The Lede Blog: Clashes in Cairo After Morsi Supporters Attack Palace Sit-In

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Video, said to show a Morsi supporter firing a shotgun in the direction of protesters in Cairo on Wednesday night, was posted on YouTube by the Mosireen film collective.

Last Updated, 6:55 p.m. Street battles erupted in Cairo on Wednesday night, after Islamist supporters of President Mohamed Morsi attacked protesters camped outside the gates of the presidential palace, according to journalists and activists who witnessed the raid.

Morsi supporters reportedly attempted to stifle coverage by attacking journalists and bloggers, but activists from the Mosireen film collective managed to record video of tents being ripped down, which was quickly posted on YouTube.

Raw footage of an attack on a sit-in outside the presidential palace in Cairo on Wednesday posted on YouTube by Mosireen, a collective of activist filmmakers.

Egypt’s ON TV, which posted a live stream of the scene outside the palace on YouTube, also broadcast video of the president’s supporters clearing the sit-in and putting up barriers to block the return of protesters to the area.

Video from Egypt’s ON TV showed Islamists driving away protesters camped outside the presidential palace in Cairo on Wednesday

Activists and journalists posted images on Twitter showing the president’s supporters dispersing the sit-in and taking control of the area outside the palace, with the apparent acquiescence of the police.

The attack on the sit-in came one day after tens of thousands of protesters rallied outside the gates of the palace to protest the president’s decree granting himself unchecked power to help push through a new constitution written by Islamists.

Before the attack, a message posted on the Muslim Brotherhood’s official @Ikhwanweb Twitter account called for a million-man counter-demonstration at the same location.

As several journalists noted, the Morsi supporters cleared the sit-in just as the vice president told reporters that the crisis could be resolved by allowing a referendum on the draft constitution to proceed and then passing amendments to the document after a new Parliament convenes.

While Muslim Brotherhood officials denied that they were responsible for the violence, claiming that “both sides” engaged in attacks, opposition activists blamed the Islamist president for the escalation and compared the use of force by civilian supporters of the Islamist movement to the tactics of the Mubarak regime and the way Iran’s government deploys members of the Basij militia to attack protesters there.

After the Morsi supporters cleared the small number of protesters who had camped outside the palace walls following Tuesday night’s protest, they moved on to erasing graffiti left by the revolutionaries, including a portrait of Jika Gaber, a young man who was killed at the start of the protests against the president’s decree.

As opposition protesters rallied nearby in response to the attack, activists reported that the president’s supporters remained on the offensive. Video streamed live from the scene to the video-sharing site Bambuser by the activist blogger Tarek Shalaby seemed to capture the sound of shots being fired.

Raw footage posted online later by the activist filmmakers from Mosireen appeared to show clear images of one of the Morsi supporters firing a shotgun in the direction of the protesters.

Later, a researcher for the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights reported that Morsi supporters were firing shotgun pellets at the protesters on the other side, and one blogger took cover under a car to avoid being attacked.

After reports of serious casualties accompanied by graphic images began to circulate online, the journalists Sharif Kouddous and Sarah Carr reported on clashes between supporters and opponents of the president from the front line between the two groups.

More footage of the street battle posted online late in the evening by Mosireen appeared to show a police officer firing at protesters from the Morsi supporters’ side of the barricades.

Mosireen video of the street battles on Wednesday night in Cairo.

Late in the evening, the blogger who writes as @Egyptocracy on Twitter drew attention to video that appeared to show a protester who had been captured by the president’s supporters. Refusing to give into the demands of his captors to confess to having been paid to take part in the demonstration, the man shouted instead, “I will voice my opinion.”

After the violence escalated, Brotherhood officials, including Essam el-Erian, a senior leader of the group’s political party, and the young, Islamist bloggers running the official Twitter account tried to blame opposition politicians, and were met with jeers from activists.

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Chiefs players head to Belcher memorial service

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KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Several players for the Kansas City Chiefs attended a memorial service for teammate Jovan Belcher, who killed his girlfriend and then fatally shot himself in the head.


Belcher killed 22-year-old Kasandra Perkins on Saturday at the home they shared in Kansas City with their 3-month-old daughter. He then drove to the Chiefs practice facility at Arrowhead Stadium, where he killed himself in front of team officials, who pleaded with him to put down his gun.


Retired Chiefs Hall of Famer Bobby Bell said after the private hour-long service that general manager Scott Pioli, who witnessed Belcher's suicide, spoke during the service. Bell said an uncle of Belcher also spoke.


The service was held at a church that Belcher and Perkins attended.


Several other Chiefs players declined comment after the service.


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Extended Use of Breast Cancer Drug Suggested

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The widely prescribed drug tamoxifen already plays a major role in reducing the risk of death from breast cancer. But a new study suggests that women should be taking the drug for twice as long as is now customary, a finding that could upend the standard that has been in place for about 15 years.


In the study, patients who continued taking tamoxifen for 10 years were less likely to have the cancer come back or to die from the disease than women who took the drug for only five years, the current standard of care.


“Certainly, the advice to stop in five years should not stand,” said Prof. Richard Peto, a medical statistician at Oxford University and senior author of the study, which was published in The Lancet on Wednesday and presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.


Breast cancer specialists not involved in the study said the results could have the biggest impact on premenopausal women, who account for a fifth to a quarter of new breast cancer cases. Postmenopausal women tend to take different drugs, but some experts said the results suggest that those drugs as well might be taken for a longer duration.


“We’ve been waiting for this result,” said Dr. Robert W. Carlson, a professor of medicine at Stanford University. “I think it is especially practice-changing in premenopausal women because the results do favor a 10-year regimen.”


Dr. Eric P. Winer, chief of women’s cancers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, said that even women who completed their five years of tamoxifen months or years ago might consider starting on the drug again.


Tamoxifen blocks the effect of the hormone estrogen, which fuels tumor growth in estrogen receptor-positive cancers that account for about 65 percent of cases in premenopausal women. Some small studies in the 1990s suggested that there was no benefit to using tamoxifen longer than five years, so that has been the standard.


About 227,000 cases of breast cancer are diagnosed each year in the United States, and an estimated 30,000 of them would be in premenopausal women with ER-positive cancer and prime candidates for tamoxifen. But postmenopausal women also take tamoxifen if they cannot tolerate the alternative drugs, known as aromatase inhibitors.


The new study, known as Atlas, included nearly 7,000 women with ER-positive disease who had completed five years of tamoxifen. They came from about three dozen countries. Half were chosen at random to take the drug another five years, while the others were told to stop.


In the group assigned to take tamoxifen for 10 years, 21.4 percent had a recurrence of breast cancer in the ensuing ten years, meaning the period 5 to 14 years after their diagnoses. The recurrence rate for those who took only five years of tamoxifen was 25.1 percent.


About 12.2 percent of those in the 10-year treatment group died from breast cancer, compared with 15 percent for those in the control group.


There was virtually no difference in death and recurrence between the two groups during the five years of extra tamoxifen. The difference came in later years, suggesting that tamoxifen has a carry-over effect that lasts long after women stop taking it.


Whether these differences are big enough to cause women to take the drug for twice as long remains to be seen.


“The treatment effect is real, but it’s modest,” said Dr. Paul E. Goss, director of breast cancer research at the Massachusetts General Hospital.


Tamoxifen has side effects, including endometrial cancer, blood clots and hot flashes, which cause many women to stop taking the drug. In the Atlas trial, it appears that roughly 40 percent of the patients assigned to take tamoxifen for the additional five years stopped prematurely.


Some 3.1 percent of those taking the extra five years of tamoxifen got endometrial cancer versus 1.6 percent in the control group. However, only 0.6 percent of those in the longer treatment group died from endometrial cancer or pulmonary blood clots, compared with 0.4 percent in the control group.


“Over all, the benefits of extended tamoxifen seemed to outweigh the risks substantially,” Trevor J. Powles of the Cancer Center London, said in a commentary published by The Lancet.


Dr. Judy E. Garber, director of the Center for Cancer Genetics and Prevention at Dana-Farber, said many women have a love-hate relationship with hormone therapies.


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Obama Tells G.O.P. Not to Tie Debt Ceiling to Fiscal Debate

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Doug Mills/The New York Times


President Obama spoke to members of the Business Roundtable in Washington on Wednesday.







WASHINGTON — President Obama warned Republicans on Wednesday not to use the debt ceiling as leverage on spending and tax decisions, saying he refused to engage again in the sort of brinkmanship that brought the country close to default last year and damaged its credit rating.




In a speech to the Business Roundtable, Mr. Obama called that irresponsible. “That is a bad strategy for America, it’s a bad strategy for your businesses and it is not a game that I will play,” he said. “Everybody here is concerned about uncertainty. There’s no uncertainty like the prospect that the United States of America, the largest economy, that holds the world’s reserve currency, potentially defaults on its debts.”


While saying he would not “play that game,” a phrase he repeated, Mr. Obama did not say what he would do in response, but some Democrats have urged him in the past to simply raise the borrowing limit using his own executive authority and let the courts determine if he overstepped his constitutional bounds.


He seemed to embrace a suggestion by John Engler, the Business Roundtable president, to raise the debt ceiling enough to last five years. “John is exactly right when he says that the only thing that the debt ceiling is good for as a weapon is just to destroy your credit rating,” Mr. Obama said.


Mr. Obama was reacting to reports that Republican leadership officials were looking for a fallback in the current debate to avert an end-of-the-year fiscal crisis. Some Republicans foresee accepting Mr. Obama’s call to extend Bush-era tax cuts for the middle class while allowing them to expire for the wealthiest Americans, and then taking up the fight again when the nation’s debt rises to the point that the statutory borrowing limit needs to be raised again, which could be in late January or February.


Republicans view any vote to raise the debt ceiling as a chance to enforce more fiscal discipline on Mr. Obama. Speaker John A. Boehner has said any increase in borrowing capacity should be offset by spending cuts that exceed the increased debt. Mr. Obama has responded by proposing to take away the Congressional power to approve increases in the debt ceiling, but Mr. Boehner said last weekend that “Congress is never going to give up this power.”


Appearing before reporters on Wednesday, Mr. Boehner and other House Republican leaders implored Mr. Obama to sit down with them and begin negotiating in earnest to head off the looming fiscal crisis, but with flattery and aggravation, they made it clear that they were now playing on his turf.


Mr. Boehner and his leadership team did not give an inch on their opposition to raising tax rates on the wealthy or their insistence that any deficit-reduction plan emphasize spending cuts. But the speaker sounded exasperated as he insisted that he had moved toward the president’s position by agreeing to $800 billion in higher tax revenue over 10 years.


“The revenues we’re putting on the table will come from guess who? The rich,” he said, his voice rising. “There are ways to limit deductions, close loopholes and have the same people pay more of their money to the federal government without raising tax rates.”


Representative Peter Roskam of Illinois, a member of the Republican leadership, appealed to Mr. Obama’s own view of himself as a politician able to rise above partisanship, a characterization Republicans have rarely, if ever, agreed with.


“I’ve seen an attribute in President Obama when we served together in the Illinois State Senate, where he was able to rise above donkeys and elephants and transform some very controversial issues in a way that was powerful,” Mr. Roskam said, imploring the president to eschew the politics of the victor and seize “an unbelievable opportunity to be a transformational president, that is to bring the country together.”


The dueling public appearances underscored how far apart the two sides were, at least as a matter of principle. Mr. Obama’s plan calls for $1.6 trillion in new taxes over 10 years, mainly through allowing rates to rise on income above $200,000 a year for individuals or $250,000 for families. He has also revived a year-old plan to trim health care and other mandatory spending by $600 billion over 10 years, but he also wants to spend $50 billion in the short term to help the economy.


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32% of Young People Use Social Media in the Bathroom

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Bielema agrees to leave Wisconsin for Arkansas

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FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. (AP) — Wisconsin coach Bret Bielema is taking his brand of power football to Arkansas.


Bielema has agreed to become the new coach of the Razorbacks, according to a person familiar with the situation that was first reported by Yahoo Sports.


The person, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because the school had not announced the hire, said a news conference was planned for Wednesday. Arkansas athletic director Jeff Long tweeted that an announcement was planned Tuesday evening.


"He's the guy Jeff was after all along," the person said of Long. "It's hard to get these coaches to sit still."


Another person familiar with the situation said Bielema's deal is for six years, paying $3.2 million annually.


Bielema is leaving the Big Ten for the SEC and a Razorbacks program that opened the year with hopes of challenging for a national championship only to get mired in the Bobby Petrino scandal before stumbling to a 4-8 finish.


The move was the second stunning hire this year at Arkansas, which brought in John L. Smith as the interim coach after firing Petrino for hiring his mistress to work in the athletic department.


Bielema seems likely to bring a far different approach than what the Razorbacks have become accustomed to. Arkansas continually ranked among the Southeastern Conference's best passing teams under Petrino while Bielema is known for his dominant offensive lines and slew of running backs.


Wisconsin running back Montee Ball tied Barry Sanders' long-standing single-season record of 39 touchdowns last year, and this year became the all-time FBS leader in touchdowns. He currently has 82 touchdowns after running for three in Saturday's Big Ten title game against Nebraska — a 70-31 romp that secured the Badgers third straight trip to the Rose Bowl, where they will play Stanford on Jan. 1.


Bielema is in his seventh season as Barry Alvarez's hand-picked successor at Wisconsin. He's 68-24 with the Badgers, with four double-digit win seasons, and he coached Wisconsin to a 17-14 win over Arkansas in his first season at the Capital One Bowl.


The 42-year-old Bielema was the defensive coordinator at Wisconsin for two years before being promoted to head coach in 2006. He played for Iowa and started his coaching career there as an assistant under Hayden Fry and later Kirk Ferentz.


The Illinois native takes over a program still reeling following the April scandal, one eager for stability and leadership.


"I'm excited about this decision," Arkansas cornerback Tevin Mitchel tweeted.


The Razorbacks improved their win total in four straight seasons under Petrino, including a 21-5 mark in 2010-11, and finished last season ranked No. 5. They had talked openly in the spring about competing for the school's first SEC championship and perhaps a national title.


Then came the April 1 motorcycle accident that led to Petrino's downfall. The married father of four initially lied about being alone during the wreck, later admitting to riding with his mistress — a former Arkansas volleyball player he had hired to work in the athletic department.


Smith, who had been an assistant the last three seasons at Arkansas under Petrino, was chosen by Long to guide a team that returned first-team All-SEC quarterback Tyler Wilson and a host of other key playmakers. The decision was lauded by the Razorbacks, who welcomed the personable Smith back with open arms.


The season hit the skids with a stunning overtime loss to Louisiana-Monroe on Sept. 8, starting a four-game losing streak that dropped Arkansas out of the rankings. The Razorbacks finished with the school's lowest win total since 2005, missing a bowl game for the first time since 2008.


"It's very difficult for me to believe that is not a bowl-eligible team," LSU coach Les Miles said following the Tigers' win over the Razorbacks in the season finale. "Watching the talent there, (it's) very capable."


Arkansas struggled to find its identity in the SEC after leaving the former Southwest Conference in 1992, but it appeared to have finally found just that under Petrino, who was hired after leaving the Atlanta Falcons during the season in 2007.


The Razorbacks turned into an offensive powerhouse under Petrino, leading the league in scoring and total offense last season. After winning 10 games and reaching the school's first BCS bowl game in 2010, losing to Ohio State, Arkansas won 11 games in 2011, capped by a Cotton Bowl win over Kansas State.


Still, Arkansas has yet to win the SEC, losing in the conference championship game three times.


While the country watched closely to see how Arkansas would react following Petrino's dismissal, Smith made headlines of his own throughout the season. The former Michigan State and Louisville coach filed for bankruptcy during the season, revealing $40.7 million in debt he blamed on bad land deals.


He was under far more fire from Arkansas fans for the mounting losses and it will be up to Bielema to turn things around in the loaded SEC West, with Alabama, LSU and now Texas A&M.


Long said during the season that the new coach would be tasked with building on the recent success at the school, which is looking into expanding the 72,000-seat Razorback Stadium and is currently building an 80,000-square-foot football operations center.


"Our new coach will be an individual who shares the passion for success our fans do, and who is willing to work relentlessly to achieve our goals," Long said following the announcement of Smith's departure.


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European Finance Ministers Deadlock on Plan to Oversee Banks

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BRUSSELS — Finance ministers of the European Union were deadlocked Tuesday over how to create a single banking supervisor for the euro zone, delaying a decision on a new system that is supposed to prevent future financial crises.




The ministers agreed to reconvene next week, a day ahead of a summit meeting of European Union leaders who had been hoping to focus discussion on the design of a banking union — something the leaders agreed last summer to establish as a way to safeguard the industry after member countries racked up enormous debts bailing out their banks.


That agreement in June had called for setting up the single regulator under the European Central Bank. And the bloc’s administrative arm, the European Commission, has proposed phasing in the system beginning Jan. 1.


But the deadlock on Tuesday indicated that there was sharp disagreement among member states over how many banks in the euro currency union should be covered by the new system; how to ensure that countries outside the currency union have a way to rebuff regulations they dislike; and how to ensure that the European Central Bank would keep monetary policy separate from its decisions on bank supervision.


After ministers failed to reach agreement Tuesday during their regular monthly meeting, Vassos Shiarly, the finance minister of Cyprus, the country holding the Union’s rotating presidency, set another session for Dec. 12.


If ministers fail to reach agreement at that meeting, the E.U. leaders will arrive at their summit meeting the following day without a cornerstone in place for the banking union. One of the goals for the union could eventually be to issue debt jointly backed by euro zone countries, as a way to buffer the sort of interest rate spikes that have often bedeviled weaker countries, including Spain.


Some ministers warned on Tuesday that further delays in designing the banking union could lead to a return of acute financial pressures in the euro zone. “If we are not able to deliver in the dates we have committed, this will not be neutral in terms of the stability of the markets,” said Luis de Guindos, the Spanish economy minister.


For Spain, stricter supervision was supposed to be the condition for using European funds to bail out its troubled banks directly and a way to avoid accumulating more sovereign debt. Once the supervisor is in place, Spain wants the money it is drawing upon for its bailout to be moved off its government ledgers.


But France and Germany remained divided over the new banking rules on Tuesday. That is a significant obstacle because agreement between the two countries usually is needed to accomplish major reforms in Europe.


Pierre Moscovici, the French finance minister, told the meeting that the new rules should apply to all lenders rather than lead to a two-tier system.


Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany has suggested that the system could eventually apply to all 6,000 banks in the euro zone. But some German officials and industry groups would rather have the new centralized oversight apply only to the biggest European banks, and leave regulation of the country's smaller savings banks in the hands of national officials.


French officials have stressed the need for a system that covers all euro zone banks. Otherwise, the French have warned, any sudden intervention by the E.C.B. into the affairs of a bank under national regulation could raise alarm among investors and depositors and even lead to bank runs.


But Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister, said Tuesday that trying to give too much central authority to a new banking regulator would meet stiff political opposition in his country.


“I think it would be very difficult to get an approval by the German Parliament if you would leave the supervision for all the German banks to European banking supervision,” Mr. Schäuble told the meeting. “Nobody believes that any European institution will be capable to supervise 6,000 banks in Europe.”


The government in Berlin has complained that overly rapid implementation of the rules could lead to regulatory loopholes. German state governments also have balked at giving the central bank oversight of their sparkassen, the hundreds of small and midsize savings banks that do much of the lending to consumers and small businesses.


Germany also refused to support one of the main British demands: new voting rules to ensure that lenders based in London continue to be regulated by Britain.


Yet another concern for Mr. Schäuble was whether placing so much supervisory power within the European Central Bank could lead the central bank to compromise its decisions on monetary policy — if, for example, the E.C.B. were setting interest rates while also trying to oversee politically sensitive issues like bank bailouts.


“In the long run, you will damage the independence of the central bank,” Mr. Schäuble told the meeting.


Germany is the biggest financial contributor to the European Union, and establishing the single supervisory system could oblige Ms. Merkel to dip into the treasury to help prop up weaker European banks, like many of those in Spain. Such aid could be an issue for German taxpayers, ahead of national elections in their country next September. German citizens have already grown weary of paying most of the bill for bailouts, and they are wary of using more money to help banks in vulnerable southern European countries.


Another issue to be resolved in coming weeks will be the leadership of the group of ministers who oversee the euro area.


Jean-Claude Juncker, who has been the group's president since 2005, reiterated at a news conference Monday night that he would step down at the end of this year or at the beginning of next year.


But he declined to signal his preference for any particular successor to the post, which gives the holder significant power over the agendas of their meetings.


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Terms of Greek Bond Buyback Top Expectations

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LONDON — In a bold bid to reduce its debt burden, Greece offered on Monday to spend as much as 10 billion euros to buy back 30 billion euros of its bonds from investors and banks.




While the buyback had been expected, the prices offered by the government were above what the market had forecast, with a minimum price of 30 euro cents and a maximum of 40 cents, for a discount of 60 percent to 70 percent.


Analysts said they expected that the average price would ultimately be 32 to 34 euro cents, a premium of about 4 cents above where the bonds traded at the end of last week.


Pierre Moscovici, the French finance minister, played down concerns that the Greek debt buyback might not go as planned.


“I have no particular anxiety about this,” Mr. Moscovici said Monday at the European Parliament ahead of the meeting in Brussels of euro zone finance ministers to discuss Greece. “It just has to be very quick.”


A successful buyback is critical for Greece. The International Monetary Fund has said that it will lend more money to Greece only if it is reasonably able to show that it is on target to achieve a ratio of debt to annual gross domestic product of less than 110 percent by 2022.


Greece will have at its disposal 10 billion euros, or $13 billion, in borrowed money from Europe. Investors who agree to trade in their Greek bonds will receive six-month treasury bills issued by Europe’s rescue vehicle, the European Financial Stability Facility. The offer will close Friday.


If successful, the exchange will retire about half of Greece’s 62 billion euros in debt owed to the private sector. The country still owes about 200 billion euros to European governments and the I.M.F.


Analysts said that Greek, Cypriot and other government-controlled European banks, which have as much as 20 billion euros worth of bonds, were expected to agree to the deal at a price in the low 30s. That would mean that to complete the transaction, hedge-fund holdings of 8 billion to 10 billion euros in bonds would have to be tendered at a price below 35 cents. Any higher price would mean that Greece would have to ask its European creditors for extra money — an unlikely outcome at this stage.


Even though Greece is so close to bankruptcy, its bonds have become one of the hot investments in Europe. Large hedge funds, like Third Point and Brevan Howard, have accumulated significant stakes, starting this summer when the bonds were trading in the low teens. Shorter-term traders have been snapping up bonds at around 29 cents to make a quick profit by participating in the buyback.


In a research note published Monday, analysts at Nomura in London said it was “reasonable and likely” that enough hedge funds — especially those that might be more risk-averse and or have a shorter perspective — would agree to the deal at a price below 35 cents.


But there are also foreign investors looking to the longer term who may decide to hold onto most of their holdings in the hope that the bonds rally even more after a successful buyback.


“I think the bonds could go to as high as 40 cents in a nonexit scenario,” said Gabriel Sterne, an analyst at Exotix in London, referring to the consensus view that Greece will not leave the euro zone anytime soon.


Bondholders were encouraged by comments from Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, reported in the German news media over the weekend, that raised the possibility that European governments might offer Greece debt relief in the future. A number of bondholders expect Greek bond yields to trade more in line with those of Portugal in the coming years, but without the prospect of a future buyback to push up the prices of Greek government bonds, the risk to such an approach is substantial.


Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the group of finance ministers whose countries use the euro, told a news conference late Monday in Brussels that ministers would meet again on the morning of Dec. 13 to make a final decision on aid disbursement to Greece.


Mr. Juncker said he was confident that Greece would receive its money on that date, but he declined to comment on the prospects for success of the buyback program because it was a sensitive matter for the financial markets.


Mr. Juncker has been the president of the group of ministers since 2005, and the post gives him significant power over what is discussed at the group’s meetings.


Mr. Juncker reiterated at the news conference that he would step down at the end of this year or at the beginning of next year. But he declined to signal his preference for any particular successor.


“I don’t have to endorse anyone,” Mr. Juncker said. “I was asking my colleagues to provide for my succession,” he said, referring to discussions held with ministers earlier in the evening.


Separately, Spain, which is also seeking to overcome crippling debt problems, began the process Monday of formally requesting 39.5 billion euros in emergency aid to recapitalize its banks. It also announced that a tax amnesty had yielded only 1.2 billion euros, less than half what the government had expected.


The request for emergency aid was being sent to authorities managing the euro zone bailout funds, according to Spanish officials, who added that no further approval would be needed from ministers meeting in Brussels.


The request follows the European Commission’s approval last week of a plan to make the granting of the aid conditional on thousands of layoffs and office closings at four Spanish banks: Bankia, Catalunya Banc, NCG Banco and Banco de Valencia.


James Kanter contributed reporting from Brussels.



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Four Things Google’s Nexus 4 Has in Common with the iPhone 4

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Besides being each company’s flagship smartphone (and having the number 4 in their names), Google‘s new Nexus 4 and the 2010 iPhone 4 have a fair bit in common with each other.


This could be a good thing, if you remember just how popular the iPhone 4 was. Unfortunately, in this case it’s more of a bad thing, and hearkens back to “Antennagate” and the iPhone 4′s other problems. Do any of these features remind you of anything?












​A glass back


With the iPhone 5, Apple finally moved from a crack- and scratch-prone glass backplate to a solid, aluminum unibody construction. Google doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo that the former may have been a bad idea, however, and the Nexus 4 has a sparkly glass back surface.


While sparkly things obviously have their fans, the Nexus 4′s chassis also seems to lean towards the brittle side. Joshua Topolsky, who reviewed the Nexus 4 for The Verge, managed to crack the glass when he accidentally knocked his phone off the table. Meanwhile, Droid-Life’s Kellex found that setting the phone on a stone countertop caused its glass back to fracture in two.


​No 4G


Even Topolsky’s glowing review of the Nexus 4 said “It feels slow,” and “There’s simply no way to ignore this deficit.” That’s because, like the iPhone 4, the Nexus 4 lacks a 4G radio (even though it has the chip to support one if it had it).


The iPhone 4, however, was released in 2010, when 4G was still a new thing and the Android “superphones” which supported it had enormous screens and horrible battery life. Today, even the iPhone has 4G. Possibly because of bad blood between Google and the wireless carriers, which appear to resent Google’s selling phones unsubsidized and sans “customizations,” the Nexus 4 does not.


​Selling out fast


Every one of Apple’s iPhone models has sold out faster, and more dramatically, than the one before. Google’s Android devices, in contrast, haven’t tended to do so … although the new Nexus smartphones and tablets are starting to have this problem.


How bad is it? After Google finally got a new wave of Nexus 4s up for sale, they sold out in about a half-hour. Google claims that it hasn’t actually sold out, but even if you spotted the Nexus 4 on Google Play, chances are you ran into technical glitches which kept it out of your shopping cart. Tipster “Syko Pompos” told the Android Police blog how to get around this and place your order, but expect to wait months to receive it.


​Public relations nightmares


It hasn’t quite reached Antennagate levels yet, perhaps partly because the Nexus brand isn’t as well-known as the iPhone (the iPhone 4′s antenna problems were actually shared by many smartphones). But most of the press coverage of the Nexus 4 lately has been about how you can’t get one. Or else, how if you want one you’ll have to either buy it on contract or pay a lot more to get it unsubsidized from T-Mobile.


On the plus side (for the Nexus), this problem is only partly caused by the Google Play store’s technical errors. The biggest reason it’s taking so long to get out to people is, like with the iPhone 4, simply how popular it is.


Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.


Linux/Open Source News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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Heisman finalists: Manziel, Te'o and Klein

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NEW YORK (AP) — Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel, Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o and Kansas State quarterback Collin Klein are the finalists for the Heisman Trophy.

The three players invited to attend the presentation ceremony in New York were announced Monday on ESPN.

Manziel is the favorite to win college football's most famous player of the year award on Saturday night in Manhattan. He would be the first freshman to win the Heisman and the first Texas A&M player since halfback John David Crow won the school's only Heisman in 1957.

The closest a freshman has come to winning the Heisman was Adrian Peterson of Oklahoma in 2004, when he finished second to Southern California quarterback Matt Leinart. Peterson was a true freshman. Manziel is a redshirt freshman, meaning he attended school last year and practiced with the team but did not play in a game.

Michael Vick of Virginia Tech came in third in 1999 as a redshirt freshman and Herschel Walker was a true freshman for Georgia in 1980 when he finished third in the Heisman balloting.

Nicknamed Johnny Football, Manziel quickly became a national sensation this season, putting up huge numbers in first-year Texas A&M coach Kevin Sumlin's spread offense. He led the 10th-ranked Aggies to a 10-2 record in their first season in the Southeastern Conference.

With a knack for improvisation, Manziel racked up an SEC-record 4,600 yards of total offense, including 1,181 rushing to lead the conference. The 6-foot-1, 200-pound Manziel zoomed to the front of the Heisman race on Nov. 10, when he passed for 253 yards and two touchdowns and ran for 92 yards as the Aggies upset then-No. 1 Alabama 29-24 in Tuscaloosa.

Manziel and Texas A&M will play Oklahoma in the Cotton Bowl.

Te'o is trying to become the first defense-only player to win the Heisman. The Fighting Irish have seven Heisman winners, tied for the most with Ohio State and Southern California, but none since Tim Brown in 1987.

He became the face of the No. 1 team in the country and leader of a defense that has been the toughest to score upon in the nation. The senior intercepted seven passes, second-most in the country and tops for a linebacker. He also led the Fighting Irish with 103 tackles, and earlier Monday won the Butkus Award as country's best linebacker.

Te'o and the Irish face No. 2 Alabama in the BCS championship game on Jan. 7 in Miami.

Klein would be the first player from Kansas State to win the Heisman. He seemed to be the front-runner for several weeks until Manziel's late push. When Klein threw three interceptions in the Wildcats' late-season loss to Baylor, Manziel moved to the front of the race.

Klein is a multitalented quarterback like Manziel, but with a different approach. The 6-5, 226-pound senior is a bullish runner who scored 22 touchdowns and threw for 15 more, while leading the seventh-ranked Wildcats (11-1) to the Big 12 title. Earlier in the day, Klein won the Johnny Unitas Award given to the top senior quarterback in the nation.

Kansas State plays Oregon in the Fiesta Bowl.

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