U.S. Is Weighing Stronger Action in Syrian Conflict

Francisco Leong/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Rebels in northern Syria celebrated on Wednesday next to what was reported to be a government fighter jet.

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration, hoping that the conflict in Syria has reached a turning point, is considering deeper intervention to help push President Bashar al-Assad from power, according to government officials involved in the discussions.

While no decisions have been made, the administration is considering several alternatives, including directly providing arms to some opposition fighters.

The most urgent decision, likely to come next week, is whether NATO should deploy surface-to-air missiles in Turkey, ostensibly to protect that country from Syrian missiles that could carry chemical weapons. The State Department spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, said Wednesday that the Patriot missile system would not be “for use beyond the Turkish border.”

But some strategists and administration officials believe that Syrian Air Force pilots might fear how else the missile batteries could be used. If so, they could be intimidated from bombing the northern Syrian border towns where the rebels control considerable territory. A NATO survey team is in Turkey, examining possible sites for the batteries.

Other, more distant options include directly providing arms to opposition fighters rather than only continuing to use other countries, especially Qatar, to do so. A riskier course would be to insert C.I.A. officers or allied intelligence services on the ground in Syria, to work more closely with opposition fighters in areas that they now largely control.

Administration officials discussed all of these steps before the presidential election. But the combination of President Obama’s re-election, which has made the White House more willing to take risks, and a series of recent tactical successes by rebel forces, one senior administration official said, “has given this debate a new urgency, and a new focus.”

The outcome of the broader debate about how heavily America should intervene in another Middle Eastern conflict remains uncertain. Mr. Obama’s record in intervening in the Arab Spring has been cautious: While he joined in what began as a humanitarian effort in Libya, he refused to put American military forces on the ground and, with the exception of a C.I.A. and diplomatic presence, ended the American role as soon as Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi was toppled.

In the case of Syria, a far more complex conflict than Libya’s, some officials continue to worry that the risks of intervention — both in American lives and in setting off a broader conflict, potentially involving Turkey — are too great to justify action. Others argue that more aggressive steps are justified in Syria by the loss in life there, the risks that its chemical weapons could get loose, and the opportunity to deal a blow to Iran’s only ally in the region. The debate now coursing through the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department and the C.I.A. resembles a similar one among America’s main allies.

“Look, let’s be frank, what we’ve done over the last 18 months hasn’t been enough,” Britain’s prime minister, David Cameron, said three weeks ago after visiting a Syrian refugee camp in Jordan. “The slaughter continues, the bloodshed is appalling, the bad effects it’s having on the region, the radicalization, but also the humanitarian crisis that is engulfing Syria. So let’s work together on really pushing what more we can do.” Mr. Cameron has discussed those options directly with Mr. Obama, White House officials say.

France and Britain have recognized a newly formed coalition of opposition groups, which the United States helped piece together. So far, Washington has not done so.

American officials and independent specialists on Syria said that the administration was reviewing its Syria policy in part to gain credibility and sway with opposition fighters, who have seized key Syrian military bases in recent weeks.

“The administration has figured out that if they don’t start doing something, the war will be over and they won’t have any influence over the combat forces on the ground,” said Jeffrey White, a former Defense Intelligence Agency intelligence officer and specialist on the Syria military. “They may have some influence with various political groups and factions, but they won’t have influence with the fighters, and the fighters will control the territory.”

Jessica Brandt contributed reporting from Cambridge, Mass.

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U.S. daily deals website Living Social to cut 400 jobs: WSJ

(Reuters) – U.S. daily deals online firm Living Social Inc is expected to announce on Thursday it is cutting 400 jobs, representing 9 percent of its workforce, as demand for daily deals and emailed daily discounts dries up, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing a source familiar with the plans.

The Washington-based company’s workforce has increased nearly 10-fold since the beginning of 2010 and it currently employs about 4,500 people worldwide, the Journal said. (http://link.reuters.com/rus34t)

Retail website Amazon.Com Inc owns a 30 percent stake in Living Social and booked a third-quarter charge of $ 169 million on the holding.

Living Social declined to comment to Reuters on the Journal report.

(Reporting By Neha Dimri and Alistair Barr; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Bonds, Clemens, Sosa on Hall ballot for first time

NEW YORK (AP) — The most polarizing Hall of Fame debate since Pete Rose will now be decided by the baseball shrine's voters: Do Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Sammy Sosa belong in Cooperstown despite drug allegations that tainted their huge numbers?

In a monthlong election sure to become a referendum on the Steroids Era, the Hall ballot was released Wednesday, and Bonds, Clemens and Sosa are on it for the first time.

Bonds is the all-time home run champion with 762 and won a record seven MVP awards. Clemens took home a record seven Cy Young trophies and is ninth with 354 victories. Sosa ranks eighth on the homer chart with 609.

Yet for all their HRs, RBIs and Ws, the shadow of PEDs looms large.

"You could see for years that this particular ballot was going to be controversial and divisive to an unprecedented extent," Larry Stone of The Seattle Times wrote in an email. "My hope is that some clarity begins to emerge over the Hall of Fame status of those linked to performance-enhancing drugs. But I doubt it."

More than 600 longtime members of the Baseball Writers' Association of America will vote on the 37-player ballot. Candidates require 75 percent for induction, and the results will be announced Jan. 9.

Craig Biggio, Mike Piazza and Curt Schilling also are among the 24 first-time eligibles. Jack Morris, Jeff Bagwell and Tim Raines are the top holdover candidates.

If recent history is any indication, the odds are solidly stacked against Bonds, Clemens and Sosa. Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro both posted Cooperstown-caliber stats, too, but drug clouds doomed them in Hall voting.

Some who favor Bonds and Clemens claim the bulk of their accomplishments came before baseball got wrapped up in drug scandals. They add that PED use was so prevalent in the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s that it's unfair to exclude anyone because so many who-did-and-who-didn't questions remain.

Many fans on the other side say drug cheats — suspected or otherwise — should never be afforded the game's highest individual honor.

Either way, this election is baseball's newest hot button, generating the most fervent Hall arguments since Rose. The discussion about Rose was moot, however — the game's career hits leader agreed to a lifetime ban in 1989 after an investigation concluded he bet on games while managing the Cincinnati Reds, and that barred him from the BBWAA ballot.

The BBWAA election rules allow voters to pick up to 10 candidates. As for criteria, this is the only instruction: "Voting shall be based upon the player's record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played."

That leaves a lot of room for interpretation.

Bonds, Clemens and Sosa won't get a vote from Mike Klis of The Denver Post.

"Nay on all three. I think in all three cases, their performances were artificially enhanced. Especially in the cases of Bonds and Clemens, their production went up abnormally late in their careers," he wrote in an email.

They'll do better with Bob Dutton of The Kansas City Star.

"I plan to vote for all three. I understand the steroid/PED questions surrounding each one, and I've wrestled with the implications," he wrote in an email.

"My view is these guys played and posted Hall of Fame-type numbers against the competition of their time. That will be my sole yardstick. If Major League Baseball took no action against a player during his career for alleged or suspected steroid/PED use, I'm not going to do so in assessing their career for the Hall of Fame," he said.

San Jose Mercury News columnist Mark Purdy will reserve judgment.

"At the beginning of all this, I made up my mind I had to adopt a consistent policy on the steroid social club. So, my policy has been, with the brilliance in the way they set up the Hall of Fame vote where these guys have a 15-year window, I'm not going to vote for any of those guys until I get the best picture possible of what was happening then," he wrote in an email.

"We learn a little bit more each year. We learned a lot during the Bonds trial. We learned a lot during the Clemens trial. I don't want to say I'm never going to vote for any of them. I want to wait until the end of their eligibility window and have my best idea of what was really going on," he said.

Clemens was acquitted this summer in federal court on six counts that he lied and obstructed Congress when he denied using performance-enhancing drugs.

Bonds was found guilty in 2011 by a federal court jury on one count of obstruction of justice, ruling he gave an evasive answer in 2003 to a grand jury looking into the distribution of illegal steroids. Bonds is appealing the verdict.

McGwire is 10th on the career home run list with 583, but has never received even 24 percent in his six Hall tries. Big Mac has admitted to using steroids and human growth hormone.

Palmeiro is among only four players with 500 homers and 3,000 hits, yet has gotten a high of just 12.6 percent in his two years on the ballot. He drew a 10-day suspension in 2005 after a positive test for PEDs, and said the result was due to a vitamin vial given to him by teammate Miguel Tejada.

Biggio topped the 3,000-hit mark — which always has been considered an automatic credential for Cooperstown — and spent his entire career with the Houston Astros.

"Hopefully, the writers feel strongly that they liked what they saw, and we'll see what happens," Biggio said last week.

Schilling was 216-146 and won three World Series championships, including his "bloody sock" performance for the Boston Red Sox in 2004.

___

AP Baseball Writer Janie McCauley and AP Sports Writers Arnie Stapleton and Dave Skretta contributed to this report.

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Recipes for Health: Roasted Sweet Potato and Crispy Kale Salad — Recipes for Health

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

This is a great salad to make with leftover roasted sweet potatoes but you can also roast them just to make the salad. The trick to succeeding with crispy kale is to make sure it is completely dry before you put it in the oven. If you are using bunched kale I recommend that you stem and wash it, spin it twice in a salad spinner, then set the leaves in single layers on a few layers of paper towels and roll them up. You can then refrigerate for up to a day or two. Once the salad is assembled, the portion of kale that you toss with the sweet potatoes will soften, and the kale that surrounds the sweet potatoes will remain crispy.

2 large or 3 medium sweet potatoes

1 generous bunch curly kale (about 1 pound), stemmed, leaves washed and dried thoroughly (see above)

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Salt to taste

1/4 cup broken pecans, lightly toasted

For the dressing:

1 small garlic clove, pureed

2 ounces Roquefort or blue cheese, crumbled

1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme leaves

1/2 cup buttermilk

1 tablespoon sherry vinegar

Freshly ground pepper

1. To roast the sweet potatoes, heat the oven to 425 degrees. Rinse the sweet potatoes and pierce in several places with the tip of a paring knife. Line a sheet pan with foil and place the sweet potatoes on the foil. Bake 40 to minutes to an hour, depending on the size of the sweet potatoes. They are done when they are soft and beginning to ooze. Remove from heat and allow to cool.

2. Meanwhile make the dressing (or you can make it a day ahead). In a mini-processor or in a mortar and pestle blend together the garlic, cheese, thyme, buttermilk, and vinegar. Season to taste with salt and pepper. For best results, leave it to sit for at least an hour.

3. To make the crispy kale, heat the oven to 300 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment. Make sure that your kale leaves are dry and tear them into medium-size pieces and toss with the olive oil. Gently knead the leaves between your thumbs and fingers to make sure they are coated with oil. Place in an even layer on the baking sheets. Do this in batches if necessary. Place in the oven and roast for 16 to 22 minutes, until the leaves are crisp but not browned. If some of the leaves crisp before others, remove them to a bowl or sheet pan and return the remaining kale to the oven. Watch closely as once the kale browns it will taste bitter. Season to taste with kosher salt or fine sea salt. Allow to cool.

4. Peel the sweet potatoes, quarter lengthwise and slice. Place in a salad bowl and add the pecans and half the crispy kale.

5. Line the edge of a platter with the remaining crispy kale. Toss the sweet potato mixture with the dressing, place in the middle of the platter and serve at once.

Yield: Serves 4 as a main dish

Advance preparation: The crispy kale will remain crisp for a day at room temperature. Sweet potatoes can be baked and refrigerated for up to four days. The salad should be served right away once assembled.

Nutritional information per serving: 378 calories; 17 grams fat; 4 grams saturated fat; 3 grams polyunsaturated fat; 9 grams monounsaturated fat; 14 milligrams cholesterol; 49 grams carbohydrates; 8 grams dietary fiber; 431 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 11 grams protein

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

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The Next War: In Federal Budget Cutting, F-35 Fighter Jet Is at Risk

Luke Sharrett for The New York Times

Vice Adm. David Venlet was named to lead the Joint Strike Fighter program in 2010 after problems had left it behind schedule and over budget.

LEXINGTON PARK, Md. — The Marine version of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, already more than a decade in the making, was facing a crucial question: Could the jet, which can soar well past the speed of sound, land at sea like a helicopter?

Luke Sharrett for The New York Times

An F-35B, the Marine Corps version of the Joint Strike Fighter.

On an October day last year, with Lt. Col. Fred Schenk at the controls, the plane glided toward a ship off the Atlantic coast and then, its engine rotating straight down, descended gently to the deck at seven feet a second.

There were cheers from the ship’s crew members, who “were all shaking my hands and smiling,” Colonel Schenk recalled.

The smooth landing helped save that model and breathed new life into the huge F-35 program, the most expensive weapons system in military history. But while Pentagon officials now say that the program is making progress, it begins its 12th year in development years behind schedule, troubled with technological flaws and facing concerns about its relatively short flight range as possible threats grow from Asia.

With a record price tag — potentially in the hundreds of billions of dollars — the jet is likely to become a target for budget cutters. Reining in military spending is on the table as President Obama and Republican leaders in Congress look for ways to avert a fiscal crisis. But no matter what kind of deal is reached in the next few weeks, military analysts expect the Pentagon budget to decline in the next decade as the war in Afghanistan ends and the military is required to do its part to reduce the federal debt.

Behind the scenes, the Pentagon and the F-35’s main contractor, Lockheed Martin, are engaged in a conflict of their own over the costs. The relationship “is the worst I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been in some bad ones,” Maj. Gen. Christopher Bogdan of the Air Force, a top program official, said in September. “I guarantee you: we will not succeed on this if we do not get past that.”

In a battle that is being fought on other military programs as well, the Pentagon has been pushing Lockheed to cut costs much faster while the company is fighting to hold onto a profit. “Lockheed has seemed to be focused on short-term business goals,” Frank Kendall, the Pentagon’s top weapons buyer, said this month. “And we’d like to see them focus more on execution of the program and successful delivery of the product.”

The F-35 was conceived as the Pentagon’s silver bullet in the sky — a state-of-the art aircraft that could be adapted to three branches of the military, with advances that would easily overcome the defenses of most foes. The radar-evading jets would not only dodge sophisticated antiaircraft missiles, but they would also give pilots a better picture of enemy threats while enabling allies, who want the planes, too, to fight more closely with American forces.

But the ambitious aircraft instead illustrates how the Pentagon can let huge and complex programs veer out of control and then have a hard time reining them in. The program nearly doubled in cost as Lockheed and the military’s own bureaucracy failed to deliver on the most basic promise of a three-in-one jet that would save taxpayers money and be served up speedily.

Lockheed has delivered 41 planes so far for testing and initial training, and Pentagon leaders are slowing purchases of the F-35 to fix the latest technical problems and reduce the immediate costs. A helmet for pilots that projects targeting data onto its visor is too jittery to count on. The tail-hook on the Navy jet has had trouble catching the arresting cable, meaning that version cannot yet land on carriers. And writing and testing the millions of lines of software needed by the jets is so daunting that General Bogdan said, “It scares the heck out of me.”

With all the delays — full production is not expected until 2019 — the military has spent billions to extend the lives of older fighters and buy more of them to fill the gap. At the same time, the cost to build each F-35 has risen to an average of $137 million from $69 million in 2001.

The jets would cost taxpayers $396 billion, including research and development, if the Pentagon sticks to its plan to build 2,443 by the late 2030s. That would be nearly four times as much as any other weapons system and two-thirds of the $589 billion the United States has spent on the war in Afghanistan. The military is also desperately trying to figure out how to reduce the long-term costs of operating the planes, now projected at $1.1 trillion.

“The plane is unaffordable,” said Winslow T. Wheeler, an analyst at the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit group in Washington.

Todd Harrison, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a research group in Washington, said Pentagon officials had little choice but to push ahead, especially after already spending $65 billion on the fighter. “It is simultaneously too big to fail and too big to succeed,” he said. “The bottom line here is that they’ve crammed too much into the program. They were asking one fighter to do three different jobs, and they basically ended up with three different fighters.”

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Copter Downing May Show New Syria Rebel Capability

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Syrian rebels downed a military helicopter with a surface-to-air missile outside Aleppo on Tuesday, video uploaded by antigovernment activists appeared to show, marking what is potentially a major battlefield advance: confirmation that rebels have put their growing stock of heat-seeking missiles to effective use.

In one video, a utility helicopter that appeared to be a Russian-built Mi-8 can be seen banking in a slow left turn and then being hit squarely near its engine by a fast-moving projectile rising at a sharp angle from below. Another video showed what appeared to be the same helicopter moments after the strike. The crippled aircraft manages a partly controlled descent in spreading flames, as a voice off-camera shouts, “sarook,” or rocket, before it strikes the ground and explodes.

In recent months, rebels have used mainly machine guns to shoot down several Syrian Air Force helicopters and fixed-wing attack jets. In this case the thick smoke trailing the projectile, combined with the elevation of the aircraft, strongly suggested that the helicopter was hit by a missile.

Rebels hailed the event as the culmination of their long pursuit of effective antiaircraft weapons, though it was not clear if the downing was an isolated tactical success or heralded a new phase in the war that would present a meaningful challenge to the Syrian government’s air supremacy.

Debate has raged since the start of the insurgency over whether Western and Arab nations should provide Syria’s rebels with portable antiaircraft missiles, often called Manpads. Some fear that such weapons could be smuggled away from the conflict and later used by terrorists against civilian airliners.

Manpads funneled by the United States to Pakistan helped Afghan rebels turn the tide against the Soviet Union in the Afghan war of 1980s. But that example is full of ambivalence — often cited in the Syria debate — because it led to an extended buyback program and decades of worry after Islamist militias, which eventually collaborated with Al Qaeda, prevailed over the Soviet-backed government in Kabul.

“Once these weapons are outside of government control, it is often extremely difficult to track their movement and control who has access to them,” said Matthew Schroeder, an analyst who studies missile proliferation at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington.

The rebels have slowly been acquiring them nonetheless, including from Syrian military stock captured in battle, and according to the unconfirmed accounts of some rebel commanders, via smuggling from outside.

Tuesday’s helicopter downing occurred not far from a large military base outside Aleppo, which rebels overran last week. It comes after a monthlong string of rebel raids on air bases, followed by their ransacking for weapons.

Andrew J. Tabler, a Syria analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, called the use of the missile “a big deal, but not a surprising deal,” and said it appeared to confirm one of two things: weapons seized from bases are functional, or that there has been truth to the quiet talk that after the recent meeting in Doha, Qatar, to reorganize the Syrian opposition into a new coalition, outside countries would provide more sophisticated weapons to the rebels.

Since that, several Arab countries and France have recognized the coalition as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people, perhaps making it more politically palatable to provide rebels with the weapons.

In interviews over the past months, Syria’s rebel have described a concerted effort to acquire and master such weapons. Last month, a rebel commander in Idlib said that he had received a small quantity of Soviet heat-seeking missiles dating to 1974 and that one had been used to shoot down a helicopter. That downing could not be independently confirmed.

He also said his fighters had seized numerous heavy machine guns from government bases and that more weapons had been delivered from Libya via Qatar. He said rebels’ tactics and skills were improving. “They know how and where to set or position the launchers,” he said.

A fighter in Damascus, Mohammed Moaz, said in an interview last month that rebels had formed an antiaircraft battalion of defected pilots and soldiers armed with missiles taken from bases raided east of Damascus. “Pilots are giving training to civilians,” he said. “It’s a qualitative improvement. Soon you’re going to hear more news about downing MIGs in the capital.”

Still, the continued dangers of government airstrikes were visible in areas other than Aleppo. In Idlib, rebels accused the authorities of targeting civilians working on the fall olive harvest when an airstrike hit an olive press “filled with people,” killing at least 20 and wounding 50, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a group based in Britain, and the Local Coordination Committees, which rely on local activists for their reports.

Citing a witness, an activist in Idlib also suggested that the crowd had been targeted. Planes took three passes over the area, first striking a farm close to the press but killing no one, he said; on the next pass they struck the olive press; and on the third run they targeted a grove where people were picking olives, killing eight women.

Another activist in the area who gave only the name Alaa said cluster bombs had been dropped onto the area and some had not exploded, creating an enduring hazard in the groves.

Anne Barnard and Hwaida Saad reported from Beirut, and C. J. Chivers from the United States. Hania Mourtada contributed reporting from Beirut, and Hala Droubi from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

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No. 1 Indiana rolls past No. 14 N Carolina 83-59

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (AP) — No. 1 Indiana had something to prove Tuesday night — that it could play defense.

Just two days after the Hoosiers put together their best game this season, they delivered an even more impressive performance, getting 20 points from Cody Zeller and 19 each from Will Sheehey and Victor Oladipo, running away from No. 14 North Carolina 83-59 in the ACC-Big Ten Challenge.

"Our guys played great basketball tonight," coach Tom Crean said. "We played against an incredible opponent, everybody understands how great North Carolina is. Our guys had an edge to them tonight, and it was on the defensive end as much as anything else."

The conventional wisdom is that the Hoosiers (7-0) are one of the nation's top scoring teams.

But the detractors have questioned Indiana's willingness to defend and some have even suggested that weakness has allowed No. 2 Duke to close the gap on the nation's top-ranked team.

North Carolina coach Roy Williams disagrees.

"I think they are," he said when asked whether Indiana deserved to be No. 1. "The thing I like about them is they really are a team. They don't have one guy that beats you up, they beat you so many different ways."

Williams and the Tar Heels (5-2) learned that lesson the hard way in Bloomington.

In the second half, the Tar Heels shot just 27.8 percent from the field and went 0 for 5 from 3-point range. They were outscored 12-8 on the fast break, an area that had caused so much concern for Crean that he lost sleep leading up to the game.

"I know people criticize us for our defense, and they say 'If they can't play defense, how good can they really be?'" Oladipo said.

Offensively, the Hoosiers were their usual balanced selves.

Zeller was 8 of 13 from the field with four blocks, one steal and an assist. Oladipo and Sheehey were both 8 of 12 from the field. Senior guard Jordan Hulls was 5 of 8, including three 3-pointers, and finished with 13 points, eight assists and two steals.

"It's cool," Oladipo said when asked about beating a program like North Carolina this handily. "I mean, we've been working really hard and you guys know as well as I know that this program, well not last year, but over the last couple of years was really struggling and we wanted to get it back to where it belongs, which is on top. So to get a win like that, it's a humbling experience."

The best thing about this game for North Carolina may be the end of its run against teams from the Hoosier State.

A week ago, North Carolina trailed by 29 points in the second half before falling 82-71 to two-time national runner-up Butler.

On Tuesday, it was almost an instant replay.

Indiana closed the first half fast, started the second half fast and spent the rest of the game pulling away. The Hoosiers' biggest lead, 83-51, came with 4:22 left in the game.

Dexter Strickland led the Tar Heels with 14 points, Marcus Paige had 11 and James Michael McAdoo had 10 points and nine rebounds for North Carolina, which was missing sophomore guard P.J. Hairston, who stayed home with a sprained left knee.

There was a bigger problem, though. North Carolina couldn't figure out how to contain Zeller, one of this season's favorites to be the national player of the year.

"Boy, I would love to watch them play if it wasn't against my team," Williams said. "You look down the lineup and Cody Zeller, he's family to begin with, he's really a load to handle, and two other guys that I didn't even hear of when they were in high school, they just kicked our rear ends."

The game pitting two of the country's most storied programs — which have combined for 10 national titles and 3,767 wins — had been billed as one of this season's showcase events. For 16 minutes, it lived up to the hype.

Zeller changed everything with two flurries.

By setting high picks and drawing post players outside, it opened up the lanes for his cutting and slashing teammates who wasted no time exploiting the holes in the Carolina defense, using a 15-6 run at the end of the first half to take a 46-37 halftime lead.

The Hoosiers were only getting started.

"If you let them dictate and control the pace of the game, they're going to win," Crean said. "So we had to control and dictate the pace of the game, and to do that, we had to run."

But in the second half, the Hoosiers were out to prove something else — that they could defend.

Over the first 8½ minutes, North Carolina managed only three points, the tip-in and a free throw.

Zeller and Oladipo, meanwhile, combined for seven points in the opening 13-0 blitz that put Indiana ahead 59-37, and North Carolina never challenged again as the Hoosiers won their 34th consecutive home game in November against a team that was supposed to cause havoc.

"It's a huge statement," Sheehey said. "We prepared for this game for a couple of weeks now and that's about it. You saw the score. We played hard, we played well, we played together and when we do that, stuff is going to happen."

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Recipes for Health: Spinach and Turkey Salad — Recipes for Health

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

Turkey or chicken transforms this classic spinach salad (minus the bacon) into a light main dish, welcome after Thanksgiving and before the rest of the holiday season feasting begins.

2 cups (12 ounces) shredded cooked turkey, chicken breast or chicken breast tenders

1 6-ounce bag baby spinach

6 white or cremini mushrooms, thinly sliced

1 cup cooked wild rice

2 tablespoons chopped walnuts

1 to 2 hard boiled eggs (to taste), finely chopped (optional)

2 tablespoons chopped chives

1 to 2 tablespoons chopped fresh herbs such as parsley, tarragon or marjoram

For the dressing:

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

1 tablespoon red wine vinegar, tarragon vinegar or sherry vinegar

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

Salt and freshly ground pepper

1 small garlic clove, pureed

1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil

2 tablespoons plain low-fat yogurt

1. Combine all of the salad ingredients in a large salad bowl. Whisk together the lemon juice, vinegar, Dijon mustard, salt, pepper, garlic, olive oil and yogurt. Toss with the salad just before serving.

Yield: Serves 4 as a main dish

Advance preparation: The salad can be assembled and the dressing mixed several hours before serving. Refrigerate and toss together when ready to serve.

Variation: Add 1 ripe but firm persimmon, peeled, cored and sliced, to the mixture.

Nutritional information per serving: 375 calories; 25 grams fat; 4 grams saturated fat; 5 grams polyunsaturated fat; 15 grams monounsaturated fat; 53 milligrams cholesterol; 14 grams carbohydrates; 2 grams dietary fiber; 119 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 26 grams protein

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

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Facebook Gift Store Urges Users to Shop While They Share

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook is already privy to its users’ e-mail addresses, wedding pictures and political beliefs. Now the company is nudging them to share a bit more: credit card numbers and offline addresses.

James Best Jr./The New York Times

Facebook Gifts is a service that prompts users to buy things for friends on the social network.

Sharing Even More

What do you think about Facebook’s plan to have users buy gifts for their friends through the site using their credit cards?

A screenshot of Facebook Gifts.

The nudge comes from a new Facebook service called Gifts. It allows Facebook users — only in the United States for now — to buy presents for their friends on the social network. On offer are items as varied as spices from Dean & DeLuca, pajamas from BabyGap and subscriptions to Hulu Plus, the video service. This week Facebook added iTunes gift cards.

The gift service is part of an aggressive moneymaking push aimed at pleasing Facebook’s investors after the company’s dismal stock market debut. Facebook has stepped up mobile advertising and is starting to customize the marketing messages it shows to users based on their Web browsing outside Facebook.

Those efforts seem to have brought some relief to Wall Street. Analysts issued more bullish projections for the company in recent days, and the stock was up 49 percent from its lowest point, closing Tuesday at $26.15, although that is still well below the initial offering price of $38. The share price has been buoyed in part by the fact that a wave of insider lockup periods expired without a flood of shares hitting the market.

To power the Gifts service, Facebook rented a warehouse in South Dakota and created its own software to track inventory and shipping. It will not say how much it earns from each purchase made through Gifts, though merchants that have a similar arrangement with Amazon.com give it a roughly 15 percent cut of sales.

If it catches on, the service would give Facebook a toehold in the more than $200 billion e-commerce market. Much more important, it would let the company accumulate a new stream of valuable personal data and use it to refine targeted advertisements, its bread and butter. The company said it did not now use data collected through Gifts for advertising purposes, but could not rule it out in the future.

“The hard part for Facebook was aggregating a billion users. Now it’s more about how to monetize those users without scaring them away,” said Colin Sebastian, an analyst with Robert W. Baird.

He added: “Gifts should also contribute more to Facebook’s treasure trove of user data, which has the benefit of a virtuous cycle, driving more personalization of the site, leading to better and more targeted ads, which improves overall monetization.”

Facebook already collects credit card information from users who play social games on its site. But they are a limited constituency, and a wider audience may be persuaded to buy a gift when Facebook reminds them that a friend is expecting a baby or a cousin is approaching her 40th birthday.

The Gifts service, which grew out of Facebook’s acquisition of a mobile application called Karma, was introduced in September and expanded earlier this month on the eve of the holiday shopping season.

Magnolia Bakery, based in New York, was among Facebook’s early partners for Gifts. Its vice president for public relations, Sara Gramling, said the company had sold roughly 200 packages of treats since then. She counted it as a marketing success. The bakery, which gained fame thanks to “Sex and the City,” had only recently begun shipping its goods. “It was a great opportunity to expand our network,” she said.

Magnolia Bakery isn’t exactly catering to the masses. A half-dozen cupcakes cost $35, plus about $12 for shipping. Facebook, Ms. Gramling said, takes care of the billing. The bakery is eyeing Facebook’s global reach, too, as it opens outlets internationally, especially in the Middle East.

One of the appeals of Facebook Gifts is the ease of making a purchase. Facebook users are nudged to buy a gift (a gift-box icon pops up) for Facebook friends on their birthdays. They are offered a vast menu to choose from: beer glasses, cake pops, quilts, marshmallows, magazine subscriptions and donations to charity. They are asked to choose a greeting card. Then they are asked for credit card details. Facebook says it stores that credit card information, unless users remove it after making a purchase.

Facebook has declined to say how many users have bought gifts, only that among those who have, the average purchase is $25.

David Streitfeld contributed reporting.

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Egypt’s President Said to Limit Scope of Judicial Decree

Tara Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times

Egyptians at a burned-out school in Cairo on Monday before the funeral of an activist who was injured in a clash and died Sunday.

CAIRO — With public pressure mounting, President Mohamed Morsi appeared to pull back Monday from his attempt to assert an authority beyond the reach of any court. His allies in the Muslim Brotherhood canceled plans for a large demonstration in his support, signaling a chance to calm an escalating battle that has paralyzed a divided nation.

After Mr. Morsi met for hours with the judges of Egypt’s Supreme Judicial Council, his spokesman read an “explanation” on television that appeared to backtrack from a presidential decree placing Mr. Morsi’s official edicts above judicial scrutiny — even while saying the president had not actually changed a word of the statement.

Though details of the talks remained hazy, and it was not clear whether the opposition or the court would accept his position, Mr. Morsi’s gesture was another demonstration that Egyptians would no longer allow their rulers to operate above the law. But there appeared little chance that the gesture alone would be enough to quell the crisis set off by his perceived power grab.

Protesters remained camped in Tahrir Square, and the opposition was moving ahead with plans for a major demonstration on Tuesday.

The presidential spokesman, Yasser Ali, said for the first time that Mr. Morsi had sought only to assert pre-existing powers already approved by the courts under previous precedents, not to free himself from judicial oversight.

He said that the president meant all along to follow an established Egyptian legal doctrine suspending judicial scrutiny of presidential “acts of sovereignty” that work “to protect the main institutions of the state.” The judicial council had said Sunday that it could bless aspects of the decree deemed to qualify under the doctrine.

Mr. Morsi had maintained from the start that his purpose was to empower himself to prevent judges appointed by former President Hosni Mubarak from dissolving the constituent assembly, which is led by his fellow Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party. The courts have already dissolved the Islamist-led Parliament and an earlier constituent assembly, and the Supreme Constitutional Court was widely expected to rule against this one next week.

But the text of the original decree had exempted all presidential edicts from judicial review until the ratification of a constitution, not just those edicts related to the assembly or justified as “acts of sovereignty.”

Legal experts said that the spokesman’s explanations of the president’s intentions, if put into effect, would amount to a revision of the decree Mr. Morsi issued last Thursday. But lawyers said that the verbal statements alone carried little legal weight.

How the courts would apply the doctrine remained hard to predict. And Mr. Morsi’s opposition indicated it was holding out for far greater concessions, including the breakup of the whole constituent assembly.

Speaking at a news conference while Mr. Morsi was meeting with the judges, the opposition activist and intellectual Abdel Haleem Qandeil called for “a long-term battle,” declaring that withdrawal of Mr. Morsi’s new powers was only the first step toward the opposition’s goal of “the withdrawal of the legitimacy of Morsi’s presence in the presidential palace.” Completely withdrawing the edict would be “a minimum,” he said.

Khaled Ali, a human rights lawyer and former presidential candidate, pointed to the growing crowd of protesters camped out in Tahrir Square for a fourth night. “The one who did the action has to take it back,” Mr. Ali said.

Moataz Abdel Fattah, a political scientist at Cairo University, said Mr. Morsi was saving face during a strategic retreat. “He is trying to simply say, ‘I am not a new pharaoh; I am just trying to stabilize the institutions that we already have,’ ” he said. “But for the liberals, this is now their moment, and for sure they are not going to waste it, because he has given them an excellent opportunity to score.”

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