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Saturday, October 19, 2013

Sherman, Revis make lock-down CBs an NFL must-have

Seattle Seahawks' Richard Sherman (25) intercepts the ball in front of Houston Texans' Owen Daniels (81) during the fourth quarter an NFL football game on Sunday, Sept. 29, 2013, in Houston. Sherman returned the ball for a touchdown. (AP Photo/Patric Schneider)

FILE - In this Dec. 12, 1999, file photo, Arizona Cardinals quarterback Jake Plummer (16) tries to tackle Washington Redskins cornerback Darrell Green (28) who intercepted Plummer's pass during the fourth quarter of an NFL football game at FedEx Field in Landover, Md. The former Washington Redskins cornerback, elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2008, looks around today's NFL and sees a lack of talent at his old job. "I would say this: The cornerback position is probably at its lowest level. (AP Photo/Doug Mills, File)

Tampa Bay Buccaneers cornerback Darrelle Revis (24) breaks up the pass to Arizona Cardinals running back Rashard Mendenhall (28) during the sec ond half of an NFL football game on Sunday, Sept. 29, 2013 in Tampa, Fla.. (AP Photo/Reinhold Matay)

FILE - In this Aug. 2, 2008 file photo, former Washington Redskins cornerback Darrell Green stands next to his bronze bust at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. The former Redskins cornerback looks around today's NFL and sees a lack of talent at his old job. (AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato, File)

Darrell Green is not impressed.

The Hall of Famer looks around today's NFL and sees a lack of talent at his old job.

"When it is most needed, in my opinion, the cornerback position is probably producing at its lowest level," Green said. "Guys like myself and Deion Sanders and Mike Haynes — this is the time when we would be saying, 'Yes! This is great! We want you to pass.'"

Seattle's Richard Sherman, Tampa Bay's Darrelle Revis and Denver's Champ Bailey think that way, too, making lock-down cornerbacks must-haves nowadays. With quarterbacks flinging the football around like never before, those back-end guys get more chances to flourish or fail. They define their teams' Ds.

Still, as Green points out, special ones are rare. Check the numbers: Through Week 6, QBs averaged a passer rating of 81 when targeting players covered by cornerbacks, higher than any season since at least 1995, according to STATS.

"This generation, they're behind the 8-ball, because these offenses and quarterbacks are incredible," said Green, who played for the Washington Redskins from 1983-2002. "Better cornerbacks would make defenses better."

Thanks to rules changes and offensive innovation, games are averaging 45.90 points in 2013, which would be the second-most in NFL history (the record is 46.48 in 1948). Games are averaging about 710 total net yards and slightly more than 490 yards passing, both on pace to break marks set in 2012. The 289 touchdown passes are the most through Week 6, an average of 3.14 per game that would be the highest in the Super Bowl era.

"If you keep getting that passing game going more and more, you're going to keep seeing how important it is to have good corners," Bailey said.

"I would say now you've got to have more than one," he said, "and that's the hard part."

Seattle pairs the 6-foot-3 Sherman with 6-foot-4 Brandon Browner.

"If you don't have good corners, it can be a long day," Sherman said, "regardless of what you're doing on offense or how your front seven is playing."

Used to be wideouts got a ton of attention: Randy Moss, Terrell Owens, Chad Ochocinco.

Now it's the diva DBs.

Sherman, for one, is "a vociferous guy," as his college teammate at Stanford, Colts quarterback Andrew Luck, put it. Sherman isn't shy about telling the world just how good he is — he engaged Revis in a Twitter spat over who's better — and the entire NFL notices what he says and how well he defends.

"The kid from Seattle's got a big mouth," Jets coach Rex Ryan said in a bit of takes-one-to-know-one commentary from a top defensive mind, "but he can play, you know?"

Ask Sherman to list top corners, and he'll mention Revis, New England's Aqib Talib, Cleveland's Joe Haden, Tennessee's Alterraun Verner, Arizona's Patrick Peterson.

"Elites," Sherman called them.

Ryan used to have Revis; he still has Antonio Cromartie.

"You can be more aggressive. You can play more man coverage — true lock-down, man coverage — if you're fortunate to have one like that. Some of the other ones, you've just got to play zone," Ryan said. "We want to attack you and we want to dictate. We don't want to ... just play zone or play scared."

Revis thinks the same way.

"I think a lot of DBs panic in this league, because the (receivers) get up on them and get on top of them," he said.

"I flip it," Revis explained. "They're the ones who are the prey."

Even if Revis didn't have his best outing against Philadelphia's DeSean Jackson on Sunday, he still helped the Bucs with a fumble recovery. Even if Bailey, in his first game this season after spraining his left foot, was troubled Sunday by Justin Blackmon, he still picked off a pass intended for Blackmon on a 2-point conversion attempt that could have pulled the Jaguars into a surprising halftime tie with the Broncos.

These guys change a game's complexion, and not only with pick-6s: There have been 25 interceptions returned for TDs already, putting the league on pace for 70, one fewer than last season, which had the most since the NFL expanded to 16 games in 1978, STATS said.

Superior cornerbacks give a defense more options.

They force offenses to alter game plans.

Look at the way Talib shadowed Saints tight end Jimmy Graham on Sunday, helping hold him without a catch.

Through Week 6, STATS has Talib ranked second among NFL cornerbacks for lowest opponent QB rating when targeted, behind only Verner. They're tied with an NFL-high four interceptions.

From 1995 (when STATS data begins) through 2012, Sanders ranked No. 1 in opposing QB rating, followed by Patrick Surtain. Among active corners, Revis was fourth, Atlanta's Asante Samuel sixth, Bailey 13th, Talib 17th. Sherman, in his third NFL season, doesn't have enough targets to qualify; his numbers for 2011-12 would put him second.

And Green? He was eighth during that period.

"Cornerbacks (are) born with something. Not a lot of coaches can teach it. Not a lot of players can play it," Green said. "It's definitely one of the toughest positions. I don't want to get too down on them, because I know what they have to face."

___

AP Sports Writers Dennis Waszak Jr., Michael Marot, Fred Goodall and Tim Booth, and AP Pro Football Writer Arnie Stapleton contributed to this report.

___

Follow Howard Fendrich on Twitter at http://twitter.com/HowardFendrich

___

AP NFL website: www.pro32.ap.org

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McConnell Says He Will Not Allow Another Shutdown (Taegan Goddard's Political Wire)

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Over 1,600 migrants rounded up after ethnic riots in Moscow

By Gabriela Baczynska and Igor Belyatski

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian police rounded up more than 1,600 migrants on Monday in Moscow after rioting swept through a southern neighborhood over a fatal stabbing of a Russian that many residents blame on a man from the Caucasus region.

Advocacy groups warned migrants from Russia's mainly Muslim Caucasus region and Central Asia of an increased risk of attacks in the worst ethnic disturbance in Moscow in three years. Authorities stepped up police patrols in the capital.

Some 200 residents rallied in the Biryulyovo district on Monday night to call for tougher policing of labor migrants, in a second day of protests over the stabbing death of an ethnic Russian, 25-year-old Yegor Shcherbakov.

Police detained ten people, local media reported

A bigger protest a day earlier had turned to violent riots.

"We are scared to walk the streets at night," blond-haired resident, Alexei Zhuravlyov, said. "They (migrants) are always attacking, stealing from and killing people. They don't even abide by basic rules like stopping at a red light."

Migrant labor has played a significant role in Russia's transformation during an oil-fuelled economic boom that took off around the time President Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000.

But many in Moscow are uneasy at the influx of migrants from Russia's heavily Muslim North Caucasus and ex-Soviet states of the Caucasus and Central Asia, although many do low-paying jobs, such as in construction, that few local residents want.

"They come here and act as if it were their home," local Biryulyovo resident Tatiana said.

In an apparent attempt to appease residents, police said they rounded up some 1,200 people detained at a wholesale vegetable market that had been stormed on Sunday night.

Another 450 were detained in northeastern Moscow, also near a vegetable market employing migrant workers.

Police said they were all detained to check whether they were involved in any wrongdoing, but they have not been accused of any specific crime. Footage showed detainees standing against walls or lined up in front of camouflage-clad police.

HEIGHTENED RISK

On Sunday, people fought with police, smashed shops, vending stalls and other sites employing migrant workers.

Police arrested at least 380 people as they struggled to quell the violence, which injured several police and shone a spotlight on persistent ethnic tensions in the capital.

"The situation shows what the sudden call by a handful of nationalist scum can lead to," Moscow's Deputy Mayor Alexander Gorbenko said in comments on state television.

Russian authorities frequently carry out raids detaining illegal immigrants but critics say such efforts are undermined by corruption in law enforcement agencies.

"We must learn to live together ... and counteract rampant corruption and related attempts to break up our country," Russia's human rights ombudsman, Vladimir Lukin, told state TV.

A group that lobbies for labor migrants in Russia warned of an increased risk of ethnic violence in Moscow on Monday.

"The nationalists are pursuing their political goals. This is clearly very dangerous. We are warning migrants to be careful for now in crowded areas and on public transportation," said Mukhamad Amin, head of the Federation of Migrants of Russia.

The rioting came before Eid al-Adha, an Islamic holiday that most Russian Muslims begin celebrating on Tuesday. In Moscow, ethnic tension is often higher during such holidays because large numbers of Muslims gather at the city's few mosques.

Putin has frequently warned of the dangers of ethnic and religious violence in multicultural Russia, which is mostly Slavic and Orthodox Christian but has a large Muslim minority.

Putin said this month Russia needed migrant laborers in industries such as construction but, in a nod to anti-migrant sentiment, suggested their numbers could be restricted in trade.

(Additional reporting by Alissa de Carbonnel and Ludmila Danilova; Editing by Steve Gutterman and Ralph Boulton)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/over-1-000-migrants-rounded-being-targeted-moscow-132128842.html
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Rose Scores 32 To Lead Bulls Over Pacers

CHICAGO (AP) — Derrick Rose scored 32 points, including eight in the final three minutes, and Luol Deng added 22 as the Chicago Bulls remained unbeaten this preseason with a 103-98 victory over the Indiana Pacers on Friday night.

Rose, who played 31 minutes, also had nine assists and was 9 for 15 from the field, including 4 for 7 from 3-point range, as the Bulls improved to 5-0.

Paul George led the Pacers (0-5) with 22 points.

The Bulls were without Jimmy Butler (left knee contusion) and Joakim Noah (right groin strain). Noah will be shut down for a week in hopes that the rest will clear up the injury that has bothered him since early in training camp.

The schedule said it was a preseason game, but the atmosphere in the United Center definitely had a regular-season feel as the teams expected to compete for the Central Division title battled down the stretch. Both teams finished with mostly starters on the court, which usually isn't the norm in the preseason.

Rose appeared done for the night when he went to the bench late in the third quarter after playing 26 minutes. He had averaged 21.8 points in three previous games as he returns after missing last season following major knee surgery.

But he returned with just over 5 minutes left and led the Bulls to victory as the crowd of 21,783 cheered as if it were a playoff game.

Source: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=237318438&ft=1&f=
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Friday, October 18, 2013

Obama, Congress at odds over Iran sanctions relief

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif briefs the media after the two days of closed-door nuclear talks, during a press conference at the CICG, in Geneva, Switzerland, Wednesday, Oct.16, 2013. (AP Photo/Keystone, Martial Trezzini)

EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton smiles during a press conference after two days of closed-door nuclear talks on Iran in Geneva, Switzerland, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2013. Talks between Iran and six world powers have ended an upbeat note, with the European Union's top diplomat Ashton calling them "very important," in efforts to end international tensions over Tehran's nuclear program. (AP Photo/Keystone, Martial Trezzini)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration is considering helping Iran recoup billions of dollars in frozen overseas assets if Tehran scales back its nuclear program.

But Congress is determined to set a high bar for any relief for Iran.

Officials say the proposal is under consideration to spur nuclear negotiations.

A skeptical Congress is weighing in, too.

Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk has a plan to give the U.S. more sticks and carrots.

He wants to freeze all remaining Iranian assets overseas. He'd do that by threatening to block from the U.S. market any bank that does business with Iran.

Kirk would let Iran get at some of the $50 billion to $75 billion that's already blocked.

But Iran would only get the money after ending all uranium enrichment activity.

Iran rejects such demands.

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Fuselage panel falls from Boeing 787 Dreamliner in flight

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Boeing Co said a body panel fell off of a 787 Dreamliner operated by Air India while the plane was in flight on Saturday, a new problem for the high-tech jet that has suffered a string of mishaps since its introduction two years ago.

Boeing said the loss of the fuselage panel posed no safety risk to passengers. It was not immediately known where the panel landed.

The jet was carrying 148 people, including crew, on a flight from Delhi to Bangalore, The Times of India newspaper reported. The pilots did not realize the eight-by-four-foot panel was missing until after the flight landed, the newspaper said, adding that India's aviation authorities are investigating.

Boeing said the missing panel fell from the underside of the plane on the right side. A photo on The Times of India website showed a large opening with components and aircraft structure visible inside.

"It was the mid-underwing-to-body fairing located on the belly of the airplane on the right side," Boeing spokesman Doug Alder said. The part "provides a more aerodynamic surface in flight."

He said Boeing is working to understand what caused the panel to fall and declined to say whether the plane was made at Boeing's South Carolina factory. A number of Air India jets have come from that assembly line.

The Times of India said the panel was replaced with one taken from a just-delivered 787 Dreamliner that was not yet ready for service. That plane is now awaiting a spare part, the paper said.

Problems that have afflicted the 787 include battery overheating that prompted regulators to ground the entire fleet in January. Flights resumed in April. Despite the problems, Boeing's stock has stayed near record levels. It closed Tuesday at $118.18, down $1.28.

(Reporting by Alwyn Scott; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/fuselage-panel-falls-boeing-787-dreamliner-flight-030152002--finance.html
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“Could You Be an Animal If You Didn’t Have Any Bones?”

Bone by Bone: Comparing Animal Skeletons

In some of the best children’s books, dandelions turn into stars, sharks and radishes merge, and pancakes fall from the sky. No one would confuse these magical tales for descriptions of nature. Small children can differentiate between “the real world and the imaginary world,” as psychologist Alison Gopnik has written. They just “don’t see any particular reason for preferring to live in the real one.”

Children’s nuanced understanding of the not-real surely extends to the towering heap of books that feature dinosaurs as playmates who fill buckets of sand or bake chocolate-chip cookies. The imaginative play of these books may be no different to kids than radishsharks and llama dramas.

But as a parent, friendly dinos never steal my heart. I associate them, just a little, with old creationist images of animals frolicking near the garden of Eden, which carried the message that dinosaurs and man, both created by God on the sixth day, co-existed on the Earth until after the flood. (Never mind the evidence that dinosaurs went extinct millions of years before humans appeared.) The founder of the Creation Museum in Kentucky calls dinosaurs “missionary lizards,” and that phrase echoes in my head when I see all those goofy illustrations of dinosaurs in sunglasses and hats.

I’ve been longing for another kind of picture book: one that appeals to young children’s wildest imagination in service of real evolutionary thinking. Such a book could certainly include dinosaur skeletons or fossils. But Bone by Bone, by veterinarian and professor Sara Levine, fills the niche to near perfection by relying on dogs, rabbits, bats, whales, and humans. Levine plays with differences in their skeletons to groom kids for grand scientific concepts.

Bone by Bone asks kids to imagine what their bodies would look like if they had different configurations of bones, like extra vertebrae, longer limbs, or fewer fingers. “What if your vertebrae didn’t stop at your rear end? What if they kept going?” Levine writes, as a boy peers over his shoulder at the spinal column. “You’d have a tail!”

“What kind of animal would you be if your leg bones were much, much longer than your arm bones?” she wonders, as a girl in pink sneakers rises so tall her face disappears from the page. “A rabbit or a kangaroo!” she says, later adding a pike and a hare. “These animals need strong hind leg bones for jumping.” Levine’s questions and answers are delightfully simple for the scientific heft they carry.

With the lightest possible touch, Levine introduces the idea that bones in different vertebrates are related and that they morph over time. She starts with vertebrae, skulls and ribs. But other structures bear strong kinships in these animals, too. The bone in the center of a horse’s hoof, for instance, is related to a human finger. (“What would happen if your middle fingers and the middle toes were so thick that they supported your whole body?”) The bones that radiate out through a bat’s wing are linked to those in a human hand. (“A web of skin connects the bones to make wings so that a bat can fly.”) This is different from the wings of a bird or an insect; with bats, it’s almost as if they’re swimming through air.

Of course, human hands did not shape-shift into bats’ wings, or vice versa. Both derive from a common ancestral structure, which means they share an evolutionary past. Homology, as this kind of relatedness is called, is among “the first and in many ways the best evidence for evolution,” says Josh Rosenau of the National Center for Science Education. Comparing bones also paves the way for comparing genes and molecules, for grasping evolution at the next level of sophistication. Indeed, it’s hard to look at the bat wings and human hands as presented here without lighting up, at least a little, with these ideas. So many smart writers focus on preparing young kids to read or understand numbers. Why not do more to ready them for the big ideas of science? Why not pave the way for evolution? (This is easier to do with older kids, with books like The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate and Why Don’t Your Eyelashes Grow?)

The whimsical illustrations in Bone by Bone, by T.S Spookytooth, also speak to imagination in its native tongue. The boys’ and girls’ bodies stretch and morph, and one little boy collapses into a puddle of mud with a baseball cap on top: “Could you be an animal if you didn’t have any bones at all?” the text asks. Answer: Yes! Just check out the starfish, the beetle, and the clam on the next pages. No didactic preaching here. Still other big ideas flash by wordlessly, like a vestigial hipbone in a whale. Vestigial structures, in case your child asks, also provide evidence of evolution, suggesting ways in which structures that were perhaps once useful no longer are.

Maybe it’s a shame that evolution skeptics are so busy with textbooks in Texas right now. If they had time, they might take exception to Bone by Bone, generating the kind of attention that could turn it into a best-seller. The book really ought to needle them: It prepares young minds for evolution without ever using the word, appealing to kids just starting out in school. If you’re a parent who thinks science matters, you’ll go for the provocation.

Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/family/2013/10/bone_by_bone_the_picture_book_that_will_show_your_kid_how_evolution_works.html
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