Saban quickly turns to challenges of 2013 season

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — It's becoming a familiar January scene for Nick Saban.

The Alabama coach plastered a smile on his face for a series of posed photos next to the various trophies awarded to college football's national champions and then proceeded to talk about the challenges facing his team.

Maybe Saban let the Gatorade dry from the celebratory drenching before thinking about the 2013 season. Maybe.

"The team next year is 0-0," Saban, who is on a 61-7 run over the past five seasons, said Tuesday morning. "Even though I really appreciate what this team accomplished and am very, very proud of what they accomplished, we need to prepare for the challenges of the new season very quickly with the team we have coming back. "

It didn't take Saban long to refocus after Monday night's 42-14 demolition of Notre Dame that secured a second straight BCS title, the Crimson Tide's third in four seasons and the seventh straight for Southeastern Conference teams.

Shortly after the game, he was already talking about getting back to the office by Wednesday morning.

Alabama players, meanwhile, finally were able to voice the "D-word." Center Barrett Jones said he had a Sports Illustrated cover from a couple of years ago after his last college game.

"It says, 'Dynasty. Can anybody stop Alabama?' I'll never forget looking at that thing and wondering if we really could be a dynasty," said Jones, who mainly put it on the wall because he's featured. "I think three out of four, I'm no dynasty expert, but that seems like a dynasty to me. I guess I can say that now that I'm gone. Don't tell coach I said that."

The 2013 team will almost certainly be regarded among the preseason favorites to get back to the summit, even though three Tide stars — tailback Eddie Lacy, cornerback Dee Milliner and right tackle D.J. Fluker — could decide to skip their senior seasons and turn pro.

Saban also emphatically tried to end speculation that he might return to the NFL, where he spent two years with the Miami Dolphins before returning to the SEC.

It was a question that really made him bristle during the 30-plus minute news conference.

"How many times do you think I've been asked to put it to rest?" Saban said. "And I've put it to rest, and you continue to ask it. So I'm going to say it today, that — you know, I think somewhere along the line you've got to choose. You learn a lot from the experiences of what you've done in the past. I came to the Miami Dolphins, what, eight years ago for the best owner, the best person that I've ever had the opportunity to work for. And in the two years that I was here, I had a very, very difficult time thinking that I could impact the organization in the way that I wanted to or the way that I was able to in college, and it was very difficult for me."

He said that experience taught him that the college ranks "is where I belong, and I'm really happy and at peace with all that."

As for the players, All-America linebacker C.J. Mosley has already said he'll return. So has quarterback AJ McCarron, who had his second straight star turn in a BCS title game.

"We certainly have to build the team around him," Saban said, adding that a late-game spat with Jones showed the quarterback's competitive fire. "I've talked a lot about it's difficult to play quarterback when you don't have good players around you. I think we should have, God willing and everybody staying healthy, a pretty good receiver corps. We'll have to do some rebuilding in the offensive line. Regardless of what Eddie decides to do, we'll probably still have some pretty decent runners. But I think AJ can be a really good player, maybe the best quarterback in the country next year."

The biggest question mark is replacing three, maybe four, starters on an offensive line that paved the way.

Amari Cooper, who broke several of Julio Jones' Alabama freshman receiving marks, and fellow freshman running back T.J. Yeldon give McCarron and the Tide a couple of potent weapons, even if Lacy doesn't return.

"I am going to try to win three or four," said Cooper, who had 105 yards and two touchdowns in the title game. "This season was good, but I expected it to be even more. There is so much more that I can do."

Saban emphasized the difficulty of repeating and said he showed the players a video of NBA Hall of Famer Michael Jordan saying that the first title isn't the hardest — it's the ones after that.

That's because, Saban said, "you have to have the will to fight against yourself."

Now, the 'Bama coach has four titles, including one during his stop at LSU. Saban doesn't wear the championship rings but uses them for a different purpose.

"I just put them on the coffee table for the recruits to look at," he said, cracking up the room.

Saban has already lined up another highly rated recruiting class and has the next wave of young talents waiting in the wings.

After all, he talked about the sign mentor Bill Belichick hung in the football building during their NFL days together: "Do your job."

Saban jokingly acknowledged that while he prepares for everything, the one thing he has never been able to anticipate is the Gatorade bath. He drew heat for a scowl after the first one, following the title game win over Texas when he got dinged in the head. Monday night's dousing went better.

"It's cold, it's sticky, but I appreciated not getting hit in the head with the bucket," Saban said. "That was an improvement."

No program has had this kind of championship run since Tom Osborne's Nebraska teams won it all in 1994, 1995 and 1997.

Saban remembers that second team well. The Cornuskers stomped Michigan State 50-10 in Saban's first game as head coach.

"I'm thinking, we're never going to win a game," Saban said. "We'll never win a game here at Michigan State. I must have taken a bad job, wrong job, no players, something. I remember Coach Osborne when we shook hands after the game, he put his arm around me and whispered in my ear, 'You're not really as bad as you think.'"

So take heart, college football.

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Health Spending Growth Stays Low for 3rd Straight Year

WASHINGTON — National health spending climbed to $2.7 trillion in 2011, or an average of $8,700 for every person in the country, but as a share of the economy, it remained stable for the third consecutive year, the Obama administration said Monday.

The rate of increase in health spending, 3.9 percent in 2011, was the same as in 2009 and 2010 — the lowest annual rates recorded in the 52 years the government has been collecting such data.

Federal officials could not say for sure whether the low growth in health spending represented the start of a trend or reflected the continuing effects of the recession, which crimped the economy from December 2007 to June 2009.

Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, said that “the statistics show how the Affordable Care Act is already making a difference,” saving money for consumers. But a report issued by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, in her department, said that the law had so far had “no discernible impact” on overall health spending.

Although some provisions of the law have taken effect, the report said, “their influence on overall health spending through 2011 was minimal.”

The recession increased unemployment, reduced the number of people with private health insurance, lowered household income and assets and therefore tended to slow health spending, said Micah B. Hartman, a statistician at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

In the report, federal officials said that total national spending on prescription drugs and doctors’ services grew faster in 2011 than in the year before, but that spending on hospital care grew more slowly.

Medicaid spending likewise grew less quickly in 2011 than in the prior year, as states struggled with budget problems. But Medicare spending grew more rapidly, because of an increase in “the volume and intensity” of doctors’ services and a one-time increase in Medicare payments to skilled nursing homes, said the report, published in the journal Health Affairs.

National health spending grew at roughly the same pace as the overall economy, without adjusting for inflation, so its share of the economy stayed the same, at 17.9 percent in 2011, where it has been since 2009. By contrast, health spending accounted for just 13.8 percent of the economy in 2000.

Health spending grew more than 5 percent each year from 1961 to 2007. It rose at double-digit rates in some years, including every year from 1966 to 1984 and from 1988 to 1990.

The report did not forecast the effects of the new health care law on future spending. Some provisions of the law, including subsidized insurance for millions of Americans, could increase spending, officials said. But the law also trims Medicare payments to many health care providers and authorizes experiments to slow the growth of health spending.

“The jury is still out whether all the innovations we’re testing will have much impact,” said Richard S. Foster, who supervised the preparation of the report as chief actuary of the Medicare agency. “I am optimistic. There’s a lot of potential. More and more health care providers understand that the future cannot be like the past, in which health spending almost always grew faster than the gross domestic product.”

Evidence of the new emphasis can be seen in a series of articles published in The Archives of Internal Medicine, now known as JAMA Internal Medicine, under the title “Less Is More.” The series highlights cases in which “the overuse of medical care may result in harm and in which less care is likely to result in better health.”

Total spending for doctors’ services rose 3.6 percent in 2011, to $436 billion, while spending for hospital care increased 4.3 percent, to $850.6 billion.

Spending on prescription drugs at retail stores reached $263 billion in 2011, up 2.9 percent from 2010, when growth was just four-tenths of 1 percent. The latest increase was still well below the average increase of 7.8 percent a year from 2000 to 2010.

Federal officials said the increase in 2011 resulted partly from rapid growth in prices for brand-name drugs.

Prices for specialty drugs, typically prescribed by medical specialists for chronic conditions, have increased at double-digit rates in recent years, the government said. In addition, spending on new brand-name drugs — those brought to market in the previous two years — more than doubled from 2010 to 2011, driven by an increase in the number of new medicines.

“In 2011,” the report said, “spending for private health insurance premiums increased 3.8 percent, as did spending for benefits. Out-of-pocket spending by consumers increased 2.8 percent in 2011, accelerating from 2.1 percent in 2010 but still slower than the average annual growth rate of 4.7 percent” from 2002 to 2008.

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Wall Street Trades Lower as Earnings Reports Begin

Stocks trading on Wall Street ticked lower on Tuesday as an earnings season that is expected to show sluggish corporate growth got under way.

The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index fell 0.5 percent in afternoon trading, the Dow Jones industrial average lost 0.5 percent and the Nasdaq composite index fell 0.4 percent.

Over the next couple of weeks, reports on fourth-quarter profits are expected to come in above the previous quarter’s lackluster results, but analysts’ current estimates are down sharply from where they were in October. Quarterly earnings are expected to grow by 2.8 percent, according to Thomson Reuters data.

German data showed industrial orders fell more than forecast in November because of a sharp drop in demand from abroad, reinforcing concerns that Europe’s largest economy may have contracted in the fourth quarter of 2012.

“I’m surprised futures are holding up, given the relative disappointment that German data showed, but I think all eyes are on the beginning of earnings season,” said Kim Forrest, senior equity research analyst at Fort Pitt Capital Group in Pittsburgh.

European shares ended mixed after the German report, with the DAX index in Frankfurt down 0.5 percent and the CAC 40 in Paris up slightly.

Monsanto shares rose 2.7 percent after the world’s largest seed company raised its earnings outlook for fiscal 2013 and posted strong first-quarter results.

Shares of the restaurant-chain operator Yum Brands fell 4.7 percent. On Monday, the company, which owns KFC, warned that sales in China, its largest market, shrank more than expected in the fourth quarter.

Vodafone shares rose 1.7 percent in London after its American partner in the joint venture Verizon Wireless said it would be “feasible” to buy out the British group.

Sears Holdings shares were 5.5 percent lower a day after the company said its chief executive would step down for family health reasons.

GameStop shares fell 5.8 percent after it reported sales for the holiday season and cut its guidance.

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Supporters Back Strike at Newspaper in China

James Pomfret/Reuters

Demonstrators gathered outside the headquarters of Southern Weekend Monday in Guangzhou, China.

BEIJING — Hundreds of people gathered outside the headquarters of a newspaper office in southern China on Monday to show their support for journalists who had declared a strike to protest what they called overbearing censorship by provincial propaganda officials.

The journalists, who work for Southern Weekend, a relatively liberal newspaper that has come under increasing pressure from officials in recent years, also received support on the Internet from celebrities and well-known commentators.

“Hoping for a spring in this harsh winter,” Li Bingbing, an actress, said to her 19 million followers on a microblog account. Yao Chen, an actress with more than 31 million followers, cited a quotation by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the Russian Nobel laureate and dissident: “One word of truth outweighs the whole world.”

Many of the people who showed up Monday at the newspaper offices in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong Province, carried banners with slogans and white and yellow chrysanthemums, a flower that symbolizes mourning. One banner read: “Get rid of censorship. The Chinese people want freedom.” Police officers watched the protesters without immediately taking any harsh actions.

The angry journalists at Southern Weekend have been calling for the removal of Tuo Zhen, the top propaganda official in Guangdong, whom the journalists blame for overseeing a change in a New Year’s editorial that ran last week and was supposed to have called for greater respect for rights enshrined in the constitution under the headline “China’s Dream, the Dream of Constitutionalism,” according to the China Media Project at the University of Hong Kong. The editorial went through layers of changes and ultimately became one praising the current political system, in which the Communist Party exercises authority over all aspects of governance.

A well-known entrepreneur, Hung Huang, said on her microblog that the actions of a local official had “destroyed, overnight, all the credibility the country’s top leadership had labored to re-establish since the 18th Party Congress,” the November gathering in Beijing that was the climax of the leadership transition.

One journalist for Southern Weekend said Monday afternoon that negotiations between the various parties had been scheduled later in the day, but there were no results from any talks as of Monday evening.

It was unclear how many employees in the newsroom had heeded the calls for a strike. It appeared Sunday that many of Southern Weekend’s reporters had declared themselves on strike. A local journalist who went by the newspaper’s Beijing office on Monday said the building appeared to be open but quiet. One employee told the journalist that the people there were not on strike. Dozens of supporters showed up outside the building at various times, some carrying signs and flowers.

The conflict was exacerbated Sunday night by top editors at the newspaper, who posted a message on the publication’s official microblog saying that the New Year’s editorial had been written with the consent of editors at the newspaper.

According to an account from a newspaper employee posted online on Monday, that statement was made after pressure was exerted on the top editors by Yang Jian, the head of the party committee at Southern Media, the parent company that runs Southern Weekend and other publications. Southern Weekend’s editor in chief, Huang Can, then pressured an employee to give up the official microblog password so the statement could be posted on the microblog.

Neither Mr. Yang nor Mr. Huang could be reached for comment Monday.

Some political analysts have said the conflict raises questions about whether the central government, led by Xi Jinping, the new party chief, will support the idea of a more open media by moving to support the protesting journalists. In his first trip outside Beijing, Mr. Xi traveled to Guangdong and praised the market-oriented economic policies put in place by Deng Xiaoping, the former supreme leader. But more recently, Mr. Xi has said that China must respect its socialist roots.

Resolving the Southern Weekend tensions could also be a test for Hu Chunhua, the new party chief in Guangdong and a potential candidate to succeed Mr. Xi as the leader of China in a decade. Mr. Hu’s predecessor, Wang Yang, was regarded by many Western political analysts as being a “reformer,” but he presided over a tightening of media freedoms in the province and specifically over Southern Media.

On Monday, People’s Daily, the party’s mouthpiece, ran a signed commentary that referred to a recent meeting of propaganda officials in Beijing and said propaganda officials should “follow the rhythm of the times” and help the authorities establish a “pragmatic and open-minded image.” Some people have interpreted that as support for officials in adopting a more enlightened approach in dealing with the news media.

But Global Times, a populist newspaper, ran a scathing editorial that said Southern Weekend was merely a newspaper and should not challenge the system.

“Even in the West, mainstream media would not choose to openly pick a fight with the government,” the editorial said. Xinhua, the state news agency, published the editorial online.

Jonathan Ansfield contributed reporting. Mia Li and Shi Da and contributed research.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 7, 2013

An earlier version of a photo caption with this article misstated the name of a newspaper in China. It is Southern Weekend not Southern Weekly.

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LG kicks off CES with 55-inch ‘ultra-HD’ TV

LAS VEGAS (AP) — LG unveiled a 55-inch TV that sports “ultrahigh-definition” resolution with four times the sharpness of regular HD television sets, kicking off what is likely to be a mini-obsession with the latest super-clear format at the annual International CES gadget show.

The model announced Monday is the smallest in a 2013 lineup that includes 65-inch and 84-inch versions. But the smaller size — and smaller price tag — begins the parade of TV makers that are seeking to bring ultrahigh definition to the masses.

Also known as “4K,” ultrahigh-definition screens are 3,840 pixels wide and 2,160 pixels tall, or more than 8 million in all. The higher resolution will let TV screens get larger without degrading picture quality, though initially the price tag will limit those sets to technology’s early adopters.

LG said the 55-inch and 65-inch versions will be available later this year in the U.S. No price was announced, but it will be less than $ 10,000. The 84-inch version that went on sale late last year cost $ 20,000.

For a few years, though, there won’t likely be a mainstream standard for getting native ultra-HD movies and TV shows to the screen either by disc or broadcast.

LG Electronics Inc. said these new TVs will have upscaling technology that takes images of lesser quality and renders them in high detail. The Korean electronics maker also said it has formed an ultra-HD content agreement with Korea’s top broadcaster, KBS, and is seeking out deals with other global content providers. The company offered no specifics.

LG said that with an ultra-HD TV, it will be possible to play phone games with very sharp resolution and in 3-D. The company said it has been possible to hook up smartphones to the TV to play games with current sets, but the resolution isn’t good.

Along with the lineup of higher-resolution TVs, LG unveiled a new Magic Remote, which acts like a wand that is sensitive to motion and is used to navigate on-screen menus. LG said the new model responds better to natural speech and can be controlled with a single finger rather than “very tiring arm gestures.” It also lets you change the channels by writing numbers in the air.

The company also touted the ability to tap different devices so they can share data. With that capability, you’d be able to see what’s inside your refrigerator while shopping, and you’d be able to monitor how clean your house is getting with cameras on a robotic vacuum. Washing machines will also have such capabilities.

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RG3 defends himself as Redskins await knee results

ASHBURN, Va. (AP) — As the Washington Redskins awaited word on Robert Griffin III's health, teammates defended the rookie quarterback's decision to keep playing after reinjuring his right knee.

Griffin also chimed in. He did not appear in the locker room during the two hours it was open to reporters Monday morning, but he offered some thoughts on Twitter.

"Many may question, criticize & think they have all the right answers. But few have been in the line of fire in battle," Griffin tweeted.

The Redskins were expected to announce results of Griffin's MRI later Monday.

Already playing with a heavy black brace in his third game since spraining a lateral collateral ligament, Griffin hurt the knee again when he fell awkwardly while throwing a pass in the first quarter of Sunday's 24-14 playoff loss to the Seattle Seahawks.

Griffin stayed in the game, but he was far from his usual self, clearly favoring the knee and unable to run with the world-class speed that helped define his play early in the season.

Then, in the fourth quarter with the Redskins trailing by seven, the knee buckled the wrong way when Griffin tried to field a bad shotgun snap. The Seahawks recovered the fumble deep in Washington territory, setting up a short field goal that helped put the game out of reach. Griffin was done for the evening.

If Griffin had been pulled earlier, the critical turnover might not have happened. And, of course, his knee probably wouldn't be hurt as badly as it is.

"I thank God for perspective and because of that I appreciate the support from everyone. I also appreciate the criticism," Griffin tweeted.

Coach Mike Shanahan said after the game he essentially left the decision for Griffin to keep playing in Griffin's hands, and Griffin said he would probably have defied his coach if ordered to the bench.

"It's a slippery slope, I guess you can say, because you want to help the team," said receiver Pierre Garcon, who faced similar questions this season while dealing with a painful toe injury. "But you want to help yourself in the long run and your career.

"You want to look out for all sides, but it's hard to really know exactly if you're doing the right thing because if you sit out and the team losses, it's like 'I could probably have helped.' If you go out there and don't help the team, it's like, 'I probably should've sat out.' You've just got to make a decision and live with it."

Shanahan was scheduled to address reporters Monday afternoon, but said after the game that he perhaps should have pulled Griffin sooner.

"It's a very tough decision," Shanahan said Sunday. "You have to go with your gut. You have to go with your gut and I did. I'm not saying my gut is always right, but I've been there before. In different situations, I get to know Robert better as time goes on and I'll know how stubborn he is — probably more so as time goes on. He's a competitor and I'll probably second guess myself. ... In the second half, should you have done it earlier? I think you always do that, especially after you don't win."

Shanahan's take is muddled by contradictory details that have emerged from the game in which Griffin originally hurt the knee last month against the Baltimore Ravens.

The coach said at the time he was told by orthopedist James Andrews on the Redskins sideline that Griffin was cleared to return to the game, but Andrews told USA Today over the weekend that he didn't get a chance to examine the knee during the one play Griffin sat out after the initial injury.

Shanahan explained the discrepancy by saying Andrews gave the OK for Griffin to return just by watching the quarterback run without doing an examination. Either way, the various versions of what happened cast more doubt on the protocol the Redskins use to determine whether someone is fit to keep playing.

The play-hurt dilemma is a factor every weekend in the NFL. Redskins left guard Kory Lichtensteiger had to leave Sunday's game in the first quarter because he could no longer play on a sprained left ankle that kept him out of practice all week.

"I went out there," Lichtensteiger said. "But, in hindsight, I probably shouldn't have done it."

Griffin's injury and the playoff loss put a damper on the end of one of the best Redskins seasons in two decades. Washington rallied from a 3-6 start to win the NFC East after four straight last-place finishes. Assuming Griffin's knee will again be fully healthy, the future looks brighter than at any time since the Super Bowl era under coach Joe Gibbs in the 1980s and early 1990s.

"I think people have really learned around here — if you're down by seven, people aren't packing it in," said safety Reed Doughty, wrapping up his seventh season in Washington. "People aren't getting that 'Oh, the way things used to be' kind of feeling."

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When the Plague Came to New York

Jakob Schiller for The New York Times

Survivors Lucinda Marker and John Tull at home a decade after having the plague.

It was November 2002, little more than a year after planes had been flown into the World Trade Center and anthrax mailings had killed five Americans. New York City was still in a state of high alert for suspected terrorists.

Suddenly all eyes were on a middle-aged married couple from Santa Fe, N.M., on a brief vacation to New York, who had the remarkably ill luck to come down with the city’s first case of bubonic plague in more than a century. Television news trucks surrounded Beth Israel Medical Center North, where they had dragged themselves after being stricken in their hotel room with rampaging fevers, headaches, extreme exhaustion and mysterious balloonlike swellings.

It took just over a day for public health officials to dispel fears about bioterrorism; there had been no unusual rise in the number of very high fevers that could have suggested an attack.

It turned out that the couple, Lucinda Marker and John Tull, had been bitten by fleas infected with Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes plague. Their home state, New Mexico, accounts for more than half of the average seven cases of plague in the country every year. (In 2012, just one case was reported in the state.)

“It was an absolute fluke,” Ms. Marker, now 57, said during a recent visit to New York. “Just rotten luck.”

Like most people who contract the disease and are quickly treated with antibiotics, she recovered in a few days. But 10 years later, her husband is still badly scarred.

In the days after they were bitten, Mr. Tull, a burly, athletic lawyer — a former prosecutor who volunteered with search-and-rescue teams — developed septicemic plague, as the infection spread throughout his body.

His temperature rose to 104.4, his blood pressure plummeted to 78/50. His kidneys were failing, and so much clotted blood collected in his hands and feet that they turned black.

Mr. Tull was put into a medically induced coma. When he was brought out of it, nearly three months later, he found out that both his legs had been amputated below the knee to drain the deadly infection. The surgery that saved his life radically changed it, but did not dampen his resilient spirit.

Even before he was released from the hospital to begin a long rehabilitation, he vowed he would once again be hiking on the rustic trails above his home.

Today Mr. Tull, 63, drives his own car, sometimes takes over the controls of a private plane, and goes on an annual trout-fishing trip to Colorado with friends. But he has not been able to hike that trail.

“That is one of the things I miss most,” Mr. Tull, now retired and receiving a disability pension, said in a telephone interview from his home. “Every single hour of every single day, the plague affects our lives, but about the only time I really get angry these days is when, because of my physical condition, there is something I want to do but can’t.”

He has appeared in several television documentaries, speaking to medical researchers around the world and dealing with a posse of journalists as his very private ordeal has been played out in public.

“Basically Lucinda and I surrendered our privacy to the press and the people who make documentaries,” Mr. Tull said. “But you know what? That didn’t bother us a bit. Lucinda had been an actress and I had been a trial lawyer. We were used to it.”

Ms. Marker, who has started to write about their ordeal, says that after 10 years she is coming to terms with it emotionally and psychologically. Yet many aspects of their case still puzzle medical experts.

In particular, no one knows why she was so easily cured while he nearly died.

Bubonic plague is transmitted by fleas that feed off pack rats, ground squirrels and prairie dogs in the mountains of New Mexico and several other states. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the disease probably came to the United States around 1900, in Asian rats that escaped from ships in the port of San Francisco.

Initially, plague was restricted to cities. The worst outbreak came in 1907, after the San Francisco earthquake. Vermin control programs prevented further outbreaks, but fleas hitched onto other animals in the wild.

Dr. Paul Ettestad, public health veterinarian for the New Mexico Department of Health, said prairie dogs became an “amplification host,” carrying the disease to their burrows and spreading it throughout their territory. Today, the easternmost limit of the plague roughly corresponds to the 100th meridian, which passes through central Texas. Known as the plague line, is it also the extent of the prairie dog population.

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U.S. to Require Electric Cars to Make Noise

DETROIT (AP) — A government safety agency wants electric and hybrid vehicles to make more noise when traveling at low speeds so pedestrians can hear them coming.

The cars and trucks, which are far quieter than conventional gasoline or diesel-powered vehicles, don't make enough noise at low speeds to warn walkers, bicyclists and the visually impaired, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Monday in a statement.

The proposed rule would require the cars to make additional noise at speeds under 18 miles per hour. NHTSA says the cars make enough noise to be heard at higher speeds.

Automakers would be able to pick the sounds that the cars make from a range of choices. Similar vehicles would have to make the same sounds. And the government says pedestrians must be able to hear the sounds over background noises.

The public has 60 days to comment on the proposed rule. The agency will use public input to craft a final rule.

NHTSA estimates that the new noise would prevent 2,800 pedestrian and cyclist injuries during the life of each model year of electric and hybrid vans, trucks and cars.

The rule is required by the Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Act that was passed by Congress in 2010.

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Assad Says Syria ‘Accepts Advice but Not Orders’

BEIRUT, Lebanon — President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, sounding defiant, confident and, to critics, out of touch with the magnitude of his people’s grievances, proposed Sunday what he called a plan to resolve the country’s 21-month uprising with a new constitution and cabinet.

But he offered no new acknowledgment of the gains by the rebels fighting against him, the excesses of his government or the aspirations of the Syrian people. Mr. Assad also ruled out talks with the armed opposition and pointedly ignored its central demand that he step down, instead using much of a nearly hourlong speech to justify his harsh military crackdown.

Mr. Assad waved to a cheering, chanting crowd as he strode to the stage of the Damascus Opera House in the central Umayyad Square — where residents said security forces had been deployed heavily the night before. In his first public speech since June 2012, he repeated his longstanding assertions that the movement against him was driven by “murderous criminals” and terrorists receiving financing from abroad, and he appeared to push back hard against recent international efforts to broker a compromise.

“Everyone who comes to Syria knows that Syria accepts advice but not orders,” he said.

His speech came a week after the United Nations and Arab League envoy on Syria, the senior Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi, visited Damascus, the capital, in a push for a negotiated solution.

“Who should we negotiate with? Terrorists?” Mr. Assad asked. “We will negotiate with their masters.”

Mr. Assad’s speech was a disappointment for international mediators and many Syrians who say they believe that without a negotiated settlement, Syria’s conflict will descend into an even bloodier stage. The United Nations estimates that more than 60,000 people have died in what began as a peaceful protest movement and transformed into armed struggle after security forces fired on demonstrators.

Rebels have made gains in the north and east of Syria and in the Damascus suburbs, but Mr. Assad’s government has pushed back with devastating airstrikes and artillery bombardments and appears confident that it can hold the capital. Neither side appears ready to give up the prospect of a military victory.

The tenor of Mr. Assad’s speech is likely to raise the question of whether Mr. Brahimi’s mission serves any purpose; there was no immediate comment from him or his staff.

Mr. Assad’s opponents rejected the proposal as meaningless, sticking to their longstanding demand that the president resign as a precondition to negotiations.

“We can’t deal with this murderous regime at all,” George Sabra, a member of the opposition Syrian National Council, said in a brief interview. “This regime has killed 60,000 people, so no one could possibly think that working with this regime is a possibility. It is out of the question.”

Mr. Assad, whose family has ruled Syria for 42 years, said Sunday that he was open to dialogue with “those who have not betrayed Syria,” apparently a reference to tolerated opposition groups that reject armed revolution, like the National Coordination Body for Democratic Change, whose members have been floated by Syria’s allies China and Russia as possible compromise brokers.

Yet Mr. Assad’s speech appeared unlikely to satisfy even those among his opponents who reject the armed rebellion, since it made no apology for the arrests of peaceful activists or for airstrikes that have destroyed neighborhoods. Mr. Assad gave no sign of acknowledging that the movement against him was anything more than a foreign plot or had any goals other than to inflict suffering and destroy the country.

“They killed the intellectuals in order to afflict ignorance on us,” Mr. Assad said. “They attacked the infrastructure in order to make our life difficult, they deprived children from school in order to bring the country backward.”

He added, “The enemies of the people are the enemies of God, and the enemies of God will burn in hell.”

Mr. Assad has framed the uprising as an attack by the West and its allies, and the members of the exile opposition leadership as puppets of their foreign supporters, including Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United States, which has offered what it calls nonlethal support and recognized the main opposition body, now known as the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces.

Some armed rebel groups have used techniques that randomly target civilians, like car bombs, and there are foreign fighters among the rebels. But most of the armed movement is made up of Syrians who took up arms during the uprising or defected from the armed forces.

In his speech, Mr. Assad thanked officers and conscripts and vowed that he would stay by their side, apparently seeking to dispel speculation that he will flee the country. He spoke against a backdrop of snapshots that was reminiscent of montages that the opposition shows of people killed by the government.

When he finished the crowd chanted, “With our souls, with our blood, we defend you, Assad,” and vowed to be his “shabiha,” the term that has come to designate pro-government militias that have attacked demonstrators.

Scores of people then rushed toward him with an almost aggressive frenzy. Bodyguards pushed them back to form a phalanx that slowly escorted Mr. Assad through the crowd.

Many observers wryly noted on social media that the opera house was a fitting setting for the speech.

“It was operatic in its otherworldly fantasy, unrelated to realities outside the building,” Rami G. Khouri, of the Beirut-based newspaper The Daily Star, wrote on Twitter.

Mr. Assad said the first step in his plan would be for foreign countries to stop financing the rebels; then his government would put down its weapons, he said — although he reserved the right to continue to fight terrorism, which his government has defined as nearly any opponent.

Next would come national dialogue, but only with groups Mr. Assad termed acceptable; then a constitution approved by referendum; then a coalition government. There was no mention of holding elections before Mr. Assad’s term expires in 2014.

Hania Mourtada contributed reporting.

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Kuwaiti gets two years for insulting emir on Twitter

KUWAIT (Reuters) – A Kuwaiti court sentenced a man to two years in prison for insulting the country’s ruler on Twitter, a lawyer following the case said, as the Gulf Arab state cracks down on criticism of the authorities on social media.

According to the verdict on Sunday, published by online newspaper Alaan, a tweet written by Rashid Saleh al-Anzi in October “stabbed the rights and powers of the Emir” Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah.

Anzi, who has 5,700 Twitter followers, was expected to appeal, the lawyer, who asked not to be named, told Reuters.

Kuwait, a U.S. ally and major oil producer, has been taking a firmer line on politically sensitive comments aired on the Internet.

In June 2012, a man was sentenced to 10 years in prison after he was convicted of endangering state security by insulting the Prophet Mohammad and the Sunni Muslim rulers of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain on social media.

Two months later, authorities detained Sheikh Meshaal al-Malik Al-Sabah, a member of the ruling family, over remarks on Twitter in which he accused authorities of corruption and called for political reform, a rights activist said.

While public demonstrations about local issues are common in a state that allows the most dissent in the Gulf, Kuwait has avoided Arab Spring-style mass unrest that toppled three veteran Arab dictators last year.

But tensions have intensified between the hand-picked government, in which ruling family members hold the top posts, and the elected parliament and opposition groups.

(Reporting by Mahmoud Harbi; Writing by Mahmoud Habboush; Editing by Jason Webb)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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