Toll Rises as U.S. Pushes for Israel-Hamas Truce

JERUSALEM — Efforts to agree on a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas intensified Tuesday, but the struggle to achieve even a brief pause in the fighting emphasized the obstacles to finding any lasting solution.

On the deadliest day of fighting in the week-old conflict, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived hurriedly in Jerusalem and met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to push for a truce. She was due in Cairo on Wednesday to consult with Egyptian officials in contact with Hamas, placing her and the Obama administration at the center of a fraught process with multiple parties, interests and demands.

Officials on all sides had raised expectations that a cease-fire would begin around midnight, followed by negotiations for a longer-term agreement. But by the end of Tuesday, officials with Hamas, the militant Islamist group that governs Gaza, said any announcement would not come at least until Wednesday.

The Israelis, who have amassed tens of thousands of troops on the Gaza border and have threatened to invade for a second time in four years to end the rocket fire from Gaza, never publicly backed the idea of a short break in fighting. They said they were open to a diplomatic accord but were looking for something more enduring.

“If there is a possibility of achieving a long-term solution to this problem through diplomatic means, we prefer that,” Mr. Netanyahu said before meeting with Mrs. Clinton at his office. “But if not, I’m sure you understand that Israel will have to take whatever actions necessary to defend its people.”

Mrs. Clinton spoke of the need for “a durable outcome that promotes regional stability and advances the security and legitimate aspirations of Israelis and Palestinians alike.” It was unclear whether she was starting a complex task of shuttle diplomacy or whether she expected to achieve a pause in the hostilities and then head home.

The diplomatic moves came as the antagonists on both sides stepped up their attacks. Israeli aerial and naval forces assaulted several Gaza targets in multiple strikes, including a suspected rocket-launching site near Al Shifa Hospital. That attack killed more than a dozen people, bringing the total number of fatalities in Gaza to more than 130 — roughly half of them civilians, the Gaza Health Ministry said.

A delegation visiting from the Arab League canceled a news conference at the hospital because of the Israeli aerial assaults as wailing ambulances brought victims in, some of them decapitated.

The Israeli assaults carried into early Wednesday, with multiple blasts punctuating the otherwise darkened Gaza skies.

Militants in Gaza fired a barrage of at least 200 rockets into Israel, killing an Israeli soldier — the first military casualty on the Israeli side since the hostilities broke out. The Israeli military said the soldier, identified as Yosef Fartuk, 18, had died from a rocket strike that hit an area near Gaza. Israeli officials said a civilian military contractor working near the Gaza border had also been killed, bringing the number of fatalities in Israel from the week of rocket mayhem to five.

Other Palestinian rockets hit the southern Israeli cities of Beersheba and Ashdod, and longer-range rockets were fired at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Neither main city was struck, and no casualties were reported. One Gaza rocket hit a building in Rishon LeZion, just south of Tel Aviv, wounding one person and wrecking the top three floors.

Senior Egyptian officials in Cairo said Israel and Hamas were “very close” to a cease-fire agreement. “We have not received final approval, but I hope to receive it any moment,” said Essam el-Haddad, President Mohamed Morsi’s top foreign affairs adviser.

Foreign diplomats who were briefed on the outlines of a tentative agreement said it had been structured in stages — first, an announcement of a cease-fire, followed by its implementation for 48 hours. That would allow time for Mrs. Clinton to involve herself in the process here and create a window for negotiators to agree on conditions for a longer-term cessation of hostilities.

But it seemed that each side had steep demands of a longer-term deal that the other side would reject.

Khaled Meshal, the Hamas leader, said in Cairo that Israel needed to end its blockade of Gaza. Israel says the blockade keeps arms from entering the coastal strip.

Ethan Bronner reported from Jerusalem, and David D. Kirkpatrick from Cairo. Reporting was contributed by Jodi Rudoren and Fares Akram from Gaza; Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem; Peter Baker from Phnom Penh, Cambodia; David E. Sanger and Mark Landler from Washington; and Rick Gladstone from New York.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 20, 2012

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misspelled the family name of the Israeli soldier who was killed in a Palestinian rocket attack on Tuesday. He is Yosef Fartuk, not Yosef Faruk. 

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Eric Stonestreet Wasn’t Drunk, He Swears

We realize there’s only so much time one can spend in a day watching new trailers, viral video clips, and shaky cell phone footage of people arguing on live television. This is why every day The Atlantic Wire highlights the videos that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention. Today:

RELATED: What Happens When You Sing ‘All Night Long’ All Night Long

So if you were one of the few people watching the American Music Awards, (which no one watched) you may have seen Eric Stonestreet be a little tipsy. But that isn’t half as enjoyable as watching Eric Stonestreet watching himself be a little tipsy that night. (Also, wow, he’s sort of a bro.)

RELATED: Modern Family Is Scary

RELATED: ‘Seven Psychocats’ and the 50 Best Bond Moments in 007 Minutes

A few days ago we found out that Paul Rudd was in play called Grace on Broadway because … (wait for it) someone in the balcony puked on the audience members during the play. Four days late we can laugh at the whole thing. Mostly because we weren’t barfed on: 

RELATED: A ‘Mad Men’ Rickroll and the Man That Destroys Carnival Games

RELATED: A Video to Restore Our Faith in Humanity and a Glacier Tsunami

Here’s how to make some magic. What you’ll need: 

(1) Canadian newscaster with chubby fingers

(1) Technology

(1) Drunk piece of technology

Voila: 

And finally. Thanksgiving is upon us!  Today we’re thankful for squirrels who like to eat plastic: 

Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Jack Taylor scores 138 points for Grinnell

After a poor shooting weekend, Grinnell guard Jack Taylor was given the green light to shoot his way out of a slump.

It only took 108 shots for Taylor to make a mockery of the college basketball record books.

Taylor scored 138 points to shatter the NCAA scoring record in Division III Grinnell's 179-104 victory over Faith Baptist Bible on Tuesday night in Grinnell, Iowa.

Taylor, a 5-foot-10, 170-pound sophomore from Black River Falls, Wis., made 27 of 71 3-point attempts, was 52 of 108 overall from the field and added seven free throws on 10 attempts in 36 minutes.

"It felt like anything I tossed up was going in," Taylor told The Associated Press.

Rio Grande's Bevo Francis held the NCAA scoring record with 113 points against Hillsdale in 1954. In 1953, Francis had 116 against Ashland Junior College. Frank Selvy is the only other player to reach triple figures, scoring 100 points for Division I Furman against Newberry in 1954. The previous Grinnell record was 89 by Griffin Lentsch last Nov. 19 against Principia.

Under coach David Arseneault, the Pioneers press and shoot 3s like nobody else in the country in any level. They've led the nation in scoring for 17 of the past 19 seasons while ranking first nationally in 3-point shooting for the 15 of those past 19 years. But none of them have had a night quite like Taylor — who never saw this coming.

Taylor recently transferred to Grinnell, located about 50 miles east of Des Moines, after playing one season for Wisconsin-La Crosse. He struggled in his debut at the nearby Wartburg Tournament over the weekend by hitting only 11 of 41 shots — including only 6 of 34 3-point attempts Still, he averaged 23.5 points a game.

But Taylor started Tuesday's night game off slow — at least according to his standards. His coaches figured the best way to get him on track was for him to keep chucking, so that's what Taylor did.

"Maybe my cold shooting from the weekend was affecting me," Taylor said. "But then they started to drop."

Taylor had 58 points at halftime.

Then he got hot.

Taylor was 32 of 58 shooting — including 18 3s — in the final 20 minutes and averaged an astounding four points a minute in the second half.

"I don't think reality has set in yet," Taylor said.

Carmelo Anthony and the New York Knicks were amazed by the feat when they heard about it after their victory in New Orleans.

"I never heard of nothing like that. That's like a video game," Anthony said, an incredulous look on his face. "How can you shoot 100 times, though?"

He joked that from now on when someone asks if he's taking too many shots, he'll mention "that someone shot it 108 times."

Raymond Felton also was astounded by the 108 shots.

"His elbow has got to be sore," Felton said.

___

AP Sports Writer Brett Martel in New Orleans contributed to this report.

___

Follow Luke Meredith on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/LukeMeredithAP

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Airlines’ On-Time Performance Rises

Rich Addicks for The New York Times

Delta Air Lines employees monitor ground traffic from a tower at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

ATLANTA — Next time you dawdle at the duty-free store or an airport bar, thinking you have a few more minutes until your flight is set to go, know this: the plane’s doors might have already closed.

Rich Addicks for The New York Times

A customer checking her bag. Delta installed bag check-in computers on boarding ramps.

There is a lot to complain about in air travel, particularly during the holiday season, with seats and overhead bins filled to capacity and the airlines charging fees for everything from a few inches of extra leg room to a bite to eat. But there is a nugget of good news. The number of flights leaving, and arriving, on time has improved significantly in recent years.

That is partly the result of the airlines flying fewer flights. But it is also because some airlines are focusing more on getting their planes out of the gate on schedule.

“There has been a lot of focus on improving performance across the industry,” said Peter McDonald, United’s chief operations officer. With carry-on space at a premium, he said passengers are also eager to board early. “There’s not a lot of hanging out at the bar until the last minute anymore.”

John Fechushak, Delta Air Lines’ director of operations in Atlanta, compared the daily task to “putting together a puzzle with different pieces every day.”

Here is a sampling of what Delta, for instance, looks at each day for each flight. How many minutes did it take for a plane to reach its gate after landing? Was the cabin door opened within three minutes? How soon were bags loaded in the hold? Did boarding start 35 minutes before takeoff? Were the cabin doors closed three minutes ahead of schedule?

So far this year, 83 percent of all flights took off within 15 minutes of schedule, the highest level since 2003, according to the Department of Transportation, which compiled figures through September. But that average belies a wide range of airline performances.

Hawaiian Airlines, helped by good weather for much of the year, topped the rankings, with 95 percent of flights leaving on time. At US Airways, 89 percent of departures were on time in that period, while Delta had 87 percent.

The biggest laggard this year has been United, which is struggling with its merger with Continental Airlines. The carrier has had three major computer problems this year, including two that crashed the airline’s passenger reservation system, stranding thousands of travelers and causing significant delays and cancellations. Its on-time departure rate, as a result, was 76 percent this year, the industry’s lowest.

American Airlines, which is going through bankruptcy proceedings and has been dealing with contentious labor relations, has also performed poorly. It delayed or canceled hundreds of flights in recent months after pilots called in sick or reported more mechanical problems. The airline also canceled scores of flight after seats were improperly bolted on some of its planes. As a result, nearly 40 percent of American’s flights were late in September.

Government statistics, however, do not provide the full picture: smaller carriers, like ExpressJet and SkyWest Airlines, which operate regional flights for Delta, United and US Airways, generally have lower on-time performance than their partners.

On-time statistics also vary widely by month, with the worst months in August and January, when summer storms, holiday travel or winter weather cause more disruptions. There are also single events that throw off the airlines: statistics, for instance, will be skewed for October by Hurricane Sandy, which shut down air travel through much of the East Coast and caused more than 19,000 flight cancellations.

Carriers have strong incentives to get planes out on time. Airlines now operate schedules that leave little wiggle room. Airplanes typically fly to several places every day, so any delayed flights, especially early in the day, can cascade through the system like falling dominoes and bedevil flight planners all day. Airlines often have to burn more fuel to try to make up for lost time, or make new arrangements for passengers who miss connections.

Airlines have long padded flight times to make up for congestion at airports or delays caused by air traffic controllers. Even so, passengers still expect their flight to take off and land at the time printed on their ticket.

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Global Update: Meningitis Vaccine Gets Longer Window Without Refrigeration

In what may prove to be a major advance for Africa’s “meningitis belt,” regulatory authorities have decided that a new meningitis vaccine could be stored without refrigeration for up to four days.

The announcement was made last week at a conference in Atlanta of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. While a few days may seem trivial, the hardest part of protecting poor countries is often keeping a vaccine cold while moving it from electrified cities to villages with no power. In antipolio drives, for example, the freezers, generators and fuel needed to make ice for the shoulder bags of vaccinators can cost more than the vaccine.

The new vaccine, MenAfriVac, made in India for 50 cents a dose, was introduced in 2010. In bad years, epidemics during the hot harmattan winds have killed as many as 25,000 Africans and disabled 50,000 more. In Chad this year, vaccination drove down cases to near zero in districts where it was used, while others nearby had serious outbreaks.

Experts decided that the vaccine is safe for four days as long as it stays below 104 degrees.

While temperatures get higher than that in Africa, said Dr. Godwin Enwere, medical director for the Meningitis Vaccine Project, teams normally get the vaccine out of coolers at dawn, drive to villages and finish before the day heats up. Other experts said it should be kept in the shade and monitored with colored paper “dots” that darken after hours in the heat.

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Hamas Strengthens as Palestinian Authority Weakens

RAMALLAH, West Bank — In the daily demonstrations here of solidarity with Gaza, a mix of sympathy and anguish, there is something else: growing identification with the Islamist fighters of Hamas and derision for the Palestinian Authority, which Washington considers the only viable partner for peace with Israel.

“Strike a blow on Tel Aviv!” proclaimed the lyrics of a new hit song blasting from shops and speakers at Monday’s demonstration, in a reference to Hamas rockets that made it nearly to Israel’s economic and cultural capital. “Don’t let the Zionists sleep! We don’t want a truce or a solution! Oh, Palestinians, you can be proud!”

Pop songs everywhere are filled with bravado and aggression. But this one reflects a widespread sentiment that does not augur well for President Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian Authority, which is rapidly losing credibility, even relevance. The Gaza truce talks in Cairo, involving Egypt, Turkey and Qatar, offer a telling tableau. The Palestinian leader seen there is not Mr. Abbas, but Khaled Meshal, the leader of the militant group Hamas, who seeks to speak for all Palestinians as his ideological brothers in the Muslim Brotherhood rise to power around the region.

Israel is also threatening Mr. Abbas, even hinting that it may give up on him, as he prepares to go to the United Nations General Assembly on Nov. 29 to try to upgrade the Palestinian status to that of a nonmember state. The Israelis consider this step an act of aggression, and even some Palestinians say it is somewhat beside the point at this stage.

“His people are being killed in Gaza, and he is sitting on his comfortable chair in Ramallah,” lamented Firas Katash, 20, a student who took part in the Ramallah demonstration.

For the United States, as for other countries hoping to promote a two-state solution to this century-old conflict, a more radicalized West Bank with a discredited Palestinian Authority would mean greater insecurity for Israel and increased opportunity for anti-Western forces to take root in a region where Islamism is on the rise.

Since Hamas, which won parliamentary elections in 2006, threw the Fatah-controlled authority out of Gaza a year later, Mr. Abbas has not set foot there. Yet he will be asking the world to recognize the two increasingly distinct entities as a unified state.

Manar Wadi, who works in an office in Ramallah, put the issue this way: “What is happening in Gaza makes the Palestinian Authority left behind and isolated. Now we see the other face of Hamas, and its popularity is rising. It makes us feel that the Palestinian Authority doesn’t offer a path to the future.”

In Cairo on Monday, Mr. Meshal seemed defiant and confident in his new role, daring the Israelis to invade Gaza as a sixth day of Israeli aerial assaults brought the death toll there to more than 100 people, many of them militants of Hamas and its affiliates. Rockets launched from Gaza hit southern Israel, causing some damage and panic, but no casualties, leaving the death toll there at three.

“Whoever started the war must end it,” Mr. Meshal said at a news conference. “If Israel wants a cease-fire brokered through Egypt, then that is possible. Escalation is also possible.”

Officials in the authority have been holding leadership meetings, staying in close touch with the talks in Cairo and issuing statements of solidarity. They have also sent a small medical delegation to Gaza and argue that there is a new opportunity to forge unity between the two feuding movements. But they are acutely aware of their problem.

“The most dangerous thing is the fact that what we could not do in negotiations, Hamas did with one rocket,” one official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “The people had such excitement seeing the occupiers run in panic. It’s a very dangerous message.”

Mr. Abbas, whose popularity has been on the decline as the Palestinian Authority faces economic difficulty and growing Israeli settlements, also ran into trouble not long before the Gaza fighting began when he seemed to give up on the Palestinian demand of a right of return to what is now Israel.

Many Palestinians believe that Israel launched its latest operation in Gaza to block the Palestinian Authority’s United Nations plans by embarrassing it. Israeli officials say that is ridiculous: the operation’s purpose is to stop the growing number of rockets being fired at their communities, and Israelis interrupted their deliberations over the United Nations bid to wage the military campaign.

But Israel says anything that does not involve direct negotiations is a waste of time. The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly threatened to take severe retaliatory steps against the Palestinian Authority, including cutting off badly needed tax receipts to Palestinian coffers, should Mr. Abbas go ahead at the United Nations.

In a speech here on Sunday night at a Palestinian leadership meeting, Mr. Abbas repeated his determination to go to New York and ask for a change in status to that of nonmember state. He has chosen the symbolically significant date of Nov. 29, when the General Assembly voted in 1947 to divide this land into two states, one Jewish and the other Palestinian Arab.

The United States has asked Mr. Abbas not to do so, but instead to resume direct negotiations with Israel, which have essentially been frozen since 2008.

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Intel CEO Paul Otellini to retire in surprise move

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Intel CEO Paul Otellini dropped a bombshell on the company’s board of directors last week, telling them in private that he plans to retire from the world’s largest maker of microprocessors in May. Otellini‘s move comes at a time when Intel faces a shaky economy and a mobile gadget craze that is eating away at demand for its PC chips —and it gives the company just six months to find a new leader.

Intel‘s board expected the 62-year-old Otellini to remain chief executive until the company’s customary retirement age of 65. The company announced his impending departure on Monday.

“The decision was entirely Paul’s,” said Intel spokesman Paul Bergevin. “The board accepted his decision with regret.”

Otellini will be ending a nearly 40-year career with Intel, including an eight-year stint as CEO by the time he leaves. He joined the Santa Clara, Calif. company after graduating from the nearby University of California at Berkeley and worked his way up the ranks before succeeding Craig Barrett as CEO in May 2005.

“It’s time to move on and transfer Intel‘s helm to a new generation of leadership,” Otellini said in a statement.

In another statement, Intel Chairman Andy Bryant praised Otellini for leading the company through “challenging times and market transitions.”

Intel‘s board plans to consider candidates inside and outside the company as it searches for Otellini’s successor. Otellini will be involved in the search.

Otellini and the four other men who have been Intel‘s CEO during the company’s 45-year history have all been promoted from within. The company’s board is believed to be leaning in that direction again.

Intel identified the leading internal candidates Monday by anointing three of Otellini’s current lieutenants as executive vice presidents. They are: Renee James, head of Intel‘s software business; Brian Krzanich, chief operating officer and head of worldwide manufacturing; and Stacy Smith, chief financial officer and director of corporate strategy.

If recent history is any indication, Krzanich has the inside track to become Intel‘s CEO. Both Barrett and Otellini served as chief operating officer before becoming CEO.

Although Otellini is generally well regarded, he has faced criticism for initially underestimating the impact that smartphones and tablet computers would have on the personal computer market. It was a pivotal change that also confounded Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer, whose software company makes the Windows operating system that runs most of the PCs relying on Intel‘s chips.

“The shift came more quickly than they expected, and when they did finally see what was happening, they were a little late to react,” said technology analyst Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights & Strategy.

Indeed, in 2008, nearly 300 million PCs were sold and most of them were powered by Microsoft‘s Windows and Intel‘s microchips, according to Forrester Research. Some 142 million smartphones sold that year, at a time when the tablet market hadn’t really taken off. That wouldn’t happen until Apple‘s 2010 release of the iPad.

By contrast, this year, Forrester estimates 330 million PCs will be sold worldwide compared with 665 million smartphones and just over 100 million tablets. By 2016, Forrester predicts annual sales of PCs will rise only slightly to 370 million machines while more than 1.6 billion smartphones and tablets will be purchased.

The fates of Intel and Microsoft have been so tightly wound for the past 30 years that computers using a combination of their chips and software are famously known as “Wintel” machines.

Now, much of the technology industry is questioning whether Intel and Microsoft can catch up in the mobile market to ensure their products remain as essential — and profitable — in the future as they have been in the past three decades.

It’s a challenge that Ballmer, 56, is confident he can tackle. He signaled his intent to remain Microsoft‘s CEO earlier this month when he ushered out the head of the company’s Windows division because of philosophical differences over the company’s future direction. For whatever reasons, Otellini concluded it was time for new leadership at Intel — an opinion that many investors share, according to RBC Capital Markets analyst Doug Freedman.

“A shift in leadership could be welcome news to investors as Intel could be in greater position to broaden its portfolio into higher growth markets,” Freedman wrote in a Monday research note.

Intel‘s stock was unchanged at $ 20.19 shortly before the market closed Monday. The stock has fallen more than 20 percent during Otellini’s reign. Most of the decline occurred this year amid concerns about the company’s ability to adjust to mobile computing and weakening demand for its core products in countries with troubled economies, particularly in Europe and China. The company blamed the poor economy for a 14 percent drop in its earnings during its most recent quarter.

Intel‘s chips have become even more dominant in the PC computer market during Otellini’s tenure, helping to boost the company’s annual revenue from $ 39 billion in 2005 to $ 54 billion last year. Besides supplying Windows-powered PCs, Otellini also scored a coup in 2006 when he convinced Apple to start using Intel chips in Mac computers instead of IBM Corp.’s microprocessors.

But Apple‘s pioneering work in smartphones and tablet computers also muddled Intel‘s future. Both the iPhone and iPad inspired a wave of sophisticated handheld devices that are undercutting demand for desktop and laptop machines that house Intel processors.

Most tablets rely on a technology licensed from British chip designer ARM Holdings Plc. Even Microsoft has tweaked the latest version of the Windows operating system so it works on ARM chips.

Other chip makers such as Qualcomm Inc. have developed less expensive microprocessors that have eclipsed Intel in the smartphone market. Qualcomm‘s inroads in the mobile market are a key reason why its stock has soared by more than 70 percent while Otellini was running Intel.

The contrasting performances of the two companies’ stocks enabled Qualcomm to surpass Intel as the world’s most valuable chip maker. Qualcomm‘s market value now stands at about $ 106 billion versus $ 100 billion for Intel.

Even though its stock under Otellini has lagged the rest of the market, Intel‘s ongoing prosperity has enabled the company to reward shareholders in other ways. Intel has paid stock dividends totaling $ 23.5 billion under Otellini as its quarterly payments rose 8 cents per share in 2005 to 22.5 cents per share currently.

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Kaepernick, 49ers whip Bears 32-7

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Strong-armed fill-in Colin Kaepernick made all the right throws, looking every bit a capable NFL No. 1 quarterback.

Kaepernick passed for 243 yards and two touchdowns in his first career start in place of the injured Alex Smith, and the San Francisco 49ers whipped the Chicago Bears 32-7 on Monday night in a highly touted NFC showdown that hardly lived up to the hype.

Kaepernick threw touchdown passes to Vernon Davis and Michael Crabtree, and Kendall Hunter ran for a 14-yard score as San Francisco (7-2-1) jumped out to a big lead by scoring on each of its first four possessions — with Aldon Smith wreaking havoc on the other side of the ball with 5½ sacks.

"I really wasn't too nervous," Kaepernick said. "I've had a lot of time in this offense. My teammates were really supportive."

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

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

After Kaepernick's stellar night on the big stage, there's certain to be chatter of a quarterback controversy for the NFC West-leading Niners.

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

"It definitely wasn't our best effort, by no means," Campbell said.

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

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

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

The soft-spoken, stone-faced Kaepernick went 16 for 23 with a 133.1 passer rating. He completed 12 of his first 14 passes with a 57-yard strike to Kyle Williams that set up Davis' 3-yard TD on the next play — and he already had amassed 126 yards passing by the end of the first quarter. The 49ers led 17-0 on Hunter's early TD run in the second, quickly topping the 14.8 points the Bears were allowing per game.

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

"I think after the first drive I felt really comfortable with what they were doing and what we had in our game plan," he said.

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

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

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

___

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

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Election, Storm and Shaky Economy Affect Holiday Shopping

Many retailers have more than the usual riding on sales beginning this Thanksgiving weekend.

The presidential election pushed holiday shopping later than usual because some toy and game makers held off on their big introductions for maximum attention. The aftereffects of Hurricane Sandy have included logistics problems and merchandise delivery delays. And some retailers, trying to keep inventory lean during uncertain economic times, have given themselves little room for error: shipments of holiday toys, for instance, are down 13 percent this year, to the lowest level since 2007, according to the global trade research firm Panjiva.

All of that makes for a particularly strange holiday season, retailers and analysts say.

“The election sucks all of the oxygen out of the room in terms of attention,” said Eric Hirshberg, the chief executive of Activision Publishing, the video game company. “A lot of the best media inventory goes to the candidates. It gets more expensive because there’s this premium demand from the candidates.”

Hasbro is adding more shades of its Furby toy through the end of the year, and Mattel last week introduced a new Monster High video game. Last year, Activision introduced its big Call of Duty release in early November. This year, though, it did not release Call of Duty: Black Ops II until Nov. 13.

“We were also worried that if we released Call of Duty before the election, no one would show up to vote,” Mr. Hirshberg said. (He was speaking facetiously, but given that the game’s retail sales were more than $500 million in the first 24 hours after it made its debut, he may have a point.)

And while retailers were expecting the election to delay some shopping, they were not expecting a storm. RetailNext, which tracks shopper traffic, said that store visits and sales in the Northeast were down about 25 percent during the storm and afterward.

Major retailers have said the election and Hurricane Sandy affected sales. Saks and Target said the beginning of November was choppy, and Macy’s said that the storm seemed to have pushed sales later into the season.

“Some of it is lost, most is postponed,” Karen M. Hoguet, Macy’s chief financial officer, said of demand. “It’s a question of timing.” And Kohl’s chief executive, Kevin Mansell, said the company typically experienced sales slowdowns pre-election and postelection, “and then the business kind of accelerates.”

The late introductions and delayed shopping put toy companies, in particular, in a difficult position: they were under pressure to make hit toys, largely via preorders and layaway, months before people would actually be buying them. Retailers and toy companies started trying to gauge demand early, looking for preliminary data on which items were unpopular and which ones were stars.

Walmart started layaway a month earlier this year versus last year, and Toys “R” Us also started holiday layaway earlier, giving the stores a jump on things. Amazon and other e-commerce sites are promoting tools like preorders, wish lists and gift registries — anything that can give them a sense of what people will buy as the Christmas season churns on.

Preorders are “an important tool to gauge customer demand, and get some feedback from our customers earlier in the process,” said John Alteio, director of toys and games for Amazon. Product introductions later in the year “can be challenging in the toy industry, so we have to draw some comparisons when we can and make the best estimate.”

Paul Solomon, co-chief executive of Moose Toys, which makes Micro Chargers and The Trash Pack, said preorders and layaway were becoming increasingly important. “It’s giving us a good read, early, as to how things are performing, and it’s even more crucial now to make a lot of noise about the brand earlier than in previous years,” he said.

“Preorders are kind of a cottage industry for games like Call of Duty,” Mr. Hirshberg, the Activision chief, said. The company began promoting the game in March, when it ran spots during the NBA playoffs.

In May, it released an ad featuring Oliver North, the national security aide at the heart of the Iran-contra affair and a consultant on the game, talking about the future of warfare. It accepted preorders starting in May. Through the summer, Activision revealed different facets of the game at various conferences, and this month it began running international television, outdoor, digital and mobile ads.

“There’s not a clean math equation that says this many preorders equals this many sales, but it’s confidence-building for us in terms of orders, in terms of production,” Mr. Hirshberg said.

John Barbour, the chief executive of LeapFrog, learned the value of early promotion after last year, when the children’s tablet LeapPad1 became a surprise hit. “It was very hard for me to gauge how successful it would be. Everyone took their best shots,” he said. By November and December, the LeapPad was selling out, and Mr. Barbour had to pay a premium to source tablet screens, and paid for airplanes to fly in extra inventory.

This year, he focused on early promotions that would translate into preorders and layaway, so toy retailers could accurately adjust their orders in time for the holidays. A good response early on means not just bigger orders from retailers, he said, but also more promotional support and more shelf space: it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“For retailers, it’s phenomenal. It brings demand forward, and they get a better read on what they’re going to need,” he said. When the LeapPad2 became available for preorders in August, it sold as much in two days of preorders as it did in its first week on sale last year, Mr. Barbour said.

He is being careful not to get too jubilant, though. “The penalties for having too much inventory are greater than the penalties for being a little bit short,” he said.

Still, some brands were ignoring the strange events of this holiday season and proceeding as usual. Stephen Bebis, the chief executive of Brookstone, said some products were becoming available in the final months of the year, but that was because of production delays, not strategy.

“People are still going to have to buy gifts for Christmas no matter who’s the president,” he said.

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Daniel Stern, Who Studied Babies’ World, Dies at 78

Dr. Daniel Stern, a psychiatrist who increased the understanding of early human development by scrutinizing the most minute interactions between mothers and babies, died on Nov. 12 in Geneva. He was 78.

The cause was heart failure, said his wife, Dr. Nadia Bruschweiler Stern.

Dr. Stern was noted for his often poetic language in describing how children respond to their world — how they feel, think and see. He wrote one of his half-dozen books in the form of a diary by a baby. In another book, he told how mothers differ psychologically from women who do not have children. He coined the term “motherese” to describe a form of communication in which mothers are able to read even the slightest of babies’ emotional signals.

Dr. Stern, who did much of his research at what is now Weill Cornell Medical College and at the University of Geneva, drew inspiration from Jay S. Rosenblatt’s work with kittens at the American Museum of Natural History in the 1950s. Dr. Rosenblatt discovered that when he removed kittens from their cage, they made their way to a specific nipple of their mother’s even when they were as young as one day old. That finding demonstrated that learning occurs naturally at an exceptionally early age in a way staged experiments had not.

Dr. Stern videotaped babies from birth through their early years, and then studied the tapes second by second to analyze interactions between mother and child. He challenged the Freudian idea that babies go through defined critical phases, like oral and anal. Rather, he said, their development is continuous, with each phase layered on top of the previous one. The interactions are punctuated by intervals, sometimes only a few seconds long, of rest, solitude and reflection. As this process goes on, they develop a sense that other people can and will share in their feelings, and in that way develop a sense of self.

These interactions can underpin emotional episodes that occur years in the future. Citing one example in a 1990 interview with The Boston Globe, Dr. Stern told of a 13-month-old who grabbed for an electric plug. His alarmed mother, who moments before had been silent and loving, suddenly turned angry and sour. Two years later, the child heard a fairy tale about a wicked witch.

“He’s been prepared for that witch for years,” Dr. Stern said. “He’s already seen someone he loves turn into something evil. It’s perfectly believable for him. He maps right into it.”

Dr. Stern described such phenomena in 1985 in “The Interpersonal World of the Infant,” which the noted psychologist Stanley Spiegel, in an interview in The New York Times, called “the book of the decade in its influence on psychoanalytic theory.”

In recent years, Dr. Stern ventured beyond childhood development to examine the psychology of how people thought about time. In one experiment, he interviewed people in depth about a single brief moment at breakfast and found that it took them a full hour to describe all that went through their minds in 30 seconds. This resulted in the 2004 book “The Present Moment: In Psychotherapy and Everyday Life,” which called for people to appreciate every moment of experience and discussed the nature of memory.

In 2010, he published “Forms of Vitality: Exploring Dynamic Experience in Psychology, the Arts, Psychotherapy and Development,” which used new understandings of neuroscience to explain human empathy.

Dr. Stern, who wrote hundreds of scientific articles, also painted, wrote poetry and had friendships with important artists. He gave Jerome Robbins, the choreographer, the title for his “Dances at a Gathering.” His friend Robert Wilson, the avant-garde director and playwright, said Dr. Stern’s slow-motion baby films helped inspire his seven-hour “silent opera,” “Deafman Glance.”

“So many things are going on, and the baby is picking them up,” Mr. Wilson said.

Daniel Norman Stern was born in Manhattan on Aug. 16, 1934. He graduated from Harvard and completed his medical degree at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. After conducting psychopharmacology research at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., he did his residency in psychiatry at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. He later trained as a psychoanalyst at the Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research at Columbia.

Dr. Stern is survived by his wife, a physician who collaborated on much of his research; two sons, Michael and Adrien; three daughters, Maria, Kaia and Alice Stern; a sister, Ronnie Chalif; and 12 grandchildren.

Dr. Stern pointed out how the evolution of the human body bolstered mother-child interaction. He noted that the distance between the eyes of a baby at the breast and the mother’s eyes is about 10 inches, exactly the distance for the sharpest focus and clearest vision for a young infant.

“Her smile exerts its natural evocative powers in him and breathes a vitality into him,” he wrote. “It makes him resonate with the animation she feels and shows. His joy rises. Her smile pulls it out of him.”

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