Falcons top Lions 31-18 for home-field advantage

DETROIT (AP) — Matt Ryan got what he wanted.

Calvin Johnson was forced to settle for what he could get.

Ryan matched a career high with four touchdown passes, two to Roddy White, to help the Atlanta Falcons beat the Detroit Lions 31-18 Saturday night and earn home-field advantage throughout the NFC playoffs.

"It's great," Ryan said. "Our confidence is high and our experience — good and bad — has helped us. The key is to keep the focus where it's been."

In yet another loss, Johnson had a record-breaking night.

Johnson broke Jerry Rice's NFL single-season yards receiving mark of 1,848. After making the record-breaking catch in the fourth quarter, Johnson jogged over to the sideline and handed the football to his father.

"That was a very special moment," he said.

Johnson also became the only player with 100 yards receiving in eight straight games and the first with 10 receptions in four games in a row in league history. He had 11 receptions for 225 yards, giving him 1,892 this season.

"I've been an NFL fan my whole life, dating back to watching Johnny Unitas and Raymond Berry as a kid, and I've coached in this league for 19 years," Detroit coach Jim Schwartz said. "I've seen a lot of Hall of Famers, but I've never seen a better player than Calvin Johnson.

"He just broke a record set by Jerry Rice, who is arguably the best player in this history of this league."

The Falcons (13-2) pulled away with Ryan's fourth TD pass to wide-open tight end Michael Palmer in the fourth quarter and Matt Bryant's 20-yard field goal with 3:05 left that gave them a 15-point lead.

Ryan was 25 of 32 for 279 yards without a turnover.

The Falcons hope playing at home, potentially throughout the conference playoffs, helps them more than it did after the 2010 and 1980 seasons. The Falcons failed to win a game in either postseason, getting routed by Green Bay two years ago and blowing a double-digit, fourth-quarter lead to Dallas three decades ago.

Atlanta advanced to its only Super Bowl with a win at Minnesota after winning a franchise-record 14 games during the 1998 season.

The Falcons won't have much incentive to match that mark next week at home against Tampa Bay, when they'll have nothing to gain and something to lose if a key player or more gets hurt.

Detroit (4-11) has been relegated to playing for pride this month and that hasn't been going very well.

The Lions, whose seven-game losing streak is the longest skid in the league, haven't struggled this much since the laughingstock of a franchise became the league's first to go 0-16 in 2008.

The Falcons led 21-3 at halftime before letting the Lions pull within five points early in the fourth quarter.

Ryan dashed Detroit's comeback hopes.

Facing intense pressure, he converted a third down in Atlanta territory with a pass to White, picked on rookie cornerback Jonte Green by throwing to Jones to pick up more first downs and found Tony Gonzalez open to convert another third down to set up his fourth TD pass.

"We didn't play well in the third quarter," Atlanta coach Mike Smith said. "Matt made some big throws on that drive."

Stafford was clearly trying to get the ball to Johnson on the next drive and cornerback Asante Samuel figured that out, stepping in front of the receiver for an interception to set up Bryant's field goal.

Atlanta running back Michael Turner was tackled in the end zone, after Detroit turned the ball over on downs, to give the Lions two meaningless points.

Ryan went deep to White for the first score, connecting with him on a 44-yard TD strike with 5:50 left in the first quarter. Ryan threw a short pass to him early in the second quarter and the standout receiver did the rest on a 39-yard sprint down the sideline.

Ryan put his third TD pass where only Julio Jones could catch it a corner of the end zone, and he did on a 16-yard reception that put Atlanta up 21-3.

Detroit didn't give up, a game after being accused of doing just that in a 38-10 loss at Arizona.

Jason Hanson kicked a second field goal late in the first half to make it 21-6.

After Atlanta opened the second half with a three-and-out drive, Mikel Leshoure scored on a 1-yard run midway through the third quarter to pull the Lions with eight points.

Hanson's third field goal made it 21-16.

Stafford finished 37 of 56 for 443 yards with an interception and the Lions say he set an NFL record for the most yards passing in a game without throwing a TD pass.

Detroit dug a big hole because the Falcons scored two TDs off turnovers in the first half.

Defensive end Kroy Biermann forced running Leshoure to fumble, giving the Falcons the ball at their 31 and they took advantage. Ryan's perfectly lofted pass to White's fingertips converted a third-and-1 in a big way, putting the Falcons ahead.

The Lions responded with another drive into Atlanta territory, but stalled and had to settle for Hanson's 34-yard field goal in the final minute of the opening quarter to pull within four points.

Atlanta earned a double-digit lead on the ensuing drive.

Ryan threw a screen pass to his left to White, who got a great block from tight end Gonzalez, and the receiver raced untouched for a score that put the Falcons ahead 14-3.

White finished with eight receptions for 153 yards and two TDs. Jones had seven receptions for 71 yards and a score.

Ryan completed his first 12 attempts and, after his first incomplete pass, he converted a third-and-10 with an 11-yard toss to Jacquizz Rodgers. Two plays later, Ryan matched a season high with a third TD pass on the connection with Jones. Prior to the game, Ryan hadn't started a game with more than 10 consecutive completions, according to STATS LLC. He started 10 for 10 last month against Tampa Bay.

Johnson had three receptions for 70 yards in the first quarter, breaking Herman Moore's single-season franchise record for yards receiving.

By halftime, Johnson had 117 yards receiving. He had 100 yards receiving for an eighth straight game, breaking a record set by Charley Hennigan in 1961 and matched by Michael Irvin in 1995. It was Johnson's 11th game with 100 yards receiving this season, tying Irvin's NFL mark.

"Calvin is one of the best players in the game and I think everybody is a big fan of his," Ryan said. "He's one of the most genuinely nice people you could meet."

Stafford connected with Johnson on a short crossing route and the receiver did the rest, outrunning Falcons on a 49-yard gain. Fittingly, the Lions turned the ball over on the next snap in the latest lowlight in a season full of them.

The Lions, Falcons and fans at Ford Field in Detroit honored the victims of the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School before the game. Players had memorial decals on their helmets that read "S.H.E.S." in white on a black background, and Detroit's coaches wore pins with a similar design. There was also a moment of silence before the national anthem while the names and ages of each victim were shown on the videoboards. Twenty children and six adults were killed in the Dec. 14 shooting in Newtown, Conn. Adam Lanza killed his mother, shot students and staff, then killed himself.

NOTES: Stafford, in his fourth season, has 1,090 career completions to surpass Bobby Layne's franchise record of 1,074. Stafford is seven attempts away from surpassing the NFL's single-season mark of 691 set by Drew Bledsoe with New England in 1994. ... Backup Falcons CB Christopher Owens had a hamstring injury.

___

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

___

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Genetic Gamble : Drugs Aim to Make Several Types of Cancer Self-Destruct

C.J. Gunther for The New York Times

Dr. Donald Bergstrom is a cancer specialist at Sanofi, one of three companies working on a drug to restore a tendency of damaged cells to self-destruct.

For the first time ever, three pharmaceutical companies are poised to test whether new drugs can work against a wide range of cancers independently of where they originated — breast, prostate, liver, lung. The drugs go after an aberration involving a cancer gene fundamental to tumor growth. Many scientists see this as the beginning of a new genetic age in cancer research.

Great uncertainties remain, but such drugs could mean new treatments for rare, neglected cancers, as well as common ones. Merck, Roche and Sanofi are racing to develop their own versions of a drug they hope will restore a mechanism that normally makes badly damaged cells self-destruct and could potentially be used against half of all cancers.

No pharmaceutical company has ever conducted a major clinical trial of a drug in patients who have many different kinds of cancer, researchers and federal regulators say. “This is a taste of the future in cancer drug development,” said Dr. Otis Webb Brawley, the chief medical and scientific officer of the American Cancer Society. “I expect the organ from which the cancer came from will be less important in the future and the molecular target more important,” he added.

And this has major implications for cancer philanthropy, experts say. Advocacy groups should shift from fund-raising for particular cancers to pushing for research aimed at many kinds of cancer at once, Dr. Brawley said. John Walter, the chief executive officer of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, concurred, saying that by pooling forces “our strength can be leveraged.”

At the heart of this search for new cancer drugs are patients like Joe Bellino, who was a post office clerk until his cancer made him too sick to work. Seven years ago, he went into the hospital for hernia surgery, only to learn he had liposarcoma, a rare cancer of fat cells. A large tumor was wrapped around a cord that connects the testicle to the abdomen. “I was shocked,” he said in an interview this summer.

Companies have long ignored liposarcoma, seeing no market for drugs to treat a cancer that strikes so few. But it is ideal for testing Sanofi’s drug because the tumors nearly always have the exact genetic problem the drug was meant to attack — a fusion of two large proteins. If the drug works, it should bring these raging cancers to a halt. Then Sanofi would test the drug on a broad range of cancers with a similar genetic alteration. But if the drug fails against liposarcoma, Sanofi will reluctantly admit defeat.

“For us, this is a go/no-go situation,” said Laurent Debussche, a Sanofi scientist who leads the company’s research on the drug.

The genetic alteration the drug targets has tantalized researchers for decades. Normal healthy cells have a mechanism that tells them to die if their DNA is too badly damaged to repair. Cancer cells have grotesquely damaged DNA, so ordinarily they would self-destruct. A protein known as p53 that Dr. Gary Gilliland of Merck calls the cell’s angel of death normally sets things in motion. But cancer cells disable p53, either directly, with a mutation, or indirectly, by attaching the p53 protein to another cellular protein that blocks it. The dream of cancer researchers has long been to reanimate p53 in cancer cells so they will die on their own.

The p53 story began in earnest about 20 years ago. Excitement ran so high that, in 1993, Science magazine anointed it Molecule of the Year and put it on the cover. An editorial held out the possibility of “a cure of a terrible killer in the not too distant future.”

Companies began chasing a drug to restore p53 in cells where it was disabled by mutations. But while scientists know how to block genes, they have not figured out how to add or restore them. Researchers tried gene therapy, adding good copies of the p53 gene to cancer cells. That did not work.

Then, instead of going after mutated p53 genes, they went after half of cancers that used the alternative route to disable p53, blocking it by attaching it to a protein known as MDM2. When the two proteins stick together, the p53 protein no longer functions. Maybe, researchers thought, they could find a molecule to wedge itself between the two proteins and pry them apart.

The problem was that both proteins are huge and cling tightly to each other. Drug molecules are typically tiny. How could they find one that could separate these two bruisers, like a referee at a boxing match?

In 1996, researchers at Roche noticed a small pocket between the behemoths where a tiny molecule might slip in and pry them apart. It took six years, but Roche found such a molecule and named it Nutlin because the lab was in Nutley, N.J.

But Nutlins did not work as drugs because they were not absorbed into the body.

Roche, Merck and Sanofi persevered, testing thousands of molecules.

At Sanofi, the stubborn scientist leading the way, Dr. Debussche, maintained an obsession with p53 for two decades. Finally, in 2009, his team, together with Shaomeng Wang at the University of Michigan and a biotech company, Ascenta Therapeutics, found a promising compound.

The company tested the drug by pumping it each day into the stomachs of mice with sarcoma.

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Preoccupations: When Relocation Is a Way of Life

ON New Year’s Day, the company I work for, Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, will move me from Washington to Paris, where I will become a regional vice president of the company and general manager of the Hotel George V, which it manages.

Daniel Rosenbaum for The New York Times

Gathering the frequent-mover miles: From left are Christian and Meg Clerc, and their daughters, Eleanor and Georgia, at home in Washington.

My wife, Meg, teaches at a Montessori school. She and our teenage daughters, Eleanor and Georgia, will reunite with me at the end of the school year. It’s the seventh move for Meg and me: about every three years for the last two decades, we’ve packed and unpacked, and left newfound schools, friends, cars, dry cleaners, banks and homes, and found newer ones.

If you want to advance in the hotel industry, you’d better be able to check “yes” next to the box that asks, “Willing to relocate?” Mobility must be in your DNA if you want to move up. Originally from Switzerland, I myself have moved eight times over 25 years of working in hotels, rising from hotel restaurant food runner to hotel general manager: from Gstaad to Lausanne, Switzerland; then to Washington, Rome, Paris and back to Washington, then to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, and to Chicago and Washington once more. Eleanor, now 17, was born in Rome. Georgia, 14, joined the journey on our first assignment in Washington.

Meg knew the score — and welcomed the global lifestyle — when she married me. In fact, she chose a mobile career herself, knowing that there would be Montessori schools worldwide.

The company provides good logistical support when it moves its employees. And on the home front, we have grown increasingly adaptive, and the moves have become easier over the years. The process begins when I first realize that a move may be in the works. Meg and I go out for lunch or coffee and review our trusty to-do list to become move-ready. Then we take our daughters out to lunch or dinner and broach the subject, beginning with “How would you feel if we moved to X?”

The worst reaction was when we planned to move back to Washington from Chicago less than a year after arriving there from Mexico. We thought the girls would be thrilled to reunite with friends in a familiar place. We thought wrong. In unison, they broke out in tears; they had just made new friends and were starting to fit in again.

Meg, so skilled at working with children as a teacher, had them talk about the roots of their fears and sadness, which usually revolve around establishing new social networks. I, racked by guilt about upsetting their cart again, blurted that they could get the puppy they had been begging for. (I had been adamantly opposed until then.) The tears stopped. Needless to say, our pup, Snickers, will be moving to Paris, too.

To stay sane at relocation time, we keep the house we’re in as homey as possible until we move, then turn the new house into a home as fast as we can. That way, we don’t have to stare at cardboard boxes on both ends of the trip. We can pack in two weeks.

Moving makes you prioritize what’s important. You have to decide what’s crucial enough to bring, and what’s marginal enough to leave behind. With friends, you have to choose those to see before you go, and the ones you want to stay in touch with after the move.

Each of us has certain things we take along — our “transitional objects.” For example, I need the big wooden credenza that’s been in my family for generations, a great coffee machine, my A.S. Roma soccer-club shirt and my watch box — after all, I am Swiss. For Meg, it’s not about things, but about creating a cozy, well-lit new space. The girls still bring their favorite stuffed animals along with photos, but their most important transitional object is each other.

BUILDING a new network of friends can be as daunting for Meg and me as it is for the girls. We’ve found friends among new work colleagues and through tight-knit expat communities. But there’s a danger of getting stuck in a cultural bubble and never befriending local people.

Our moves have brought us a great appreciation of cultural differences. The ability to adapt quickly to change helps in all kinds of situations. The moves have also prepared our daughters to make new friends quickly. Still, we wonder and worry how it will affect their future relationships. Will they have trouble forming long-lasting bonds?

We find inspiration, meanwhile, in
the lyrics of “You’re My Home,” the Billy Joel song: “I never had a place that I could call my very own, but that’s
all right, my love, ’cause you’re my home.”

As told to Perry Garfinkel.

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Ben Ali’s Possessions to Be Auctioned in Tunisia

TUNIS — It could be the Middle East’s most opulent yard sale.

Just in time for Christmas, Tunisia’s Finance Ministry has organized a public auction of cars, jewels, carpets and trinkets that once belonged to the deposed president, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, the first autocrat to fall in the Arab Spring revolution incubated here two years ago.

The monthlong sale and exhibition of 12,000 items begins Saturday at the Cleopatra Hotel, a sumptuous property in a northern suburb of Tunis.

For the price of a 30-dinar ticket, about $20, curious Tunisians can gape freely at the former president’s collection of rare clocks, rococo-themed picture frames and gold-plated falcons. Those in a shopping spirit can even take home one of the first lady’s treadmills or handbags.

Advertisements for the event feature a village of mud-brick houses lighted by one of the former president’s sparkling chandeliers and a poster of a smiling schoolboy whose image is Photoshopped into the back seat of Mr. Ben Ali’s Bentley.

According to the event’s French-language Web site, www.confiscation.tn, “bargain hunters” can buy an array of high-end electronics, while those with more “retro” tastes can indulge in one of Mr. Ben Ali’s many knickknacks, some of them gifts from wealthy businessmen and fellow despots.

The government aims to raise an estimated 20 million dinars, about $13 million, from the event, largely through the sale of big-ticket items like Mr. Ben Ali’s fleet of luxury automobiles, more than 300 items of silver and gold jewelry, and an extensive collection of local and foreign artworks.

Thirty-nine of his cars will be up for auction, including two Lamborghini Gallardos and an Aston Martin Vanquish that contains a personalized plate reading “hand-built in England for Sakher el Materi,” Mr. Ben Ali’s son-in-law, now 31.

The items are mostly from Mr. Ben Ali’s Sidi Dhrif residence, one of numerous presidential palaces peppered across Tunisia’s northeast coast. After the Jan. 14, 2011, revolution that sent Mr. Ben Ali and his family into exile in Saudi Arabia, locals destroyed or looted some of the family’s homes, including a sumptuous palace in the Hammamet resort district.

 Attempts to retake public ownership of Mr. Ben Ali’s assets, particularly his foreign holdings, have proceeded fitfully over the past two years.

Many Tunisians have criticized the government as moving too slowly on the sale of confiscated assets and have expressed frustration at the prospect that Mr. Ben Ali could reclaim some of his old possessions through Saudi purchasers.

According to a statement from Slim Besbes, then acting minister of finance, it took eight months just to determine the value of items and legal procedures surrounding the sale of Mr. Ben Ali’s confiscated assets.

While some cars in his collection have been sold in earlier auctions, the event starting Saturday is the government’s most ambitious sell-off effort yet. And even those items represent a small sliver of what the government considers Mr. Ben Ali’s corruptly attained assets, which included 398 holding companies, Tunisian banks and telecommunications concerns.

 

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Google working on “X Phone”, “X” tablet to take on rivals – WSJ

(Reuters) – Google Inc is working with recently acquired Motorola on a handset codenamed “X-phone”, aimed at grabbing market share from Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter.

Google acquired Motorola in May for $ 12.5 billion to bolster its patent portfolio as its Android mobile operating system competes with rivals such as Apple and Samsung.

The Journal quoted the people saying that Motorola is working on two fronts: devices that will be sold by carrier partner Verizon Wireless, and on the X phone.

Motorola plans to enhance the X Phone with its recent acquisition of Viewdle, an imaging and gesture-recognition software developer. The new handset is due out sometime next year, the business daily said, citing a person familiar with the plans.

Motorola is also expected to work on an “X” tablet after the phone. Google Chief Executive Larry Page is said to have promised a significant marketing budget for the unit, the newspaper said quoting the persons.

Google was not immediately reachable for comments outside regular U.S. business hours.

(Reporting by Balaji Sridharan in Bangalore; Editing by Richard Chang)

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Douglas wins AP female athlete of the year honors

When Gabby Douglas allowed herself to dream of being the Olympic champion, she imagined having a nice little dinner with family and friends to celebrate. Maybe she'd make an appearance here and there.

"I didn't think it was going to be crazy," Douglas said, laughing. "I love it. But I realized my perspective was going to have to change."

Just a bit.

The teenager has become a worldwide star since winning the Olympic all-around title in London, the first African-American gymnast to claim gymnastics' biggest prize. And now she has earned another honor. Douglas was selected The Associated Press' female athlete of the year, edging out swimmer Missy Franklin in a vote by U.S. editors and news directors that was announced Friday.

"I didn't realize how much of an impact I made," said Douglas, who turns 17 on Dec. 31. "My mom and everyone said, 'You really won't know the full impact until you're 30 or 40 years old.' But it's starting to sink in."

In a year filled with standout performances by female athletes, those of the pint-sized gymnast shined brightest. Douglas received 48 of 157 votes, seven more than Franklin, who won four gold medals and a bronze in London. Serena Williams, who won Wimbledon and the U.S. Open two years after her career was nearly derailed by a series of health problems, was third (24).

Britney Griner, who led Baylor to a 40-0 record and the NCAA title, and skier Lindsey Vonn each got 18 votes. Sprinter Allyson Felix, who won three gold medals in London, and Carli Lloyd, who scored both U.S. goals in the Americans' 2-1 victory over Japan in the gold-medal game, also received votes.

"One of the few years the women's (Athlete of the Year) choices are more compelling than the men's," said Julie Jag, sports editor of the Santa Cruz Sentinel.

Douglas is the fourth gymnast to win one of the AP's annual awards, which began in 1931, and first since Mary Lou Retton in 1984. She also finished 15th in voting for the AP sports story of the year.

Douglas wasn't even in the conversation for the Olympic title at the beginning of the year. That all changed in March when she upstaged reigning world champion and teammate Jordyn Wieber at the American Cup in New York, showing off a new vault, an ungraded uneven bars routine and a dazzling personality that would be a hit on Broadway and Madison Avenue.

She finished a close second to Wieber at the U.S. championships, then beat her two weeks later at the Olympic trials. With each competition, her confidence grew. So did that smile.

By the time the Americans got to London, Douglas had emerged as the most consistent gymnast on what was arguably the best team the U.S. has ever had.

She posted the team's highest score on all but one event in qualifying. She was the only gymnast to compete in all four events during team finals, when the Americans beat the Russians in a rout for their second Olympic title, and first since 1996. Two nights later, Douglas claimed the grandest prize of all, joining Retton, Carly Patterson and Nastia Liukin as what Bela Karolyi likes to call the "Queen of Gymnastics."

But while plenty of other athletes won gold medals in London, none captivated the public quite like Gabby.

Fans ask for hugs in addition to photographs and autographs, and people have left restaurants and cars upon spotting her. She made Barbara Walters' list of "10 Most Fascinating People," and Forbes recently named her one of its "30 Under 30." She has deals with Nike, Kellogg Co. and AT&T, and agent Sheryl Shade said Douglas has drawn interest from companies that don't traditionally partner with Olympians or athletes.

"She touched so many people of all generations, all diversities," Shade said. "It's her smile, it's her youth, it's her excitement for life. ... She transcends sport."

Douglas' story is both heartwarming and inspiring, its message applicable those young or old, male or female, active or couch potato. She was just 14 when she convinced her mother to let her leave their Virginia Beach, Va., home and move to West Des Moines, Iowa, to train with Liang Chow, Shawn Johnson's coach. Though her host parents, Travis and Missy Parton, treated Douglas as if she was their fifth daughter, Douglas was so homesick she considered quitting gymnastics.

She's also been open about her family's financial struggles, hoping she can be a role model for lower income children.

"I want people to think, 'Gabby can do it, I can do it,'" Douglas said. "Set that bar. If you're going through struggles or injuries, don't let it stop you from what you want to accomplish."

The grace she showed under pressure — both on and off the floor — added to her appeal. When some fans criticized the way she wore her hair during the Olympics, Douglas simply laughed it off.

"They can say whatever they want. We all have a voice," she said. "I'm not going to focus on it. I'm not really going to focus on the negative."

Besides, she's having far too much fun.

Her autobiography, "Grace, Gold and Glory," is No. 4 on the New York Times' young adult list. She, Wieber and Fierce Five teammates Aly Raisman and McKayla Maroney recently wrapped up a 40-city gymnastics tour. She met President Barack Obama last month with the rest of the Fierce Five, and left the White House with a souvenir.

"We got a sugar cookie that they were making for the holidays," Douglas said. "I took a picture of it."

Though her busy schedule hasn't left time to train, Douglas insists she still intends to compete through the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in 2016.

No female Olympic champion has gone on to compete at the next Summer Games since Nadia Comaneci. But Douglas is still a relative newcomer to the elite scene — she'd done all of four international events before the Olympics — and Chow has said she hasn't come close to reaching her full potential. She keeps up with Chow through email and text messages, and plans to return to Iowa after her schedule clears up in the spring.

Of course, plenty of other athletes have said similar things and never made it back to the gym. But Douglas is determined, and she gets giddy just talking about getting a new floor routine.

"I think there's even higher bars to set," she said.

Because while being an Olympic champion may have changed her life, it hasn't changed her.

"I may be meeting cool celebrities and I'm getting amazing opportunities," she said. "But I'm still the same Gabby."

___

AP Projects Editor Brooke Lansdale contributed to this report.

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Vernice D. Ferguson, Leader and Advocate of Nurses, Dies at 84

Vernice D. Ferguson, who fought for greater opportunities, higher wages and more respect for nurses as a longtime chief nursing officer for the Veterans Administration, died on Dec. 8 at her home in Washington. She was 84.

NYU Photobureau

Vernice D. Ferguson served at the Veterans Administration.

Her niece Hope Ferguson confirmed her death.

America faced a nursing shortage when Ms. Ferguson began overseeing the agency’s more than 60,000 nurses nationwide in 1980. Historically, the nursing ranks were overwhelmingly female, but as job opportunities began to expand for young women in the late 1970s, nursing, with its prospect of strenuous work, irregular hours and relatively low pay, was losing its appeal.

Doctors, most of whom were men, were paid far more and rarely discussed medical treatments with nurses, despite nurses’ hands-on knowledge of patients.

“What is good enough for the doctor is good enough for me and the nursing staff,” Ms. Ferguson was quoted as saying in the book “Pivotal Moments in Nursing: Leaders Who Changed the Path of a Profession,” by Beth Houser and Kathy Player. “Whatever the boys have, I am going to get the same thing for the girls.”

In 1981, Ms. Ferguson told National Journal, “Hospitals are going to have to rethink and restructure their policies to let nurses perform nursing services and let others attend to ‘hotel’ services,” like making beds and handling phone calls.

Ms. Ferguson helped establish an agency scholarship program to recruit and retain nurses and made educational programs that had been restricted to doctors open to nurses as well.

By 1992, when she left the agency — then the Department of Veterans Affairs — the number of registered nurses there with bachelor’s degrees or higher had more than doubled. Nurses’ salaries also increased throughout the field. In 1980, their average annual pay was $26,826 in 2008 dollars; in 2008, it was $66,973, according to the most recent survey of registered nurses.

Vernice Doris Ferguson was born on June 13, 1928, in Fayetteville, N.C. Her father was a minister in Baltimore, where she grew up, and her mother was a teacher. At a time when few black women attended college, Ms. Ferguson graduated from New York University with a nursing degree in 1950 and was awarded the Lavinia L. Dock prize for high scholastic standing. At the awards ceremony, the director of nursing refused to shake her hand, Ms. Houser and Ms. Player wrote.

Ms. Ferguson’s first job out of college was in a research unit financed by the National Institutes of Health at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx. She went on to be a co-author of papers in The American Journal of Nursing, The Journal of Clinical Nutrition and The Journal of Clinical Investigation.

She worked in several hospitals around the country, and from 1972 to 1980 was the chief of the nursing department of the Clinical Center at the National Institutes of Health. A brief marriage ended in divorce. Her survivors include a sister, Velma O. Ferguson, and several nieces and nephews.

After retiring in 1992, Ms. Ferguson was appointed senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing.

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World Briefing | The Americas: Canada: Court Seeks a Balance on Veils

The Supreme Court of Canada ruled Thursday that witnesses could cover their faces for religious reasons while testifying in court under some circumstances. A Muslim woman, who cannot be named under a court order, asked to wear a niqab, a full-face veil, for religious reasons when testifying in an Ontario court against two men whom she has accused of sexual assault. The Supreme Court did not specifically rule on her request. But it provided trial judges with a four-part process for analyzing such requests to maintain a balance between religious freedoms and the right to a fair trial. The defendants’ lawyers argued that the faces of witnesses provided clues about the truthfulness of their testimony. Canada’s immigration minister recently barred women from wearing a niqab when taking the citizenship oath.

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Reacting to users’ outcry, Facebook’s Instagram reverts to prior policy on advertising

SAN FRANCISCO – Instagram has abandoned wording in its new terms-of-service agreement that sparked outcry from users concerned it meant their photos could appear in advertisements.

In a blog post late Thursday, the popular mobile photo-sharing service says it has reverted to language in the advertising section of its terms of service that appeared when it was launched in October 2010.

Instagram is now owned by Facebook Inc. and maintains that it would like to experiment with different forms of advertising to make money.

Its blog post says that it will now ask users’ permission to introduce possible ad products only after they are fully developed.

The outcry to the changes announced earlier this week led the company to clarify that it has no plans to put users’ photos in ads.

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Michael Phelps voted AP male athlete of year

Now that he's away from the pool, Michael Phelps can reflect — really reflect — on what he accomplished.

Pretty amazing stuff.

"It's kind of nuts to think about everything I've gone through," Phelps said. "I've finally had time to myself, to sit back and say, '... that really happened?' It's kind of shocking at times."

Not that his career needed a capper, but Phelps added one more honor to his staggering list of accomplishments Thursday — The Associated Press male athlete of the year.

Phelps edged out LeBron James to win the award for the second time, not only a fitting payoff for another brilliant Olympics (four gold medals and two silvers in swimming at the London Games) but recognition for one of the greatest careers in any sport.

Phelps finished with 40 votes in balloting by U.S. editors and broadcasters, while James was next with 37. Track star Usain Bolt, who won three gold medals in London, was third with 23.

Carl Lewis is the only other Olympic-related star to be named AP male athlete of the year more than once, taking the award for his track and field exploits in 1983 and '84. The only men honored more than twice are golf's Tiger Woods and cyclist Lance Armstrong (four times each), and basketball's Michael Jordan (three times).

"Obviously, it's a big accomplishment," Phelps said. "There's so many amazing male athletes all over the world and all over our country. To be able to win this is something that just sort of tops off my career."

Phelps retired at age 27 as soon as he finished his final race in London, having won more gold medals (18) and overall medals (22) than any other Olympian.

No one else is even close.

"That's what I wanted to do," Phelps said. "Now that it's over, it's something I can look back on and say, 'That was a pretty amazing ride.'"

The current ride isn't so bad either.

Set for life financially, he has turned his fierce competitive drive to golf, working on his links game with renowned coach Hank Haney as part of a television series on the Golf Channel. In fact, after being informed of winning the AP award, Phelps called in from the famed El Dorado Golf & Beach Club in Los Cabos, Mexico, where he was heading out with Haney to play a few more holes before nightfall.

"I can't really complain," Phelps quipped over the phone.

Certainly, he has no complaints about his swimming career, which helped turn a sport that most Americans only paid attention to every four years into more of a mainstream pursuit.

More kids took up swimming. More advertisers jumped on board. More viewers tuned in to watch.

While swimming is unlikely to ever match the appeal of football or baseball, it has carved out a nice little niche for itself amid all the other athletic options in the United States — largely due to Phelps' amazing accomplishments and aw-shucks appeal.

Just the fact that he won over James shows just how much pull Phelps still has. James had an amazing year by any measure: The league MVP won his first NBA title with the Miami Heat, picking up finals MVP honors along the way, and then starred on the gold medal-winning U.S. basketball team in London.

Phelps already had won the AP award in 2008 after his eight gold medals in Beijing, which broke Mark Spitz's record. Phelps got it again with a performance that didn't quite match up to the Great Haul of China, but was amazing in its own right.

After the embarrassment of being photographed taking a hit from a marijuana pipe and questioning whether he still had the desire to go on, Phelps returned with a vengeance as the London Games approached. Never mind that he was already the winningest Olympian ever. Never mind that he could've eclipsed the record for overall medals just by swimming on the relays.

He wanted to be one of those rare athletes who went out on top.

"That's just who he is," said Bob Bowman, his longtime coach. "He just couldn't live with himself if knew he didn't go out there and give it good shot and really know he's competitive. He doesn't know anything else but to give that kind of effort and have those kind of expectations."

Phelps got off to a rocky start in London, finishing fourth in the 400-meter individual medley, blown out of the water by his friend and rival, Ryan Lochte. It was only the second time that Phelps had not at least finished in the top three of an Olympic race, the first coming way back in 2000 when he was fifth in his only event of the Sydney Games as a 15-year-old.

To everyone looking in, Lochte seemed poised to become the new Phelps — while the real Phelps appeared all washed up.

But he wasn't going out like that.

No way.

Phelps rebounded to become the biggest star at the pool, edging Lochte in the 200 IM, contributing to a pair of relay victories, and winning his final individual race, the 100 butterfly. There were two silvers, as well, leaving Phelps with a staggering resume that will be awfully difficult for anyone to eclipse.

His 18 golds are twice as many as anyone else in Olympic history. His 22 medals are four clear of Larisa Latynina, a Soviet-era gymnast, and seven more than the next athlete on the list. Heck, if Phelps was a nation, he'd be 58th in the medal standings, just one behind India (population: 1.2 billion).

"When I'm flying all over the place, I write a lot in my journal," Phelps said. "I kind of relive all the memories, all the moments I had throughout my career. That's pretty special. I've never done that before. It's amazing when you see it all on paper."

Four months into retirement, Phelps has no desire to get back in the pool. Oh, he'll swim every now and then for relaxation, using the water to unwind rather than putting in one of his famously grueling practices. Golf is his passion at the moment, but he's also found time to cheer on his hometown NFL team, the Baltimore Ravens, and start looking around for a racehorse that he and Bowman can buy together.

Phelps hasn't turned his back on swimming, either. He's got his name attached to a line of schools that he wants to take worldwide. He's also devoting more time to his foundation, which is dedicated to teaching kids to swim and funding programs that will grow the sport even more.

He's already done so much.

"His contribution to the way the world thinks about swimming is so powerful," Bowman said. "I don't think any other athlete has transformed his sport the way he's transformed swimming."

Phelps still receives regular texts from old friends and teammates, asking when he's going to give up on this retirement thing and come back the pool as a competitor.

He scoffs at the notion, sounding more sure of himself now than he did in London.

And if there's anything we've learned: Don't doubt Michael Phelps when he sets his mind on something.

"Sure, I could come back in another four years. But why?" he asked, not waiting for an answer. "I've done everything I wanted to do. There's no point in coming back."

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Follow Paul Newberry on Twitter at www.twitter.com/pnewberry1963

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