Clinton to Visit Israel in Effort to Defuse Gaza Conflict

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia – President Obama is sending Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to the Middle East to try to defuse the conflict in Gaza, the White House announced on Tuesday.

Mrs. Clinton, who has been accompanying Mr. Obama on his three-country Asia trip, will leave directly from Asia, traveling first to Jerusalem to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, then to the West Bank to meet with Palestinian leaders and finally to Cairo to meet with Egyptian officials.

“This morning, Secretary Clinton and the president spoke again about the situation in Gaza and the they agreed that it makes sense for the secretary to travel to the region so Secretary Clinton will depart today,” said Benjamin Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser to Mr. Obama. “Her visits will build on the engagement that we’ve undertaken in the last several days.”

Mr. Rhodes said that “any resolution to this has to include an end to that rocket fire” by Hamas militants on Israeli communities but “the best way to solve this is through diplomacy.”

He added: “It’s in nobody’s interest to see an escalation of the military conflict.”

The decision to dispatch Mrs. Clinton dramatically deepens the American involvement in the crisis. Mr. Obama made a number of late-night phone calls to the Middle East on Monday night that convinced him that he had to become more engaged and that Mrs. Clinton might be able to accomplish something.

After an Asian summit dinner in Phnom Penh on Monday night, Mr. Obama called President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt to discuss the situation, then spoke with Mr. Netanyahu and called Mr. Morsi back. He was up until 2:30 a.m. on the phone, the White House said. He has been consulting with Mrs. Clinton repeatedly on the sidelines of the Asian summit meetings on Tuesday.

Mrs. Clinton will not meet with Hamas representatives on her trip, but instead with leaders of the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank, which is at odds with Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip. “We do not engage directly with Hamas,” Mr. Rhodes said.

Instead, Mr. Obama is focused on leveraging Egypt’s influence with Hamas to press for a halt to the rocket attacks. “We believe Egypt can and should be a partner in achieving that outcome,” Mr. Rhodes said.

Mr. Rhodes reaffirmed that the United States supports Israel’s right to defend itself and said Mr. Obama did not ask Mr. Netanyahu to hold off a ground incursion into Gaza. Thousands of Israeli forces have gathered in possible preparation to move into Gaza, which would significantly escalate the conflict.

With the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon scheduled to arrive in Israel on Tuesday followed by Mrs. Clinton, Israel has decided to give some more time to diplomacy to end the crisis with Gaza before launching a ground invasion into the Palestinian enclave, a senior Israeli official said.

The official in the Israeli prime minister’s office said that the country’s top nine ministers, who make up the inner security cabinet, held discussions late into the night on the state of the diplomatic efforts and Israel’s military operation in Gaza, which entered its seventh day on Tuesday. The goal of the operation, Israel says, is to bring about an end to years of rocket fire by Gaza militants against southern Israel.

“A decision has been taken to give diplomacy more time, but not unlimited time,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the deliberations of the inner cabinet are highly confidential.

Egypt has been brokering efforts, with American involvement, for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, the Islamic militant group that controls Gaza.

“What is on the table is not there yet. It does not bring about what we need,” the official said, referring to Israel’s demands for an end to the threat of rocket fire in the south.

Tens of thousands of Israeli reserve soldiers have been mobilized and troops and tanks have massed along the border with Gaza, ready to go in the order is given.

So far Israel has carried out its campaign from the air, pounding more than 1,000 targets in Gaza, including long-range rocket launchers and stores. Palestinian health officials have put the death toll at about 107, including 26 children. Gaza militants have fired more than 800 rockets at Israel, killing three civilians there in one attack. Several have reached as far north as Tel Aviv.

Many of the rockets headed for densely populated areas have been intercepted by Israel’s anti-rocket missile system while others have landed in open ground.

On Tuesday morning, Gaza militants fired more barrages of rockets into southern Israel. One struck a bus in the southern city of Beersheba but the passengers had disembarked and escaped unharmed, according to initial reports.

Mrs. Clinton’s trip comes even as she is preparing to step down as secretary of state, presenting her a delicate late test after four years in which Mr. Obama’s administration has failed to achieve the broader peace it once sought in the region.

With the president’s re-election behind him, Mrs. Clinton plans to resign around the time of the second inauguration on Jan. 20. Aides said she would stay until a successor can be confirmed as long as it does not drag too long into the new year.

The abrupt change in plans here underscored the challenges for Mr. Obama as he tries to reorient American foreign policy away from its dominant focus on the Middle East and more toward the Pacific-Asia region that he sees as the long-term future. Even as he chose Southeast Asia as the destination for the first overseas trip after winning a second term, Mr. Obama has found himself drawn every day into the deadly dispute consuming the Middle East.

Peter Baker reported from Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem

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People turn to Twitter for CPR information: study

(Reuters) – Amid snarky comments and links to cat videos, some Twitter users turn to the social network to find and post information on health issues like cardiac arrest and CPR, according to a U.S. study.

Over a month, researchers found 15,234 messages on Twitter that included specific information about resuscitation and cardiac arrest, said the study published in the journal Resuscitation.

“From a science standpoint, we wanted to know if we can reliably find information on a public health topic, or is (Twitter) just a place where people describe what they ate that day,” said Raina Merchant, the study’s lead author and a professor at the Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

According to the researchers, they found people using Twitter to send and receive a wide variety of information on CPR and cardiac arrest, including their personal experiences, questions and current events.

Some researchers and organizations already use Twitter for public health matters, including tracking the 2009 H1N1 “swine flu” pandemic and finding the source of the Haitian cholera outbreak, the researchers said.

For the study, the researchers created a Twitter search for key terms, such as CPR, AED (automatic external defibrillators), resuscitation and sudden death.

Between April and May 2011, their search returned 62,163 tweets, which were whittled down to 15,324 messages that contained specific information about cardiac arrest and resuscitation.

Only 7 percent of the tweets were about specific cardiac arrest events, such as a user saying they just saw a man being resuscitated, or a user asking for prayers for a sick family member.

About 44 percent of the tweets were about performing CPR and using an AED. Those types of tweets included information on rules about keeping AEDs in businesses and questions about how to resuscitate a person.

The rest of the tweets were about education, research and news events, such as links to articles about celebrities going into cardiac arrest.

The vast majority of the Twitter users send fewer than three tweets about cardiac arrest or CPR throughout the month. Users that sent more tweets typically had more followers – people who subscribe to their messages – and often worked in a health-care related field.

About 13 percent of the tweets were re-sent, or retweeted, by other users. The most popular retweeted messages were about celebrity-related cardiac arrest news, such as an AED being used to revive a fan at a Lady Gaga concert.

“I think the pilot (study) illustrated for us that there is an opportunity to potentially provide research and information for people in real time about cardiac arrest and resuscitation,” Marchant said.

“I can imagine in the future we will see systems that would automatically respond to tweets of individual users. Twitter is a really powerful tool, and we’re just beginning to understand its abilities.”

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/T2bj7u

(Reporting from New York by Andrew Seaman at Reuters Health; editing by Elaine)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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49ers' Kaepernick gets big assist from Aldon Smith

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Aldon Smith's high-flying defense gave Colin Kaepernick all kinds of extra chances in his first career NFL start.

And the Kaepernick looked little like a backup in delivering on nearly every one of those opportunities under the lights on football's big stage.

The strong-armed Kaepernick passed for 243 yards and two touchdowns in place of the injured Alex Smith, Aldon Smith had 5½ sacks, and the 49ers whipped the Chicago Bears 32-7 on Monday night in a highly anticipated NFC showdown that hardly lived up to the hype.

"I wanted to come out and show what I'm capable of and show that I can be a starter," Kaepernick said. "That's what I've been trying to prove since I've been here."

With Aldon Smith wreaking havoc on the other side of the ball, Kaepernick threw touchdown passes to Vernon Davis and Michael Crabtree, and Kendall Hunter ran for a 14-yard score as San Francisco (7-2-1) jumped out to a big lead by scoring on each of its first four possessions.

Jason Campbell, the other quarterback in this matchup of backups for division leaders, threw a 13-yard touchdown pass to Brandon Marshall in the third quarter, but was sacked five times and threw two interceptions in his first start since October 2011 for Oakland.

He faced fierce pressure all night, playing for the Bears (7-3) while starter Jay Cutler recovers from a concussion suffered eight days earlier — just like Alex Smith.

After Kaepernick's stellar night on national TV, there's certain to be chatter of a quarterback controversy for the NFC West-leading Niners. And anyone who knows coach Jim Harbaugh knows he's all about competition — at every spot on the field.

"I usually tend to go with the hot hand, and we've got two quarterbacks with hot hands," he said. "We'll make that decision when we have to make it."

Kaepernick certainly isn't counting on it.

"I don't think one game can be called a hot hand," he said.

Aldon Smith took over the NFL sacks lead with 15, passing Denver's Von Miller with 13, and recorded the second-best total in franchise history behind Fred Dean's six-sack day on Nov. 13, 1983, against New Orleans. Tarell Brown and Dashon Goldson each had an interception for San Francisco's stingy defense, which shut down Campbell, Matt Forte and Co. three years after the teams last met in a 10-6 49ers home win.

"I think I have a thing for night games, I love playing at night," Smith said. "I love playing under the lights."

Kaepernick, Aldon Smith and Hunter sure made general manager Trent Baalke looked good for his selections from the 2011 draft class.

"Colin is the man!" Davis said emphatically. "Colin did a great job, I was very proud of him."

And reigning NFL Coach of the Year Harbaugh earned a key victory four days after his own health issue. The 48-year-old Harbaugh had a minor procedure for an irregular heartbeat Thursday.

The 49ers added a safety in the fourth quarter after a replay review. With 9:24 left, former San Francisco offensive lineman Chilo Rachal was called for intentional grounding out of the end zone, but Harbaugh challenged and the review showed Rachal's knee was down in the end zone before the ball left.

"Tonight was probably the worst nightmare. We just have to find a way," Campbell said. "It's one game that we lost. We have to pick it back up next week and try to get back on the winning side. Our goals and everything still sit ahead of us."

The soft-spoken, stone-faced Kaepernick went 16 for 23 with a 133.1 passer rating. He completed 12 of his first 14 passes with a 57-yard strike to Kyle Williams that set up Davis' 3-yard TD on the next play — and he already had amassed 126 yards passing by the end of the first quarter.

The 49ers led 17-0 on Hunter's early TD run in the second, quickly topping the 14.8 points the Bears were allowing per game.

Kaepernick threw for 184 yards in the first half alone — an impressive outing for the second-year pro selected in the second round out of Nevada.

"I think after the first drive I felt really comfortable with what they were doing and what we had in our game plan," he said. "I really wasn't too nervous. I've had a lot of time in this offense. My teammates were really supportive."

Frank Gore ran for 78 yards and David Akers kicked field goals of 32, 37 and 32 yards for the 49ers, eager to defend their home field a week after settling for a frustrating 24-24 tie against the division rival St. Louis Rams.

They outgained Chicago 249-35 in a lopsided first half.

Davis got his prime-time moment just how he loves it. Eager to get more involved in the offense down the stretch this season, the tight end had a team-best six catches for 83 yards.

"It felt like somebody took the handcuffs off," Davis said. "It sends out a message we're for real and we'll step up in big games."

Campbell was slow to get up after a hit by Ahmad Brooks with 6:06 left in the third quarter, not an encouraging sign as third-string QB Josh McCown started loosening up.

Chicago dropped into a first-place tie in the NFC North with Green Bay, which owns the tiebreaker after beating the Bears in Week 2. The Bears have lost two straight following a six-game winning streak.

Things were much less stressful on the opposite sideline, where Kaepernick chatted between series with Alex Smith — who was out of uniform and dressed in red 49ers jacket on a crisp, windy fall evening at sold-out Candlestick Park.

Smith, the 2005 No. 1 overall draft pick, was ruled out earlier Monday after being evaluated by team medical director Dr. Dan Garza.

Campbell had little chance as his offensive line was overmatched all night, spoiling his first start since last October and before a broken collarbone derailed his 2011 season and forced him to miss the final 10 games.

Forte was limited to 63 yards on 21 carries — not much better than his 41-yard day on 20 carries in the loss here in 2009, when Cutler threw five interceptions.

"I think we all let the team down at one point or another in the ballgame," Marshall said. "We're just taking turns."

San Francisco featured the opportunistic, ball-hawking defense this time after the Bears came in with an NFL-leading 30 takeaways and 19 interceptions.

"Coming in I think there may have been some questions about who may have been the better defense," Aldon Smith said. "We came out and proved a point tonight."

NOTES: The 49ers won their fourth straight Monday Night Football game, fifth in six and seventh of 10. ... San Francisco's 43 Monday Night Football victories match the Dallas Cowboys for the most. ... Bears WR Alshon Jeffery left with a knee injury in the second half.

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Recipes for Health: Apple Walnut Galette — Recipes for Health

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times NYTCREDIT:

A great rustic apple pie for Thanksgiving, this has very little butter in the pastry and a minimum of sweetening. It’s all about the apples.

1 dessert galette pastry (1/2 recipe)

Juice of 1/2 lemon

2 pounds slightly tart apples, like Braeburns, peeled, cored and cut in wedges (about 1/2 inch thick at the thickest point)

2 tablespoons (1 ounce) unsalted butter

1/4 cup (50 grams) plus 1 tablespoon dark brown sugar or turbinado sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 cup lightly toasted walnuts, chopped

3/4 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

1/4 cup (25 grams) almond powder

1 egg beaten with 1 teaspoon milk, for egg wash

1. Line 2 sheet pans with parchment. In a large bowl combine the lemon juice and apples and toss together.

2. Heat a large, heavy frying pan over high heat and add the butter. Wait until it becomes light brown and carefully add the apples and 1/4 cup of the sugar. Do not add the apples until the pan and the butter are hot enough or they won’t sear properly and retain their juice. But be careful when you add them so that the hot butter doesn’t splatter. When the apples are brown on one side, add the vanilla, 1/2 teaspoon of the cinnamon and the nutmeg, flip the apples and continue to sauté until golden brown, about 5 to 7 minutes. Stir in the walnuts, then scrape out onto one of the lined sheet pans and allow to cool completely.

3. Remove the pastry from the freezer and place it on the other parchment-lined baking sheet. Leave to thaw while the apples cool, but don’t keep it out of the freezer for too long. It’s easiest to handle if it’s cold and will thaw quickly. You just want it soft enough so that you can manipulate it.

4. Sprinkle the almond powder over the pastry, leaving a 2- to 3-inch border all around. Place the apples on top. Fold the edges of the dough in over the fruit, pleating the edges as you work your way around the fruit to form a free-form tart that is roughly 9 inches in diameter. Place in the freezer on the baking sheet for 45 minutes to an hour. This helps the galette maintain its shape.

5. Meanwhile preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Remove the galette from the freezer. Brush the exposed edge of the pastry with the egg wash. Combine the remaining tablespoon of sugar and 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon and sprinkle over the fruit and the crust. Place in the oven and bake 1 hour, until the crust is nicely browned and the apples are sizzling. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for at least 15 minutes. Serve hot, warm or at room temperature.

Yield: 1 9-inch galette, serving 8

Advance preparation: You can assemble this through Step 4 and freeze it for up to a month. Once it is frozen, double-wrap it in plastic. You can also freeze the galette after baking. Thaw and warm in a 350-degree oven for 10 to 15 minutes to recrisp the crust.

Nutritional information per serving: 259 calories; 11 grams fat; 4 grams saturated fat; 3 grams polyunsaturated fat; 3 grams monounsaturated fat; 50 milligrams cholesterol; 37 grams carbohydrates; 3 grams dietary fiber; 92 milligrams sodium; 5 grams protein

Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”

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Gaza Clash Escalates With Deadliest Israeli Strike

Bernat Armangue/Associated Press

Smoke rose over Gaza City on Sunday, as Israel widened its range of targets to include buildings used by the news media.

CAIRO — Emboldened by the rising power of Islamists around the region, the Palestinian militant group Hamas demanded new Israeli concessions to its security and autonomy before it halts its rocket attacks on Israel, even as the conflict took an increasing toll on Sunday.

After five days of punishing Israeli airstrikes on the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and no letup in the rocket fire in return, representatives of Israel and Hamas met separately with Egyptian officials in Cairo on Sunday for indirect talks about a truce.

The talks came as an Israeli bomb struck a house in Gaza on Sunday afternoon, killing 11 people, in the deadliest single strike since the conflict between Israel and Hamas escalated on Wednesday. The strike, along with several others that killed civilians across the Gaza Strip, signaled that Israel was broadening its range of targets on the fifth day of the campaign.

By the end of the day, Gaza health officials reported that 70 Palestinians had been killed in airstrikes since Wednesday, including 20 children, and that 600 had been wounded. Three Israelis have been killed and at least 79 wounded by unrelenting rocket fire out of Gaza into southern Israel and as far north as Tel Aviv.

Hamas, badly outgunned on the battlefield, appeared to be trying to exploit its increased political clout with its ideological allies in Egypt’s new Islamist-led government. The group’s leaders, rejecting Israel’s call for an immediate end to the rocket attacks, have instead laid down sweeping demands that would put Hamas in a stronger position than when the conflict began: an end to Israel’s five-year-old embargo of the Gaza Strip, a pledge by Israel not to attack again and multinational guarantees that Israel would abide by its commitments.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel stuck to his demand that all rocket fire cease before the air campaign lets up, and Israeli tanks and troops remained lined up outside Gaza on Sunday. Tens of thousands of reserve troops had been called up. “The army is prepared to significantly expand the operation,” Mr. Netanyahu said at the start of a cabinet meeting.

Reda Fahmy, a member of Egypt’s upper house of Parliament and of the nation’s dominant Islamist party, who is following the talks, said Hamas’s position was just as unequivocal. “Hamas has one clear and specific demand: for the siege to be completely lifted from Gaza,” he said. “It’s not reasonable that every now and then Israel decides to level Gaza to the ground, and then we decide to sit down and talk about it after it is done. On the Israeli part, they want to stop the missiles from one side. How is that?”

He added: “If they stop the aircraft from shooting, Hamas will then stop its missiles. But violence couldn’t be stopped from one side.”

Hamas’s aggressive stance in the cease-fire talks is the first test of the group’s belief that the Arab Spring and the rise in Islamist influence around the region have strengthened its political hand, both against Israel and against Hamas’s Palestinian rivals, who now control the West Bank with Western backing.

It also puts intense new pressure on President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt, a former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood who was known for his fiery speeches defending Hamas and denouncing Israel. Mr. Morsi must now balance the conflicting demands of an Egyptian public that is deeply sympathetic to Hamas and the Palestinian cause against Western pleadings to help broker a peace and Egypt’s need for regional stability to help revive its moribund economy.

Indeed, the Egyptian-led cease-fire talks illustrate the diverging paths of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, a Palestinian offshoot of the original Egyptian Islamist group. Hamas has evolved into a more militant insurgency and is labeled a terrorist organization by the United States and Israel, while the Brotherhood has effectively become Egypt’s ruling party. Mr. Fahmy said in an interview in March that the Brotherhood’s new responsibilities required a step back from its ideological cousins in Hamas, and even a new push to persuade the group to compromise.

Reporting was contributed by Ethan Bronner, Irit Pazner Garshowitz and Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem, and Peter Baker from Bangkok.

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Cisco to buy cloud-networking start-up Meraki for $1.2 billion

(Reuters) – Networking equipment company Cisco Systems Inc said it will buy privately held cloud networking company Meraki for $ 1.2 billion in cash as part of its cloud and networking strategy.

Cisco said the acquisition of Meraki, which was founded in 2006 by members of MIT’s Laboratory for Computer Science, is expected to close in the second quarter of Cisco’s 2013 fiscal year and is subject to regulatory approval.

Cisco’s second quarter runs until the end of January.

Meraki – funded by Sequoia Capital and Google Inc – offers Wi-Fi technology, switching, security and mobile device management from the cloud with a focus on mid-sized businesses.

“This is a very logical move for Cisco,” said ZK research analyst Zeus Kerravala.

He said the deal will allow Cisco to offer alternative solutions to traditional Wi-Fi deployment models like smaller competitors, such as Aruba Networks and Ruckus Wireless, which debuted on Friday.

“Cisco didn’t really have anything to counter that before,” Kerravala noted.

Meraki’s Chief Executive Sanjit Biswas said in a letter to employees posted on the company website that Cisco had approached the company several weeks ago.

The company’s founders had at first rejected the offer in favor of continuing Meraki’s strategy aimed at an initial public listing.

“After several weeks of consideration, we decided late last week that joining Cisco was the right path for Meraki,” Biswas said.

He also said that Meraki had achieved a $ 100 million bookings run rate, grown to 330 employees and had a positive cash flow.

(Reporting by Nicola Leske, editing by Gary Crosse)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Ravens top Steelers 13-10, control AFC North race

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Terrell Suggs isn't ready to declare the race for the AFC North title over.

Besides, even if it were after the Baltimore Ravens' 13-10 victory over the Steelers on Sunday night, the veteran linebacker knows Pittsburgh still has the upper hand in the rivals' ultimate litmus test.

"They got it where it counts," Suggs said. "That's all that really matters is championships. These little independent battles is good for morale but until we catch them in the ring race ... we'll take the win but we've still got to catch them in that component of the rivalry."

The Ravens (8-2) took a significant step in that direction by shutting down the Steelers (6-4) and backup quarterback Byron Leftwich. The veteran completed 18 of 39 passes for 201 yards in place of injured starter Ben Roethlisberger. Leftwich ran for a score but also threw a drive-killing interception and was sacked three times.

"We went out there and we tried to make plays," Leftwich said. "Some went our way, some didn't. And it just wasn't enough."

The rematch comes in Baltimore in two weeks.

"It's like halftime," Baltimore coach John Harbaugh said. "It's like we won the first half and the second half is coming up."

The Steelers certainly hope it goes a little better than the first.

Pittsburgh was a clock chewing, drive extending machine under Roethlisberger. There were considerably more fits and starts with Leftwich under center. The Steelers converted just 5 of 17 (29 percent) of third downs, well below their season average or 49 percent.

"We never found a rhythm," Leftwich said.

The Ravens weren't much better. Joe Flacco completed 20 of 32 passes for 164 yards. Running back Ray Rice managed just 40 yards on 20 carries, forcing the Ravens to rely on an old standby make the difference.

Typically, that's not a problem. But this is not a typical year in Baltimore.

The defense came in ranked 27th in the league in yards allowed and is missing spiritual leader Ray Lewis, who is on the injured reserve-return list with a triceps injury.

The emotional linebacker made the trip anyway, giving his teammates a lift in the locker room.

"We haven't been playing the best the past couple weeks, or the whole season, some people say," said Baltimore cornerback Corey Graham, who intercepted Leftwich in the third quarter. "We've just got to find a way to get wins and that's what we were able to do today."

The Steelers hosted a number of franchise greats, including Hall-of-Famers Lynn Swann, John Stallworth and Joe Greene.

Their presence was appreciated, though it did little to make up for the absence of safety Troy Polamalu — out again with a right calf injury — or Roethlisberger, the franchise's current standard bearer.

Roethlisberger offered to do everything he could to help Leftwich win his first game as a starter in more than six years and insisted all week the offense wouldn't change.

For a fleeting moment, Roethlisberger appeared to be right.

Leftwich went deep on the game's first snap trying to hit Mike Wallace, drawing a pass interference penalty on Baltimore's Cary Williams. Two plays later Leftwich — who joked all week about his lack of speed — bought time in the pocket, rolled to his right and made for the sideline.

Rather than slide or duck out of bounds, the 250-pound Leftwich got a block and raced — in a manner of speaking — 31 yards for a touchdown to give the Steelers a 7-0 lead. Roethlisberger lifted his good arm in the air in celebration after the longest run of Leftwich's career, and the play seemed to give Pittsburgh a sense of confidence.

It didn't last. At least, not on offense.

The Steelers' second possession ended with a Wallace fumble that Ed Reed returned to the Pittsburgh 14. Baltimore managed only a field goal, but it seemed to bring the Steelers back to earth.

If that didn't, Jones did.

The explosive return man drifted under a Drew Butler punt late in the first half, sprinted up the field, cut to the right and zipped untouched to the end zone for his third return touchdown of the season to give Baltimore a 10-7 lead.

"They were trying to set up the outside wall, but I saw nothing but open field to the right so I thought, 'Why not go this way?'" Jones said.

Baltimore moved in front 13-7 in the third quarter on Justin Tucker's second field goal, more than enough to help the Ravens take a major step toward their second straight division title.

"They talked about how it was going to be a physical game, how it was going to come down to the end and it lived up to it," Graham said. "It was definitely a great experience. I look forward to it in a couple weeks."

NOTES: Baltimore TE Dennis Pitta left the game with a concussion in the first quarter and did not return ... Pittsburgh RB Isaac Redman also left with a concussion and did not return ... Pittsburgh RB Rashard Mendenhall had 33 yards in his first game in a month ... The Steelers travel to Cleveland next week while the Ravens play in San Diego.

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MaleSurvivor Conference Examines Sexual Abuse in Sports

It was the summer before high school, and Christopher Gavagan, then 13, was preparing to leave the safe familiarity of the friends he had known during his boyhood. With a plan to excel at ice hockey, he began training on inline skates, moving through his New York City neighborhood, up and down the streets until, he said, “I turned down the wrong street.”

Gavagan, now a filmmaker, was one of eight panelists who participated Friday in a discussion about young athletes who have been sexually assaulted or abused by their coaches. The panel was part of the MaleSurvivor 13th International Conference, held this year at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. The conference brought together men who have been sexually abused, as well as psychologists, social workers, academics and members of the legal community.

A dour procession of stories about sexual misconduct by coaches toward their male charges has come to light in recent months. Jerry Sandusky, a former assistant football coach at Penn State, was sentenced in October to 30 to 60 years in prison on 45 counts of child molesting. Sugar Ray Leonard wrote in his autobiography last year that he was sexually molested by an Olympic boxing coach. The N.H.L. players Theo Fleury and Sheldon Kennedy were sexually abused as teenagers by their hockey coach Graham James.

The prevalence of sexual abuse among all boys 17 and under has been variously estimated to be as low as 5 percent and as high as 16 percent. For some of the millions of children who participate in sports nationwide, and their parents, sexual assault in a sports context has its own dynamic.

“Sports is a place where parents send their boys to learn skills, to learn how to be teammates and how to work together — to make boys stronger and healthier,” said Dr. Howard Fradkin, author of “Joining Forces,” a book about how men can heal from sexual abuse. “It’s the place where we send our boys to grow up. The betrayal that occurs when abuse occurs in sports is damaging because it destroys the whole intent of what they started out to do.”

When Gavagan, now 38, turned down that fateful street, and stepped briefly into the house of a man recommended as a hockey coach by a couple of female acquaintances, what greeted him, he said, was “a young boy’s dream come true.”

The dream Gavagan glimpsed was embodied in the trophy room of the house.

“It was everything I wanted to be right there,” recalled Gavagan, who is working on a feature-length documentary on sexual abuse in youth sports, in which he interviews other sexual-abuse victims and his own attacker, against whom he has never pressed charges. In addition to the shiny relics that seemed to give testimony to the man’s coaching prowess, Gavagan said, the trophy room had pictures of hockey teams the man had coached and workout equipment — the physical tools promising the chance to get bigger and stronger.

“To a skinny 13-year-old, it was like winning the lottery,” Gavagan said.

Christopher Anderson, the executive director of MaleSurvivor, said sexual abuse — basically nonconsensual touching or sexual language — is devastating under any circumstance, but coach and player often have a special relationship.

“Especially as you progress higher and higher, the coach can become just as important in some ways to an athlete as the relationship with his parents might have,” Anderson said. “In some cases, it’s a substitute for parents.”

He added: “There’s also a fundamentally different power dynamic. When you’re a young star, the coach can literally make or break your career as an athlete.”

But caution has to extend beyond coaches who guide future Olympians, Gavagan said, noting that his coach was not of that caliber.

“The entire grooming process was so subtle,” Gavagan said. “It’s not like when I first went into his house that he tried to grope me.”

First, Gavagan said, the coach said it was all right to curse in that house. On another visit it was fine to have a beer, which led on another day to Playboy magazine and on subsequent days to harder pornography and harder liquor. It was six months before the coach laid an explicitly sexual hand on him, Gavagan said.

“I didn’t feel like a sudden red line had been crossed — the line had been blurred,” Gavagan said, explaining that he avoided his parents when he returned home with liquor on his breath by telling them he was exhausted and going straight to his room. (Unlike many sexual-abuse victims, Gavagan said his parents, with whom the coach had ingratiated himself, were supportive of their son, and his was a loving family. He said that if he had approached them about the coach, they would have listened.)

Another aspect of sexual abuse in sports is the environment, which emphasizes a kind of macho ethic.

“What is most different about abuse is the sports culture itself,” Fradkin said. “It is a culture that promotes teamwork and teaches boys to shrug it off. When a boy or man is abused, he risks being thrown off the team if he should speak the truth because he’ll be seen as being disloyal — and weak.”

At 17, after four years with his coach, Gavagan said he “aged out” of his coach’s target age.

“At the time I had no idea of how it would impact my life, but the unhealthy lessons about relations, trust and the truth set a time bomb that would detonate my relationships for the next 10 years,” Gavagan said.

As a word of caution, Anderson said the lesson for parents should not be that sports are dangerous.

“It should be that there are sometimes dangerous people who gravitate to sporting organizations and our safeguards aren’t good enough yet to adequately protect our children,” he said. “That doesn’t mean that we should be pulling our kids from soccer and baseball and basketball. What it means is that parents need to be vigilant.”

He added: “They need to be proactive with athletic organizations to make sure that policies are in place — such as doing criminal background checks on staff and having a procedure where young athletes can complain about inappropriate behavior — that make sure children are protected.”

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Which Tablet to Buy Among Dozens Confuses Shoppers

Holiday shoppers with a tablet computer on their gift list this year might be forgiven for feeling a little panicked.

Look at the tablets available online or at a consumer electronics store and it can be dizzying to choose from among the dozens of slim rectangles with touch screens — each with various sizes, features, prices and applications.

Tablets were supposed to be a simple alternative to the bloated personal computer market. And when “tablet” was synonymous with “iPad,” that was true.

But this is the first holiday season in which the iPad faces competitors that have built up a solid footing in the market. Amazon and Google introduced tablets just in time for the shopping rush. As a result, many consumers and analysts say, the new market of keyboardless computers is quickly becoming as confusing as that of the old-school PC.

“What’s different about this holiday season is that consumers have not just more choice, but really good choices,” said Sarah Rotman Epps, who studies consumer computing trends at Forrester. “There have been many iPad wannabes but no real quality alternatives, and now there are several.”

While choice is a good thing for consumers, she said, it also makes shopping “confusing and complicated.”

For the companies that make tablets, the choice means everything. The stakes are much higher than the sale of individual devices. Each company is trying to snag lifelong customers for their other products — like music, apps, e-books, movies, Web search or word-processing software.

While Apple has dominated the market until now, selling more tablets than any other company, its perch is being threatened by the newcomers.

“Apple left a lot of room for rivals to grow,” said Tero Kuittinen, an independent mobile analyst.

By keeping its tablet prices so high, he said, Apple could lose its place as the biggest tablet seller, just as it did with smartphones when it lost the first-place position to Samsung, which makes less expensive phones using Google’s Android software. The iPad still dominates the market with a 50 percent share, according to third-quarter figures from the research firm IDC, but that is down from 60 percent a year ago. Samsung is in second place with an 18 percent share, Amazon is third with 9 percent, and Asus, which makes Google’s Nexus 7 tablet, is in fourth with 8.6 percent of the market.

But Google, which makes the vast majority of its revenue on Web ads, still lags in the tablet market, even though sales of its Nexus 7 tablet are approaching one million a month, according to Asus. About 98 percent of Web traffic from tablets comes from iPads, according to Onswipe, a digital publishing company. Google would like more of that traffic, as well as more buyers for apps and media from its Google Play store, as would Amazon and Microsoft.

“The first decision you make is what ecosystem am I in, do I want the Android Play store and content or some other?” said Hiroshi Lockheimer, Google’s vice president for engineering for Android. “So the importance of the ecosystem can’t be overstated.”

But the decisions after that are still complex.

Say, for example, that you want a tablet that runs Google’s Android operating system. There is the Nexus 7, a seven-inch tablet made by Asus, and the Nexus 10, a 10-inch tablet made by Samsung. Then there are the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 and the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 (not to be confused with the Samsung Galaxy Note 2, a 5.5-inch smartphone). And that’s not to mention the dozens of Android tablets made by Lenovo, Toshiba and others.

This year, Microsoft also has a tablet, called Surface. Amazon has the Kindle Fire and Fire HD, and Barnes & Noble has the Nook HD and HD+. Once shoppers choose one, they have more choices to make, like whether they want to pay $15 more for the privilege of not seeing ads on the Kindle Fire.

Even Apple, which has always prided itself on having simple product lines, now offers the new iPad, the older iPad 2 and the iPad Mini. If you factor in the various amounts of storage and the choice of cellular data or just Wi-Fi, there are essentially 14 iPad models to choose from.

Complicating the decision on hardware, different tablets connect to different online stores for apps, music and video. If you have built your music and app collection on Apple devices, an Android tablet may mean starting from scratch, and vice versa.

The proliferation of products is nothing new for a mature market, as anyone who has stood in front of a wall of televisions at Best Buy or in a parking lot of Priuses at a Toyota dealership knows.

But some consumer electronics companies that have given their customers too many options have run into trouble, said Shaw Wu, an analyst at Sterne Agee. They include Motorola Mobility, which is trying to rescue its cellphone business by paring its lineup of 27 devices, and Research in Motion, which offers a perplexing matrix of BlackBerrys with confusing names, like the BlackBerry Torch 9810, 9850 and 9860.

Google in particular runs this risk, said Michael Gartenberg, a technology analyst at Gartner, because it gives away its Android operating system to any device manufacturer that wants to use it, resulting in an uncontrolled array of Android devices running different versions of the software. Some apps will work only with particular versions, making it difficult to know exactly what you are getting.

Google has tried to address this problem in recent months. It gave its line of Nexus products names corresponding to their screen size and began selling them in its Play store. (Google teams up with manufacturers to build the Nexus devices.) It began running ads for the tablets online, on billboards, in print and on television, which had been rare for the company, and assigned a public relations employee to focus on selling hardware to consumers.

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Israel Bombs Government and Media Sites in Wider Attack

Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

A man injured by bombing in the Zaitoun neighborhood of Gaza City on Saturday that also killed one person.

GAZA CITY — Israel pressed its assault on the Gaza Strip early Sunday, deploying warplanes and naval vessels to pummel the coastal enclave as Israeli forces widened the onslaught from mostly military targets to media offices and centers of government infrastructure including on Saturday the four-story headquarters of the Hamas prime minister.

The crash of explosions pierced the Gaza City quiet several times throughout the early morning, with one attack injuring several journalists at a communications building, witnesses said. A rocket fired from Gaza ploughed through the roof of an apartment building in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon but there were no immediate reports of casualties there. Israel’s “Iron Dome” defense shield also intercepted at least one rocket aimed at Tel Aviv in the latest of several salvoes toward the Israeli city, news reports said.

Palestinian news agencies reported that two children were killed in a predawn strike on Sunday in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza. The Israeli military said it had “targeted dozens of underground launchers” overnight and also hit what it called a Hamas training base and command center. The Israeli Navy “targeted terror sites on the northern Gaza shore line,” the statement said, in repeated rounds of multiple missiles that could be easily heard.

The onslaught continued despite talks in Cairo that Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi said Saturday night he thought could soon result in a ceasefire. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would consider a comprehensive ceasefire if the launches from Gaza stop.

The attack on the office of Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, one of several on government installations, came a day after he hosted his Egyptian counterpart in that very building on Friday, a sign of Hamas’s new legitimacy in a radically redrawn Arab world.

That stature was underscored Saturday by a visit to Gaza from the Tunisian foreign minister and the rapid convergence in Cairo of two Hamas allies, the prime minister of Turkey and the crown prince of Qatar, for talks with the Egyptian president and the chairman of Hamas on a possible cease-fire.

But Mark Regev, a spokesman for Mr. Netanyahu, denied reports that a truce was imminent.

It was unclear whether the deal under discussion in Cairo would solely suspend the fighting or include other issues. Hamas — which won elections in Gaza in 2006 and took full control in 2007 but is considered a terrorist organization by Israel and the United States — wants to turn its Rafah crossing with Egypt into a free-trade zone and seeks Israel’s withdrawal from the 1,000-foot buffer it patrols on Gaza’s northern and eastern borders.

For his part, Mr. Netanyahu spoke with the leaders of Britain, Germany, Italy, Greece, Poland, Portugal, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic, according to a statement from his office.

As the fighting entered its fifth day, with Israel continuing preparations for a ground invasion, the conflict showed no sign of abating.

Among the buildings Israel hit overnight were two containing the offices of local media outlets. A statement from the Israeli Defense Forces initially described one of its targets as “a communications facility used by Hamas to carry out terror activity against the state of Israel.” Within minutes, the I.D.F. recalled that statement and replaced it with one referring to “a communications antenna.”

Salama Marouf of the Hamas media office issued a statement condemning what he called an “immoral massacre against the media” and calling the attack a “confession” by Israel “that it has lost the media battle.”

Six journalists were injured in the first attack, around 2:30 a.m., in the Shawa and Hossari Building in downtown Gaza City, which houses two local radio stations -- one run by the militant Islamic Jihad -- and the offices of the Ma’an Palestinian news agency as well as the German broadcaster ARD.

One of the journalists injured on Sunday, Khader Zahar of the Beirut-based Al Quds satellite channel, lost a leg in the explosion, which hit its 11th-floor studio.

At 7 a.m., a missile dropped from an Apache helicopter hit the top of the 15-story Al Shoruq Building, also downtown, witnesses said. The target was the Hamas channel that broadcasts locally, Al Aqsa, but the building also contains offices of the Al Arabiya television network and the Middle East Broadcast Center which runs it, as well as the live studio position of the Iranian television station, and two production companies -- Gaza Media Center  and Mayadeen -- that provide services for Fox News, Sky News, CBS and Al Jazeera.

Nobody was injured in that attack. Witnesses said that everyone in the building fled after a warning missile was fired in the stairwell, two minutes before the attack on the roof.

Jodi Rudoren reported from Gaza City, and Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem. Reporting was contributed by Fares Akram and Tyler Hicks from the Gaza Strip, Carol Sutherland and Iritz Pazner Garshowitz from Jerusalem, and David D. Kirkpatrick and Mayy El Sheikh from Cairo.

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