Leader of Online Movie Group IMAGiNE Gets five Years for Piracy

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Jeremiah B. Perkins, the former leader of internet movie group IMAGiNE, was sentenced to five years in prison on a piracy charge, the U.S. Department of Justice said Thursday.

Perkins, 40, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement in August.

In addition to the prison sentence, Perkins was sentenced to three years of supervised release and ordered to pay $ 15,000 in restitution.

The five-year prison sentence and three years supervised release represent the maximum sentence that Perkins faced, but he could have received a maximum fine of $ 250,000.

According to the Justice Department, IMAGiNE specialized in pirating movies playing in theaters. Court documents indicated that Perkins, of Portsmouth, Va., and his cohorts used receivers and recording devices to capture the audio tracks for movies in theaters, then sync the audio tracks to illegally recorded video files. The group would then share the completed files with members of the IMAGiNE Group and others.

ExtraTorrent reports that the recipients of IMAGiNE’s pirated movies included buyers in Asia, who would then make copies and distribute the pirated films in the Asian underground market.

During Perkins’ trial, an MPAA representative testified that IMAGiNE was “the most prolific motion picture piracy release group operating on the Internet from September 2009 through September 2011,” the Justice Department said.

The Justice Department said that Perkins admitted to renting computer servers in France and other locations for IMAGiNE’s use, and also to registering internet domains for IMAGiNE and setting up PayPal and email accounts to facilitate the group’s transactions.

Three of Perkins’ co-defendants – Sean M. Lovelady, Willie O. Lambert and Gregory A. Cherwonik – also pleaded guilty to one count each of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement and received sentences ranging from 23 to 40 months.

A fifth co-defendant, Javier E. Ferrer, was charged in September and also pleaded guilty to the charge. His sentencing is scheduled for March.

Perkins and his co-defendants were arrested by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations division, which also conducted the investigation.

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Packers show off depth in 24-10 win over Vikes

GREEN BAY, Wis. (AP) — Deep on offense and scary-good on defense, the Green Bay Packers were way too much for the Minnesota Vikings.

Maybe everyone else in the NFC, too.

Aaron Rodgers, Charles Woodson and the Packers reminded everyone of how dangerous they can be when they're at full strength Saturday night, overwhelming the Vikings 24-10 in an NFC wild-card game that was never really close.

"Our defense played great," Rodgers said. "Our defense tonight played at a championship level and that's what you need in the playoffs."

John Kuhn scored two touchdowns, DuJuan Harris added another and Rodgers connected with an NFL playoff-record 10 receivers as he threw for 274 yards in his first playoff victory at home. Defensively, the Packers (12-5) finally managed to contain Adrian Peterson and were all over Vikings backup Joe Webb, pressed into service because of Christian Ponder's triceps injury.

Peterson was held to 99 yards — an improvement after gaining 199 and 210 in the first two games against Green Bay. It was only the second time in the last 11 games that he was held below 100 yards. Webb, who hadn't thrown a pass all season, was sacked three times and off target all night. His only highlight was a 50-yard scoring pass to Michael Jenkins late in the fourth quarter, but it was far too late for the Vikings (10-7).

"No disrespect to Ponder, but ... it's about one guy and that's Adrian Peterson," said Woodson, who played his first game since breaking his right collarbone Oct. 21. "Our main focus, whether it was Ponder or Webb, was to keep 28 (Peterson) from getting off. And if we were going to keep him from getting off, put the ball in the quarterback's hands, whatever quarterback it was, we felt good about what was going to happen."

With a little over a minute left, Packers fans began taunting the Vikings (10-7) with chants of "Nah-nah-nah-nah ... goodbye." The win snapped a two-game losing streak at Lambeau Field in the playoffs, and sent the Packers to San Francisco next Saturday for an NFC divisional game with the 49ers. The teams met in the season opener, with San Francisco winning 30-22.

"A lot has happened since we played San Francisco," Packers coach Mike McCarthy said. "We're a different team."

This was the third game in six weeks between Green Bay and the Vikings, and second in six days. The Packers' loss in Minnesota last weekend cost them the No. 2 seed in the NFC, along with a bye this weekend, and left them looking — dare we say it? — vulnerable going into the playoffs. But with Woodson back and Rodgers having all four of his top receivers for, essentially, the first time since Sept. 30, Green Bay looked like a team that could make the kind of deep run it did two years ago when it won the Super Bowl.

Rodgers used so many different options other NFL quarterbacks must have been drooling. He went with Harris on Green Bay's first scoring drive, mixed it up between James Jones, Tom Crabtree and Greg Jennings on the second, and had 22- and 23-yard completions to Jordy Nelson before Kuhn scored on a 3-yard run that put the Packers up 17-3 just before the half.

And pretty much everyone got in on the fun on the last score, a 12-play, 80-yard drive that chewed up more than 5 ½ minutes. Rodgers connected with Jones on a 19-yard completion to put the Packers in Packers territory, then connected with Harris for 14 yards two plays later to reach the red zone. Rodgers threw incompletes on second and third downs, but just when the Packers thought they'd have to settle for a field goal, the Vikings were whistled for 12 men on the field, giving Rodgers another crack at the end zone.

He found Kuhn for the 9-yard score, and the game was all but over.

"That was tough. We were down seven and they went and scored and they were coming out of the half, too, getting the ball, too, and they got it and scored again," Antoine Winfield said. "Can't do that against the Green Bay Packers."

Harris, who didn't play in the first game against Minnesota this season because he'd only been elevated from the practice squad a day earlier, led the team in receiving (five catches for 61 yards) and rushing (47 yards on 17 carries). Jennings and Jones had four catches each and Nelson had three before hobbling off late in the fourth quarter.

"We have some stuff to work on," Rodgers said. "We've got to help our defense out more, close a team out like that. Tough test next week back in San Francisco."

Hey, at least the Packers are still playing. That's more than the Vikings can say.

Ponder was hurt last weekend when Morgan Burnett slammed into him on a blitz. Though initially thought to be an elbow injury, Ponder said it was actually a deep bruise in his right triceps. It limited his flexibility along with his power and, though it is better, there simply wasn't enough time to recover with the short, six-day turnaround.

After testing the arm before the game, the Vikings decided to go with Webb, whose only playing time this year was a couple of handoffs at the end of a blowout of Tennessee in early October.

"I can play with pain. The biggest thing is the loss of flexibility," Ponder said. "I couldn't get the ball in the position to where I could throw it normally and lost a lot of power and everything. It wouldn't have been wise to play."

It was the first time Buffalo's Frank Reich in 1993 a quarterback had started a playoff game after not starting during the regular season, according to STATS Inc. And, in the first series at least, he seemed to have caught the Packers off guard. That or they were too busy trying to bottle up Peterson, who bulldozed them for 409 yards in their first two games, to pay attention.

With what seemed like every Packers defender focused on Peterson, Webb converted a third-and-3 with a 17-yard pickup. His 5-yard run four plays later put the Vikings at the Green Bay 13. But Webb's first pass of the night went into the ground, and the Vikings were forced to settle for Blair Walsh's 33-yard field goal that gave them a 3-0 lead.

But the Packers quickly settled down and Webb and the Vikings never stood a chance. Especially with Peterson not allowed to roam free as he's done against the Packers in the past.

"The energy level was at an all-time high," Woodson said. "This week, like last week, we buzzed around. But this week we made the tackles, we didn't allow (Peterson) to get through the line of scrimmage and get yards after first contact. We just kept putting heat on them. That was the difference."

Notes: With two sacks of Webb, Matthews joined Reggie White as the only Packers to have two or more sacks in two postseason games. ... Minnesota had 157 of its 324 yards in the fourth quarter, when the game was out of hand. ... Kuhn is the only player in the NFL to score a touchdown in each of the last four postseasons. ... Mason Crosby's 20-yard field goal in the second quarter was his sixth straight in the postseason, a Packers record. ... Vikings S Harrison Smith left the game briefly with a left knee injury, but was able to return. Minnesota coach Leslie Frazier said after the game he was fine.

___

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Despite New Health Law, Some See Sharp Rise in Premiums

Health insurance companies across the country are seeking and winning double-digit increases in premiums for some customers, even though one of the biggest objectives of the Obama administration’s health care law was to stem the rapid rise in insurance costs for consumers.

Bob Chamberlin/Los Angeles Times

Dave Jones, the California insurance commissioner, said some insurance companies could raise rates as much as they did before the law was enacted.

Particularly vulnerable to the high rates are small businesses and people who do not have employer-provided insurance and must buy it on their own.

In California, Aetna is proposing rate increases of as much as 22 percent, Anthem Blue Cross 26 percent and Blue Shield of California 20 percent for some of those policy holders, according to the insurers’ filings with the state for 2013. These rate requests are all the more striking after a 39 percent rise sought by Anthem Blue Cross in 2010 helped give impetus to the law, known as the Affordable Care Act, which was passed the same year and will not be fully in effect until 2014.

 In other states, like Florida and Ohio, insurers have been able to raise rates by at least 20 percent for some policy holders. The rate increases can amount to several hundred dollars a month.

The proposed increases compare with about 4 percent for families with employer-based policies.

Under the health care law, regulators are now required to review any request for a rate increase of 10 percent or more; the requests are posted on a federal Web site, healthcare.gov, along with regulators’ evaluations.

The review process not only reveals the sharp disparity in the rates themselves, it also demonstrates the striking difference between places like New York, one of the 37 states where legislatures have given regulators some authority to deny or roll back rates deemed excessive, and California, which is among the states that do not have that ability.

New York, for example, recently used its sweeping powers to hold rate increases for 2013 in the individual and small group markets to under 10 percent. California can review rate requests for technical errors but cannot deny rate increases.

The double-digit requests in some states are being made despite evidence that overall health care costs appear to have slowed in recent years, increasing in the single digits annually as many people put off treatment because of the weak economy. PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates that costs may increase just 7.5 percent next year, well below the rate increases being sought by some insurers. But the companies counter that medical costs for some policy holders are rising much faster than the average, suggesting they are in a sicker population. Federal regulators contend that premiums would be higher still without the law, which also sets limits on profits and administrative costs and provides for rebates if insurers exceed those limits.

Critics, like Dave Jones, the California insurance commissioner and one of two health plan regulators in that state, said that without a federal provision giving all regulators the ability to deny excessive rate increases, some insurance companies can raise rates as much as they did before the law was enacted.

“This is business as usual,” Mr. Jones said. “It’s a huge loophole in the Affordable Care Act,” he said.

While Mr. Jones has not yet weighed in on the insurers’ most recent requests, he is pushing for a state law that will give him that authority. Without legislative action, the state can only question the basis for the high rates, sometimes resulting in the insurer withdrawing or modifying the proposed rate increase.

The California insurers say they have no choice but to raise premiums if their underlying medical costs have increased. “We need these rates to even come reasonably close to covering the expenses of this population,” said Tom Epstein, a spokesman for Blue Shield of California. The insurer is requesting a range of increases, which average about 12 percent for 2013.

Although rates paid by employers are more closely tracked than rates for individuals and small businesses, policy experts say the law has probably kept at least some rates lower than they otherwise would have been.

“There’s no question that review of rates makes a difference, that it results in lower rates paid by consumers and small businesses,” said Larry Levitt, an executive at the Kaiser Family Foundation, which estimated in an October report that rate review was responsible for lowering premiums for one out of every five filings.

Federal officials say the law has resulted in significant savings. “The health care law includes new tools to hold insurers accountable for premium hikes and give rebates to consumers,” said Brian Cook, a spokesman for Medicare, which is helping to oversee the insurance reforms.

“Insurers have already paid $1.1 billion in rebates, and rate review programs have helped save consumers an additional $1 billion in lower premiums,” he said. If insurers collect premiums and do not spend at least 80 cents out of every dollar on care for their customers, the law requires them to refund the excess.

As a result of the review process, federal officials say, rates were reduced, on average, by nearly three percentage points, according to a report issued last September.

Read More..

Despite New Health Law, Some See Sharp Rise in Premiums

Health insurance companies across the country are seeking and winning double-digit increases in premiums for some customers, even though one of the biggest objectives of the Obama administration’s health care law was to stem the rapid rise in insurance costs for consumers.

Bob Chamberlin/Los Angeles Times

Dave Jones, the California insurance commissioner, said some insurance companies could raise rates as much as they did before the law was enacted.

Particularly vulnerable to the high rates are small businesses and people who do not have employer-provided insurance and must buy it on their own.

In California, Aetna is proposing rate increases of as much as 22 percent, Anthem Blue Cross 26 percent and Blue Shield of California 20 percent for some of those policy holders, according to the insurers’ filings with the state for 2013. These rate requests are all the more striking after a 39 percent rise sought by Anthem Blue Cross in 2010 helped give impetus to the law, known as the Affordable Care Act, which was passed the same year and will not be fully in effect until 2014.

 In other states, like Florida and Ohio, insurers have been able to raise rates by at least 20 percent for some policy holders. The rate increases can amount to several hundred dollars a month.

The proposed increases compare with about 4 percent for families with employer-based policies.

Under the health care law, regulators are now required to review any request for a rate increase of 10 percent or more; the requests are posted on a federal Web site, healthcare.gov, along with regulators’ evaluations.

The review process not only reveals the sharp disparity in the rates themselves, it also demonstrates the striking difference between places like New York, one of the 37 states where legislatures have given regulators some authority to deny or roll back rates deemed excessive, and California, which is among the states that do not have that ability.

New York, for example, recently used its sweeping powers to hold rate increases for 2013 in the individual and small group markets to under 10 percent. California can review rate requests for technical errors but cannot deny rate increases.

The double-digit requests in some states are being made despite evidence that overall health care costs appear to have slowed in recent years, increasing in the single digits annually as many people put off treatment because of the weak economy. PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates that costs may increase just 7.5 percent next year, well below the rate increases being sought by some insurers. But the companies counter that medical costs for some policy holders are rising much faster than the average, suggesting they are in a sicker population. Federal regulators contend that premiums would be higher still without the law, which also sets limits on profits and administrative costs and provides for rebates if insurers exceed those limits.

Critics, like Dave Jones, the California insurance commissioner and one of two health plan regulators in that state, said that without a federal provision giving all regulators the ability to deny excessive rate increases, some insurance companies can raise rates as much as they did before the law was enacted.

“This is business as usual,” Mr. Jones said. “It’s a huge loophole in the Affordable Care Act,” he said.

While Mr. Jones has not yet weighed in on the insurers’ most recent requests, he is pushing for a state law that will give him that authority. Without legislative action, the state can only question the basis for the high rates, sometimes resulting in the insurer withdrawing or modifying the proposed rate increase.

The California insurers say they have no choice but to raise premiums if their underlying medical costs have increased. “We need these rates to even come reasonably close to covering the expenses of this population,” said Tom Epstein, a spokesman for Blue Shield of California. The insurer is requesting a range of increases, which average about 12 percent for 2013.

Although rates paid by employers are more closely tracked than rates for individuals and small businesses, policy experts say the law has probably kept at least some rates lower than they otherwise would have been.

“There’s no question that review of rates makes a difference, that it results in lower rates paid by consumers and small businesses,” said Larry Levitt, an executive at the Kaiser Family Foundation, which estimated in an October report that rate review was responsible for lowering premiums for one out of every five filings.

Federal officials say the law has resulted in significant savings. “The health care law includes new tools to hold insurers accountable for premium hikes and give rebates to consumers,” said Brian Cook, a spokesman for Medicare, which is helping to oversee the insurance reforms.

“Insurers have already paid $1.1 billion in rebates, and rate review programs have helped save consumers an additional $1 billion in lower premiums,” he said. If insurers collect premiums and do not spend at least 80 cents out of every dollar on care for their customers, the law requires them to refund the excess.

As a result of the review process, federal officials say, rates were reduced, on average, by nearly three percentage points, according to a report issued last September.

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Undecided Syrians Could Tip Balance of Rebellion

BEIRUT, Lebanon — At his government office in the Syrian capital, Damascus, the civil servant avoids discussing what Syrians call “the situation.” But he quietly ponders his own private endgame, toying with defecting to the rebels, yet clinging to his post, increasingly sure there are no fighters worth joining.

A multilingual former military officer, he says he is among many friends and colleagues who feel trapped: disenchanted with President Bashar al-Assad, disgusted by the violence engulfing Syria and equally afraid of the government and the rebels, with both sides, as he puts it, ready to sacrifice “the innocents.”

Mr. Assad remains in power in part because two years into the uprising, a critical bloc of Syrians remains on the fence. Among them are business owners who drive the economy, bankers who finance it, and the security officials and government employees who hold the keys to the mundane but crucial business of maintaining an authoritarian state. If they abandoned the government or embraced the rebels en masse, they might change the tide. Instead, their uncertainty contributes to the stalemate.

The Egyptian and Tunisian rebellions that inspired Syria’s initially peaceful uprising reached tipping points within weeks, with far less bloodshed. In those cases, widespread desire for change overwhelmed the fear of the unknown, and toppled governments — or rather, the dictatorial cliques that headed them. But in Syria, each side has bloodied the other while many stay on the sidelines, and a core contingent of supporters feels obligated to stick with the government even as their doubts grow. That is in part because the government’s ruthless crackdown has made protest far more risky than in other uprisings. But it is also because of doubts, among the urban elite and others, about the direction of the revolution and how a rebel-ruled Syria would look.

“Me and my neighbors, we were the first to go down to the street and scream that we want a country, a real country, not a plantation,” said Samar Haddad, who runs a Syrian publishing house. “But this armed revolution, I refuse it as much as I refuse the regime.”

Ms. Haddad, who is in her late 40s and now spends much of her time outside Damascus, said that she and her circle of intellectuals and professionals embrace unarmed Syrian protesters as heroes, but believe that the armed rebellion is creating warlords and cycles of revenge that will be hard to uproot.

The fence sitters include government employees, security forces, intellectuals and wealthy Syrians. Some, including members of Mr. Assad’s minority Alawite sect, say they fear the rule of Islamists, or the calls for vengeance from some factions of the Sunni Muslim-dominated uprising.

Some are former soldiers who say they defected only to be disappointed by rebels who lack discipline or obsess about religious ideology. One young man, Nour, said he gave up on revolution when he tried to join an Islamist brigade, Al Tawhid, but was rejected for wearing skinny jeans.

Others, like the Damascus civil servant, a Sunni, simply fear a post-Assad vacuum and are confused about the safest course for their families and the country.

Fewer and fewer Syrians appear to believe the government can restore order; the fraying of the country has become hard to miss. This has resulted in countless private debates over how to survive — amid growing alarm that without a political settlement or intervention, endless fighting will gut the Syrian state.

For those who support neither Mr. Assad nor his opponents, life has become a fearful wait.

In Damascus, little gets done in offices that tremble with explosions and empty out by dusk. Government salaries are still paid, the civil servant said, but fewer workers show up. Ms. Haddad said her publishing employees still come to work, in what has become an act of defiance to show that life goes on.

Many people express a wish for a political solution — perhaps a transitional government involving moderate government officials — but believe that decisions are being made by armed men on both sides who refuse to compromise.

“Both sides have the same mind,” said Abu Tony, a shopkeeper in central Damascus who favors a compromise and gave only a nickname for safety reasons.

“This is not life,” he said, “to spend half of the day without electricity, without heating oil and without even bread just because the two sides refuse to give up some of their demands.”

Ms. Haddad said she and like-minded friends were trying quietly to build civil society. But she said: “We feel depressed, useless, helpless. We are not the decision makers.”

Even as some Alawites grow frustrated with Mr. Assad — believing he has poisoned their future in Syria — many believe there is no safe place for them on the other side. In part for this reason, there have not been mass defections by senior Alawite military officers.

But even Sunni soldiers under strong pressure to defect sometimes feel that “we can’t offer them much,” said one rebel commander based in the northern province of Idlib.

He said many were in touch with colleagues who defected earlier, who recount months without salaries, and the humiliation of former colonels commanded by junior fighters with swollen egos.

One such disappointed defector is Nour, who said he served in the feared Fourth Division commanded by Mr. Assad’s brother Maher. He said he defected after security forces raped and killed his fiancée and many friends begged him to join the rebels.

But he was let down, first by fighters who drank and took drugs and offered him money for sexual acts; then by Al Tawhid Brigade, whose fighters, he said, taunted him, saying “You want to join us and you’re wearing skinny trousers?” He said he had decided to stay in Turkey and avoid both sides in the conflict.

The Damascus civil servant and would-be defector — who has talked for months about defecting, first to rebels from his hometown and then to a reporter — said he hesitates over many questions about the rebels and their plans: “Are the people aware enough? Can they practice self-control? Can the rebels set up a security zone?”

“Many questions need answers,” he said.

The government, he added, long ago stopped forcing him to attend pro-Assad demonstrations, but rebel supporters call him a traitor for asking questions.

“Why should I join a group where I am obliged to curtsy?”

An employee of The New York Times contributed reporting from Damascus, Syria, and Hania Mourtada from Beirut.

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After much speculation, CEO Kilar to leave Hulu

(Reuters) – Hulu Chief Executive Jason Kilar will leave the streaming TV company this quarter, he wrote in a blog post on the company’s website on Friday, raising more questions about its future path under multiple owners.

Kilar has long been rumored to be exiting the company as it faces stiff competition from Netflix Inc, Amazon.com Inc as well as Google Inc and Apple Inc.

Hulu chief technology officer Rich Tom is also leaving, according to the post.

Kilar gave no reason for his departure or indicate his future plans. Hulu did not name a replacement for the executives.

Kilar, Hulu CEO since July 2007, last year steered the company to $ 700 million in revenue and grew subscribers to 3 million. More than 200,000 new subscribers have signed up with the service in the last seven days, he noted.

“My decision to depart has been one of the toughest I’ve ever made,” Kilar wrote. “The things that have clearly brought the most joy to my heart (and what I believe to be the most important inputs in our business) have been this team and the values and principles we hold dear.”

Still, the popular service, which started primarily as a free site for people to catch up on television shows they might have missed, has had a rocky path over the last five years.

Part of the problem stems from its complicated ownership structure involving media conglomerates Walt Disney Co, News Corp and Comcast NBC Universal, and how much content each should make available to Hulu.

The owners face a dilemma: The success of Hulu could potentially eat away at the lucrative business of getting cable companies to pay for programming. Furthermore, it is now building out its own stable of original content exclusive to Hulu.

Disney CEO Bob Iger said in a statement that Kilar had been “an integral part of the Hulu story, transforming it from an interesting idea into an innovative business model that continues to evolve… We appreciate what he’s built, and we share his confidence in his team’s ability to drive Hulu forward from here.”

A statement from News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch said Kilar had helped build Hulu into one of the leading online video services and called the company “incredibly well positioned for the road ahead.”

BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield expects News Corp’s Fox to buy out its partners in the venture this year.

“With full ownership of Hulu, FOX accelerates Hulu‘s push into original programming and explores adding cable network content to create a virtual MVPD (multichannel video programmer distributor) service,” Greenfield said in a January 3 research note.

Comcast, the third partner in the venture declined to comment on Kilar’s departure. Unlike Disney and News Corp, Comcast does not have any management control of Hulu, which was a regulatory condition related to its acquisition of NBC Universal in 2011.

Hulu put itself on the block in 2011 with suitors including Google, Amazon, DirecTV Group and Dish Network Corp, Reuters reported at the time. Talks collapsed over the price of the deal.

Private equity firm Providence Equity Partners said in October last year that it had sold its 10 percent stake in Hulu to the remaining owners.

Kilar’s name surfaced as a potential candidate for the top job at Yahoo Inc after Scott Thompson resigned last year but Kilar removed himself from consideration.

(Reporting By Jennifer Saba and Liana Baker in New York; Editing by Gunna Dickson and Tim Dobbyn)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Manziel leads A&M to Cotton Bowl rout of Sooners

ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) — At one point early in the Cotton Bowl, with "Johnny B. Goode" blaring through the stadium speakers, Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Manziel peeked up at the accompanying highlights on the huge video board hanging over the field.

Texas A&M's exciting dual-threat quarterback known as Johnny Football sure puts on a show worth watching.

"Best player I've ever played. He does so many good things. He's got magic," Oklahoma defensive coordinator Mike Stoops said. "He'll have a chance to win four (Heismans) if he stays healthy."

Manziel tiptoed down the sideline for a 23-yard TD on the game's opening drive and went on to an FBS bowl record for quarterbacks with 229 yards rushing on 17 carries. He also set a Cotton Bowl record with 516 total yards as the 10th-ranked Aggies beat No. 12 Oklahoma 41-13 on Friday night to wrap up their first SEC season.

With first-year coach Kevin Sumlin and their young star quarterback after leaving the Big 12 for the SEC, the Aggies (11-2) overwhelming won the only bowl game matching teams from those two power conferences. They won 11 games for the first time since 1998, their only Big 12 title season.

The Aggies never trailed while winning their last six games and became the first SEC team with more than 7,000 total yards — 7,261 after gaining 633 in the Cotton Bowl.

"It's huge for this program, and for me especially, with the kind of woes A&M has had over the past decade or however long it's been since they had 11 wins," Manziel said. "For us to get up tonight and watch them battle back, it's good when we strike first. That's what we like to do. It was good to do that and not really look back."

Texas A&M led by only a point at halftime, but scored on its first three drives of the second half — on drives of 91 and 89 yards before Manziel threw a short pass to Ryan Swope on fourth-and-5 that turned into a 33-yard TD and a 34-13 lead.

Oklahoma (10-3), which like the Aggies entered the game with a five-game winning streak, went three-and-out on its first three drives after halftime in what was quarterback Landry Jones' 50th and final career start.

"Feel just disappointed that he's going out this way, getting beat like that," Sooners center Gabe Ikard said.

Jones completed 35 of 48 passes for 278 yards with a touchdown and an interception. He won 39 games and three bowls for the Sooners, in a career that started on the same field in the 2009 season opener when he replaced injured Heisman winner Sam Bradford in the first college game at Cowboys Stadium.

But Jones missed out becoming only the third NCAA quarterback to go 4-0 as a starter in bowl games.

"It was obvious tonight that we didn't play the way we should have played," said Jones, whose frustration was evident when he yelled at a teammate after a failed fourth-down play. "We couldn't run it. We couldn't throw it. It happens, you know."

SEC teams have won the last five Cotton Bowls, all against Big 12 teams, and nine out of 10. That included Texas A&M's loss to LSU only two years ago.

It had been six weeks since the Aggies played their last game, and four weeks since Manziel became the first freshman to win college football's highest individual award.

Manziel got it started with an electrifying 24-yard run on third down on the opening drive. Then on a third-and-10, Manziel rolled to his left and took off, juked around a defender and got near the sideline. He tiptoed to stay in bounds and punctuated his 23-yard score with a high-step over the pylon for a quick lead.

Officials reviewed the play to make sure he did stay in bounds, and the replays showed clearly that he did.

"There is too much talk about how you perform after the Heisman and about the layoff and all of that," said Manziel, who set an SEC record with 4,600 total yards in the regular season. "There wasn't anything holding us back. No rust, there was no nothing. We played as a unit."

The chants of "S-E-C! S-E-C!" began after Swope's TD catch with 4 minutes left in the third quarter. They got louder and longer after that, and Manziel spread both his arms out and ran off the field like he was flying.

Oklahoma was in the Cotton Bowl for only the second time. It was the first bowl matchup between the former Big 12 rivals, but the 17th consecutive season they have played each other.

The Sooners had won 11 of 13 in the series since Bob Stoops became their coach. That included a 77-0 Oklahoma win in 2003 that was the most-lopsided loss in Texas A&M history.

Sumlin was the A&M offensive coordinator in 2002 when the Aggies upset the top-ranked Sooners. The next year, Sumlin was hired by Stoops as an assistant, and he stayed there five seasons before going to Houston as head coach and now the Aggies.

"I think tonight was really indicative of this season," Sumlin said. "It's one of the teams I thought in the country that truly got better every week."

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Pregnancy Centers Gain Influence in Anti-Abortion Fight

Brandon Thibodeaux for The New York Times

Amber Jupe, right, attended a session conducted by Margo Shanks at a Care Net facility; the program addressed signs of fetal alcohol syndrome.

WACO, Tex. — With free pregnancy tests and ultrasounds, along with diapers, parenting classes and even temporary housing, pregnancy centers are playing an increasingly influential role in the anti-abortion movement. While most attention has focused on scores of new state laws restricting abortion, the centers have been growing in numbers and gaining state financing and support.

Largely run by conservative Christians, the centers say they offer what Roland Warren, head of Care Net, one of the largest pregnancy center organizations, described as “a compassionate approach to this issue.”

As they expand, they are adding on-call or on-site medical personnel and employing sophisticated strategies to attract women, including Internet search optimization and mobile units near Planned Parenthood clinics.

“They’re really the darlings of the pro-life movement,” said Jeanneane Maxon, vice president for external affairs at Americans United for Life, an anti-abortion group. “That ground level, one-on-one, reaching-the-woman-where-she’s-at approach.”

Pregnancy centers, while not new, now number about 2,500, compared with about 1,800 abortion providers. Ms. Maxon estimated that the centers see about a million clients annually, with another million attending abstinence and other programs. Abortion rights advocates have long called some of their approaches deceptive or manipulative. Medical and other experts say some dispense scientifically flawed information, exaggerating abortion’s risks.

Jean Schroedel, a Claremont Graduate University politics professor, said that “there are some positive aspects” to centers, but that “things pregnant women are told at many of these centers, some of it is really factually suspect.”

The centers defend their practices and information. “Women who come in are constantly telling us, ‘Abortion seems to be my only alternative and I think that’s the best thing to do,’ ” said Peggy Hartshorn, president of Heartbeat International, which she described as a “Christ-centered” organization with 1,100 affiliates. “Centers provide women with the whole choice.”

One pregnant woman, Nasya Dotie, 21, single, worried about finishing college and disappointing her parents, said she was “almost positive I was going to have an abortion.”

A friend at her Christian university suggested visiting Care Net of Central Texas. She met with a counselor, went home and considered her options. She returned for an ultrasound, and though planning not to look at the screen, when a clinician offered, she agreed. Then, “I was like, ‘That’s my baby. I can’t not have him.’ ”

Thirteen states now provide some direct financing; 27 offer “Choose Life” license plates, the proceeds from which aid centers. In 2011, Texas increased financing for the centers while cutting family planning money by two-thirds, and required abortion clinics to provide names of centers at least 24 hours before performing abortions. In South Dakota, a 2011 law being challenged by Planned Parenthood requires pregnancy center visits before abortions.

Cities like Austin, Baltimore and New York have tried regulating centers with ordinances requiring them to post signs stating that they do not provide abortions or contraceptives, and disclosing whether medical professionals are on-site. Except for San Francisco’s, the laws were blocked by courts or softened after centers sued claiming free speech violations. Similar bills in five states floundered. Most legal challenges to “Choose Life” license plates failed, although a North Carolina court said alternate views must be offered.

Some observers say harsh anti-abortion statements from the 2012 elections may also benefit pregnancy centers.

“Do you want some individual politician talking about rape, or some woman who says, ‘I care about you’?” Dr. Schroedel said.

Conservatives like Rick Santorum, during his presidential campaign, and the Texas governor, Rick Perry, have praised pregnancy centers.

Some centers use controversial materials stating that abortion may increase the risk of breast cancer. A brochure issued by Care Net’s national organization, for example, says, “A number of reliable studies have concluded that there is an association between abortion and later development of breast cancer.”

Dr. Otis Brawley, the American Cancer Society’s chief medical officer, who calls himself a “pro-life Catholic,” said studies showing abortion-breast cancer links are “very weak,” while strong studies find no correlation.

Other claims include long-term psychological effects. The Care Net brochure says that “many women experience initial relief,” but that “women should be informed that abortion significantly increases risk for” clinical depression, suicidal thoughts and behavior, post-traumatic stress disorder and other problems. An American Psychological Association report found no increased risk from one abortion.

With largely volunteer staffs and donations from mostly Christian sources, centers usually offer free tests and ultrasounds, services that clinics like Planned Parenthood charge for. They offer advice about baby-rearing or adoption, ask if women are being pressured to abort, and give technical descriptions of abortion and fetal development. Many offer prayer and Bible study.

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After Fiscal Deal, Tax Code May Be Most Progressive Since 1979

WASHINGTON — With 2013 bringing tax increases on the incomes of a small sliver of the richest Americans, the country’s top earners now face a heavier tax burden than at any time since Jimmy Carter was president.

The last-minute deal struck by the departing 112th Congress raised taxes on a handful of the highest-earning Americans, with about 99.3 percent of households experiencing no change in their income taxes. But the Tax Policy Center estimates that the average family in the top 1 percent will pay a federal tax rate of more than 36 percent this year, up from 28 percent in 2008. That is the highest rate since 1979, at least.

By some measures, the tax code might now be the most progressive in a generation, tax economists said, while noting that every American is paying a lower burden currently than they did then. In fact, the total federal tax rate is still vastly lower for the very rich than it was at any point in the 1940s through 1970s. It has risen from historical lows, but is still closer to those lows than where it was in the postwar decades.

“We made the system more progressive by raising rates at the top and leaving them for everyone else,” said Roberton Williams of the Tax Policy Center, a research group based in Washington. “The offsetting issue is that the rich have gotten a lot richer.”

Indeed, over the last three decades the bulk of pretax income gains have gone to the wealthy — and the higher up on the income scale, the bigger the gains, with billionaires outpacing millionaires who outpaced the merely rich. Economists doubted that the tax increases would do much to reverse that trend.

With the recovery failing to improve incomes for millions of average Americans and the country running trillion-dollar deficits, President Obama made “tax fairness” a centerpiece of his re-election campaign. In the heated negotiations with House Speaker John A. Boehner, that translated into the White House’s insistence on tax increases for the top 2 percent of households and a continuation of tax breaks and cuts for a vast number of taxpayers.

Republicans resisted increasing tax rates and aimed for lower revenue targets, arguing that spending was the budget’s primary problem and that no American should see his or her taxes go up too much in such a sluggish economy. But ultimately they relented, and Congress cut a last-minute deal.

“A central promise of my campaign for president was to change the tax code that was too skewed towards the wealthy at the expense of working middle-class Americans,” Mr. Obama said after Congress reached an agreement.

That deal includes a host of tax increases on the rich. It raises the tax rate to 39.6 percent from 35 percent on income above $400,000 for individuals, and $450,000 for couples. The rate on dividends and capital gains for those same taxpayers was bumped up 5 percentage points, to 20 percent. Congress also reinstated limits on the amount households with more than $300,000 in income can deduct. On top of that, two new surcharges — a 3.8 percent tax on investment income and a 0.9 percent tax on regular income — hit those same wealthy households.

As a result of the taxes added in both the deal and the 2010 health care law, which came into effect this year, taxpayers with $1 million in income and up will pay on average $168,000 more in taxes. Millionaires’ share of the overall federal tax burden will climb to 23 percent from 20 percent.

The result is a tax code that squeezes hundreds of billions of dollars more from the very well off — about $600 billion more over 10 years — while leaving the tax burden on everyone else mostly as it was. And the changes come after 30 years of both Republican and Democratic administrations doing the converse: zeroing out federal income taxes for many poor working families while also reducing the tax burden for households on the higher end of the income scale.

“Back at the end of the Carter and beginning of the Reagan administrations, we had a pretty severe income-tax burden for people at a low level of income. It was actually kind of appalling,” said Alan D. Viard, a tax expert at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-of-center research group in Washington. “Policy makers in both parties realized that was bad policy and started whittling away at it” by expanding credits and tinkering with tax rates.

After those changes and the new law, comparing average tax rates for poor households and wealthy households, 2013 might be the most progressive tax code since 1979. But economists cautioned that measuring progressivity is tricky. “It’s not like there is some scientific measure of progressivity all economists agreed upon,” said Leonard E. Burman, a professor of public affairs at Syracuse University. “People look at different numerical measures and they’ve changed in different ways at different income levels.”

Mr. Viard said that over time the code had become markedly more progressive for the poor compared with the middle class. But it arguably did not become much more progressive for the rich compared with the middle class, or the very rich compared with the rich, in part because of the George W. Bush-era tax cuts on investment income.

An anesthesiologist who earns a $500,000 salary subject to payroll and income taxes might pay a higher tax rate than a hedge fund manager making $1 billion subject mostly to capital-gains taxes, for instance.

Economists are also divided on the ultimate effect of those tax increases on the wealthy to income growth and income inequality in the United States. The recession hit the incomes of the rich hard, but they have snapped back much more strongly than those for middle or low-income workers.

“I’d still rather be really rich, even if I’m getting taxed much more than a low-income person” would be, Mr. Williams of the Tax Policy Center added.

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News Analysis: Debt Deal Fails to Allay Fears on U.S. Global Power

WASHINGTON — Two years ago the departing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, declared that “the most significant threat to our national security is our debt.” After a decade in which the nation had chased Al Qaeda and invaded Iraq, Admiral Mullen was saying, in essence, that the biggest enemy was us.

Paula Bronstein/Getty Images

Some analysts worry that the United States will not maintain influence in places like Myanmar.

Now that Congress and President Obama have slipped past the latest budget deadline with a bill that does little to address the country’s long-term debt issues — and by some measures might worsen them — the worries of the national security establishment have been reignited. Most pointedly, military and diplomatic experts wonder whether the United States is at risk of squandering its global influence.

“There’s a sense that we’ve been playing roulette with our position, and this deal does nothing to stop that,” Richard N. Haass, the president of Council on Foreign Relations, said in an interview. His coming book, “Foreign Policy Begins at Home,” is part of a wave of recent literature arguing that America’s reduced global ambitions are linked to its status as a debtor nation.

Vali Nasr, who will soon publish “The Dispensable Nation,” argues that the debt, among other economic woes, has allowed Mr. Obama and other Democrats to justify a retreat from global engagement. “It’s made it far easier to say ‘We can’t do more,’ ” said Mr. Nasr, the dean of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. “And without addressing the debt issues, it will be easier to make that argument for years to come.”

A departing senior diplomat at the State Department who requested anonymity, ruminating on the outcome of the confrontation on the fiscal crisis, said that the failure to attack the long-term debt issues would become another reason “to turn our backs on the Middle East and trim our sails on the new focus on Asia.”

That is the theme that the Chinese — who have an interest in portraying the United States as a declining power unable to manage its economy — are already promoting. “The politicians have chosen to kick the can down the road,” the state-run Xinhua news agency said in a commentary on Wednesday. “The can will never disappear,” it continued, warning that the United States was falling “into an abyss you can never come out of.”

Most evidence suggests that the country’s debt is not an immediate crisis. The deficit is expected to shrink somewhat in coming years, and even after the United States lost its AAA bond rating, foreigners have remained willing to lend the country money at very low interest rates. That is a sign of confidence in the American economy and a recognition that Europe and Asia have problems of their own.

But the aging of the population and the growth of health costs will most likely cause the deficit to grow rapidly in coming decades, meaning that the most difficult choices about taxes and spending are still ahead. Absent decisions on those issues, the government will have fewer resources and be more dependent on foreign lenders — increasingly the Chinese.

“Partly it is about resources,” Mr. Haass said, referring to the national security implications of the deficit. “But it is also about reducing your vulnerability to the machinations of currency markets and potentially hostile central bankers” who choose whether to buy American debt.

“When we appear to be dysfunctional, as we have in recent times, it makes it hard to be the model for the democratic, capitalistic model we say we want to be in the world,” he added.

History suggests that the relationship between debt and American power is a complex one, subject to differing interpretations by both economists and historians. The federal debt exceeded 100 percent of the gross domestic product at the end of World War II, but the postwar period nonetheless marked the beginning of America’s superpower status. The debt fell fairly steadily during the cold war, and it was cut to about a third of gross domestic product by the end of the Nixon administration — even as the country retreated into a post-Vietnam War funk.

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