Four Android productivity apps you should use in 2013

Happy New Year! Like most folks, I am working on some resolutions for 2013. One resolution I have is to be more productive. One way I am going to do this is by using my Android phone better. Now there are apps that I have, but really have not used to their fullest. As I work on this resolution, I might discover even better apps. For now I will focus on these impressive apps that can make anyone more productive.

I use Hootsuite on the computer, but rarely find myself engaging with it on my smartphone. With Hootsuite, you can manage Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Foursquare accounts. The free version allows for up to five accounts and one member of your team to access the account. There is a pro version with a monthly fee, in which you can have more accounts and team members and helpful analytics tools.

The design of the app is very good. If you sync the web version to mobile, you will have everything automatically downloaded to the phone. When viewing content, you swipe left or right to change columns or streams. If you are in the middle of a stream, simply tap the top menu bar to automatically return to the top. The app allows for multiple profiles and scheduled tweets. My goal is to keep up with my feeds and tweets in real-time rather than waiting until I get to a computer.

Another web service that I started to use, but find myself not using it to the fullest. Producteev is a web-based task management service. With Producteev you can work as an individual or in a team by setting up workspaces and then organize tasks by labels. For each task you can assign a priority, due date, and share with team members, if you have any. Overall, this is a great service, since I like making lists, even though I rarely remember having made them.

The Producteev app is available for all platforms. The app has a very clean interface and is easy to find tasks. Probably the best way to keep up with tasks is to use the different widget for the home screen. Seeing the widgets will help keep those key tasks in the forefront of your mind. The app will work offline and syncs in the background.

I read blogs every single day, especially those related to new apps, Android, or mobile news. The only way I can do that is via my Google Reader. I find myself trying to catch up each day on the computer (just like with Twitter activity) when I would be better off reading a little bit over time during the day. NewsRob is a Google Reader that I have had for years. The interface is very clean and easy to use. The developer created a bunch of customizations options, which really make this reader stand out.

With NewsRob you can set up a notification of new articles, how you synchronize with Google and when, how many articles to keep in your cache, and more. If you set up folders within Google Reader, NewsRob will download the folders, too. This enables you to read the posts by blog or folder. The app provides a very clean blogpost display optimized for smaller screens. With each post you can zoom in or out, mark a post read or unread, view in the browser, and share the link to email or services such as Evernote. There is a free version of the app.

The last task I need to work on to be more productive is to keep up with the calendar. I find myself checking on the computer, after the fact, finding out that I am either late or forgot about a meeting or appointment. Using Google calendar is a good place to start, but I have not found the standard calendar app on my Droid was all that helpful.

Business Calendar is a very capable calendar app that has a ton of features. The app lets you view your calendar in a number of different views, and has search and favorite-calendar features, to name a few. The option of viewing different calendars, color coding and being able to easily add, delete, and edit events is helpful. The ability to use widgets for reminders is important. The pro version has over 10 different sizes and allows for the import or export of calendar files in the iCalendar format. Business Calendar also has a free version.

So my top goal or resolution for 2013 is to be more productive. I think using these apps more will help me accomplish that goal. Are there any apps you have but not using to their fullest? What resolutions do you have for 2013?

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Laos May Bear Cost of a Chinese Railroad

OUDOM XAI, Laos — Wang Quan, the new Chinese owner of a hotel in this farm town tucked into the tropical mountains of northern Laos, is hoping that the first of 20,000 Chinese workers will arrive here soon to start construction on a new railroad.

Justin Mott for The New York Times

A Chinese construction truck passed through a small Hmong village on Route 13 in Oudom Xai Province, Laos.

The Chinese-financed railway is to snake its way through dozens of tunnels and bridges, eventually linking southern China to Bangkok, the capital of Thailand, and then on to the Bay of Bengal in Myanmar, significantly expanding China’s already enormous trade with Southeast Asia.

But Mr. Wang may have to wait a little longer to make his fortune from all the Chinese expected to descend on this obscure corner of Laos about 50 miles from the nearest border with China. Even though the project has run into some serious objections from international development organizations, most experts expect it to go ahead anyway. That is because China considers it vital to its strategy of pulling Southeast Asia closely into its orbit and providing Beijing with another route to transport oil from the Middle East.

The crucial connection would run through Oudom Xai between Kunming, the capital of China’s southern province of Yunnan, and the Laotian capital, Vientiane.

“China wants a fast-speed rail — Kunming to Vientiane,” George Yeo, a former foreign minister of Singapore, said in a recent speech to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Business Club in Bangkok.

Mr. Yeo, chairman of Kerry Logistics Network, a major Asian freight and distribution company, is considered one of the best-informed experts on the expansion of new Asia trading routes. “The big objective is Bangkok,” he said. “It’s a huge market, lots of opportunities. From there, Bangkok to Dawei in Myanmar — that will enable China to bypass the Malacca Straits,” a potential choke point between the Indian Ocean and China’s east coast.

But China is not particularly interested in sharing much of the wealth the railroad would generate. Most of the benefits, critics say, would flow to China while most of the costs would be borne by the host nation. The price tag of the $7 billion, 260-mile rail project, which Laos will borrow from China, is nearly equal to the tiny $8 billion in annual economic activity in Laos, which lacks even a rudimentary railroad and whose rutted road system is largely a leftover from the French colonial era.

In mid-November, when Prime Minister Wen Jiabao of China visited Vientiane for a summit meeting of European and Asian leaders, he was expected to attend a groundbreaking for the railroad. The ceremony did not take place.

An assessment of the rail project by a consultant for the United Nations Development Program said the terms of the financing offered by China’s Export-Import Bank were so onerous they put Laos’s “macroeconomic stability in danger.” At the same time, the construction through northern Laos would turn the countryside into “a waste dump,” the consultant’s report said. “An expensive mistake” if signed under the terms on offer, the report concluded.

As collateral for the loan, Laos was bound to provide China with minerals, including potash and copper.

Other international donors echoed the findings. “Partners, including the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank, expressed concern, and the International Monetary Fund was here and said, ‘You have to be very careful,’ ” said an Asian diplomat briefed on the reservations expressed to the Laotian government.

Nonetheless, the National Assembly has approved the project as the nation’s part in the much broader trans-Asian rail agreement signed by nearly 20 Asian countries in 2006. While the workings of the Communist Party that runs Laos are extremely opaque, diplomats here said, the project is most strongly backed by the pro-China deputy prime minister, Somsavat Lengsavad. Efforts to interview Mr. Somsavat were unsuccessful.

China’s exploding trade with Southeast Asia reached nearly $370 billion in 2011, double that of the United States in the same year. By 2015, when the Southeast Asian countries aim to have completed an economic community, China projects that its trade with the region will equal about $500 billion.

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Governor to sue NCAA over Penn state sanctions

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Gov. Tom Corbett said Tuesday he plans to sue the NCAA in federal court over sanctions imposed against Penn State in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky child sexual abuse scandal.

The Republican governor scheduled a news conference for Wednesday on Penn State's campus in State College to announce the filing in U.S. District Court in Harrisburg.

The sanctions, agreed to by the university in July, included a $60 million fine that would be used nationally to finance child abuse prevention grants. State and federal lawmakers have raised objections to the money being spent outside Pennsylvania.

A message seeking comment on the expected lawsuit was left with the NCAA on Tuesday.

Last month, a Pennsylvania congressman said he was unhappy with how the NCAA responded to a request from the state's U.S. House delegation that the whole $60 million in Penn State fines be distributed to causes within the state.

NCAA president Mark Emmert had said in a Dec. 12 letter that a task force had been charged with allocating at least 25 percent of the fine money to programs in Pennsylvania.

Republican Rep. Charlie Dent said days later in a statement that Emmert's response was "unacceptable and unsatisfactory."

The NCAA said then that it stood by what Emmert said.

The fine was just part of college sports' governing body's sanctions on Penn State for its handling of the abuse scandal involving Sandusky, a former assistant under head football coach Joe Paterno. The landmark sanctions also included a four-year ban from postseason play and significant scholarship cuts for the marquee football program, which avoided being suspended, the so-called death penalty.

Sandusky, a former defensive coordinator, was convicted in June on charges he sexually abused 10 boys, some on campus. The 68-year-old was sentenced to 30 to 60 years in state prison.

Eight young men testified against him, describing a range of abuse they said went from grooming and manipulation to fondling, oral sex and anal rape when they were boys.

Sandusky didn't testify at his trial but has maintained his innocence, acknowledging he showered with boys but insisting he never molested them.

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Study Suggests Lower Death Risk for the Overweight

A century ago, Elsie Scheel was the perfect woman. So said a 1912 article in The New York Times about how Miss Scheel, 24, was chosen by the “medical examiner of the 400 'co-eds'” at Cornell University as a woman “whose very presence bespeaks perfect health.”

Miss Scheel, however, was hardly model-thin. At 5-foot-7 and 171 pounds, she would, by today's medical standards, be clearly overweight. (Her body mass index was 27; 25 to 29.9 is overweight.)

But a new report suggests that Miss Scheel may have been onto something. The report on nearly three million people found that those whose B.M.I. ranked them as overweight had less risk of dying than people of normal weight. And while obese people had a greater mortality risk over all, those at the lowest obesity level (B.M.I. of 30 to 34.9) were not more likely to die than normal-weight people.

The report, although not the first to suggest this relationship between B.M.I. and mortality, is by far the largest and most carefully done, analyzing nearly 100 studies, experts said.

But don’t scrap those New Year’s weight-loss resolutions and start gorging on fried Belgian waffles or triple cheeseburgers.

Experts not involved in the research said it suggested that overweight people need not panic unless they have other indicators of poor health and that depending on where fat is in the body, it might be protective or even nutritional for older or sicker people. But over all, piling on pounds and becoming more than slightly obese remains dangerous.

“We wouldn’t want people to think, ‘Well, I can take a pass and gain more weight,'” said Dr. George Blackburn, associate director of Harvard Medical School’s nutrition division.

Rather, he and others said, the report, in The Journal of the American Medical Association, suggests that B.M.I., a ratio of height to weight, should not be the only indicator of healthy weight.

“Body mass index is an imperfect measure of the risk of mortality,” and factors like blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar must be considered, said Dr. Samuel Klein, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

Dr. Steven Heymsfield, executive director of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Louisiana, who wrote an editorial accompanying the study, said that for overweight people, if indicators like cholesterol “are in the abnormal range, then that weight is affecting you,” but that if indicators are normal, there’s no reason to “go on a crash diet.”

Experts also said the data suggested that the definition of "normal" B.M.I., 18.5 to 24.9, should be revised, excluding its lowest weights, which might be too thin.

The study did show that the two highest obesity categories (B.M.I. of 35 and up) are at high risk. “Once you have higher obesity, the fat’s in the fire,” Dr. Blackburn said.

But experts also suggested that concepts of fat be refined.

"Fat per se is not as bad as we thought," said Dr. Kamyar Kalantar-Zadeh, professor of Medicine and Public Health at the University of California, Irvine. "What is bad is a type of fat that is inside your belly. Non-belly fat, underneath your skin in your thigh and your butt area — these are not necessarily bad." He added that, to a point, extra fat is accompanied by extra muscle, which can be healthy.

Still, it is possible that overweight or somewhat obese people are less likely to die because they, or their doctors, have identified other conditions associated with weight gain, like high cholesterol or diabetes.

“You’re more likely to be in your doctor’s office and more likely to be treated,” said Dr. Robert Eckel, a past president of the American Heart Association and a professor at University of Colorado.

Some experts said fat could be protective in some cases, although that is unproven and debated. The study did find that people 65 and over had no greater mortality risk even at high obesity.

“There’s something about extra body fat when you’re older that is providing some reserve,” Dr. Eckel said.

And studies on specific illnesses, like heart and kidney disease, have found an “obesity paradox,” that heavier patients are less likely to die.

Still, death is not everything. Even if "being overweight doesn't increase your risk of dying," Dr. Klein said, it "does increase your risk of having diabetes" or other conditions.

Ultimately, said the study’s lead author, Katherine Flegal, a senior scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “the best weight might depend on the situation you’re in.”

Take the perfect woman, Elsie Scheel, in whose "physical makeup there is not a single defect," the Times article said. This woman who "has never been ill and doesn't know what fear is" loved sports and didn't consume candy, coffee or tea. But she also ate only three meals every two days, and loved beefsteak.

Maybe such seeming contradictions made sense against the societal inconsistencies of that time. After all, her post-college plans involved tilling her father’s farm, but “if she were a man, she would study mechanical engineering.”

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Shell Oil Rig Runs Aground in Alaska

An enormous Shell Oil offshore drilling rig ran aground on an island in the Gulf of Alaska on Monday night after it broke free from tow ships in rough seas, officials said.

The rig, the Kulluk, which was used for test drilling in the Arctic last summer, is carrying about 139,000 gallons of diesel fuel and 12,000 gallons of lubricating oil and hydraulic fluid, the officials said.

A Coast Guard helicopter flew over the rig after the grounding at 8:48 p.m. and “detected no visible sheen,” said Darci Sinclair, a spokeswoman for a unified command of officials from Shell, Alaskan state agencies and other groups that has been directing the response since the troubles with the rig began last Thursday.

Ms. Sinclair said that more overflights were planned after daybreak on Tuesday, and that the unified command would be monitoring the fuel situation as it planned further actions. “The focus will be around salvage,” she said.

The 266-foot diameter rig ran aground on the east coast of Sitkalidak Island, an uninhabited island that is separated by the Sitkalidak Strait from the far larger Kodiak Island to the west. The nearest town, Old Harbor, is across the strait on Kodiak Island; it has a population of about 200 people.

Ms. Sinclair said the coast where the Kulluk ran aground has a combination of rocky and sandy terrain.

Earlier Monday, a Shell spokesman had said that the rig had been brought under control after towlines were reconnected to two ships during a break in what had been several days of extremely rough seas and high winds.

But late Monday afternoon the line from one of the ships, the Aiviq, became separated. Then several hours later, the other ship, the Alert, was ordered to disconnect its towline, out of concern for the safety of the ship’s nine-person crew. At the time, Ms. Sinclair said, swells were as high as 35 feet and winds were gusting up to 65 miles an hour.

The Kulluk, one of two rigs that Shell used to drill test wells off the North Slope of Alaska as part of the company’s ambitious and expensive effort to open Arctic waters to oil production, was being towed by the Aiviq to a Seattle shipyard for off-season maintenance when the towline initially separated during a storm on Thursday.

The Aiviq then lost power, and other support ships and a Coast Guard cutter were brought in to help with engine repairs and to reconnect towlines to the Kulluk, which does not have its own propulsion system. The 18 workers aboard the rig were evacuated by Coast Guard helicopters on Saturday.

Over the weekend, support crews struggled in 25-foot swells to reconnect towlines, succeeding several times. But each time the lines separated again, leaving the rig in danger of drifting toward land.

The Kulluk, which was built in Japan in 1983 and upgraded over the past six years at a cost of $292 million, is designed for icy conditions in the Arctic. It can drill in up to 400 feet of water and up to 20,000 feet deep. During drilling season it carries a crew of about 140 people, Mr. Smith said.

Shell has spent six years and more than $4 billion in its effort to drill in Arctic waters, one of the last untapped oil-producing regions in the United States. But the effort has faced regulatory hurdles and opposition from American Indian and environmental groups.

Last summer, the Kulluk drilled a shallow test well in the Beaufort Sea while another rig drilled a similar hole in the Chukchi Sea to the west.

But Shell announced in September that it would be forced to delay further drilling until this year after a specialized piece of equipment designed to contain oil from a spill was damaged in a testing accident.

The episode was one of a number of setbacks for the Arctic drilling program last year.

Shell now says it hopes to drill five exploratory wells in the region during the 2013 drilling season, which begins in mid-July.

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Sony No Longer Shipping PlayStation 2 in Japan

You may have grown up with it. Your children may have, too.

Sony‘s PlayStation 2 home game console, released in 2000, was one of the most popular game consoles of all time, rivaled in sales only by the different kinds of Nintendo DS handheld console. It continued to be sold new on store shelves until just recently, even years after Sony launched its PlayStation 3 successor.

Now, however, Sony’s sent out its last shipment of new “PS2″ consoles for the Japanese market, according to Japanese gaming news site Famitsu (as reported by Polygon’s Emily Gera). Some other regions are continuing to receive shipments for now, but the heart of the PlayStation 2 phenomenon has finally stopped beating.

A gaming legend

Japanese PlayStation fans saw thousands more titles released in their language than English-speaking players. The PlayStation 2 was especially well-known for its role-playing games, such as the MMORPG Final Fantasy XI, which was designed so closely around the PS2′s capabilities that its Windows PC version uses almost entirely the same graphics and controller-based interface.

New PS2 games continue to ship; Final Fantasy XI is even getting a full-fledged, retail-boxed expansion pack this March. It’ll only support the PS2 in Japan, however, where dedicated players continue to use the original “fat” PS2 consoles with the hard drive expansion slot. Internationally, it will only support the PC and Xbox 360.

PS2 games in a post-PS2 world

The first PlayStation 3 consoles — infamous for the silence which ensued at the Sony event where their price at launch was announced to be “599 U.S. dollars” — were backwards-compatible with the vast majority of PlayStation 2 and original PSOne games. Sony achieved PS2 backwards compatibility, however, by including the PS2′s actual “Emotion Engine” and “Graphics Synthesizer” chips inside each PS3, essentially making it two game consoles in one (and helping to drive up that launch price).

A redesign bumped down the price some, but at the cost of removing the Emotion Engine chip, which caused the redesigned PS3 consoles to sometimes have bugs or fail to play certain games. Today’s PS3 consoles lack both chips, which means that while they play PSOne games just fine, they don’t support PS2 game discs at all and can’t be upgraded to do so.

The legend lives on?

Sony has made HD remakes of certain PS2 titles, and republished others for the PS3 under the “PlayStation 2 Classics” brand. Dozens of such titles have been re-released as digital downloads in the PlayStation Network store.

This method of playing a PS2 game on the PS3, however, involves essentially buying the game again (assuming that it’s even in the store), sort of like Sony’s method of playing PlayStation Portable games on the Vita. Even rebuying the games for the PS3 doesn’t ensure continued playability on modern Sony consoles; the upcoming “PlayStation 4″ (not its actual name) reportedly won’t be able to play games made for the PS3.

Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.
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Rape Incites Women to Fight Culture in India

Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

A candlelight gathering after the cremation on Sunday blocked a road in New Delhi, the city where the Dec. 16 rape occurred.

NEW DELHI — Neha Kaul Mehra says she was only 7 years old the first time she was sexually harassed. She was walking to a dance class in an affluent neighborhood of New Delhi when a man confronted her and began openly masturbating.

That episode was far from the last. Years of verbal and physical sexual affronts left Ms. Mehra, now 29, filled with what she described as “impotent rage.”

Last week, she and thousands of Indian women like her poured that anger into public demonstrations, reacting to news of the gang rape of another young woman who had moved to the city from a small village, with a new life in front of her.

That woman, a 23-year-old physiotherapy student, died Saturday from internal injuries inflicted with a metal rod during the rape, which took place on a bus two weeks ago.

In her story and its brutal ending, many women in the world’s largest democracy say they see themselves.

“That girl could have been any one of us,” said Sangeetha Saini, 44, who took her two teenage daughters to a candle-filled demonstration on Sunday in Delhi. Women in India “face harassment in public spaces, streets, on buses,” she said. “We can only tackle this by becoming Durga,” she added, referring to the female Hindu god who slays a demon.

Indian women have made impressive gains in recent years: maternal mortality rates have dropped, literacy rates and education levels have risen, and millions of women have joined the professional classes. But the women at the heart of the protest movement say it was born of their outraged realization that no matter how accomplished they become, or how hard they work, women here will never fully take part in the promise of a new and more prosperous India unless something fundamental about the culture changes.

Indeed, many women in India say they are still subject to regular harassment and assault during the day and are fearful of leaving their homes alone after dark. Now they are demanding that the government, and a police force that they say offers women little or no protection, do something about it.

Ankita Cheerakathil, 20, a student at St. Stephen’s College who attended a protest on Thursday, remembered dreading the daily bus ride when she was in high school in the southern state of Kerala. Before she stepped outside her house, she recalled, she would scrutinize herself in a mirror, checking to see whether her blouse was too tight. At the bus stop, inevitably, men would zero in on the schoolgirls in their uniforms, some as young as 10, to leer and make cracks filled with sexual innuendo.

“This is not an isolated incident,” Ms. Cheerakathil said of the death of the New Delhi rape victim. “This is the story of every Indian woman.”

While the Dec. 16 attack was extreme in its savagery, gang rapes of women have been happening with frightening regularity in recent months, particularly in northern India. Critics say the response from a mostly male police force is often inadequate at best.

Last week, an 18-year-old woman in Punjab State committed suicide by drinking poison after being raped by two men and then humiliated by male police officers, who made her describe her attack in detail several times, then tried to encourage her to marry one of her rapists. Dozens more gang rapes have been reported in the states of Haryana, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh in recent months.

The government does not keep statistics on gang rape, but over all, rapes increased 25 percent from 2006 to 2011. More than 600 rapes were reported in New Delhi alone in 2012. So far, only one attack has resulted in a conviction.

Sociologists and crime experts say the attacks are the result of deeply entrenched misogynistic attitudes and the rising visibility of women, underpinned by long-term demographic trends in India.

After years of aborting female fetuses, a practice that is still on the rise in some areas because of a cultural preference for male children, India has about 15 million “extra” men between the ages of 15 and 35, the range when men are most likely to commit crimes. By 2020, those “extra” men will have doubled to 30 million.

“There is a strong correlation between masculinized sex ratios and higher rates of violent crime against women,” said Valerie M. Hudson, a co-author of “Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia’s Surplus Male Population.” Men who do not have wives and families often gather in packs, Ms. Hudson argues, and then commit more gruesome and violent crimes than they would on their own.

Reporting was contributed by Malavika Vyawahare, Anjani Trivedi, Niharika Mandhana and Saritha Rai.

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Who might fill the NFL coaching openings

When NFL coaching jobs open, the names Jon Gruden, Bill Cowher and Tony Dungy immediately surface as potential candidates.

Much more likely than any of those Super Bowl winners returning to the sideline for 2013 would be the hirings of more obscure assistant coaches such as Mike Zimmer, Mike McCoy and Gus Bradley.

And Jon Gruden's younger brother, Jay.

Sure, some of the best-known coaches, including Andy Reid, Lovie Smith and Ken Whisenhunt, who lost their jobs Monday, will be in the mix. So might college coaches Chip Kelly of Oregon and Bill O'Brien of Penn State.

Maybe even Nick Saban, although leaving Alabama for the NFL is a long shot.

Bringing in highly accomplished coordinators has been the most common route for NFL teams lately. Cincinnati's Zimmer and Gruden and Denver's McCoy top most lists, along with Bruce Arians, who went 9-3 as Indianapolis' interim coach this season.

Zimmer was turned down twice last season after interviewing with Tampa Bay, which brought in Rutgers coach Greg Schiano, and Miami (Green Bay offensive coordinator Joe Philbin). The defensive mastermind still wants to be a head coach somewhere, but isn't getting his hopes up.

"Honestly, I don't listen to that stuff anymore," he said in early December. "Honest-to-God's truth. I've had for so many years, have people say, 'This is your year.' Then at the end of the year for about three days I'm totally depressed because I see this guy get a job, that guy get a job, that guy get a job.

"So it's in my best interest not to think about it, talk about it and just try to do the best job I can because I'm like (everybody else), I get disappointed too."

Gruden, who cut his coaching teeth in Arena Football and has revived Cincinnati's offense around Andy Dalton and A.J. Green, got some interest from other teams after last season. He quickly took himself out of the running, but might get more suitors with seven jobs open.

So might McCoy, whose adaptability is unquestioned after he adjusted Denver's offense for Tim Tebow's skill set last season, then made Peyton Manning's transition from the Colts to the Broncos so smooth.

Arians joined the Colts after he was released as Pittsburgh's offensive coordinator. When head coach Chuck Pagano was diagnosed with leukemia, Arians stepped in and guided a team that went 2-14 a year ago into the playoffs.

Bradley has helped Pete Carroll build a physical, sometimes intimidating and always effective defense in Seattle. That style of defense will be attractive to teams such as the Bears, Browns and Eagles who have to deal with cold weather late in the schedule.

Kelly is one of the most intriguing candidates. The NFL is loath to admit it is enamored of anything college teams do, but Kelly's wide-open, speed-based offense has lots of pro franchises salivating.

He has been mentioned for most NFL openings, and that figures to continue.

___

AP Pro Football Writer Arnie Stapleton in Denver and Sports Writer Joe Kay in Cincinnati contributed to this story.

___

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

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Well: Managing Diabetes, Then Told of Cancer

Nine years ago, Brenda Gray, a former schoolteacher in North Carolina, discovered she had Type 2 diabetes.

Since then, she has learned to manage the disease, diligently taking her medicine and keeping tabs on her blood sugar. But in September, she was told she had skin cancer, and her diabetes spun out of control.

Ms. Gray started an aggressive course of treatment that included radiation therapy. But the treatments weakened her and destroyed her appetite. Unable to eat, she developed dangerously low blood-sugar levels, and about two months ago, Ms. Gray’s daughter had to rush her to a hospital.

“She found me in bed shaking and sweating,” said Ms. Gray, who is 62 and lives in Durham. “When I got to the hospital, they couldn’t understand how I was still standing.”

Cancer and diabetes are two of the leading killers in America. Each can be a devastating diagnosis in its own right, but researchers are finding that the two often occur together. By some estimates, as many as one in five cancer patients also has diabetes.

In a recent joint report, the American Cancer Society and the American Diabetes Association noted that people with Type 2 diabetes have an increased risk of developing cancers of the liver, pancreas, colon and bladder. Researchers with the National Cancer Institute released a similar report last year, which found greater rates of cancer among diabetics, as well as an elevated risk of dying from cancer.

Experts say it is clear from accumulating clinical data that the two share some biological links. The problem results from simple demographics as well: with the rapid rise in Type 2 diabetes and a growing population of cancer survivors, the two diseases are coinciding more frequently in older patients.

“We are going to see a lot greater numbers of people with both diseases,” said Edward Giovannucci, a professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health and an author of the joint report. “By some estimates, the link between diabetes and cancer may quantitatively become even more important than the link between smoking and cancer.”

Already, oncologists say, it is not uncommon to encounter patients struggling to balance cancer treatments with insulin shots and diabetes drugs. Because cancer is generally seen as the more lethal of the two diseases, patients often make it the priority.

“Although cancer is no longer generally a death sentence, for many patients, they see it as that no matter what you say,” said Dr. June McKoy, a geriatric oncologist at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “Suddenly, they put their diabetes on the back burner, and they focus on the cancer.” But high blood sugar can damage kidneys and blood vessels, strain the immune system and worsen cancer prognosis.

Researchers say that the link between the two diseases is complex and driven by many factors. Typically, though, it is diabetes that sets the stage for cancer. “Most cancers don’t cause diabetes,” said Dr. Pankaj Shah, an endocrinologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. “Mostly diabetes increases the risk of cancer.”

Type 2 diabetes is often preceded by chronically high insulin levels and high blood sugar, fertile conditions for cancer. Insulin is known to fuel cell growth, and cancer cells consume glucose out of proportion to other nutrients. The two diseases share many risk factors as well, including obesity, poor diet, physical inactivity, smoking and advanced age.

Another factor that complicates the relationship are the treatments given to patients. Diabetes drugs can have an impact on cancer prognosis and vice versa. Type 2 diabetics treated with the drug metformin, for example, develop cancer less frequently than diabetics given other medications. A number of clinical trials are now under way to see how well the drug performs as a cancer treatment.

Drugs used against cancer, on the other hand, tend to worsen diabetes. Chemotherapy can wreak havoc on blood sugar levels, and glucocorticoids, which are widely prescribed to alleviate nausea in cancer patients, promote insulin resistance, said Dr. Lorraine L. Lipscombe of Women’s College Hospital in Toronto.

Dr. Lipscombe was the lead author of a large study last month that found that breast cancer survivors were 20 percent more likely to receive a diabetes diagnosis than other women. The study found evidence that glucocorticoids and chemotherapy may hasten the onset of diabetes.

“They don’t cause diabetes in everyone, but they can bring out or unmask it in people who might already be vulnerable,” she said.

For diabetics who are used to tightly monitoring their blood sugar levels, the impact of cancer drugs can be alarming. Rigoberto Cortes, 71, a former metal worker in Chicago, has had Type 2 diabetes for over two decades. A year ago, he was told he had Stage 3 colon cancer.

“When I started chemotherapy, my sugar level was going way up and way down like never before,” he said. “I kept asking my oncologist what I should do.”

Mr. Cortes said his oncologist was not very concerned by the blood sugar swings. He eventually got a second opinion and switched doctors. He also lost weight and changed his eating habits, which helped minimize his blood sugar swings.

Although every case is different, the general strategy in treating such patients should be to get the cancer under control first, said Dr. Shah at the Mayo Clinic.

“Diabetes treatment essentially is given to prevent long-term complications,” he added.

At some hospitals, oncologists may take responsibility for managing blood sugar and other diabetes concerns in their cancer patients. But ideally, treatments should be coordinated by a team that includes a certified diabetes educator.

“They go over diet with the patient, review their medication, review their insulin,” said Dr. McKoy of Northwestern. “They can play a big role.”

For a diabetic trying to navigate the world of cancer, or a cancer patient navigating the world of diabetes, such interventions can be crucial. In a study published in October, Dr. McKoy and her colleagues looked at several years of health records for over 200,000 people with Type II diabetes who developed cancer.

Those who underwent a diabetes counseling session after their cancer diagnosis — consisting of two sessions a week for four to six weeks — were more likely to receives tests of hemoglobin A1c levels, a barometer of how well blood sugar has been controlled over time, and to take care of their blood sugar levels. As a result, they had fewer emergency room visits, fewer hospital admissions and lower health care costs.

Ms. Gray, the former schoolteacher in Durham, learned this firsthand. After her recent emergency, she worked with a diabetes educator at Duke University Hospital. Ms. Gray learned tips and strategies to balance the two diseases, including ways to keep her blood sugar normal when cancer treatments ruin her appetite.

“I came into the hospital and they got me back on track,” she said. “I was just so focused on the cancer. It changed everything. But I’ve learned how to face this.”

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Shape of Fiscal Deal Emerging, but Spending Still at Issue

WASHINGTON — Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, on Monday reached agreement on a tentative deal to stave off large tax increases starting on Tuesday, but remained stuck on whether and how to stop $110 billion in across-the-board spending cuts in 2013, an official familiar with the negotiations said.

Speaking at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, adjacent to the White House, President Obama took note of the progress.

“Today it appears that an agreement to prevent this New Year’s tax hike is within sight, but it is not done,” he said. “There are still issues left to resolve, but we are hopeful that Congress can get it done. But it is not done.”

Mr. Obama used the occasion to warn Republicans that he would continue to press for more tax increases even beyond whatever may be included in a deal now. “If Republicans think I will finish the job of deficit reduction through spending cuts alone,” he said, then “they’ve got another thing coming. That’s not how it’s going to work.”

Republicans responded to the president’s speech angrily, accusing him of “moving the goal posts” just when a deal was in reach. They said that they knew that the two sides still had to agree on how to suspend the automatic spending cuts, but that they generally agreed that such a suspension would be offset, at least partially, by spending cuts elsewhere. Instead, the president said any deal to turn off the so-called sequester had to be financed by tax increases and spending cuts in concert.

“My heart is still pounding,” said Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee, expressing anger broadly felt by Republicans who said they were blindsided.

Mr. McConnell, of Kentucky, went to the Senate floor Monday afternoon, calling on Congress to act on the tax agreement and leave a deal on automatic spending cuts for the coming days. “Let’s pass the tax relief portion now,” he said. “Let’s take what’s been agreed to and get moving. The president wants this, members of Congress want to protect taxpayers, and we can get it done now.”

Under the emerging deal, income taxes would rise to 39.6 percent from 35 percent on income over $400,000 for single people and $450,000 for couples. Above those income levels, dividends and capital gains tax rates would also rise, to 20 percent from 15 percent.

The official familiar with the deal stressed that taxes would rise in some sense on the top 2 percent of earners, as Mr. Obama had wanted. That is because the deal would reinstate provisions to tax law, ended by the Bush tax cuts of 2001, that phase out personal exemptions and deductions for the affluent. Those phaseouts, under the agreement, would begin at $250,000 for single people and $300,000 for couples.

The estate tax would also rise, but considerably less than Democrats had wanted. The value of estates over $5 million would be taxed at 40 percent, up from the current 35 percent. Democrats had wanted a 45 percent rate on inheritances larger than $3.5 million.

Under the deal, the new rates on income, investment and inheritances would be permanent.

Mr. Obama and the Democrats would be granted a five-year extension of tax cuts they won in the 2009 stimulus law for middle-class and working-poor taxpayers. Those include a child credit that goes out as a check to workers who do not earn enough money to pay income taxes, an expanded earned income credit and a refundable credit for tuition.

Democrats also secured a full year’s extension of unemployment insurance without strings attached, a $30 billion cost.

All combined, the official said, the new package would raise about $600 billion over 10 years, compared to the revenue generated if current tax levels were simply extended. That, he said, is 85 percent of the revenue Democrats had wanted to raise under Mr. Obama’s initial proposal, which would have raised around $700 billion.

In addition, the deal would stave off sharp cuts for one year to health care providers who treat Medicare patients. That cost, about $30 billion, would be paid for with cuts to other health care programs.

But a final deal is being held up by one last question: What to do about $110 billion in automatic spending cuts set to begin Jan. 2.

While Republicans want them to go into force unless they are replaced by spending cuts elsewhere, Senate Democrats want to put them on “pause” for at least a year. All sides are angry over the impasse.

Mr. McConnell’s solution is likely to be resisted by Democrats, who will see it as a clear Republican victory with the spending cuts remaining in place. But many Republicans are just as opposed to those cuts as Democrats because they hit defense programs especially hard. Pressure would continue to mitigate or reverse the damage.

“Let me be clear,” Mr. McConnell said, “we will continue to work on finding smarter ways to cut spending, but let’s not let that hold up protecting Americans from the tax hike that will take place in about 10 hours. We can do this. We must do this.”

Robert Pear, John M. Broder and Jennifer Steinhauer contributed reporting.

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