industry’s largest U.S. gathering — some attendees were stunned by the intensity of violence on display. A demo for Sony’s “The Last of Us” ended with a villain taking a shotgun blast to the face. A scene from Ubisoft’s “Splinter Cell: Blacklist” showed the hero torturing an enemy. A trailer for Square Enix’s “Hitman: Absolution” showed the protagonist slaughtering a team of lingerie-clad assassins disguised as nuns.

“The ultraviolence has to stop,” designer Warren Spector told the GamesIndustry website after E3. “I do believe that we are fetishizing violence, and now in some cases actually combining it with an adolescent approach to sexuality. I just think it’s in bad taste. Ultimately I think it will cause us trouble.”

“The violence of these games can be off-putting,” Brian Crecente, news editor for the gaming website Polygon, said Monday. “The video-game industry is wrestling with the same issues as movies and TV. There’s this tension between violent games that sell really well and games like ‘Journey,’ a beautiful, artistic creation that was well received by critics but didn’t sell much.”

During November, typically the peak month for pre-holiday game releases, the two best sellers were the military shooters “Call of Duty: Black Ops II,” from Activision, and “Halo 4,” from Microsoft. But even with the dominance of the genre, Crecente said, “There has been a feeling that some of the sameness of war games is grating on people.”

Critic John Peter Grant said, “I’ve also sensed a growing degree of fatigue with ultra-violent games, but not necessarily because of the violence per se.”

The problem, Grant said, “is that violence as a mechanic gets old really fast. Games are amazing possibility spaces! And if the chief way I can interact with them is by destroying and killing? That seems like such a waste of potential.”

There are some hints of a sneaking self-awareness creeping into the gaming community. One gamer — Antwand Pearman, editor of the website GamerFitNation — has called for other players to join in a “Day of Cease-Fire for Online Shooters” this Friday, one week after the massacre.

“We are simply making a statement,” Pearman said, “that we as gamers are not going to sit back and ignore the lives that were lost.”

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Penn State voted AP sports story of year again

NEW YORK (AP) — The Penn State child sex abuse scandal was selected as the sports story of the year by U.S. editors and news directors in an annual vote conducted by The Associated Press.

The news broke in November 2011, with a grand jury report outlining charges against Jerry Sandusky, and the outrage that followed led to the firing of Hall of Fame coach Joe Paterno. But the aftershocks were felt long into 2012: Sandusky was convicted in June of assaulting 10 boys, and the NCAA handed down brutal sanctions in July.

In both years, the scandal was picked as the top sports story, the first time since the AP began conducting its annual vote in 1990 that the same story was selected twice in a row. The results of this year's tally were announced Wednesday.

Even before the Sandusky trial, the State College community had absorbed another huge blow as Paterno died Jan. 22 at age 85 of lung cancer.

The year ended with a small step to normalcy — joy on the football field. Under new coach Bill O'Brien, the Nittany Lions won eight of their last 10 games to finish 8-4, capped by an overtime victory at home over Wisconsin.

There were 157 ballots submitted from U.S. news organizations. The voters were asked to rank the top 10 sports stories of the year, with the first-place story getting 10 points, the second-place story receiving nine points, and so on.

The Penn State saga received 1,420 points and 109 first-place votes. The No. 2 sports story, Lance Armstrong stripped of his seven Tour de France titles, had 10 first-place votes and 1,008 points.

Football's popularity, college and pro, was unmistakable with seven of the top 10 stories. But only two of them involved the action on the field.

Here are 2012's top 10 stories:

1. PENN STATE: Sandusky, the former defensive coordinator whose crimes led to such devastation for his victims and for his former employer, was found guilty on 45 of 48 counts. In October, the 68-year-old was sentenced to 30 to 60 years in prison. His conviction provided some closure, but a messy aftermath remained. Former FBI Director Louis Freeh released the results of his investigation July 12, saying Paterno and other top school officials covered up allegations against Sandusky. The NCAA used that report as a basis for its sanctions announced later that month, which included a $60 million fine, a four-year bowl ban and scholarship reductions.

2. LANCE ARMSTRONG: In February, federal prosecutors closed an investigation into whether the star cyclist doped. That turned out to be only a temporary reprieve for a once-revered figure. In June, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency accused him of using performance-enhancing drugs, and in August, when he dropped his fight against the charges, USADA ordered his record seven Tour titles wiped out. A report released in October laid out vivid details of the evidence. The year ends with Armstrong dropped by many of the companies he endorsed and no longer formally involved with the cancer charity he founded, Livestrong.

3. NFL BOUNTIES: This much is clear: Saints coach Sean Payton was suspended for the entire season and New Orleans started 0-4 to quickly fall out of playoff contention. Much else about the bounty scandal remains in dispute. Players deny the NFL's assertions of a pay-for-injury program. On Dec. 11, former Commissioner Paul Tagliabue overturned his successor's suspensions of four players but endorsed the findings of the investigation under Roger Goodell.

4. FOOTBALL CONCUSSIONS: The deaths of NFL greats Alex Karras — who suffered from dementia — and Junior Seau — who committed suicide — were grim reminders of the angst over head injuries in the sport and their possible consequences. Thousands of retired players have sued the league, alleging the NFL failed to protect them from the dangers of concussions.

5. LONDON OLYMPICS: Michael Phelps retired from swimming after setting an Olympic record with his 22nd medal at a Summer Games bursting with memorable performances. Usain Bolt became the first man to successfully defend both the 100- and 200-meter dash titles. And the host country racked up 65 medals in an Olympics so successful for Britain that it barely even rained.

6. COLLEGE FOOTBALL PLAYOFFS: Instead of complaining about the BCS, soon we can moan about the selection committee. After years of carping, fans finally got a playoff system, which will debut after the 2014 season. The four-team bracket will feature semifinals and a title game to determine a national champion.

7. REPLACEMENT OFFICIALS: Fans and pundits predicted a blown call would decide a critical game when the NFL started the season with replacement officials. Sure enough, in Week 3, on the national stage of "Monday Night Football," a missed offensive pass interference penalty and a questionable touchdown catch handed the Seattle Seahawks a win over the Green Bay Packers. Two days later, the league resolved its labor dispute with the regular refs.

8. SUPER GIANTS: A team that had been 7-7 upset the top-seeded Green Bay Packers on the road in the playoffs, needed overtime to beat the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC title game, then came from behind to defeat the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl, 21-17, an outcome strangely similar to their matchup four years earlier. Eli Manning won his second Super Bowl MVP award.

9. SUMMITT RETIRES: Pat Summitt, the winningest coach in NCAA basketball history, retired from the Tennessee bench in April at age 59, less than eight months after revealing she had early-onset dementia. Longtime assistant Holly Warlick took over the Lady Vols. Summitt was 1,098-208 with eight national titles in 38 seasons.

10. MANNING'S RESURGENCE: Peyton Manning was released from the Indianapolis Colts in March after missing last season because of neck surgery, the future uncertain for the four-time MVP. John Elway and the Broncos gambled that he still had some championship play left in that right arm, and so far it's looking like a brilliant move as Denver won the AFC West.

___

AP Projects Editor Brooke Lansdale contributed to this report.

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Global Update: African Children Still at Risk of Pneumonia Despite Ceramic Stoves

Small ceramic indoor stoves, such as those sold by women in AIDS self-help groups in Africa, do save fuel and cut down on eye-irritating smoke, a new study has found — but they do not save children from pneumonia.

The study, published in The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, compared 168 households in rural Kenya that used either “upesi jiko” stoves or traditional three-stone indoor fires. The former — the name means “quick stove” in Swahili — has a locally made ceramic firebox that sells for $3. Clay and mud must be built up around it to insulate it and support the pot.

Since it uses less wood, it saves local forests. But it has no chimney, so the smoke stays indoors.

Biweekly visits by researchers found that children in both the stove and open-fire homes got pneumonia equally often. Pneumonia is a leading cause of death for infants in poor countries, and a 2008 study showed that the fine particles and toxic gases in cooking smoke inflame their lungs, doubling the pneumonia risk.

Two years ago, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton committed $50 million in American aid to help the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves get 100 million efficient stoves into households by 2020. But experts are still divided over which stove to pursue; chimneys do not solve all the problems, and stoves with fans burn more cleanly but are expensive and fragile.

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Richard Engel of NBC Is Freed in Syria

Richard Engel, the chief foreign correspondent for NBC News, and three of his crew members were freed on Monday after five days in captivity in Syria, the news organization said on Tuesday.

The journalists were unharmed. The news organization released a short statement that said, “We are pleased to report they are safely out of the country.”

The identities of the kidnappers and their motives were unknown. But an article on the NBC News Web site quotes Mr. Engel as saying their captors “were talking openly about their loyalty to the government” of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Their kidnapping once again highlights the perils of reporting from Syria, which is said by the Committee to Protect Journalists to be “the world’s most dangerous place for the press.”

NBC declined to specify the number of crew members that were with Mr. Engel. Two of the crew members, John Kooistra and Ghazi Balkiz, appeared with Mr. Engel on NBC’s “Today” show on Tuesday morning. A third, Aziz Akyavas, spoke at a news conference in Turkey. Mr. Akyavas said in an interview on the Turkish television channel NTV that a technician who traveled with the crew was still missing. NBC did not respond to a request for comment about that report.

Mr. Engel and the crew members covertly entered Syria several times this year to report on the insurgency that is fighting Mr. Assad there. Mr. Engel was last seen on television last Thursday in a taped report from Aleppo, Syria’s commercial capital, where he reported that “the Syrian regime appears to be cracking, but the rebels remain outgunned.”

In order to transmit their report in safety, Mr. Engel and his crew apparently crossed the border into Turkey. Their effort to cross back into the country on Thursday led to their capture.

About 15 men, Mr. Engel said on the “Today” show, “just literally jumped out of the trees and bushes” and “dragged us out of the car.” The kidnappers killed one of the rebels whom the crew had been traveling with, he said.

NBC’s Web site said there was “no claim of responsibility, no contact with the captors and no request for ransom during the time the crew was missing.”

Mr. Engel said on “Today” that the kidnappers had a plan to exchange the crew for several people being held by Syrian rebels. “We were told that they wanted to exchange us for four Iranian agents and two Lebanese people who are from the Amal movement,” he said.

But the crew members were freed when the captors “ran into a checkpoint manned by members of the Ahrar al-Sham brigade, a Syrian rebel group,” NBC’s Web site reported. “There was a confrontation and a firefight ensued. Two of the captors were killed, while an unknown number of others escaped.” The rebels then helped escort the crew to the border with Turkey.

“We are very happy to be back in Turkey,” Mr. Engel said, speaking in front of cameras at Cilvegozu border gate in southern Turkey. He added, “The last five days are the days that we want to forget.”

NBC tried to keep the crew’s disappearance a secret for several days while it sought to ascertain their whereabouts. Its television competitors and many other major news organizations, including The New York Times, refrained from reporting on the situation, in part out of concern that any reporting could worsen the danger for the crew. News outlets similarly refrained from publishing reports about a 2008 kidnapping in Afghanistan of David Rohde of The New York Times and a local reporter, Tahir Ludin. The two reporters escaped in June 2009 after seven months in captivity.

In the case of Mr. Engel, some Web sites reported speculation about his disappearance on Monday. NBC declined to comment until the crew members were safely out of Syria on Tuesday.

While none of the crew members suffered any physical injuries, there was “psychological pressure,” Mr. Akyavas told NTV. He said they were blindfolded, handcuffed, and “every now and then had guns pointed on our heads. It was not pleasant.”

In his comments on “Today” Mr. Engel said: “They made us choose which one of us would be shot first, and when we refused there were mock shootings. They pretended to shoot Ghazi several times.”

The crew members were also filmed for a video that showed them being held in a small, nondescript room.

Mr. Engel is perhaps the best-known foreign-based correspondent on television in the United States. Hop-scotching from Iraq to Afghanistan to Egypt and other countries in recent years, he has had more airtime than any other such correspondent at NBC, ABC or CBS. Thus the news of his kidnapping and safe release is likely to generate widespread interest from viewers.

Mr. Engel has worked for NBC since May 2003, two months into the Iraq war. He was promoted to chief foreign correspondent in 2008. At the time, the NBC News president Steve Capus said, “There aren’t enough superlatives to describe the work that Richard has done in some of the most dangerous places on earth for NBC News. His reporting, his expertise on the situation in the Middle East, his professionalism and his commitment to telling the story of what is happening there is unparalleled.”

The “NBC Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams has been among Mr. Engel’s most ardent fans. Without alluding to his disappearance, Mr. Williams brought up Mr. Engel while being interviewed onstage at a charity fund-raiser in New Jersey on Sunday night. “What I know about Richard Engel is, he’s fearless, but he’s not crazy,” Mr. Williams said. When Mr. Engel’s name came up, there was spontaneous applause from the crowd.

Brian Stelter reported from New York and Sebnem Arsu from Istanbul. Bill Carter contributed reporting from New York.

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A&M's Johnny Football is AP's Player of the Year

Johnny Manziel ran for almost 1,700 yards and 30 touchdowns as a dual-threat quarterback his senior year of high school at Kerrville Tivy.

Who would have thought he'd be even more impressive at Texas A&M when pitted against the defenses of the Southeastern Conference?

On Tuesday, Manziel picked up another major award for his spectacular debut season. He was voted The Associated Press Player of the Year. As with the Heisman Trophy and Davey O'Brien Award that Manziel already won, the QB nicknamed Johnny Football is the first freshman to collect the AP award.

Manziel's 31 votes were more than twice that of second place finisher Manti Te'o, Notre Dame's start linebacker. He is the third straight Heisman-winning quarterback to receive the honor, following Robert Griffin III and Cam Newton.

Manziel erased initial doubts about his ability when he ran for 60 yards and a score in his first game against Florida.

"I knew I could run the ball, I did it a lot in high school," Manziel said in an interview with the AP. "It is just something that you don't get a chance to see in the spring. Quarterbacks aren't live in the spring. You don't get to tackle. You don't get to evade some of the sacks that you would in normal game situations. So I feel like when I was able to avoid getting tackled, it opened some people's eyes a little bit more."

The 6-foot-1 Manziel threw for 3,419 yards and 24 touchdowns and ran for 1,181 yards and 19 more scores to help the Aggies win 10 games for the first time since 1998 — and in their inaugural SEC year, too.

Ryan Tannehill, Manziel's predecessor now with the Dolphins after being drafted eighth overall this season, saw promise from the young quarterback last year when he was redshirted. But even he is surprised at how quickly things came together for Manziel.

"It's pretty wild. I always thought he had that playmaking ability, that something special where if somebody came free, he can make something exciting happen," Tannehill said. "I wasn't really sure if, I don't think anyone was sure if he was going to be able to carry that throughout an SEC season, and he's shocked the world and he did it."

After Manziel sat out as a redshirt in 2011, Texas A&M's scheduled season-opener against Louisiana Tech this year was postponed because of Hurricane Isaac. That left him to get his first taste of live defense in almost two years against Florida.

He responded well, helping the Aggies race to a 17-7 lead early using both his arm and his feet. The Gators shut down Manziel and A&M's offense in the second half and Texas A&M lost 20-17.

But Manziel's performance was enough for Texas A&M's coaching staff to realize that his scrambling ability was going to be a big part of what the Aggies could do this season.

"The first half really showed that I was a little bit more mobile than we had seen throughout the spring," Manziel said. "Me and (then-offensive coordinator) Kliff Kingsbury sat down and really said: 'Hey we can do some things with my feet as well as throwing the ball.' And it added a little bit of a new dimension."

Manziel knew that the biggest adjustment from playing in high school to college would be the speed of the game. Exactly how quick players in the SEC were was still a jolt to the quarterback.

"The whole first drive I was just seeing how fast they really flew to the ball and I felt like they just moved a whole lot faster," he said of the Florida game. "It was different than what I was used to, different than what I was used to in high school. So it was just having to learn quick and adjust on the fly."

He did just that and started piling up highlight reel material by deftly avoiding would-be tacklers to help the Aggies run off five consecutive wins after that.

His storybook ride hit a roadblock when he threw a season-high three interceptions in a 24-19 loss to LSU. But Manziel used it as a learning experience, taking to heart some advice he received from Kingsbury.

"He just told me to have a plan every time, before every snap," Manziel said. "Make sure you have a plan on what you want to do and where you want to go with the ball."

"I feel like as the year went on, I just learned the offense more and knew exactly where I wanted to go, instead of maybe evading the blitz and just taking off running for the first down instead of hitting a hot route or throwing it underneath to an open guy and doing things a lot simpler and cleaner."

The Aggies and Manziel rebounded from the loss to LSU by winning their last five games, highlighted by their stunning 29-24 upset of top-ranked Alabama on Nov. 10.

By the time Manziel wrapped up a 253-yard passing and 92-yard rushing performance to lead Texas A&M to the victory in Tuscaloosa, you could hardly call him a freshman anymore.

"You keep growing and growing every week," he said. "By the time I played Alabama I had a much better grasp of the game than I did in the first one."

The 4,600 yards of total offense Manziel gained in 12 games broke the SEC record for total yards in a season. The record was previously held by 2010 Heisman winner Newton, who needed 14 games to pile up 4,327 yards. The output also made him the first freshman, first player in the SEC and fifth player overall to throw for 3,000 yards and run for 1,000 in a season.

Manziel, who turned 20 two days before taking home the Heisman, has been so busy he hasn't had a second to step back and digest the historical significance of his accomplishments this season.

He's far more concerned with helping the Aggies extend their winning streak to six games with a win over Oklahoma on Jan. 4 in the Cotton Bowl.

"I think it will happen after the bowl game and after the season is completely over," he said. "I'm just ready for it to die down a little bit and get back into a practice routine where we get better and hopefully do what we want to do in the bowl game."

He'll have to do it without his mentor Kingsbury, who left A&M last week to become coach at Texas Tech, where he starred at quarterback not that long ago. Manziel said is happy Kingsbury got to return to his alma matter, but is still adjusting to the idea of playing without him.

"I'm the happiest guy on the face of the earth for him," Manziel said, speaking from California where he appeared on the "Tonight Show" Monday evening. "I think he deserves it with how hard he's worked this year to get us where we were. It's bittersweet though, because I'd like him to be here for the entire time that I'm here."

Manziel is eager to get back on the field for the Cotton Bowl and is focused on helping the offense pick up where it left off in the regular-season finale.

"Even though Kliff Kingsbury's not here anymore, we just need to continue to get better and do what we do," Manziel said. "Push tempo, go fast and be the high-flying offense that we have been all year."

_____

AP Sports Writer Steven Wine contributed to this story from Miami.

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Mind: A Misguided Focus on Mental Illness in Gun Control Debate

The gunman, Adam Lanza, 20, has been described as a loner who was intelligent and socially awkward. And while no official diagnosis has been made public, armchair diagnosticians have been quick to assert that keeping guns from getting into the hands of people with mental illness would help solve the problem of gun homicides.

Arguing against stricter gun-control measures, Representative Mike Rogers, Republican of Michigan and a former F.B.I. agent, said, “What the more realistic discussion is, ‘How do we target people with mental illness who use firearms?’ ”

Robert A. Levy, chairman of the Cato Institute, told The New York Times: “To reduce the risk of multivictim violence, we would be better advised to focus on early detection and treatment of mental illness.”

But there is overwhelming epidemiological evidence that the vast majority of people with psychiatric disorders do not commit violent acts. Only about 4 percent of violence in the United States can be attributed to people with mental illness.

This does not mean that mental illness is not a risk factor for violence. It is, but the risk is actually small. Only certain serious psychiatric illnesses are linked to an increased risk of violence.

One of the largest studies, the National Institute of Mental Health’s Epidemiologic Catchment Area study, which followed nearly 18,000 subjects, found that the lifetime prevalence of violence among people with serious mental illness — like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder — was 16 percent, compared with 7 percent among people without any mental disorder. Anxiety disorders, in contrast, do not seem to increase the risk at all.

Alcohol and drug abuse are far more likely to result in violent behavior than mental illness by itself. In the National Institute of Mental Health’s E.C.A. study, for example, people with no mental disorder who abused alcohol or drugs were nearly seven times as likely as those without substance abuse to commit violent acts.

It’s possible that preventing people with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and other serious mental illnesses from getting guns might decrease the risk of mass killings. Even the Supreme Court, which in 2008 strongly affirmed a broad right to bear arms, at the same time endorsed prohibitions on gun ownership “by felons and the mentally ill.”

But mass killings are very rare events, and because people with mental illness contribute so little to overall violence, these measures would have little impact on everyday firearm-related killings. Consider that between 2001 and 2010, there were nearly 120,000 gun-related homicides, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. Few were perpetrated by people with mental illness.

Perhaps more significant, we are not very good at predicting who is likely to be dangerous in the future. According to Dr. Michael Stone, professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia and an expert on mass murderers, “Most of these killers are young men who are not floridly psychotic. They tend to be paranoid loners who hold a grudge and are full of rage.”

Even though we know from large-scale epidemiologic studies like the E.C.A. study that a young psychotic male who is intoxicated with alcohol and has a history of involuntary commitment is at a high risk of violence, most individuals who fit this profile are harmless.

Jeffery Swanson, a professor of psychiatry at Duke University and a leading expert in the epidemiology of violence, said in an e-mail, “Can we reliably predict violence?  ‘No’ is the short answer. Psychiatrists, using clinical judgment, are not much better than chance at predicting which individual patients will do something violent and which will not.”

It would be even harder to predict a mass shooting, Dr. Swanson said, “You can profile the perpetrators after the fact and you’ll get a description of troubled young men, which also matches the description of thousands of other troubled young men who would never do something like this.”

Even if clinicians could predict violence perfectly, keeping guns from people with mental illness is easier said than done. Nearly five years after Congress enacted the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, only about half of the states have submitted more than a tiny proportion of their mental health records.

How effective are laws that prohibit people with mental illness from obtaining guns? According to Dr. Swanson’s recent research, these measures may prevent some violent crime. But, he added, “there are a lot of people who are undeterred by these laws.”

Adam Lanza was prohibited from purchasing a gun, because he was too young. Yet he managed to get his hands on guns — his mother’s — anyway. If we really want to stop young men like him from becoming mass murderers, and prevent the small amount of violence attributable to mental illness, we should invest our resources in better screening for, and treatment of, psychiatric illness in young people.

All the focus on the small number of people with mental illness who are violent serves to make us feel safer by displacing and limiting the threat of violence to a small, well-defined group. But the sad and frightening truth is that the vast majority of homicides are carried out by outwardly normal people in the grip of all too ordinary human aggression to whom we provide nearly unfettered access to deadly force.

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Advertising: Finding a Documentary Audience, for a Cause

DOCUMENTARY films are notoriously difficult to finance, with filmmakers often spending more time scrounging up money to make a film than actually producing it. Unlike big Hollywood films, where having the presence of a marquee name can attract dollars, documentary filmmakers often must try to explain how a niche idea can succeed at the box office.

The director and backers of “Girl Rising,” a documentary that is a cornerstone of a media campaign about educating girls around the world, hope to change that. To promote the new film, and demonstrate the impact that documentaries can have on audiences, they will rely on technologies often used by more traditional advertisers, including personalized ads for employees of companies viewing them online.

“If what you are after is engagement and connection to a cause,” said Richard E. Robbins, the director, “how you use the tools that are available to you is very different than if you are trying to market ‘Batman.’ ”

Money donated by consumers seeing the film will be funneled to a nonprofit group, 10x10, which will then distribute the funds to various nonprofits helping to educate girls.

Many documentary filmmakers have trouble quantifying the social and financial impact their films can have, Mr. Robbins said. And many are confronted with “a dearth of evidence to support the idea that documentary films affect change.”

But using highly targeted advertising can help filmmakers learn who is donating, how much they are donating, how much interest there is in a film and whether there is enough interest to warrant a screening in a city, he said. Having that information might also help persuade future investors to support documentaries connected to causes.

“Girl Rising,” which will be released in March, is being financed in part by 10x10, which supports educating girls around the world through film and social media advocacy.

Ads promoting “Girl Rising” will be shown to employees of 57 companies that the filmmakers selected in hopes they will support efforts to educate girls in developing countries. Those companies include Apple, Bank of America, Oracle, Goldman Sachs, Wal-Mart, Disney and Procter & Gamble.

“Those companies are deeply invested in vibrant economies overseas, healthy supply chains, diversity, attracting and retaining and identifying new employees, skilled employees,” said Holly Gordon, executive director at 10x10. “We thought that they would be advocates for these issues of gender diversity and global education.”

Employees at the companies will see ads on their computers at work, customized to use the company name. For example, an Oracle employee will see an ad that says “Oracle employees can change the world,” with a link to see a trailer for the film and donate to the cause.

A group of former ABC News journalists, known as the Documentary Group, and Vulcan Productions announced the creation of 10x10 and its media campaign at the United Nation’s first International Day of the Girl in October. Additional funds for organization came from Intel, the Ford Foundation, Google, the Nike Foundation, the Skoll Foundation and the Fledgling Fund.

“Girl Rising,” the first film backed by the group, features stories inspired by nine girls in countries like Haiti, Nepal, Sierra Leone, Uganda and Afghanistan. Some of the segments are narrated by celebrities like Meryl Streep, Selena Gomez and Kerry Washington.

Well-known writers from each of the countries, including Mona Eltahawy, an Egyptian-American author, and Edwidge Danticat of Haiti helped to write the stories of each of the girls to whom they were paired. Each story will be presented differently; some will be animated while others will be live action.

Chris Golec, the chief executive of Demandbase, the company behind the ads, said technology that aimed at the Internet addresses at the companies would be used to find the right users for each ad.

“Targeting people at work is four times more likely to drive engagement than somebody coming from a residential I.P. address,” said Mr. Golec, referring to the Internet addresses of home viewers. “If you personalize the ad with the company name that they work for you get a three times higher click through rate on the ad.”

Using such digital advertising also helps the filmmakers and producers in another way, said Mr. Robbins. “It’s infinitely more trackable, there’s so much more data,” he said. “We can measure conversion rates, who our audience is — its not just anonymous people buying tickets.”

Distribution of “Girl Rising” will be in phases, beginning in January at the Sundance Film Festival, where one chapter will be shown. It will make its official debut in March for International Women’s Day at an event in New York City, and with a smaller event in Los Angeles. CNN will show the film in June as part of the network’s new film division.

Organizers are also using technology to get viewers to book a screening of the film in the city of their choice. Supporters of 10x10 will receive an e-mail asking them to go to a Web site, Gathr.us, which will keep track of the number of screening requests from various cities.

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North Korean Satellite Most Likely Dead, Astronomers Say

The North Korean satellite launched into space last week is out of control and most likely dead, astronomers reported Monday. The apparent failure will not cause the spacecraft to fall quickly back to earth but represents a major setback in Pyongyang’s bid to portray the launching as a patriotic and technological success.

“It’s tumbling and we haven’t picked up any transmissions,” said Jonathan McDowell, a Harvard astronomer who tracks global rocket launchings and space activity. “Those two things are most consistent with the satellite being entirely inactive at this point.”

North Korea’s state-run press, which was preoccupied on Monday with reporting on the somber one-year anniversary of the death of Kim Jong-il, the longtime leader, said nothing about the satellite’s dysfunction. It has been describing the satellite launch as a triumphal achievement of Mr. Kim’s successor, his son Kim Jong-un, done in the face of worldwide criticism and United Nations sanctions on the North’s ballistic missile program.

The satellite, said to be about the size of a washing machine, reportedly carries an onboard camera to observe the earth. That mission requires the spacecraft’s orbit to be rock-steady.

Dr. McDowell said the tumbling implies that onboard systems meant to control and stabilize the craft had failed.

He added that radio astronomers had picked up no signals from the satellite and that optical astronomers had observed it brightening and dimming as it slowly tumbled end over end.

“It’s clear that the rocket part of this mission worked very well for the North Koreans,” Dr. McDowell said in an interview. “They ended up in the right orbit. But the preponderance of the evidence suggests that the satellite failed either during the ascent or shortly afterwards.”

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49ers withstand comeback, top Patriots 41-34

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. (AP) — LaMichael James awaited the kickoff, determined to regain the momentum for the 49ers after they quickly lost all of a 28-point lead.

"We need a boost," he said. "That's what I was thinking. I was thinking I got to take it to the house."

He didn't get all the way there, but close enough to set up the decisive touchdown — going 62 yards before Colin Kaepernick's 38-yard pass to Michael Crabtree with 6:25 left — that helped San Francisco reach the playoffs with a 41-34 win over the New England Patriots on Sunday night.

"We faced adversity," James said. "Nobody flinched."

Now the 49ers have at least a wild-card berth with a 10-3-1 record, knowing a win against division rival Seattle (9-5) next Sunday clinches the AFC West title.

The Patriots (10-4) already had locked up first place in the AFC East with a chance to improve their chances for a first-round bye. They began the day in second place in the race for the two byes but fell behind the Denver Broncos (11-3). The Houston Texans (12-2) hold the top spot.

"We haven't thought about that yet," Tom Brady said. "What's in our control is winning football games."

Doing that on Sunday night seemed almost impossible after the 49ers rolled to a 31-3 lead on Kaepernick's 27-yard touchdown pass to Crabtree five minutes into the third quarter. Only one team in NFL history had won a regular-season game after trailing by 28 — a 38-35 win by the 49ers over the New Orleans Saints on Dec. 7, 1980.

But with 25 minutes left and Brady at quarterback, the 49ers weren't comfortable.

"Tom is a good quarterback and we knew some adversity was going to come and they were going to make plays sooner or later," linebacker NaVorro Bowman said.

They did — time after time — until they had tied the score at 31 on Danny Woodhead's second touchdown, a 1-yard run with 6:43 remaining.

Woodhead began the comeback with a 6-yard touchdown run, Brady scored on a 1-yard sneak on the first play of the fourth quarter and then threw a 5-yard touchdown pass to Aaron Hernandez less than three minutes later. And when Woodhead scored again, the Patriots had their fourth touchdown in 14 minutes, 16 seconds.

But two plays later — James' kickoff return and Crabtree's catch — the 49ers were back on top. And this time they stayed there.

David Akers made it 41-31 with a 28-yard field goal with 1:56 to go, Stephen Gostkowski kicked a 41-yarder for New England with 38 seconds remaining and San Francisco sealed the win when Delanie Walker caught the onside kick.

"We just spotted them 28 points," Brady said. "We fought hard, but you can't play poorly against a good team and expect to win. We can't miss plays that we have opportunities with."

For Kaepernick, a second-year pro starting just his fifth game, it was a chance to remain calm even as the big lead disappeared. He finished with 14 completions in 25 attempts for 216 yards and a career-high four touchdowns.

"This is my 17th year of football," he said. "I've been playing since I was eight years old. So, to me, I am going to go out there and I'm going to throw to the guy who is open and you try to keep football simple so your mind can be clear when you're on the field."

It was clear enough for him to throw a short pass to Crabtree then watch him race by cornerback Kyle Arrington for the go-ahead touchdown. That gave the team that had allowed the fewest points this season enough to beat the team that had scored the most.

"We can win a shootout," said Crabtree, who had 107 yards receiving. "Whatever it takes, that's our motto. ... We feel like we can do anything, sky's the limit."

New England, which had won seven straight games, lost for the first time at home in December in 21 games. The Patriots also had won 21 in a row in the second half of the schedule before San Francisco somehow regrouped late in a game it seemingly had clinched long before.

The 49ers forced four turnovers, matching the number of giveaways the Patriots had at home all season.

"I don't think they faced a physical defense like us all season," said San Francisco cornerback Carlos Rogers, who intercepted Brady midway through the first quarter and ran 53 yards to the Patriots 5.

The 49ers were leading 7-0 at the time on Kaepernick's 24-yard touchdown pass to former Patriot Randy Moss. Gostkowski's 32-yard field goal made it 7-3, but San Francisco scored on Kaepernick's 34-yard pass to Walker and David Akers' 20-yard field goal for a 17-3 lead at intermission.

"Everything" went wrong in the first half, Patriots wide receiver Wes Welker said. "A lot of bad football."

Frank Gore then recovered Kaepernick's fumble and ran 9 yards for a touchdown. Two plays later, Aldon Smith intercepted Brady's pass and Kaepernick struck on the next play with his 27-yard pass to Crabtree for a 31-3 lead with 10:21 remaining in the third quarter.

Still plenty of time for Brady.

"I had a feeling we'd be able to come back," he said.

But when the Patriots tied it, a poor job by the kickoff team proved costly.

"I did as much as I could to help the team win," James said.

It was just enough.

NOTES: The 49ers allowed 520 yards after entering the game second in the NFL in fewest yards allowed, 275.5 per game. ... Welker had five catches, giving him 100 and making him the first player in NFL history with that many in five seasons. ... Gore led all rushers with 83 yards on 21 carries. ... Brady was 36 for a career-high 65 for 443 yards, one touchdown and two interceptions.

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