Manziel is first freshman to win Heisman Trophy

NEW YORK (AP) — He's Johnny Best in Football now — and a freshman, at that.

Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel became the first newcomer to win the Heisman Trophy, taking college football's top individual prize Saturday night after a record-breaking debut.

Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o finished a distant second in the voting and Kansas State quarterback Collin Klein was third. In a Heisman race with two nontraditional candidates, Manziel broke through the class ceiling and kept Te'o from becoming the first purely defensive player to win the award.

"That barrier's broken now," Manziel said. "It's starting to become more of a trend that freshmen are coming in early and that they are ready to play. And they are really just taking the world by storm."

None more than the guy they call Johnny Football.

Manziel drew 474 first-place votes and 2,029 points from the panel of media members and former winners. Te'o had 321 first-place votes and 1,706 points and Klein received 60 firsts and 894 points.

"I have been dreaming about this since I was a kid, running around the backyard pretending I was Doug Flutie, throwing Hail Marys to my dad," he said after hugging his parents and kid sister.

Flutie was one of many Heisman winners standing behind Manziel as he gave his speech on stage at the Best Buy Theater in Times Square.

"I always wanted to be in a fraternity," Manziel said later. "Now I get to be in the most prestigious one in the entire world."

Manziel was so nervous waiting for the winner to be announced, he wondered if the television cameras could see his heart pounding beneath his navy blue pinstripe suit. But he seemed incredibly calm after, hardly resembling the guy who dashes around the football field on Saturday. He simply bowed his head, and later gave the trophy a quick kiss.

"It's such an honor to represent Texas A&M, and my teammates here tonight. I wish they could be on the stage with me," he said with a wide smile, concluding his speech like any good Aggie: "Gig' em."

Just a few days after turning 20, Manziel proved times have truly changed in college football, and that experience can be really overrated.

For years, seniors dominated the award named after John Heisman, the pioneering Georgia Tech coach from the early 1900s. In the 1980s, juniors started becoming common winners. Tim Tebow became the first sophomore to win it in 2007, and two more won it in the next two seasons.

Adrian Peterson had come closest as a freshman, finishing second to Southern California quarterback Matt Leinart in 2004. But it took 78 years for a newbie to take home the big bronze statue.

"It doesn't matter anymore," he said.

Peterson was a true freshman for Oklahoma. As a redshirt freshmen, Manziel attended school and practiced with the team last year, but did not play in any games.

He's the second player from Texas A&M to win the Heisman, joining John David Crow from 1957, and did so without the slightest hint of preseason hype. Manziel didn't even win the starting job until two weeks before the season.

Who needs hype when you can fill-up a highlight reel the way Manziel can?

With daring runs and elusive improvisation, Manziel broke 2010 Heisman winner Cam Newton's Southeastern Conference record with 4,600 total yards, led the Aggies to a 10-2 in their first season in the SEC and orchestrated an upset at then-No. 1 Alabama in November that stamped him as legit.

He has thrown for 3,419 yards and 24 touchdowns and run for 1,181 yards and 19 more scores to become the first freshman, first SEC player and fifth player overall to throw for 3,000 yards and run for 1,000 in a season.

"You can put his numbers up against anybody who has ever played the game," Texas A&M coach Kevin Sumlin said.

Manziel has one more game this season, when the No. 10 Aggies play Oklahoma in the Cotton Bowl on Jan. 4.

As for the Heisman, Manziel said he'd like to keep it right next to his bed.

"But I'm in college. A lot of people come through the house. We live in a college neighborhood. It might not be a good idea. If I can get a case that's indestructible, locked and looks pretty good, we'll see where I keep it," he said.

The resume alone fails to capture the Johnny Football phenomena. At 6-foot-1 and 200 pounds, Manziel is master of the unexpected, darting here and there, turning plays seemingly doomed to failure into touchdowns.

Take, for example, what he did in the first quarter against the Crimson Tide. Manziel took a shotgun snap, stepped up in the pocket as if he was about to take off on another made scramble and ran into the back a lineman. On impact, Manziel bobbled the ball, caught it with his back to the line of scrimmage, turned, rolled the opposite direction and fired a touchdown pass — throwing across his body — to a wide-open receiver.

He might as well have been back in Kerrville, Texas, where he became a hill country star in high school.

His road to college stardom was anything but a clear path.

Manziel competed with two other quarterbacks to replace Ryan Tannehill as the starter this season, the Aggies' first in the SEC and first under Sumlin.

Manziel came out of spring practice as the backup, but became the starter in August.

Still, nobody was hailing him is the next big thing. Did Sumlin think he had a Heisman winner on his hands?

"No," he said emphatically, adding, "Not this year."

Then Manziel started playing and the numbers started piling up.

He also had some struggles against Florida in the season opener and in a home loss to LSU. The question was: Could he do his thing against a top-notch opponent?

The answer came in Tuscaloosa, Ala., on Nov. 10. Going into the matchup against the Crimson Tide, Manziel said he and his teammates heard a lot of doubters.

"You can't do this and you can't do that," he recalled Saturday at the podium

Manziel passed for 253 yards, ran for 92 and the Aggies beat the Tide 29-24. Klein had been the front-runner for most of the season, but Manziel surged after beating 'Bama.

Still, Manziel was still something of a mystery man. Sumlin's rules prohibit freshmen from being available to the media. Manziel was off-limits, but not exactly silent.

Manziel gave glimpses of himself on social media — including some memorable pictures of him dressed up as Scooby-Doo for Halloween with some scantily clad young women.

Before he became a celebrity, Manziel got himself into some serious trouble. In June, he was arrested in College Station after police said he was involved in a fight and produced a fake ID. He was charged with disorderly conduct and two other misdemeanors.

After the season, Texas A&M took the reins off Manziel and made him available for interviews, allowing him to tell his own tale.

Though in the end, his play said it all.

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Follow Ralph D. Russo at www.Twitter.com/ralphdrussoap

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Ebony Looks to Its Past as It Modernizes

Nathan Weber for The New York Times

Desirée Rogers, left, and Linda Johnson Rice in the archives at Ebony.

DESIRÉE ROGERS, the C.E.O. of Johnson Publishing, which owns the magazines Ebony and Jet, and Fashion Fair, a makeup line aimed at women of color, can see many sights from her 21st-floor corner office across from Millennium Park. “This is a good view of Chicago,” Ms. Rogers told a recent visitor, gesturing at a panorama of Lake Michigan, Grant Park, Navy Pier, the Adler Planetarium and Soldier Field. But the sight that holds the most personal meaning for Ms. Rogers may be a portrait by Robin Harper just above her purple retro sofa, depicting the boxer Jack Johnson with a soft, wounded expression.

The portrait, Ms. Rogers said, reminded her of looking at pictures of Muhammad Ali in the pages of Ebony with her grandfather as a little girl growing up in New Orleans. “My grandfather really liked fighters,” she said. As they flipped through the magazines, she said, he’d tell her: “I hope you’re great. And I hope one day you’ll be in those pages.”

Ms. Rogers, 53, has been in the pages of Ebony many times since her first appearance in April 1989 in a photo from George H. W. Bush’s inauguration. Her name now sits atop the magazine’s masthead, just below that of her best friend, Linda Johnson Rice, chairwoman of the company.

Ms. Johnson Rice’s father, the late John H. Johnson, founded Johnson Publishing in 1942 with a $500 loan he secured against his mother’s furniture when he was 24. Since then, Ebony (the name was the suggestion of Ms. Johnson Rice’s mother, Eunice Johnson) has gone on to become one of the most recognizable African-American publications in the world. The Harper image was part of the huge art collection of Mr. and Mrs. Johnson (no relation to the boxer), and it graced the cover of the magazine in March 1978.

Ms. Rogers joined Johnson Publishing just over two years ago after a short, controversial run as White House social secretary for President Obama. Among the tasks she has set for herself is making Ebony a lifestyle brand.

“We started looking at the assets that we have and also to really think about the Johnsons and what they were creating,” Ms. Rogers said. “We have incredible loyalty and love from the community. We have great relationships with our clients, who have been rooting for us to turn around and modernize.”

In early November, Ebony.com introduced The Ebony Collection, an online shop that sells framed prints of 2,000 photos selected from the magazine’s million-image archive. Reprinted from the original negatives stored in a climate-controlled room, the images were selected by Ms. Johnson Rice, who spent months poring over her father’s original commissions. “We kept everything,” Ms. Johnson Rice said. “Every major event that’s happened to African-Americans since 1945, with Ebony as a repository for all those photographs and as a voice for all that happened.”

Paying respect to history is a theme repeatedly invoked in the Johnson Publishing offices, so much so that it was no surprise running into Henry Louis Gates Jr., the director of the Harvard W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, in a conference room. Professor Gates was there with a film crew shooting a PBS series, “Many Rivers to Cross: The History of the African American People,” and was being shown images from the archives by Ms. Johnson Rice for an episode that will cover 1940 to 1980. “My family got Ebony,” he said later. “Every family subscribed to Ebony and Jet if they were black.

“They still have cultural resonance among all classes of African-Americans,” Professor Gates said. “Very few organs of journalism reach a wider swath of the African-American community than Ebony and Jet.”

In 2013, that community will once again welcome the Ebony Fashion Fair, which began bringing high fashion to 160 cities across the country in 1958, but has been on hiatus since Eunice Johnson’s death in 2010. (“It’s the No. 1 question I get as I travel the country,” Ms. Rogers said. ‘When is the show coming back, Desirée?’ ”)

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Rebel Groups in Syria Make Framework for Military

ANTALYA, Turkey — Military commanders of the main Free Syrian Army units from all over Syria agreed Friday to a unified command structure, bowing to intense pressure from Qatar and Saudi Arabia, who the fighters said promised more advanced weapons once a central military council was in place.

The agreement, the product of three days of intensive talks among more than 260 rebel commanders, was a marked departure from previous attempts because it was built strictly around commanders from inside Syria.

Following the terms of the pact, the participants elected a 30-member Supreme Military Council, which then selected the chief of staff, Gen. Salim Idriss, by consensus. Previous attempts at unification all foundered on disagreements over the structure, tensions between officers inside and outside the country and the failure of donors to provide the weapons they promised.

But analysts warned that despite the atmosphere of comity, the agreement could still come unglued — fierce arguments from the meeting occasionally overflowed into the marble lobby of a luxury hotel here, where the rebel commanders with their beards, leather jackets and track suits made a sharp contrast to golfers and other guests.

“We accepted everything because they promised everything — even paradise,” Ahmad al-Qanatri, the commander of a military battalion in northern Idlib Province, said of the conference sponsors. “The structure is good, but all on condition we get something. I am not sure we will. If we see any rockets and missiles, it will probably be the ones fired at us.”

“From the outside you see all these victories and you think, ‘Wow!’ But I am fighting with nothing,” Mr. Qanatri added.

Several elements have transformed the chances for unity sticking this time around, participants said.

First, dozens of governments participating in the Friends of Syria meeting in Morocco, on Wednesday want to see signs of a viable alternative government in order to extend recognition to the opposition coalition, reorganized less than a month ago. Coalition members are scheduled to meet in Cairo on Saturday to begin selecting a prime minister and a cabinet.

The United States in particular has emphasized that the coalition must show strong links to the interior forces, both the rebels and civilian society. Rebel commanders said that three representatives from the Central Intelligence Agency — one from headquarters, one from Turkey and another from Jordan — attended their discussions here but did not comment.

Second, there is a growing sense that extremist jihadist forces are beginning to eclipse the rest of the opposition with better weapons and fighters. But outside powers have been reluctant to provide much-demanded antiaircraft and antitank missiles until they are assured that the arsenal will not fall into the wrong hands if the rebels achieve their goal of toppling the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

Third, rebel commanders said they were facing a stark new reality. Their advances in recent weeks have been built largely on fatigue and low morale among government soldiers, as well as on random weapons captured from military bases, they said.

But both the initial attempt to batter the ramparts of Damascus and the long struggle for Aleppo have given many commanders the sober sense that they had better obtain stronger weapons for any final showdown over the main government strongholds.

The meeting here concluded with twin promises between the commanders and their outside supporters. In exchange for unification, the main backers of the rebels said they would funnel money and weapons through the new military council rather than playing favorites among the groups, commanders said.

“Before, they were always trying to bring different factions to their side, they created divisions, but now they are helping to create unity,” said Gen. Abed Farzat, a military commander from Aleppo.

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Exclusive: Google to replace M&A chief

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Google Inc is replacing the head of its in-house mergers and acquisitions group, David Lawee, with one of its top lawyers, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Don Harrison, a high-ranking lawyer at Google, will replace Lawee as head of the Internet search company‘s corporate development group, which oversees mergers and acquisitions, said the source, who spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

Google is also planning to create a new late-stage investment group that Lawee will oversee, the source said.

Google declined to comment. Lawee and Harrison could not immediately be reached for comment.

One of the Internet industry’s most prolific acquirers, Google has struck more than 160 deals to acquire companies and assets since 2010, according to regulatory filings. Many of Google’s most popular products, including its online maps and Android mobile software, were created by companies or are based on technology that Google acquired.

Harrison, Google’s deputy general counsel, will head up the M&A group at a time when the company is still in the process of integrating its largest acquisition, the $ 12.5 billion purchase of smartphone maker Motorola Mobility, which closed in May.

And he takes over at a time when the Internet search giant faces heightened regulatory scrutiny, with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the European Commission conducting antitrust investigations into Google’s business practices. Several recent Google acquisitions have undergone months of regulatory review before receiving approval.

As deputy general counsel, Harrison has been deeply involved in the company’s regulatory issues and many of its acquisitions. He joined Google more than five years ago and has completed more than 70 deals at the company, according to biographical information on the Google Ventures website.

Harrison is an adviser to Google Ventures, the company’s nearly four-year old venture division which provides funding for start-up companies.

While most of Google’s acquisitions are small and mid-sized deals that do not meet the threshold for disclosure of financial terms, Google has a massive war chest of $ 45.7 billion in cash and marketable securities to fund acquisitions.

Lawee, who took over the M&A group in 2008, has had hits and misses during his tenure. Google shut down social media company Slide one year after acquiring it for $ 179 million, for example.

The planned late-stage investment group has not been finalized, the source said. The fund might operate separately from Google Ventures, according to the source.

“Think of it as a private equity fund inside of Google,” the source said.

The company recently said it would increase the cash it allocates to Google Ventures to $ 300 million a year, up from $ 200 million, potentially helping it invest in later-stage financing rounds.

Google finished Friday’s regular trading session down 1 percent, or $ 6.92, at $ 684.21.

(Reporting By Alexei Oreskovic; editing by Carol Bishopric and Jim Loney)

Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Te'o and Manziel hit Manhattan with Heisman hopes

NEW YORK (AP) — Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o was looking forward to a break after a five-city-in-five-days tour, during which he has become the most decorated player in college football.

"I'm just trying to get a workout in and get some sleep," he said Friday about his plans for the night.

Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel seemed to have more energy when he arrived at a midtown Manhattan hotel with his fellow Heisman Trophy finalist. In fairness, Johnny Football's week hasn't been nearly as hectic, though this trip to New York city is different from the first time he visited with his family when he was young.

"It's just taking it up a whole 'nother level, but happy to be here," he said.

Manziel and Te'o spent about 30 minutes getting grilled by dozens of reporters in a cramped conference room, posed for some pictures with the big bronze statue that they are hoping to win and were quickly whisked away for more interviews and photo opportunities.

Manziel, Te'o or Collin Klein, the other finalists who couldn't make it to town Friday, each has a chance to be a Heisman first Saturday night.

Manziel is trying to be the first freshman to win the award. Te'o would be the first winner to play only defense. Klein would be Kansas State's first Heisman winner.

Manziel and Te'o were on the same flight from Orlando, Fla., where several college football awards were handed out last night. The 6-foot-1, 200-pound quarterback was just happy the 255-pound linebacker didn't try to record another sack when they met.

"He's a big guy," Manziel said, flashing a big smile from under his white Texas A&M baseball cap. "I thought he might stuff me in locker and beat me up a little bit."

The two hadn't had much time for sightseeing yet, but they did walk around Times Square some, saying hello to a few fans. They probably weren't too difficult to spot in their team issued warm-up gear.

"We've just been talking about goofy stuff. Playing video games. Playing Galaga. Just some things from back in the day. Messing around with each other," Manziel said. "Kind of seeing who is going to take more pictures. He's definitely taking that award right now."

Te'o is already going to need a huge trophy case to house his haul from this week. He has won six major awards, including the Maxwell as national player of the year. He'll try to become Notre Dame's eighth Heisman winner and first since Tim Brown in 1987.

"I can only imagine how I would feel if I win the Heisman," he said.

Charles Woodson of Michigan in 1997 is the closest thing to a true defensive player winning the Heisman. Woodson was a dominant cornerback, but he also returned punts and played a little receiver. That helped burnish his Heisman credentials.

Te'o is all linebacker. He leads the top-ranked Fighting Irish with 103 tackles and seven interceptions.

Klein was the front-runner for the Heisman for a good chunk of the season, but he played his worst game late in the season — in a loss at Baylor — and the momentum Manziel gained by leading Texas A&M to victory at Alabama has been tough to stop.

Manziel's numbers are hard to deny. He set a Southeastern Conference record with 4,600 total yards, throwing for more than 3,000 and rushing for more than 1,000.

Klein, by comparison, averages about 100 fewer total yards per game (383-281) than Manziel.

A freshman has never won the Heisman. Oklahoma running back Adrian Peterson came closest in 2004, finishing second by Southern California's Matt Leinart.

Manziel is a redshirt freshman, meaning he attended Texas A&M and practiced with the team but did not play last year. Still, he'd be the most inexperienced college player to win the sport's most prestigious award.

"It's surreal for me to sit here and think about that this early in my career," he said. "With what me and my teammates have gone through, with how they've played and how they've helped me to get to this point, it's just a testament to how good they are and how good they've been this year.

"Without them I wouldn't be here and that's the real story to all this."

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Art and Commerce Meet in Miami Beach

Katie Orlinsky for The New York Times

Visitors at the V.I.P. opening of Art Basel Miami Beach.

MIAMI — Mera Rubell was taking time out from greeting the hundreds of visitors at her family’s sprawling contemporary art center here to vent.

“It’s the height of arrogance to dismiss — — ,” she began.

Jason, her son, interrupted: “It’s arrogance. It’s a completely uninteresting story.”

For the moment her husband, Don, had given up on trying to get a word in.

The Rubells, deans of Miami’s bustling art scene, were pushing back against a chorus of complaints that has been growing louder in the weeks leading up to Art Basel Miami Beach, the annual art pilgrimage that began Wednesday and ends Sunday.

Prominent art writers and critics, including Sarah Thornton, Felix Salmon, Will Gompertz and Dave Hickey, have been attacking the art world, arguing that the staggering sums of money being spent on works are distorting judgments about art and undermining its long-term cultural significance.

“Money talks loudly and easily drowns out other meanings,” Ms. Thornton wrote in TAR magazine in a recent article, “Top 10 Reasons NOT to Write About the Art Market.”

In its special edition for the opening day of the fair, The Art Newspaper asked whether “the art world is facing a crisis of values” because of the “pernicious influence of the market on art.”

And in the eyes of many critics, Art Basel Miami Beach — or what Simon Doonan, writing in Slate last week, labeled a “promo-party cheese-fest” — has become a symbol of everything that’s wrong with the art market. The fair’s extraordinary success in just over a decade, and its celebration of wretched excess, have triggered a backlash.

But the Rubells, along with a growing number of other prominent collectors, art dealers and curators, are having none of it. The backlash against the backlash has begun.

“The market supports artists,” Jason Rubell said. Given the limited amount of government support for the arts, he added, “it’s an industry that without commerce doesn’t exist. What do people want — to go back to the recession?”

Ms. Rubell was annoyed that critics seemed to ignore the social, economic and cultural transformation of Miami that the fair and collectors like her have helped bring about. She noted that the Rubells’ 45,000-square-foot art center — where one huge gallery is now filled with works by Oscar Murillo, a 26-year-old Colombian immigrant who lived with and was supported by the Rubells while he created dozens of mural-sized canvases — used to be a Drug Enforcement Administration storage center.

Outside, in the center’s courtyard, visitors like Martha Stewart admired the French artist Bernar Venet’s collaboration with Bugatti, the superluxury sports car brand, on a one-of-a-kind Veyron Grand Sport Venet car (a price hasn’t been set, a Bugatti spokeswoman said, but will undoubtedly be in “the higher end of the millions”).

“I’m grateful to Bugatti, Perrier, Bank of America and other companies,” Ms. Rubell declared. “Their support helps facilitate quality programs and opens exhibits like this” — the Murillo show — “to the public.”

In Miami Beach, at the main fair, the consumer-oriented glitter abounds this week: coffee carts with $20-a-glass Ruinart Champagne; Davidoff cigar rollers; BMW’s artist-designed cars; and Takashi Murakami’s $70,000-and-up commissioned portraits. One could almost imagine that the Barbara Kruger work on display at L&M gallery — a super-sized sign reading “Greedy” on one line and an unprintable expletive on the next — had an invisible subtitle telling the wealthy V.I.P.’s who had come to shop, “I’m Talking to You — Yeah, You!”

Of course, rich patrons have always supported artists, Don Rubell pointed out, from the pharaohs to the Medicis. Today, multimillion-dollar sales represent only a silk-thin layer of a deeply varied and thriving art market. The art world, Mr. Rubell asserted, is “actually becoming more democratic.”

“There’s 20 ancillary fairs” in addition to the high-end main event of Art Basel, he said. “Whatever amount of money you have in your pocket, you can enter this magical world of art.”

The notion that the art market contains multitudes is one with which Marc Glimcher, part of the family dynasty that runs the Pace Gallery, said he agreed.

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The Human Price: Bangladesh Fire Exposes Safety Gap in Supply Chain

ASHULIA, Bangladesh — The fire alarm shattered the monotony of the Tazreen Fashions factory. Hundreds of seamstresses looked up from their machines, startled. On the third floor, Shima Akhter Pakhi had been stitching hoods onto fleece jackets. Now she ran to a staircase.

But two managers were blocking the way. Ignore the alarm, they ordered. It was just a test. Back to work. A few women laughed nervously. Ms. Pakhi and other workers returned to their sewing tables. She could stitch a hood to a jacket in about 90 seconds. She arranged the fabric under her machine. Ninety seconds. Again. Ninety more seconds. She sewed six pieces, maybe seven.

Then she looked up.

Smoke was filtering up through the three staircases. Screams rose from below. The two managers had vanished. Power suddenly went out throughout the eight-story building. There was nowhere to escape. The staircases led down into the fire. Iron grilles blocked the windows. A man cowering in a fifth-floor bathroom called his mother to tell her he was about to die.

“We all panicked,” Ms. Pakhi said. “It spread so quickly. And there was no electricity. It was totally dark.”

Tazreen Fashions Ltd. operated at the beginning of the global supply chain that delivers clothes made in Bangladesh to stores in Europe and the United States. By any measure, the factory was not a safe place to work. Fire safety preparations were woefully inadequate. The building itself was under construction — even as sewing work continued inside — and mounds of flammable yarn and fabric were illegally stored on the ground floor near electrical generators.

Yet Tazreen was making clothing destined for some of the world’s top retailers. On the third floor, where firefighters later recovered 69 bodies, Ms. Pakhi was stitching sweater jackets for C&A, a European chain. On the fifth floor, workers were making Faded Glory shorts for Walmart. Ten bodies were recovered there. On the sixth floor, a man named Hashinur Rahman put down his work making True Desire lingerie for Sears and eventually helped save scores of others. Inside one factory office, labor activists found order forms and drawings for a licensee of the United States Marine Corps that makes commercial apparel with the Marines’ logo.

In all, 112 workers were killed in a blaze last month that has exposed a glaring disconnect among global clothing brands, the monitoring system used to protect workers and the factories actually filling the orders. After the fire, Walmart, Sears and other retailers made the same startling admission: They say they did not know that Tazreen Fashions was making their clothing.

But who, then, is ultimately responsible when things go so wrong?

The global apparel industry aspires to operate with accountability that extends from distant factories to retail stores. Big brands demand that factories be inspected by accredited auditing firms so that the brands can control quality and understand how, where and by whom their goods are made. If a factory does not pass muster, it is not supposed to get orders from Western customers.

Tazreen Fashions was one of many clothing factories that exist on the margins of this system. Factory bosses had been faulted for violations during inspections conducted on behalf of Walmart and at the behest of the Business Social Compliance Initiative, a European organization.

Yet Tazreen Fashions received orders anyway, slipping through the gaps in the system by delivering the low costs and quick turnarounds that buyers — and consumers — demand. C&A, the European retailer, has confirmed ordering 220,000 sweaters from the factory. But much of the factory’s business came through opaque networks of subcontracts with suppliers or local buying houses. Labor activists, combing the site of the disaster, found labels, order forms, design drawings and articles of clothing from many global brands.

Walmart and Sears have since said they fired the suppliers that subcontracted work to Tazreen Fashions. Yet some critics have questioned how a company like Walmart, one of the two biggest buyers in Bangladesh and renowned for its sophisticated global supply system, could have been unaware of the connection.

Julfikar Ali Manik contributed reporting from Ashulia, and Steven Greenhouse from New York.

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Manning leads Broncos past Raiders 26-13

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — After overwhelming another overmatched division rival, Peyton Manning and the streaking Denver Broncos can turn their attention to much more meaningful opponents.

Manning threw for 310 yards and had his 30th touchdown pass of the season on the game's opening drive to help the Broncos roll to their eighth straight victory, 26-13 over the Oakland Raiders on Thursday night.

Knowshon Moreno ran for 119 yards and a score on a career-high 32 carries, and Matt Prater kicked four field goals to help the Broncos (10-3) move a half-game ahead of New England and Baltimore for the second-best record in the AFC. Denver visits Baltimore next week in a game that will help decide who gets a first-round playoff bye.

Carson Palmer threw one interception that thwarted a possible scoring chance for the Raiders (3-10) and lost a fumble that set up a touchdown for the Broncos as Oakland lost its sixth straight game. This is the team's longest skid since also losing six in a row in 2007.

The Raiders played the game with heavy hearts as coach Dennis Allen's father, Grady, died earlier in the week from cardiac arrest. Allen was away from the team for two days but returned Wednesday and coached the game.

The Raiders players talked during the week about rallying around their first-year coach but came out flat against a fierce division rival and were swept in the season-series by the Broncos for the first time since 2006.

The game was mildly competitive for only a brief time as the Raiders got on the board late in the first half on a touchdown pass from Palmer to Darren McFadden and then started with the ball in the third quarter down 13-7.

McFadden, returning from a four-game absence for a sprained right ankle, broke off a 36-yard run on the first play from scrimmage, but the Raiders drive stalled in Denver territory after that and the Broncos took the game over.

Manning, who joined Brett Favre as the only quarterbacks in NFL history with 5,000 career completions, converted a third-and-11 with a perfectly placed 22-yard pass to Demaryius Thomas. Manning followed that with a 29-yard completion to Eric Decker, but the drive stalled after a pass-interference call on Matt Giordano gave the Broncos a first down at the 1. Prater's 20-yard field goal made it 16-7.

Mike Goodson then made the ill-advised decision to return a kick from 8 yards deep in the end zone, forcing Oakland to start a drive at the 8. Von Miller then beat Khalif Barnes for a sack on third down, stripping the ball from Palmer. Mitch Unrein recovered at the 2 and Moreno scored two plays later to make it 23-7.

Prater added another field goal later in the third quarter and Manning went on to his record 12th season with 10 wins as a starting quarterback.

The only remaining drama was whether quarterback project Terrelle Pryor would get his first action of the season for Oakland. He didn't, giving the frustrated Raiders fans yet another reason to be upset even though Palmer added a 56-yard TD pass to Darrius Heyward-Bey and finished with 273 yards passing.

The Raiders won the coin toss but decided to defer until the second half. The decision backfired as Manning converted three third downs on a 68-yard drive that was capped by a 6-yard pass to Joel Dreessen that was Manning's 30th touchdown pass of the season.

Prater added two field goals after Broncos' drives stalled inside the Oakland 20 as Denver extended the lead to 13-0. The momentum shifted after Phillip Adams' intercepted an underthrown pass from Manning to Matthew Willis in the end zone.

Oakland responded with an 80-yard drive capped by a 6-yard screen pass to McFadden.

___

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

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Well: Running in Reverse

This column appears in the Dec. 9 issue of The New York Times Magazine.

Backward running, also known as reverse or retro running, is not as celebrated as barefoot running and will never be mistaken for the natural way to run. But a small body of science suggests that backward running enables people to avoid or recover from common injuries, burn extra calories, sharpen balance and, not least, mix up their daily routine.

The technique is simple enough. Most of us have done it, at least in a modified, abbreviated form, and probably recently, perhaps hopping back from a curb as a bus went by or pushing away from the oven with a roasting pan in both hands. But training with backward running is different. Biomechanically, it is forward motion’s doppelgänger. In a study published last year, biomechanics researchers at the University of Milan in Italy had a group of runners stride forward and backward at a steady pace along a track equipped with force sensors and cameras.

They found that, as expected, the runners struck the ground near the back of their feet when going forward and rolled onto the front of their feet for takeoff. When they went backward though, they landed near the front of their feet and took off from the heels. They tended to lean slightly forward even when running backward. As a result, their muscles fired differently. In forward running, the muscles and tendons were pulled taut during landing and responded by coiling, a process that creates elastic energy (think rubber bands) that is then released during toe-off. When running backward, muscles and tendons were coiled during landing and stretched at takeoff. The backward runners’ legs didn’t benefit from stored elastic energy. In fact, the researchers found, running backward required nearly 30 percent more energy than running forward at the same speed. But backward running also produced far less hard pounding.

What all of this means, says Giovanni Cavagna, a professor at the University of Milan who led the study, is that reverse running can potentially “improve forward running by allowing greater and safer training.”

It is a particularly attractive option for runners with bad knees. A 2012 study found that backward running causes far less impact to the front of the knees. It also burns more calories at a given pace. In a recent study, active female college students who replaced their exercise with jogging backward for 15 to 45 minutes three times a week for six weeks lost almost 2.5 percent of their body fat.

And it aids in balance training — backward slow walking is sometimes used as a therapy for people with Parkinson’s and is potentially useful for older people, whose balance has grown shaky.

But it has drawbacks, Cavagna says — chiefly that you can’t see where you’re going. “It should be done on a track,” he says, “or by a couple of runners, side by side,” one facing forward.

It should be implemented slowly too, because its unfamiliar motion can cause muscle fatigue. Intersperse a few minutes periodically during your regular routine, Cavagna says. Increase the time you spend backward as it feels comfortable.

The good news for serious runners is that backward does not necessarily mean slow. The best recorded backward five-kilometer race time is 19:31, faster than most of us can hit the finish line with our best foot forward.

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3 Walmart Suppliers Made Goods in Bangladesh Factory

Khurshed Rinku/Associated Press

Burials on Nov. 27 for some of the 112 victims of the garment factory fire in Bangladesh.

Documents found at the Tazreen apparel factory in Bangladesh, where 112 workers died in a fire nearly two weeks ago, indicate that three American garment companies were using the factory during the past year to supply goods to Walmart and its Sam’s Club subsidiary.

The documents — photographed by a Bangladeshi labor organizer after the fire and made available to The New York Times — include an internal production report from mid-September showing that 5 of the factory’s 14 production lines were devoted to making apparel for Walmart.

In a related matter, two officials who attended a meeting held in Bangladesh in 2011 to discuss factory safety in the garment industry said on Wednesday that the Walmart official there played the lead role in blocking an effort to have global retailers pay more for apparel to help Bangladesh factories improve their electrical and fire safety.

Ineke Zeldenrust, international coordinator for the Clean Clothes Campaign, an anti-sweatshop group based in Amsterdam, said Walmart was the company that “most strongly advocated this position.”

The meeting was held in April 2011 in Dhaka, the country’s capital, and brought together global retailers, Bangladeshi factory owners, government officials and nongovernment organizations after several apparel factory fires in Bangladesh had killed dozens of workers the previous winter.

According to the minutes of the meeting, which were made available to The Times, Sridevi Kalavakolanu, a Walmart director of ethical sourcing, along with an official from another major apparel retailer, noted that the proposed improvements in electrical and fire safety would involve as many as 4,500 factories and would be “in most cases” a “very extensive and costly modification.”

“It is not financially feasible for the brands to make such investments,” the minutes said.

Kevin Gardner, a Walmart spokesman, said the company official’s remarks in Bangladesh were “out of context.”

“Walmart has been advocating for improved fire safety with the Bangladeshi government, with industry groups and with suppliers,” he said, adding that the company has helped develop and establish programs to increase fire prevention.

Ms. Zeldenrust said, “Everyone recognized that fire safety was a serious problem and it was a high time to act on it, and Walmart’s position had a very negative impact.” She added, “It gives manufacturers the excuse they’re looking for to say, ‘We’re not to blame.’ ”

Scott Nova, the executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium, a factory monitoring group based in Washington, was also at the meeting. He said that upgrading the factories’ safety would cost a small fraction of what Walmart and other retailers pay for the clothing they import from Bangladesh each year.

Bloomberg News first reported details of the Dhaka meeting on Wednesday.

Walmart has indirectly acknowledged that the factory, Tazreen Fashions, outside Dhaka, was producing some of its apparel, saying in a statement that a supplier had “subcontracted work to this factory without authorization and in direct violation of our policies.” In that statement, issued two days after the Nov. 24 fire, Walmart said, “We have terminated the relationship with that supplier.” Walmart has declined to name the supplier.

After Walmart was shown some of the documents from the factory on Wednesday, Mr. Gardner replied in an e-mail. “As we’ve said, the Tazreen factory was de-authorized months ago,” he wrote. “We don’t comment on specific supplier relationships.”

The photographed documents from the factory indicate that three suppliers — the International Direct Group, Success Apparel and Topson Downs — used the factory to make shirts, shorts and pajamas for Walmart. One document, written in July, provides product descriptions from Success Apparel for Walmart’s Faded Glory house-brand shorts. A photo taken inside the factory after the fire showed a pair of Faded Glory shorts.

The documents indicate that Success Apparel often worked through Simco, a Bangladeshi garment maker.

Mr. Nova of the Worker Rights Consortium said the documents raised questions about Walmart’s statements after the fire.

“It was not a single rogue supplier as Walmart has claimed — there were several different U.S. suppliers working for Walmart in that factory,” Mr. Nova said. “It stretches credulity to think that Walmart, famous for its tight control over its global supply chain, didn’t know about this.”

Mr. Nova works closely with the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity and made the factory documents available.

Investigators also found apparel made for Sears and Disney inside the factory after the fire. Both companies said suppliers had given orders to the factory without their knowledge and authorization.

Mr. Gardner said accredited outside auditors had periodically inspected the factory on Walmart’s behalf. A May 2011 audit gave the factory an “orange” rating, meaning that there were “higher-risk violations” and that it would be re-audited within six months. If a factory gets three orange ratings over two years, it loses Walmart’s approval.

A follow-up audit in August 2011 for Walmart gave Tazreen an improved “yellow” rating, meaning “medium-risk violations.”

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