A Financial Service for People Fed Up With Banks


Steve Dykes for The New York Times


Shamir Karkal, left,







Like many people, Josh Reich got fed up with his bank after it charged him overdraft fees and he endured painful customer service calls to fight them. But unlike most people, Mr. Reich, a software engineer from Australia, decided to come up with a better way to bank.




Mr. Reich and a co-founder, Shamir Karkal, created Simple, an online banking start-up company based in Portland, Ore., that offers its customers free checking accounts and data-rich analysis of their transactions and spending habits.


Few entrepreneurs dare to set their sights on industries as large and entrenched as banking and expect to flourish. But Mr. Reich, 34, a professed data nerd who has built computers and tinkered with the innards of sophisticated cameras, holds a master’s degree in business and has a robust background in financial data analysis. He is confident that Simple’s minimalist approach — it promises not to charge any fees for any services — will draw fans and customers.


“Banks make money by keeping customers confused,” Mr. Reich said. “There’s no incentives to make the experience better.”


Of course, inviting people to trust a start-up with their money is a lot to ask. The company, which began signing up customers late last year in a deliberately slow fashion, now has 20,000 and has processed transactions worth more than $200 million.


It also has the backing of prominent venture capital firms including Shasta Ventures, SV Angel and IA Ventures and has raised more than $13 million. Simple has few, if any, direct competitors, although some services like SmartyPig and Mint offer analysis of bank accounts and financial transactions.


Simple is actually not a bank. It has deals with CBW Bank and Bancorp, federally insured banks, to hold its customers’ money.


And it has built slick apps for the Web and mobile devices to give customers an overview of their accounts and transactions. But it encourages customers to treat it as a bank, closing their more traditional accounts and only using Simple.


The company’s biggest challenge, banking analysts say, will be to persuade people to give it a try.


“It is extremely difficult to get consumers to change and leave their banks,” said Jacob Jegher, an analyst at Celent, a research and consulting firm. “Plus, although they are not a bank, they still operate like a financial institution, and they will face challenges that big banks have decades of experience with.”


After the financial crisis, smaller community banks and credit unions gained customers eager for alternatives to larger corporate banks. Experts say Simple could attract those customers as well.


Early adopters are warming to the service; during a speech last fall at a conference aimed at technology enthusiasts, designers and creative people, Mr. Reich asked how many in attendance were Simple customers. A majority of the crowd raised hands.


Mr. Reich said Simple was keeping its first group of customers small to allow it to work out any kinks. (Already there have been some flaws, like one that briefly locked several users out of their accounts in November.) At this stage, those who want a Simple account have to request an invitation on its site, though these are handed out fairly liberally to those who meet the minimal qualifications of Simple and its bank partners.


Customers receive a plain white card that can be used like a debit card. The company offers most traditional banking features, like direct deposit and money transfers. But there is plenty it does not offer, like joint or business checking accounts, or paper checkbooks, which may be a deal killer for some.


The start-up does not have physical bank branches or automated teller machines, nor does it plan to build any. As a result, Simple customers cannot make cash deposits and must rely on the Internet and phone for service.


Simple tries to make up for what it does not have with modern software design and data analysis.


Each Simple transaction is tagged with detailed information that allows customers to search their accounts with plain English commands like “Show me how much I spent on meals over $30 last month,” or “Show me how much money I spent on gifts in December.”


Customers can see transactions plotted on a map or search for all transactions in a particular state or country, something that would be difficult with a traditional bank account.


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Iran’s Oil Exports and Sales Down 40 Percent, Official Admits





Iran’s oil minister acknowledged for the first time on Monday that petroleum exports and sales had fallen by at least 40 percent over the past year, contradicting his previous denials and providing an unusual public admission that the cumulative impact of Western economic sanctions has grown more severe.




The acknowledgment by the oil minister, Rostam Qasemi, came as new restrictions from the sanctions are threatening to further choke Iran’s ability to sell oil, its most important export. Under provisions of an American law that takes effect in February, importers of Iranian oil that have been exempted from the sanctions cannot send the money used to buy it to Iran without risking penalties in the United States. The result could impound billions of dollars’ worth of Iran’s expected oil revenue in the banks of those importing countries.


Additional punitive measures, which President Obama signed into law last week, broaden the list of blacklisted Iranian industries to include all energy, shipping and shipbuilding enterprises and seek to restrict barter transactions that Iran has been using to circumvent earlier sanctions. Some critics of the new steps say they nearly amount to a trade embargo.


In another consequence of the sanctions’ impact, the Oil Ministry on Monday stopped the sale of jet fuel to Iran’s heavily indebted domestic airlines unless they pay cash. The semiofficial Mehr news agency reported that most commercial airline flights inside the country had been canceled as a result.


Mr. Qasemi, a former Revolutionary Guards commander who was appointed oil minister more than a year ago, had consistently asserted that Iran had no problem selling its oil. In September, in an address to the Parliament, he said that oil exports were rising, despite outside data that showed a sharp drop. At other times, he has threatened to halt all oil exports in retaliation for the sanctions, apparently in a vain effort to raise oil prices by frightening global oil traders.


Both the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, of which Iran is a major member, and the International Energy Agency, a group of mostly Western oil-importing countries, have reported that Iran’s crude exports fell to roughly a million barrels a day by the end of 2012, compared with 2.4 million a year earlier.


Other Iranian officials have said it is clear that the country’s oil exports have suffered.


Economists knowledgeable about Iran’s sanctions problems said Mr. Qasemi’s acknowledgment of the export decline, made at a parliamentary meeting on finances, was inevitable because the government must find a way to fill a large gap in the budget — a gap that revenue from oil exports had been expected to fill.


The Iranian Students’ News Agency quoted the minister as telling lawmakers that “there has been a 40 percent decrease in oil sales and a 45 percent decrease in repatriating oil money.” The agency also quoted him as forecasting further decreases without specifying how much.


“It’s common knowledge in Iran that oil exports have fallen,” said Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, an economics professor at Virginia Tech, who visited his native Iran last month. “I don’t know if the oil minister had been in denial.”


Dr. Salehi-Isfahani suggested that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government might have to resolve the budget deficit problem with an accounting maneuver that would recalculate the value of Iran’s oil sales at half the official foreign-exchange rate — 25,000 rials per dollar instead of the central bank’s artificial rate of 12,260 rials per dollar.


That change would be much closer to the rial’s actual value and essentially double the amount — in rials — gained from Iranian oil exports. But such a move would also concede the sanctions’ severe inflationary impact, which has caused a steep fall in the value of the Iranian currency this past year.


Many Iranians have suffered from the rial’s decline, which has essentially made them poorer by raising the price of imported goods. Iran’s inflation also has left many Iranian businesses unable to pay wages or bills. The problem surfaced in a new way on Monday with the abrupt cancellation of domestic flights by Iranian airlines, which had been buying fuel on credit.


The head of the Airlines Association, Seyyed Abdol Reza Musavi, told Mehr that flights in Tehran, Kish, Mashhad and other airports had been halted because the carriers failed to repay their debts, and that fuel would now be provided “on a cash-only basis.” It was unclear how long the flight suspensions would last.


The sanctions on Iran have been intensifying for the past few years because of its disputed nuclear program, which Iran says is for peaceful use but which Western countries and Israel suspect is meant to develop the ability to make nuclear weapons.


Thomas Erdbrink contributed reporting from Tehran.



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Live blog: Samsung’s new gear at CES 2013






yep thats how apple works now, but can you stream network flash players thru your i pad via apple tv , answer = no , same with google tv. hook the comp directly to the comp get a wireless keayboard and an air mouse , and fyi windows media player can be streamed wirelessly from any pc all you need is a 50 dollar blue ray player , if you want to stream media from a hard drive wirelessly it just has to be one built to the standard like any wd home drive , but dont go usb get one that connects via gigabit


Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News









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Bama starts with bang at BCS championship game


MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. (AP) — One of the most anticipated BCS championship games began with Alabama getting the ball and driving it down the field for a touchdown against No. 1 Notre Dame's vaunted defense.


Sun Life Stadium was packed and raucous for the kickoff Monday night.


The Fighting Irish won the coin toss, decided to kickoff and the Crimson Tide marched down the field with ease, driving 82 yards on five plays to take a 7-0 lead on Eddie Lacy's 20-yard touchdown run up the middle with 12:03 left in the first quarter.


It was only the third rushing touchdown Notre Dame has allowed this season.


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Oil Sand Industry in Canada Tied to Higher Carcinogen Level


Todd Korol/Reuters


An oil sands mine Fort McMurray, Alberta.







OTTAWA — The development of Alberta’s oil sands has increased levels of cancer-causing compounds in surrounding lakes well beyond natural levels, Canadian researchers reported in a study released on Monday. And they said the contamination covered a wider area than had previously been believed.




For the study, financed by the Canadian government, the researchers set out to develop a historical record of the contamination, analyzing sediment dating back about 50 years from six small and shallow lakes north of Fort McMurray, Alberta, the center of the oil sands industry. Layers of the sediment were tested for deposits of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, groups of chemicals associated with oil that in many cases have been found to cause cancer in humans after long-term exposure.


“One of the biggest challenges is that we lacked long-term data,” said John P. Smol, the paper’s lead author and a professor of biology at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. “So some in industry have been saying that the pollution in the tar sands is natural, it’s always been there.”


The researchers found that to the contrary, the levels of those deposits have been steadily rising since large-scale oil sands production began in 1978.


Samples from one test site, the paper said, now show 2.5 to 23 times more PAHs in current sediment than in layers dating back to around 1960.


“We’re not saying these are poisonous ponds,” Professor Smol said. “But it’s going to get worse. It’s not too late but the trend is not looking good.” He said that the wilderness lakes studied by the group were now contaminated as much as lakes in urban centers.


The study is likely to provide further ammunition to critics of the industry, who already contend that oil extracted from Canada’s oil sands poses environmental hazards like toxic sludge ponds, greenhouse gas emissions and the destruction of boreal forests.


Battles are also under way over the proposed construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would move the oil down through the western United States and down to refineries along the Gulf Coast, or an alternative pipeline that would transport the oil from landlocked Alberta to British Columbia for export to Asia.


The researchers, who included scientists at Environment Canada’s aquatic contaminants research division, chose to test for PAHs because they had been the subject of earlier studies, including one published in 2009 that analyzed the distribution of the chemicals in snowfall north of Fort McMurray. That research drew criticism from the government of Alberta and others for failing to provide a historical baseline.


“Now we have the smoking gun,” Professor Smol said.


He said he was not surprised that the analysis found a rise in PAH deposits after the industrial development of the oil sands, “but we needed the data.” He said he had not entirely expected, however, to observe the effect at the most remote test site, a lake that is about 50 miles to the north.


Asked about the study, Adam Sweet, a spokesman for Peter Kent, Canada’s environment minister, emphasized in an e-mail that with the exception of one lake very close to the oil sands, the levels of contaminants measured by the researchers “did not exceed Canadian guidelines and were low compared to urban areas.”


He added that an environmental monitoring program for the region announced last February 2012 was put into effect “to address the very concerns raised by such studies” and to “provide an improved understanding of the long-term cumulative effects of oil sands development.”


Earlier research has suggested several different ways that the chemicals could spread. Most oil sand production involve large-scale open-bit mining. The chemicals may become wind-borne when giant excavators dig them up and then deposit them into 400-ton dump trucks.


Upgraders at some oil sands projects that separate the oil bitumen from its surrounding sand are believed to emit PAHs. And some scientists believe that vast ponds holding wastewater from that upgrading and from other oil sand processes may be leaking PAHs and other chemicals into downstream bodies of water.


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DealBook: Banks Reach Settlements on Mortgages

Correction Appended

11:38 a.m. | Updated

Bank of America agreed on Monday to pay $11.65 billion to Fannie Mae to settle claims over troubled mortgages that soured during the housing crash, mostly loans issued by the bank’s Countrywide Financial subsidiary.

Separately, federal regulators reached an $8.5 billion settlement on Monday to resolve claims of foreclosure abuses that included flawed paperwork used in foreclosures and bungled loan modifications by 10 major lenders, including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citibank. About $3.3 billion of that settlement amount will go toward Americans who went through foreclosure in 2009 and 2010, while $5.2 billion will address other assistance to troubled borrowers, including loan modifications and reductions of principal balances. Eligible homeowners could get up to $125,000 in compensation.

The two agreements are not directly related, but they illustrate the extent of the banks’ role in the excesses of the credit boom, from the making of loans to the seizure of homes.

Under the terms of the Bank of America deal, the bank will pay Fannie Mae $3.6 billion to compensate for faulty mortgages and will also pay the housing finance giant $6.75 billion to buy back mortgages. It also must pay the agency $1.3 billion related to loan servicing problems.

The settlement will resolve all of the lender’s disputes with Fannie Mae, removing a major impediment to Bank of America’s rehabilitation. The bank had settled its fight with Freddie Mac, the other government-owned mortgage giant, in 2011.

Both Fannie and Freddie, which have posted billions of dollars in losses in recent years, have argued that Countrywide misrepresented the quality of home loans that it sold to the two entities at the height of the mortgage bubble. Bank of America assumed those troubles when it bought Countrywide in 2008.

Before the latest settlement announced on Monday, the Countrywide acquisition had cost Bank of America more than $40 billion in losses on real estate, legal costs and settlements, according to several people close to the bank.

By removing part of the bank’s mortgage albatross, the move is a continued retreat from home lending by Bank of America, even as rivals including JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo compete for the profitable refinance business that has boomed with interest rates persistently low.

Bank of America also agreed to sell the servicing rights on about $306 billion worth of home loans to other firms. In separate statements, Nationstar Mortgage Holdings and the Newcastle Investment Corporation announced they were buying the rights. Those servicing costs, which were roughly $3.4 billion in the third quarter, have weighed on the bank’s profits, especially as borrowers fall behind on their bills.

Brian T. Moynihan, the bank’s chief executive, said in November that he intended to sell off about two million loans the bank currently serviced.

“Together, these agreements are a significant step in resolving our remaining legacy mortgage issues, further streamlining and simplifying the company and reducing expenses over time,” Mr. Moynihan said in a statement on Monday.

Bank of America said it expected the settlement to hurt its fourth-quarter earnings by $2.5 billion because of costs tied to foreclosure reviews and litigation. The firm also expects to record a $700 million charge, an accounting move known as a debt-valuation adjustment, related to an improvement in the prices of its bonds.

The deal on Monday helps the bank move away from its troubled mortgage business. Still, the bank’s attempts to resolve other costly mortgage litigation have so far been stymied. Looking to appease investors that sued the bank for losses when mortgages packaged into securities imploded during the financial crisis, the bank agreed to pay $8.5 billion in June 2011. But the settlement, which would help mollify investors including the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Pimco, has been stalled.

Further thwarting Bank of America’s retreat from the mortgage business, federal prosecutors sued the bank in October, accusing it of churning through loans so quickly that quality controls were virtually forgotten. The Justice Department sued the bank under a law that could mean Bank of America could pay well more than $1 billion to settle.

Bank of America has been embroiled with other legal woes, including accusations that it misled investors about the acquisition of Merrill Lynch. Shareholders, led by pension funds, had said the bank provided false and misleading statements about the health of the Wall Street firm, which, unknown to the public, was racking up huge losses in late 2008 amid turmoil in the markets.

The separate agreement with 10 banks on foreclosure abuses concludes weeks of feverish negotiations between the federal regulators, led by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the banks. That settlement will end a troubled foreclosure review mandated by the banking regulators.

The deal, which was hashed out over the weekend, had teetered on the brink of collapse after officials from the Federal Reserve demanded that the banks pay an addition $300 million to address their part in the 2008 financial crisis, according to several people briefed on the negotiations who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The Federal Reserve, though, agreed to back down on the demands in the hope that the pact could move ahead and bring more immediate relief to homeowners struggling to stay afloat in a time of persistent unemployment and a sluggish economy.

The multibillion-dollar foreclosure settlement was driven, to a large extent, by banking regulators, who decided that a review of loan files was inefficient, costly and simply not yielding relief for homeowners, these people said. The goal in scuttling the reviews, which were mandated as part of a consent order in April 2011, was to provide more immediate relief to homeowners.

The comptroller’s office and the Federal Reserve said on Monday that the settlement “provides the greatest benefit to consumers subject to unsafe and unsound mortgage servicing and foreclosure practices during the relevant period in a more timely manner than would have occurred under the review process.”

The relief will be distributed to homeowners even if they did not file a claim for their loan files to be reviewed.

Concerns about the Independent Foreclosure Review began to mount in within the comptroller’s office, according to the people familiar with the matter. The alarm, these people said, was that the reviews were taking more than 20 hours a loan file at a cost of up to $250 an hour. Since the start of the review, the banks, which are required to pay for consultants to review the files, had spent an estimated $1.5 billion.

More vexing, the banking regulators said that the reviews were not providing any relief to borrowers or turning up meaningful instances where homes of borrowers current on their payments were seized, according to these people.

Michael J. de la Merced and Ben Protess contributed reporting.


Correction: January 8, 2013

An earlier version of this article omitted one element of the settlement between Bank of America and Fannie Mae, and summaries of the article in some sections of nytimes.com consequently understated the total amount of the two mortgage-related settlements announced Monday. It is more than $20 billion, not $18.5 billion.

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Chinese Newspaper, Southern Weekend, Challenges Censors


Pool photo by


Xi Jinping at a meeting in Beijing in December. Unrest at an influential newspaper, Southern Weekend, has caught the public’s attention.







BEIJING — Turmoil at one of China’s leading newspapers is posing an early challenge to the measured political program of the new Chinese leader Xi Jinping, pitting a pent-up popular demand for change against the Communist Party’s desire to maintain a firm grip.




The unrest at the influential newspaper Southern Weekend began last week when censors appeared to have toned down the paper’s New Year’s letter to readers — traditionally a call for progress in the new year. That caused journalists and their supporters — including students at nearby Sun Yat-sen University — to issue open letters expressing their outrage.


“Our yielding and our silence has not brought a return of our freedom,” the students said in their petition on Sunday, according to a translation by Hong Kong University’s China Media Project. “Quite the opposite, it has brought the untempered intrusion and infiltration of rights by power.”


By Sunday night, the protests had transformed into a real-time melee in the blogosphere — a remarkable development in a country where protests of all kinds are tightly controlled and the media largely know the boundaries of permissible debate.


In this case, the newspaper’s economics and environmental news staffs appeared to declare that they were on strike, while editors loyal to the government shut down or took control of the paper’s official microblogs. One widely distributed staff declaration with 90 signatures said the publication’s microblogs were no longer authentic.


“I don’t know whether it will be a full strike, but I do know the joint statement about the confiscation of the Weibo account has widespread support,” said one former editor, referring to a microblogging site and speaking on the condition of anonymity.


The turmoil at the Guangzhou-based newspaper resonates especially strongly among politically aware Chinese because Mr. Xi chose southern China for a tour after taking power in November. He made a pilgrimage to nearby Shenzhen, where the father of China’s economic reforms, Deng Xiaoping, initiated them two decades ago.


Indeed, Mr. Xi seems to be casting himself in the mold of Deng, who was known for bold economic reforms but who also brooked no opposition to the rule of the Communist Party.


The latest indication was a speech Mr. Xi made that also was published in newspapers on Sunday. Speaking to senior leaders, Mr. Xi repeatedly invoked Deng, especially on the need to adhere to “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” a phrase often used to mean a combination of pragmatic policies and one-party rule. He also praised the prereform era, in what appeared to be an effort to appeal to harder-line Communists.


But part of the reason for the clamor for reforms are hopes that Mr. Xi himself has raised. So far he has won praise by calling for China’s constitutional protections to be put in effect, ordering officials to cut pomp and setting in motion an anticorruption campaign.


These actions seem to have prompted the calls for even bolder reforms.


Beyond the unrest at Southern Weekend, editors of the edgy historical journal Yanhuang Chunqiu published a cover article last week arguing that the existing Constitution offered a basis for political reform and that the party’s failure to abide by it was a central cause of political instability. On Friday, the magazine’s Web site was shut down, with officials claiming that it had failed to update its registration.


A message posted by the journal about the shutdown was forwarded 31,000 times, provoking many scathing criticisms of the government. The chief editor, Wu Si, said the journal’s staff had filed the paperwork and could be back online in 10 days.


Optimists say they hope the measures against the two publications were the result of recalcitrant officials appointed by the departing team of Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, whose decade in power was marked by an overriding desire for stability. Many members of Mr. Xi’s team will not take office until the annual meeting of the National People’s Congress in March, and it could take years for Mr. Xi to put allies into important positions of power.


“If Xi does not remove people and promote some officials, his new policies — if he has any — will be sunk by the old people,” said a senior editor at a top party newspaper who asked to remain anonymous because of the delicacy of the subject. “The conflicts between the old and the new have just emerged.”


Chinese politics since Deng’s time have been defined by similar tensions between liberalization and reaction. But Mr. Xi also confronts millions of increasingly outspoken Internet users whose outpourings can confound even China’s heavy censorship.


Zhan Jiang, a professor of media at the Beijing Foreign Studies University, said the public anger showed how expectations had risen. “Currently in China people are unusually sensitive to developments like this, and so the reaction has been quite intense,” Mr. Zhan said.


Some are less sure that the atmosphere is more open, saying the media shutdowns have occurred because Mr. Xi has avoided taking a clear position.


“There are still no clear rules on the media, and so officials stick to using their habitual ways to control the media,” said Li Datong, a prominent Chinese newspaper editor fired for his views. “There won’t be any change until Xi Jinping enunciates any ideas about major change.”


Other commentators doubt this will happen. They note that in previous jobs Mr. Xi upheld the status quo and that now that he has reached the pinnacle of his career he is unlikely to support systemic reform.


“This is a traditional viewpoint: if you change the emperor you’ll have a change of policy and maybe some new, hopeful things,” said the exiled Chinese political commentator Zhang Ping, who goes by the pen name Chang Ping. “But I don’t think this is likely, because you still have an emperor.”


Jonathan Ansfield contributed reporting from Beijing, and Chris Buckley from Hong Kong.



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Analysts predicting slow start for ‘ultra-HD’ TVs






LAS VEGAS (AP) — Ultra high definition TVs are set to be the talk of International CES, the gadget show kicking off this week, but they aren’t likely to account for much of the market even four years down the road.


That is the conclusion of analysts of the show’s host, a day before TV makers such as Samsung, LG and Sony attempt to wow conference attendees with their latest models.






Ultra-HD TVs, with four times as many pixels as HD TVs, are expected to account for only 1.4 million units sold in the U.S. in 2016, or about 5 percent of the entire market. Sales in the rest of the world are expected to be smaller.


The analysts blamed high prices and low availability for the slow start.


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RG3 hurt, Seattle tops Redskins 24-14 in playoffs


LANDOVER, Md. (AP) — Russell Wilson raced ahead to throw the final block on Marshawn Lynch's go-ahead touchdown run, and the Seattle Seahawks finally had a victorious road show.


Robert Griffin III's knee buckled as he tried to field a bad shotgun snap, leaving the Washington Redskins an offseason to worry about their franchise player's health.


The last rookie quarterback standing in the NFL playoffs is Wilson — the third-round pick who teamed with Lynch on Sunday to lead the Seahawks to a 24-14 victory over the Griffin and the Redskins.


Lynch ran for 131 yards, and Wilson completed 15 of 26 passes for 187 yards and ran eight times for 67 yards for the Seahawks, who overcame a 14-0 first-quarter hole — their biggest deficit of the season — and will visit the top-seeded Atlanta Falcons next Sunday.


"It was only two touchdowns, but it's still a big comeback and in this setting and the crowd, it's a marvelous statement about the guys resolve and what is going on," Seattle coach Pete Carroll said. "It's not about how you start but how you finish."


Seattle will be riding a six-game winning streak, having left behind any doubts that the team can hold its own outside the Pacific Northwest. The Seahawks were 3-5 on the road in the regular season and had lost eight straight road playoff games, the last win coming in December 1983 against the Miami Dolphins.


The day began with three rookie quarterbacks in the playoffs, but No. 1 overall pick Andrew Luck was eliminated when the Indianapolis Colts lost 24-9 to the Baltimore Ravens earlier in the day.


Lynch's change-of-direction, 27-yard touchdown run — with Wilson leading the way with a block on safety Madieu Williams near the goal line — and a 2-point conversion gave the Seahawks a 21-14 lead with 7:08 remaining.


"Marhsawn always tells me, 'Russ, I got your back, no matter what,'" Wilson said. "So I just try to help him out every cone in a while when he gets downfield."


Then came the play that essentially put the outcome to rest.


On the second play of the Redskins' next possession, Griffin's heavily braced right knee buckled badly as he tried to field a bad shotgun snap on a second-and-22 at Washington's 12-yard line. He lay on the ground, unable to recover the ball as the Seahawks pounced on it.


Griffin walked off the field under his own power, but the Redskins announced he would not return. After a few minutes, Griffin walked back to the sideline and watched the end of the game. The extent of the injury was not immediately known.


Griffin was playing in his third game since spraining his right knee about a month ago against the Baltimore Ravens, and he had been looking gimpy since tumbling backward following an ill-advised sidearm throw in the first quarter.


Nevertheless, he stayed in the game. Redskins coach Mike Shanahan said he didn't pull Griffin because the quarterback wanted to continue.


"I think I did put myself at more risk," Griffin said. "But every time you get on the field, you're putting yourself on the line."


Griffin was scheduled for an MRI to determine the extent of the injury.


Having recovered the fumble, the Seahawks kicked a short field goal to give them the insurance they needed. Fellow rookie Kirk Cousins, subbing for Griffin, was unable to rally the Redskins in the final minutes.


Griffin, the No. 2 overall pick and last year's Heisman Trophy winner who set several rookie quarterback record this year, finished 10 for 19 for 84 yards with two touchdowns and one interception. He also had five carries for 21 yards, including a laboring 9-yard run that made him look 32 years old instead of 22.


The loss ended a seven-game winning streak for the Redskins, who recovered from a 3-6 start to win the NFC East.


The Redskins opened the game threatening to make a mockery of the NFL's top scoring defense. Simple toss-to-the-right stretch plays netted 8, 9 and 18 yards for Alfred Morris in an 80-yard drive, and tight end Logan Paulsen barreled into linebacker Malcolm Smith after a catch to highlight a 54-yard drive.


Both possessions ended with 4-yard touchdown passes: one to Evan Royster for his first NFL TD catch and the other to Paulsen. The Redskins led 14-0 in the first quarter against a team that allowed a season-low 15.3 per game in the regular season, but Griffin had tweaked the knee on that second drive.


The Seahawks responded by getting Lynch involved more and scoring on three consecutive drives to pulled within a point at halftime. Steven Hauschka, who injured his left ankle during the first half and had to relinquish kickoff duties, nevertheless sandwiched field goals of 32 and 29 yards around a 4-yard touchdown pass from Wilson to Michael Robinson.


The Seahawks were poised to take the lead on the opening drive of the second half, moving the ball to 1-yard line with a pair of nice runs by Lynch and a leaping catch by Golden Tate.


But Lynch fumbled on second-and-goal from the 1, the ball popped loose and was recovered by defensive lineman Jarvis Jenkins. Then, on their next drive, the Seahawks drove to Washington's 28 before a sack forced a punt — rather than a long field goal attempt by an injured kicker.


With the Redskins' offense struggling, however, the Seahawks had more chances to take the lead — and finally did on the 79-yard drive capped by Lynch's touchdown run.


The playoff meeting between the two teams was the third, but first outside Seattle. The Seahawks won 20-10 in January 2006, and 35-14 in January 2008. Those were the last two postseason games played by the Redskins.


Seattle had outscored opponents 193-60 in its final five games of the regular season. But they were 3-5 on the road and had lost eight straight road playoff games. Their only road playoff win came in their first postseason road game, Dec. 31, 1983, at Miami.


And now they have another.


___


Follow Joseph White on Twitter: http://twitter.com/JGWhiteAP


___


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


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Drug-Testing Company Tied to N.C.A.A. Draws Criticism





KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A wall in one of the conference rooms at the National Center for Drug Free Sport displays magazine covers, each capturing a moment in the inglorious history of doping scandals in sports.







Steve Hebert for The New York Times

The National Center for Drug Free Sport, in Kansas City, Mo., tries to deter doping with programs for high school, college and professional leagues.








Monica Almeida/The New York Times

Don Catlin, formerly of U.C.L.A.’s Olympic Analytical Lab, has raised questions about drug testing at colleges.






The images show Ben Johnson, the sprinter who lost his 1988 Olympic gold medal after testing positive; and Barry Bonds, the tarnished home run king; and Lyle Alzado, one of the first pro football players to admit to steroid use.


“People always assume that it’s the athletes at the top of their sport or the top of their game that are using,” said Frank Uryasz, Drug Free Sport’s founder and president. “But I can assure you that’s not the case. There’s always that desire to be the best, to win. That permeates all level of sport — abuse where you just wouldn’t expect it.”


Over the past quarter-century, athletes like Johnson, Bonds and Alzado stirred widespread concern about doping in sports.


Professional leagues without drug-testing programs have put them in; leagues with drug-testing programs have strengthened them. Congress and medical experts have called on sports officials at all levels to treat doping like a scourge.


It was in this budding American culture of doping awareness that Uryasz found a niche business model. He has spent the past decade selling his company’s services to the country’s sports officials.


The company advises leagues and teams on what their testing protocols should look like — everything from what drugs to test for to how often athletes will be tested to what happens to the specimens after testing. It also handles the collection and testing of urine samples, often with the help of subcontractors.


Drug Free Sport provides drug-testing programs for high school, college and professional leagues.


A privately held company with fewer than 30 full-time employees, it counts among its clients Major League Baseball, the N.F.L., the N.B.A., the N.C.A.A. and about 300 individual college programs.


Many, if not all, of the players on the field Monday night for the Bowl Championship Series title game between Alabama and Notre Dame have participated in a drug-testing program engineered by Drug Free Sport.


Uryasz says his company’s programs provide substantial deterrents for athletes who might consider doping.


Critics, however, question how rigorous the company’s programs are. They say Drug Free Sport often fails to adhere to tenets of serious drug testing, like random, unannounced tests; collection of samples by trained, independent officials; and testing for a comprehensive list of recreational and performance-enhancing drugs.


The critics, pointing to a low rate of positive tests, question Drug Free Sport’s effectiveness at catching athletes who cheat. Since the company began running the N.C.A.A.’s drug-testing program in 1999, for example, the rate of positive tests has been no higher than 1 percent in any year — despite an N.C.A.A. survey of student-athletes that indicated at least 1 in 5 used marijuana, a banned substance. (The N.C.A.A. tests for marijuana at championship competitions but not in its year-round program.)


Uryasz said the rate of positive tests was not meaningful. “I don’t spend a lot of time on the percent positive as being an indicator of very much,” he said.


Independent doping experts contend that having a contract with Drug Free Sport allows sports officials to say they take testing seriously without enacting a truly stringent program.


Don Catlin, the former head of U.C.L.A.’s Olympic Analytical Lab, best known for breaking the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative doping ring, oversaw the testing of many of Drug Free Sport’s urine samples when he was at U.C.L.A. He said the work by Drug Free Sport and similar companies could be used to mislead fans.


“The problem with these schools is they all want to say they’re doing drug testing, but they’re not really doing anything I would call drug testing,” he said.


A Company’s Origins


Uryasz said he became interested in working with student-athletes while tutoring them as an undergraduate at Nebraska. After he graduated, he earned an M.B.A. from Nebraska and worked in health care administration in Omaha. He said he heard about an opening at the N.C.A.A. through a friend.


Driven in part by scandals in professional sports, the N.C.A.A. voted at its 1986 annual convention to start a drug-testing program.


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