A&M's Johnny Football is AP's Player of the Year

Johnny Manziel ran for almost 1,700 yards and 30 touchdowns as a dual-threat quarterback his senior year of high school at Kerrville Tivy.

Who would have thought he'd be even more impressive at Texas A&M when pitted against the defenses of the Southeastern Conference?

On Tuesday, Manziel picked up another major award for his spectacular debut season. He was voted The Associated Press Player of the Year. As with the Heisman Trophy and Davey O'Brien Award that Manziel already won, the QB nicknamed Johnny Football is the first freshman to collect the AP award.

Manziel's 31 votes were more than twice that of second place finisher Manti Te'o, Notre Dame's start linebacker. He is the third straight Heisman-winning quarterback to receive the honor, following Robert Griffin III and Cam Newton.

Manziel erased initial doubts about his ability when he ran for 60 yards and a score in his first game against Florida.

"I knew I could run the ball, I did it a lot in high school," Manziel said in an interview with the AP. "It is just something that you don't get a chance to see in the spring. Quarterbacks aren't live in the spring. You don't get to tackle. You don't get to evade some of the sacks that you would in normal game situations. So I feel like when I was able to avoid getting tackled, it opened some people's eyes a little bit more."

The 6-foot-1 Manziel threw for 3,419 yards and 24 touchdowns and ran for 1,181 yards and 19 more scores to help the Aggies win 10 games for the first time since 1998 — and in their inaugural SEC year, too.

Ryan Tannehill, Manziel's predecessor now with the Dolphins after being drafted eighth overall this season, saw promise from the young quarterback last year when he was redshirted. But even he is surprised at how quickly things came together for Manziel.

"It's pretty wild. I always thought he had that playmaking ability, that something special where if somebody came free, he can make something exciting happen," Tannehill said. "I wasn't really sure if, I don't think anyone was sure if he was going to be able to carry that throughout an SEC season, and he's shocked the world and he did it."

After Manziel sat out as a redshirt in 2011, Texas A&M's scheduled season-opener against Louisiana Tech this year was postponed because of Hurricane Isaac. That left him to get his first taste of live defense in almost two years against Florida.

He responded well, helping the Aggies race to a 17-7 lead early using both his arm and his feet. The Gators shut down Manziel and A&M's offense in the second half and Texas A&M lost 20-17.

But Manziel's performance was enough for Texas A&M's coaching staff to realize that his scrambling ability was going to be a big part of what the Aggies could do this season.

"The first half really showed that I was a little bit more mobile than we had seen throughout the spring," Manziel said. "Me and (then-offensive coordinator) Kliff Kingsbury sat down and really said: 'Hey we can do some things with my feet as well as throwing the ball.' And it added a little bit of a new dimension."

Manziel knew that the biggest adjustment from playing in high school to college would be the speed of the game. Exactly how quick players in the SEC were was still a jolt to the quarterback.

"The whole first drive I was just seeing how fast they really flew to the ball and I felt like they just moved a whole lot faster," he said of the Florida game. "It was different than what I was used to, different than what I was used to in high school. So it was just having to learn quick and adjust on the fly."

He did just that and started piling up highlight reel material by deftly avoiding would-be tacklers to help the Aggies run off five consecutive wins after that.

His storybook ride hit a roadblock when he threw a season-high three interceptions in a 24-19 loss to LSU. But Manziel used it as a learning experience, taking to heart some advice he received from Kingsbury.

"He just told me to have a plan every time, before every snap," Manziel said. "Make sure you have a plan on what you want to do and where you want to go with the ball."

"I feel like as the year went on, I just learned the offense more and knew exactly where I wanted to go, instead of maybe evading the blitz and just taking off running for the first down instead of hitting a hot route or throwing it underneath to an open guy and doing things a lot simpler and cleaner."

The Aggies and Manziel rebounded from the loss to LSU by winning their last five games, highlighted by their stunning 29-24 upset of top-ranked Alabama on Nov. 10.

By the time Manziel wrapped up a 253-yard passing and 92-yard rushing performance to lead Texas A&M to the victory in Tuscaloosa, you could hardly call him a freshman anymore.

"You keep growing and growing every week," he said. "By the time I played Alabama I had a much better grasp of the game than I did in the first one."

The 4,600 yards of total offense Manziel gained in 12 games broke the SEC record for total yards in a season. The record was previously held by 2010 Heisman winner Newton, who needed 14 games to pile up 4,327 yards. The output also made him the first freshman, first player in the SEC and fifth player overall to throw for 3,000 yards and run for 1,000 in a season.

Manziel, who turned 20 two days before taking home the Heisman, has been so busy he hasn't had a second to step back and digest the historical significance of his accomplishments this season.

He's far more concerned with helping the Aggies extend their winning streak to six games with a win over Oklahoma on Jan. 4 in the Cotton Bowl.

"I think it will happen after the bowl game and after the season is completely over," he said. "I'm just ready for it to die down a little bit and get back into a practice routine where we get better and hopefully do what we want to do in the bowl game."

He'll have to do it without his mentor Kingsbury, who left A&M last week to become coach at Texas Tech, where he starred at quarterback not that long ago. Manziel said is happy Kingsbury got to return to his alma matter, but is still adjusting to the idea of playing without him.

"I'm the happiest guy on the face of the earth for him," Manziel said, speaking from California where he appeared on the "Tonight Show" Monday evening. "I think he deserves it with how hard he's worked this year to get us where we were. It's bittersweet though, because I'd like him to be here for the entire time that I'm here."

Manziel is eager to get back on the field for the Cotton Bowl and is focused on helping the offense pick up where it left off in the regular-season finale.

"Even though Kliff Kingsbury's not here anymore, we just need to continue to get better and do what we do," Manziel said. "Push tempo, go fast and be the high-flying offense that we have been all year."

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AP Sports Writer Steven Wine contributed to this story from Miami.

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Attackers in Pakistan Kill Anti-Polio Workers

Rizwan Tabassum/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

A Pakistani mother mourned her daughter, who was killed on Tuesday in an attack on health workers participating in a drive to eradicate polio from Pakistan.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Gunmen shot dead five female health workers who were immunizing children against polio on Tuesday, causing the Pakistani government to suspend vaccinations in two cities and dealing a fresh setback to an eradication campaign dogged by Taliban resistance in a country that is one of the disease’s last global strongholds.

“It is a blow, no doubt,” said Shahnaz Wazir Ali, an adviser on polio to Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf. “Never before have female health workers been targeted like this in Pakistan. Clearly there will have to be more and better arrangements for security.”

No group claimed responsibility for the attacks, but most suspicion focused on the Pakistani Taliban, which has previously blocked polio vaccinators and complained that the United States is using the program as a cover for espionage.

The killings were a serious reversal for the multibillion-dollar global polio immunization effort, which over the past quarter century has reduced the number of endemic countries from 120 to just three: Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria.

Nonetheless, United Nations officials insisted that the drive would be revived after a period for investigation and regrouping, as it had been after previous attacks on vaccinators here, in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Pakistan has made solid gains against polio, with 56 new recorded cases of the diseases in 2012, compared with 192 at the same point last year, according to the government. Worldwide, cases of death and paralysis from polio have been reduced to less than 1,000 last year, from 350,000 worldwide in 1988.

But the campaign here has been deeply shaken by Taliban threats and intimidation, though several officials said Tuesday that they had never seen such a focused and deadly attack before.

Insurgents have long been suspicious of polio vaccinators, seeing them as potential spies. But that greatly intensified after the C.I.A. used a vaccination team headed by a local doctor, Shakil Afridi, to visit Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, reportedly in an attempt to obtain DNA proof that the Bin Laden family was there before an American commando raid attacked it in May 2011.

In North Waziristan, one prominent warlord has banned polio vaccinations until the United States ceases drone strikes in the area.

Most new infections in Pakistan occur in the tribal belt and adjoining Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province — some of the most remote areas of the country, and also those with the strongest militant presence. People fleeing fighting in those areas have also spread the disease to Karachi, the country’s largest city, where the disease has been making a worrisome comeback in recent years.

After Tuesday’s attacks, witnesses described violence that was both disciplined and well coordinated. Five attacks occurred within an hour in different Karachi neighborhoods. In several cases, the killers traveled in pairs on motorcycle, opening fire on female health workers as they administered polio drops or moved between houses in crowded neighborhoods.

Of the five victims, three were teenagers, and some had been shot in the head, a senior government official said. Two male health workers were also wounded by gunfire; early reports incorrectly stated that one of them had died, the official said.

In Peshawar, the capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, gunmen opened fire on two sisters participating in the polio vaccination program, killing one of them. It was unclear whether that shooting was directly linked to the Karachi attacks.

In remote parts of the northwest, the Taliban threat is exacerbated by the government’s crumbling writ. In Bannu, on the edge of the tribal belt, one polio worker, Noor Khan, said he quit work on Tuesday once news of the attacks in Karachi and Peshawar filtered in. “We were told to stop immediately,” he said by phone.

Still, the Pakistani government has engaged considerable political and financial capital in fighting polio. President Asif Ali Zardari and his daughter Aseefa have been at the forefront of immunization drives. With the help of international donors, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, they have mounted a huge vaccination campaign aimed at up to 35 million children younger than 5, usually in three-day bursts that can involve 225,000 health workers.

The plan seeks to have every child in Pakistan immunized at least four times per year, although in the hardest-hit areas one child could be reached as many as 12 times in a year.

Declan Walsh reported from Islamabad, and Donald G. McNeil Jr. from New York. Salman Masood contributed reporting from Islamabad, and Zia ur-Rehman from Karachi, Pakistan.

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Facebook Responds to Anger Over Proposed Instagram Changes

Jeremy Pinnix, a 40-year-old app developer in Spring Hill, Tenn., has been a regular user of the photo-sharing service Instagram since it was introduced in 2010, posting pictures of his family, local scenery and favorite moments.

But when he learned this week about changes to the company’s terms of service that would apparently allow his photos to be used as advertisements, he didn’t hesitate. Mr. Pinnix deleted his account and has not looked back.

“Many of the photos I take are of my wife and kids,” he said. “The idea that those could be used in ads without my consent is disconcerting.”

The anxiety has been a mounting theme on social networks this week as Instagram users react to the coming changes, part of a push by Facebook, which now owns Instagram, to make money from the service.

On Tuesday evening, the complaints, which included angry tweets and images on Instagram protesting the changes, prompted some action. Kevin Systrom, a co-founder of Instagram, wrote a blog post saying the company would change the new terms of service to make clearer what would happen to users’ pictures.

“We’ve heard loud and clear that many users are confused and upset about what the changes mean,” he wrote. “I’m writing this today to let you know we’re listening and to commit to you that we will be doing more to answer your questions, fix any mistakes, and eliminate the confusion.”

Eric Goldman, an associate professor at the Santa Clara University School of Law, said the latest skirmish between Facebook and its users was part of the sometimes uncomfortable dynamic between companies offering free online services and their eventual need to turn a profit from them.

“The interest of the site is never 100 percent aligned with the users, and the divergence inevitably leads to friction,” said Mr. Goldman. “It’s unavoidable.”

When it announced the changes on Monday, Facebook provided few details on how it would integrate ads and photos, other than to say that when the changes went into effect on Jan. 16, they would not affect any photographs uploaded to the service before then.

That did not prevent unhappy users from threatening to take their portfolios of photographs over to rival services, such as EyeEm, another social photo-sharing application. Many, including Mr. Pinnix, eyed a return to Flickr, the former king of photo-sharing services, which is owned by Yahoo. In a stroke of lucky timing, Flickr had just released a new application for the iPhone that has drawn considerable praise from users.

The operators of services like Instaport.me and Instabackup, which let people create copies of their Instagram photos, said they were seeing higher than average volume.

Linus Ekenstam, who helped found a service called Copygram that lets people back up their Instagram accounts and order physical prints of their favorite shots, said demand for the company’s free exporting tool had skyrocketed.

“It’s a thousand percent more activity than we’re used to,” he said. “Today is crazy.”

He estimated that roughly 15 people per minute were using the exporting tool, and around half a million photographs had been backed up.

Of course, that’s a sliver of the still-expanding Instagram universe. The company has said more than 100 million users have contributed upward of five billion photographs to the service to date. But should that momentum slow, it could very well damage the plan for producing advertising revenue on the scale Facebook was counting on after spending $735 million in cash and stock to buy Instagram. The company also risks scaring off skittish brands and advertisers that would not want to anger Facebook or Instagram users who disagree with how their images are used.

The history of the social Web is full of cautionary tales of companies, from Digg to Myspace, whose users eventually got so fed up with how the companies meddled that they fled to greener digital pastures, leaving the companies in ruin.

In Tuesday’s blog post, Mr. Systrom sought to quell the mounting unrest and reassure users that the company would not be peddling photographs of kids playing on the beach or friends partying in nightclubs to the highest bidder. “To be clear, it is not our intention to sell your photos,” he said.

He said that the company also did not intend to put its members in advertisements. “We do not have plans for anything like this and because of that we’re going to remove the language that raised the question,” he said. “Our main goal is to avoid things likes advertising banners you see in other apps that would hurt the Instagram user experience.”

He did concede that the company might do something like promote a brand like Topshop and show Facebook visitors which of their friends already follow Topshop, tiny blurbs that could include their username and avatar.

Mr. Systrom also insisted that Instagram users still “own their content” and that “Instagram does not claim any ownership rights over your photos,” adding, “Nothing about this has changed.”

Of course, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, said nearly the same thing in April: “We need to be mindful about keeping and building on Instagram’s strengths and features rather than just trying to integrate everything into Facebook. That’s why we’re committed to building and growing Instagram independently.” Since then, the company has cut off Facebook’s easy integration with rival Twitter and bound the photo service more tightly into Facebook.

Rebecca Lieb, an analyst with the Altimeter Group, said worries about Facebook changing for the worse has become par for the course almost any time Facebook alters its site, whether in the design or in its privacy policies. It underscores the importance and omnipotence of the service in its users lives as much as it signals a distrust of Facebook itself.

“There’s always a reaction when Facebook does anything because the user base is so unbelievably large,” said Ms. Lieb. “But while what its users say can be very loud and very viral, what they do can be two very disparate things.”

“There are always Facebook users who say ‘This is the last straw,’ ” she said. But in the end, she said, “there’s not a lot of portability. Where would you go?”

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Hard Times in Spain Force Feuding Couples to Delay Divorce

SABADELL, SPAIN — Esther Fernández, 45, was desperate for a divorce. A hairdresser, she had fallen in love with another man, who was dying of cancer.

Her husband, Gaby Cuadrado, 47, had lost his factory job. Selling their house in a depressed market in this sleepy city outside Barcelona was impossible. Neither could afford a second home. They were already struggling to pay their mortgage. An expensive divorce was out of the question.

So for two years she stuck it out, leaving before dawn, hiding from Mr. Cuadrado, who said he became so obsessed with his wife that he would spy on her from his car. She had panic attacks. “I felt trapped,” she said.

It was even worse for him. The situation, Mr. Cuardado said, pushed him to the brink of suicide. “Being forced to live with a woman I loved who had rejected me was psychological torture,” he said. They finally divorced in November, after moving to tiny apartments in bad parts of town.

If marriage is for better or worse, richer or poorer, then these are the worst of times for a poorer Spain. Couples are paying the emotional price, especially when they cannot afford the price of divorce.

Fewer of them can. Accounts from judges, divorce lawyers and therapists — as well as couples themselves — indicate that many Spaniards are staying in troubled relationships longer as a result of an economic crisis that has ground on for nearly five years.

Last year, the number of divorces in Spain dropped 17 percent compared with 2006, according to the Spanish Judicial Council, a national association that represents the country’s judges. The divorce rate jumped in 2006 after changes to the divorce law made it easier to split up in 2005, but it has fallen with the crisis in Spain’s economy, according to the council.

“There is no doubt that the crisis is pushing people to stay together,” said José María Redondo, the council’s spokesman, who attributed the drop in the divorce rate to a burst housing bubble and hard economic times.

The crisis is not only slowing divorces but also transforming the process, according to divorce lawyers. Judges are reducing alimony payments and dueling spouses have moved from fighting over property to sparring over the critical issue of who assumes debts.

Some couples are literally dividing their homes in two, by sticking tape across the floor, said Álvaro Cavia, a leading Barcelona-based divorce lawyer. Unable to afford a divorce, other couples live together even as they engage openly in other romantic relationships.

Squabbles over money — or the lack of it — are the biggest source of contention among couples seeking to mend fraying relationships, according to Myka Pedrero, a family psychologist in a suburb of Barcelona, who counseled Ms. Fernández, her sister.

It is worst for jobless couples, she said, not just because of the money strains, but because they often spend all day together at home, treading on each others’ nerves. When warring couples share the same quarters it is especially confusing for children unable to accept their parents’ break-ups, she said.

“The crisis makes things worse as it adds huge pressures to marriages when you don’t have a job and can’t pay the bills,” she said. “When people who want to split are forced to stay together it pollutes the whole ecosystem that is the family and drives both the man and the woman crazy.”

Until the crisis exploded, legal experts say, divorce was widely accepted as the easiest exit from a bad marriage after decades during which it was prohibited during the Franco dictatorship.

Divorce was first legalized in Spain 1981 but the law required couples to legally separate first, a period of reflection aimed at safeguarding the family in a socially conservative, Catholic country. The change in the law in 2005 has allowed couples to get “express divorces” without any separation. Couples need to have been married for at least three months to qualify.

Even when couples can afford a divorce, the economic crisis has added new complications.

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Mets trade Cy Young winner Dickey to Blue Jays

NEW YORK (AP) — Eager for a new challenge and certainly a better chance to win, R.A. Dickey broke the news of his trade even before the Toronto Blue Jays and New York Mets.

A few minutes ahead of the teams announcing the seven-player swap Monday that sent the NL Cy Young winner to Toronto, he tweeted his thanks to Mets fans and added he was all set to pitch for the Blue Jays.

"Now that its official, I want to say that I don't have the words to express how grateful I am to you for the steadfast support," Dickey posted on Twitter. "Thank you for making me feel wanted."

"Looking forward to a new chapter with the Jays," he wrote.

Toronto acquired the 38-year-old knuckleballer and catchers Josh Thole and Mike Nickeas. The Mets got top catching prospect Travis d'Arnaud and catcher John Buck, plus minor league right-hander Noah Syndergaard and outfielder Wuilmer Becerra.

"It was an extraordinary privilege for us to be part of his career," Mets general manager Sandy Alderson said about Dickey on a conference call. "The final chapter has not been written."

Earlier in the day, Dickey and the busy Blue Jays agreed to a new contract, clearing the way for the Mets to send him to a team that's spending a lot of money trying to join baseball's elite. Toronto has now acquired All-Stars Jose Reyes, Josh Johnson, Mark Buehrle, Melky Cabrera and Dickey since the season ended.

Dickey was already signed for $5.25 million next year. His new contract adds two more seasons for $25 million — he will get $12 million in both 2014 and 2015, plus there's a club option for 2016 at $12 million with a $1 million buyout.

Dickey needed to pass a physical before the teams announced the deal. He became the fourth pitcher to win the Cy Young and be traded before the next season, joining David Cone, Pedro Martinez and Roger Clemens.

Alderson said the Mets' preference going into the offseason was to re-sign Dickey. But as the winter meetings approached in early December, Alderson said Dickey's value "in a possible trade was also sky-rocketing. At some point, those lines crossed."

Several teams made runs at a deal for Dickey, with Texas and the Los Angeles Angels among those in the mix. Alderson said while some clubs popped in and out of trade talks, Toronto's interest remained steady.

Alderson said the Mets didn't completely decide to trade Dickey until they saw the final package that Toronto offered.

"This was a complicated deal," Alderson said.

The Blue Jays have missed the playoffs since winning their second straight World Series crown in 1993, and have boldly moved to reshape a team that went 73-89 last season in the rugged AL East.

Last month, they acquired a high-priced trio — Johnson and Buehrle on the mound, Reyes at shortstop — in a 12-player trade with the Miami Marlins.

Toronto later signed Cabrera, an All-Star outfielder with San Francisco whose season ended when he was suspended 50 games for a positive testosterone test.

Dickey was 20-6 with a 2.73 ERA last season, capping his rapid rise from the majors' scrap heap to an ace pitcher. He did it by perfecting a way to throw his floater faster than previous knuckleballers, and tossing it with exceptional control.

Dickey becomes part of a stellar rotation that includes Johnson, Buehrle and returning starters Ricky Romero and Brandon Morrow.

Thole gives the Blue Jays a catcher who is familiar with handling Dickey's knuckleball. He joined a lineup that features former home run champ Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion, who hit 42 homers last season.

Despite a big spot in the rotation to fill minus Dickey, Alderson said the Mets were not giving up on next season.

"We certainly are not punting on 2013," he said.

D'Arnaud turns 24 in February. He hit .333 at Triple-A Las Vegas with 16 homers and 52 RBIs before tearing a knee ligament trying to break up a double play in June. He has been an All-Star at several levels during his climb through the minors.

Alderson called d'Arnaud the top catching prospect in the minors and predicted he could contribute on the major league level next year.

Popular with Mets fans, Dickey perturbed team management when he spoke about his contract situation last week during a club event at Citi Field for children displaced from their schools by Superstorm Sandy.

Dickey said he enjoyed playing for the Mets and added it would be "disappointing" if he went through his option year without a new deal and became a free agent.

"If that's the decision that they make, I feel like it would be unfortunate because it probably is going mean that I'm not going to be back," Dickey said then. "And that would be sad."

Buck was an All-Star with Toronto in 2010. The 32-year-old hit .192 with 12 home runs and 41 RBIs for Miami last season, then was part of the big trade between Marlins and Blue Jays.

The 20-year-old Syndergaard went 8-5 with a 2.60 ERA for Class A Lansing. The 18-year-old Becerra hit .250 with four RBIs in 11 games in the rookie Gulf Coast League.

Thole hit .234 with one homer and 21 RBIs in 104 games last season. The 26-year-old played four seasons with the Mets.

Nickeas split last season with the Mets and Triple-A Buffalo. The 29-year-old hit .174 with one homer and 13 RBIs for New York.

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Philippine Lawmakers Pass Reproductive Health Bill

MANILA — After a ferocious national debate that pitted family members against one another, and some faithful Catholics against their church, the Philippine Congress passed legislation on Monday to help the country’s poorest women gain access to birth control.

Jay Directo/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Supporters of a landmark reproductive health bill celebrated as the Philippine Congress passed legislation on Monday to help the country’s poorest women gain access to birth control. 

Jay Directo/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Opponents of a reproductive health bill, including a Catholic nun, looked at portraits of Philippine legislators as they passed a landmark measure Monday.

“The people now have the government on their side as they raise their families in a manner that is just and empowered,” said Edwin Lacierda, a spokesman for President Benigno S. Aquino III, who pushed for passage.

Each chamber of the national legislature passed its own version of the measure — by 13 to 8 in the Senate and 133 to 79 in the House of Representatives — and minor differences between the two must be reconciled before the measure goes to Mr. Aquino for his signature.

The measure had been stalled for more than a decade because of determined opposition from the Roman Catholic Church. Roughly four-fifths of Filipinos are Catholic.

Birth control is legal and widely available in the Philippines for people who can afford it, particularly those living in cities. But condoms, birth control pills and other methods can be difficult to find in rural areas, and their cost puts them out of reach for the very poor.

“Some local governments have passed local ordinances that banned the sale of condoms and contraceptives and forbid their distribution in government clinics, where most poor Filipinos turn for health care,” Human Rights Watch said in a statement on the issue, adding that the new bill would override such ordinances.

The measure passed on Monday would stock government health centers, including those in remote areas, with free or subsidized birth control options for the poor. It would require sex education in public schools and family-planning training for community health officers. The Philippines has one of the highest birthrates in Asia, but backers of the legislation, including the Aquino administration, have said repeatedly that its purpose is not to limit population growth. Rather, they say, the bill is meant to offer poor families the same reproductive health options that wealthier people in the country enjoy.

The United Nations Population Fund estimates that half of the 3.4 million pregnancies in the Philippines each year are unintended, and that there are 11 pregnancy-related deaths in the country each day, on average. Most of those could be avoided, the organization says, through improved maternal health care, a need that proponents say the new legislation will directly address.

Catholic Church officials took a hard line against the measure, saying it was out of line with the beliefs of most religious Filipinos. The church equated contraception with abortion, which is illegal in the Philippines.

“These artificial means are fatal to human life, either preventing it from fruition or actually destroying it,” the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines said in a statement on the eve of the votes in Congress.

The statement cited health risks associated with some forms of birth control, but the bishops’ strongest objections have been lodged on moral rather than medical grounds. In a pastoral letter, they said: “The youth are being made to believe that sex before marriage is acceptable, provided you know how to avoid pregnancy. Is this moral? Those who corrupt the minds of children will invoke divine wrath on themselves.”

The legislation prompted a heated national debate in the Philippines over the role that government should play in family planning and women’s health.

“This bill no doubt has inflicted a very wide chasm of division in our society,” said Juan Ponce Enrile, the president of the Senate. “Families are even divided, mother and daughter differing in their views, husband and wife differing in their views.” Mr. Enrile opposed the bill; his son, Juan, a congressman, voted in favor of it.

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Bangladesh Finds Gross Negligence in Factory Fire

DHAKA, Bangladesh — Criminal charges for “unpardonable negligence” should be brought against the owner of the Bangladesh garment factory where a fire killed 112 people last month, according to a preliminary report from a government inquiry submitted Monday.

“The owner of the factory cannot be indemnified from the death of large numbers of workers from this fire,” Main Uddin Khandaker, the official who led the inquiry, said in an interview. “Unpardonable negligence of the owner is responsible for the death of workers.”

The Nov. 24 fire at the Tazreen Fashions factory, where workers were making clothes for global retailers like Walmart and Sears, has focused attention on the unsafe work conditions and low wages at many garment factories in Bangladesh, the No. 2 exporter of apparel after China. The fire also has exposed flaws in the system that monitors the industry’s global supply chain: Walmart and Sears say they had no idea their apparel was being made there.

Mr. Khandaker submitted a 214-page report to Bangladesh’s Home Ministry on Monday, saying that the factory owner, Delowar Hossain, and nine of his midlevel managers and supervisors prevented employees from leaving their sewing machines even after a fire alarm sounded.

Mr. Hossain could not be reached for comment.

The report also stated that the fire was “an act of sabotage,” but it did not provide any evidence.

Some labor advocates found that explanation unconvincing. “They don’t say who did it, they don’t say where in the factory it was done, they don’t say how they learned it,” said Scott Nova, executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium, a monitoring group in Washington. “Regardless of what sparked the fire, it is clear that the unsafe nature of this factory and the actions taken by management once the fire started were the primary contributors to the horrendous death toll.”

Bangladeshi officials have been under intense domestic and international pressure to investigate the blaze and charge those deemed responsible. Families of the victims have demanded legal action against Mr. Hossain. Labor advocates have argued that the global brands using the factory also shared in the responsibility for the tragedy.

Fires have been a persistent problem in Bangladesh’s garment industry for more than a decade, with hundreds of workers killed over the years. Mr. Khandaker said his inquiry recommended the creation of a government task force to oversee regular inspections of factories and uphold the rights of workers.

Bangladesh has more than 4,500 garment factories, which employ more than four million workers, many of them young women. The industry is crucial to the national economy as a source of employment and foreign currency. Garments constitute about four-fifths of the country’s manufacturing exports, and the industry is expected to grow rapidly.

But Bangladesh’s manufacturing formula depends on keeping wages low and restricting the rights of workers. The minimum wage in the garment industry is $37 a month, unions are almost nonexistent, and garment workers have taken to the streets in recent years in sometimes violent protests over wages and work conditions.

Workers at Tazreen Fashions had staged small demonstrations in the months before the fire, demanding wages they were owed. On the night of the fire, more than 1,150 people were inside the eight-story building, working overtime shifts to fill orders for various international brands. Fire officials say the fire broke out in the open-air ground floor, where large mounds of fabric and yarn were illegally stored; Bangladeshi law requires that such flammable materials be stored in a room with fireproof walls.

The blaze quickly spread across the length of the ground floor — roughly the size of a football field — as fire and toxic smoke filtered up through the building’s three staircases. The factory lacked a sprinkler system or an outdoor fire escape; employees were supposed to use interior staircases, and many escaped that way.

But on some floors, managers ordered workers to ignore a fire alarm and stay to work. Precious minutes were lost. Then, as smoke and fire spread throughout the building, many workers were trapped, unable to descend the smoke-filled staircases and blocked from escape by iron grilles on many windows. Desperate workers managed to break open some windows and leap to the roof of a nearby building and safety. Others simply jumped from upper floors to the ground.

“We have also found unpardonable negligence of midlevel officials at the factory,” Mr. Khandaker said. “They prevented workers from coming down. We recommend taking proper legal measures against them.”

Mr. Khandaker listed a host of violations at Tazreen Fashions: managers on some floors closed collapsible gates to block workers from running down the staircases, the ground-floor warehouse was illegal and the building’s escape plan improper, and the factory lacked a required closed-circuit television monitoring system. None of the fire extinguishers in the factory appeared to have been used on the night of the fire, suggesting poor preparedness and training.

Moreover, Mr. Khandaker said, the factory lacked a required fire safety certificate. It had applied for an annual renewal, but a certificate had not yet been issued.

Asked about the allegation of sabotage, Mr. Khandaker said that investigators had found no evidence of an electrical short circuit, and that eyewitnesses had suggested possible foul play. He said the report recommended a full criminal investigation into the matter.

“It seems to us that it was sabotage,” he said. “Somebody set the fire.”

Julfikar Ali Manik reported from Dhaka, and Jim Yardley from New Delhi. Steven Greenhouse contributed reporting from New York.

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Syrians Airstrike Kills Palestinian Refugees

DAMASCUS, Syria — Government forces for the first time hit Syria’s largest Palestinian refugee neighborhood with airstrikes on Sunday, killing at least eight people in the Yarmouk district of Damascus and driving dozens of formerly pro-government Palestinian fighters to defect to the rebels, fighters there said.

The New York Times

For many Yarmouk residents — refugees from conflict with Israel and their descendants — the attacks shattered what was left of the Syrian government’s claim to be a champion and protector of Palestinians.

New signs emerged on Sunday of political pressure on President Bashar al-Assad. Mr. Assad’s vice president was quoted as saying that neither side could win the war and calling for “new partners” in a unity government, a possible sign that at least some in the government were exploring new ways out of the crisis. The comments came as two close allies, the government of Iran and the leader of the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah, appeared to slightly temper their support.

In Yarmouk, burned body parts littered the ground at the Sheik Abdul Qader mosque, which had offered shelter to Palestinians and others displaced by fighting in other areas. Minutes before, a Syrian fighter jet fired rockets at the camp. Women, crying children and white-bearded men thronged the streets with hurriedly packed bags, not sure where to look for safety.

For many Yarmouk residents — refugees from conflict with Israel and their descendants — the attacks shattered what was left of the Syrian government’s claim to be a champion and protector of Palestinians, a position the Assad family relied upon as a source of domestic and international legitimacy in more than 40 years of iron-fisted rule.

“For decades the Assad regime was talking about the Palestinians’ rights,” said a Palestinian refugee who gave his name as Abu Ammar as he debated whether to flee with his wife and five children from the camp, on the southern edge of Damascus. “But Bashar al-Assad has killed more of us today than Israel did in its latest war on Gaza.”

He added: “What does Bashar expect from us after today? All of us will be Free Syrian Army fighters.”

The Palestinian militant group and political party Hamas has broken with Mr. Assad over his crackdown on what began as a peaceful protest movement, and while most Palestinian parties still profess neutrality, a growing number of Palestinians support — and have even joined — the rebels.

The Syrian government long held the loyalty of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees, giving them health care, education and access to professional careers, among other rights denied by other Arab host countries. But those policies also gave Palestinians a stake and sense of belonging in Syria that have led many to support the uprising.

Several of Mr. Assad’s allies signaled a new push for a peaceful solution. Iran’s Foreign Ministry called for an end to military action, the release of political prisoners and a broad-based dialogue to form a transitional government that would hold free elections, Iran’s state news agency reported.

Mr. Assad’s vice president, Farouk al-Sharaa, said that neither the government nor the rebels could end the conflict militarily, the pro-Syrian Lebanese newspaper Al Akhbar reported. And he called for a solution involving a cease-fire and brokered by international leaders that would establish a “national unity government with wide powers.”

He added that the battle was for the country’s very existence, not “the survival of an individual or a regime,” and that Syria’s leaders “cannot achieve change without new partners.”

The impact of the statements was unclear. Mr. Sharaa, a Sunni Muslim like most of the rebels, has been floated by the Arab League as a possible successor, but many of Mr. Assad’s opponents reject any dealings with leaders of the current government.

In neighboring Lebanon, Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, appeared to acknowledge for the first time that the Syrian uprising is at least in part driven by popular sentiment.

“Today, in Syria,” he said in a videotaped address at a graduation ceremony, “there is a big part of the population with the Syrian regime and a part against it, and the latter armed themselves to fight the regime.”

An employee of The New York Times reported from Damascus, and Anne Barnard from Beirut, Lebanon. Hania Mourtada contributed reporting from Beirut, and Hala Droubi from Dubai.

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Be Careful When Downloading Your Twitter Archive

Twitter is rolling out the long-awaited feature of downloading your entire tweet history, it seems, but be careful. You might not like what you find in there. Sometimes we remember our tweets with rose-colored lenses.

RELATED: ‘Human Virus’ Snakes Through Twitter

The Next Web was the first to notice a few users posting about being able to download their tweet history this weekend. Not everyone can do it, though. Twitter is slow-rolling the new feature, so only a limited number of people have access to the option. To check if you’re one of the lucky few, go to your settings page. At the very bottom there should be a new section with a big button offering you the chance to download your archive. Twitter will send you an email with three different compression files of your tweet history after a few minutes. You’ll decompress a .html file and be able to sort through all the dumb stuff you’ve said on Twitter by month and by year. 

RELATED: Twitter Finally Grows Up

The Verge has the best screen shots of what the process looks like. One of their readers even posted a link to his history in the comments of their post. You can check it out here if you’re interested to see what the feature is like. Just don’t judge the poor guy too harshly. 

RELATED: Sexy Piggy Banks, Analogies and Haley Barbour

We don’t have the option to download our archive yet. We checked. And, in case you think you’re clever, we checked to see if you could game the url to get your history by subbing in your username into the Verge commenter’s URL. You can’t, unfortunately. 

RELATED: Arm Wrestling, Strangers and Pricey Prophylactics

Twitter CEO Dick Costello promised the feature would be here by the end of the year, so it seems like he’s just delivering what he promised. You should get it soon, too. 

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Texans clinch AFC South with 29-17 win over Colts

HOUSTON (AP) — The Houston Texans now own the AFC South, and they have a message for the rest of the NFL:

Last week's debacle against New England was not the real Texans.

The real Texans, they claim, clinched the division for the second straight year with a 29-17 victory over Indianapolis.

"A lot of people were wondering how we were going to respond," Andre Johnson said. "I think a lot of people doubted us after what happened last week. We (felt) like we had to show people what we were really about."

They believe they did so against the Colts, a team that dominated the division for years before Houston's recent rise.

But Sunday's celebrations were more subdued than last year's. This time the Texans expected to win the division, and have much bigger goals ahead.

"It's awesome," J.J. Watt said. "But there's a lot more fun ahead, so I hope everybody is not celebrating too early."

Johnson gained 151 yards receiving and a touchdown, Bryan Braman had a special teams score on a blocked punt, and Shayne Graham kicked five field goals.

The Texans (12-2) grabbed their first AFC South title last season after the Colts nosedived without injured quarterback Peyton Manning. Manning is gone to Denver and rookie Andrew Luck couldn't do much against the inspired Houston defense.

The Colts (9-5) had won three straight games and needed a win to clinch a playoff berth a year after going 2-14 in 2011. Before that, they took the division seven times since Houston entered the league in 2002.

"It was a tough loss for us in that we came here with one idea and that was to win the division, and we're not going to win the division — they did it," Indianapolis interim coach Bruce Arians said.

Thanks in great part to three sacks from Watt, Houston bounced back six days after the 42-14 loss to New England on national television. The Texans will have home-field advantage throughout the AFC playoffs if they win out.

Luck threw for 186 yards with two touchdowns in the return to his hometown. He had led the Colts to a rookie-record six wins on drives in the fourth quarter or overtime this season, and he got the Colts within six points late in the third quarter.

"We came here to win, not put up a respectable showing," Luck said. "We'll move on to next week and hopefully get better."

Houston's defense shut Luck down after he made it close, and the Texans used Arian Foster to eat up the clock. Foster ran for a season-high 165 yards to leave him with 1,313 yards rushing, giving him his third straight year with at least 1,200.

"It's not really that we bounced back," Foster said. "It's that we played the football that we know we're capable of playing. We feel we're a team that if we play how we know we can ... it's going to be hard for us to get beat."

Watt increased his AFC-leading sack total to 19 ½ — the NFL record for a season is 22 ½ — and finished with 10 tackles. He also forced a fumble for the third straight game.

"I don't even know the stats," Houston coach Gary Kubiak said. "But it seemed like every time I looked up, he was making a play."

Luck was sacked five times playing behind a makeshift offensive line missing center Samson Satele (ankle) and right tackle Winston Justice (biceps).

Johnson, who has 11,008 yards receiving in his career, scored on a 3-yard reception to make it 10-0 in the first quarter. The Texans didn't score a touchdown on offense after that, but were helped by Braman's special teams effort.

Braman blocked his second punt of the season, recovered it and returned it 8 yards for his first career touchdown to make it 20-3 just before halftime.

Vick Ballard had 60 yards rushing on a Colts drive that ended with an 8-yard touchdown reception by Dwayne Allen to cut Houston's lead to 23-17 in the third quarter. Ballard finished with a career-high 105 yards rushing.

Houston couldn't do anything on its next drive and punted. But Indy sputtered, and interim coach Bruce Arians even drew an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on a punt, giving Houston the ball at the Colts 39.

Graham added a 46-yard field goal to push the lead to 26-17 and made his fifth field goal with about a minute left.

Rookie T.Y. Hilton and Luck connected on a 61-yard touchdown pass just before halftime.

Watt's forced fumble on Mewelde Moore on the Houston 1 was recovered by Tim Dobbins early in the second quarter, robbing the Colts of points. And the Colts stalled inside the red zone again and had to settle for Adam Vinatieri's 26-yard field goal to cut Houston's lead to 10-3.

The Texans had set the tone as they got to Luck early, sacking him twice on the Colts' second drive. Antonio Smith got to him first, and Watt put a move on backup tackle Jeff Linkenbach and took him down for a 15-yard loss.

On offense, Johnson was dominant. He put Houston up 10-0 when he waltzed into the end zone for a 3-yard touchdown reception. Johnson kept things going earlier in the drive when he caught a pass, lost it and then grabbed it again just before it touched the ground for a 10-yard gain on third-and-9.

NOTES: Luck needs 74 yards to break Cam Newton's rookie yards passing record of 4,051 yards. ... Dobbins has recovered four fumbles this season, a franchise record. ... Braman's two blocked punts this season are a single-season franchise record.

___

Online: http://pro32.ap.org/poll and http://twitter.com/AP_NFL

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