New tragedy rocks NFL's regularly scheduled world

The games go on.

For the second straight weekend, tragedy rocked the regularly scheduled world of the NFL. It left families, friends, teammates and coaching staffs grieving over yet another senseless loss of life. It also left the league facing questions not only about efforts to safeguard players on the field but whether it's doing enough to help them stay out of harm's way once they step outside the white lines.

In the early-morning hours Saturday in Irving, Texas, 24-year-old Dallas Cowboys nose tackle Josh Brent got behind the wheel of his Mercedes alongside teammate Jerry Brown and sped off, the prelude to a one-car accident that would leave Brown dead at 25 and Brent sitting in jail facing a felony charge of intoxicated manslaughter.

All this happened little more than three years after Brent was sentenced to probation and 60 days in jail in a plea agreement following his drunken driving arrest while playing football at the University of Illinois, where he and Brown were teammates as well.

That it happened just a week after Kansas City linebacker Jovan Belcher shot his girlfriend to death, then drove to the Chiefs' training facility and took his own life with the same gun, raised questions about the league's responsibility to the young men it empowers and enriches — in some cases, almost overnight.

"I don't know that anybody has the answer, to be honest. They're human beings, kids in most of the cases like this, and they're going to make mistakes," said Dan Reeves, who played seven years for the Cowboys before launching an NFL coaching career that included four stops over four decades.

"As a coach, you've got more than 50 players, if you count practice squad guys, that you're trying to keep an eye on. And both the league and the team invest an awful lot of time and money trying to educate them about the opportunities and pitfalls that are set out in front of them. ...

"But no matter what you do, some are going to believe the bad stuff will never happen to them. And teams spend so much time together, they become like families. It's easy to get lulled into thinking you know which ones need a pat on the back and which ones a kick in the behind. Yet this shows we don't always learn the real strengths and weaknesses of some until it's too late. Everybody deals with that knowledge in their own way.

"But if you're going to play," Reeves said finally. "I don't know any other way to honor that person than to play as hard as you can."

The emotional scene that roiled Kansas City in the wake of Belcher's murder-suicide a week earlier shifted to Cincinnati, where the Cowboys arrived Saturday night to complete preparations before Sunday's kickoff against the Bengals.

The team cut short its regular two-hour meeting and made sure counselors were on hand to speak to players afterward. But when owner Jerry Jones spoke with a Fox interviewer outside the locker room shortly before the game, his eyes were rimmed red and he spoke haltingly about Brown.

"Our team loved him. They certainly are conscious of him and want his family to know and have as much of them as they can give. At the same time," he added, "they know that one of the best things they can do for him and his memory is to come to the game today, is go out and play well."

How the NFL responds to this latest tragedy remains to be seen. Earlier this summer, cognizant of both the rising number of domestic violence and DUI incidents involving players, Commissioner Roger Goodell pledged to address both problems.

"We are going to do some things to combat this problem because some of the numbers on DUIs and domestic violence are going up and that disturbs me," he told CBS Sports. "When there's a pattern of mistakes, something has got to change."

In several important ways, player conduct has already improved significantly since Goodell took over from Paul Tagliabue.

In 2006, Goodell's first season, 68 players were arrested for crimes more severe than a traffic violation. Since then, arrests for crimes including domestic violence, drunken driving and gun possession are down 40 percent.

Yet, as Goodell noted, the number of incidents in the last year have climbed at an alarming rate — according to one study, 21 of the league's 32 teams had at least one player charged with domestic violence or sexual assault — and the tragedies involving players on successive weekends has already prompted accusations that the league isn't doing nearly enough.

On Saturday in Kansas City, a dozen members of the Chiefs' organization attended a memorial service for Kasandra Perkins. Among them was general manager Scott Pioli, whom Belcher spoke with in the parking lot of the Chiefs facility to thank before turning the gun on himself. A day later, just as the Chiefs did against the Panthers last Sunday, the Cowboys rallied to win their game against the Bengals.

The team has already canceled its annual Christmas party, scheduled for Monday at Cowboys Stadium, and instead began planning a memorial service for Brown.

"From here on, they're in uncharted waters," Reeves said. "No one can point the best way forward. I was lucky in that sense: We never had to deal with the nightmare of losing a friend and teammate. One thing I'm certain of, though — it's going to haunt some of them for a long time to come."

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A Breakthrough Against Leukemia Using Altered T-Cells

PHILIPSBURG, Pa. — Emma Whitehead has been bounding around the house lately, practicing somersaults and rugby-style tumbles that make her parents wince.

It is hard to believe, but last spring Emma, then 6, was near death from leukemia. She had relapsed twice after chemotherapy, and doctors had run out of options.

Desperate to save her, her parents sought an experimental treatment at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, one that had never before been tried in a child, or in anyone with the type of leukemia Emma had. The experiment, in April, used a disabled form of the AIDS virus to reprogram Emma’s immune system genetically to kill cancer cells.

The treatment very nearly killed her. But she emerged from it cancer-free, and seven months later is still in complete remission. She is the first child and one of the first humans ever in whom new techniques have achieved a long-sought goal — giving a patient’s own immune system the lasting ability to fight cancer.

Emma had been ill with acute lymphoblastic leukemia since 2010, when she was 5, her parents, Kari and Tom, said. She is their only child.

She is among just a dozen patients with advanced leukemia to have received the experimental treatment, which was developed at the University of Pennsylvania. Similar approaches are also being tried at other centers, including the National Cancer Institute and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

“Our goal is to have a cure, but we can’t say that word,” said Dr. Carl June, who leads the research team at the University of Pennsylvania. He hopes the new treatment will eventually replace bone-marrow transplantation, an even more arduous, risky and expensive procedure that is now the last hope when other treatments fail in leukemia and related diseases.

Three adults with chronic leukemia treated at the University of Pennsylvania have also had complete remissions, with no signs of disease; two of them have been well for more than two years, said Dr. David Porter. Four adults improved but did not have full remissions, and one was treated too recently to evaluate. A child improved and then relapsed. In two adults, the treatment did not work at all. The Pennsylvania researchers are presenting their results on Sunday and Monday in Atlanta at a meeting of the American Society of Hematology.

Despite the mixed results, cancer experts not involved with the research say it has tremendous promise, because even in this early phase of testing it has worked in seemingly hopeless cases.

“I think this is a major breakthrough,” said Dr. Ivan Borrello, a cancer expert and associate professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Dr. John Wagner, director of pediatric blood and marrow transplantation at the University of Minnesota, called the Pennsylvania results “phenomenal,” and said they were “what we’ve all been working and hoping for but not seeing to this extent.”

A major drug company, Novartis, is betting on the Penn team, and has committed $20 million to building a research center on the Penn campus to bring the treatment to market.

Hervé Hoppenot, president of Novartis Oncology, called the research “fantastic” and said it had the potential — if the early results hold up — to revolutionize the treatment of leukemia and related blood cancers. Researchers say the same approach, reprogramming the patient’s immune system, may also be used eventually against tumors like breast and prostate cancer.

To perform the treatment, doctors remove millions of the patient’s T-cells — a type of white blood cell — and insert new genes that enable the T-cells to kill cancer cells. The new genes program the T-cells to attack B-cells, a normal part of the immune system that turns malignant in leukemia.

The altered T-cells — called chimeric antigen receptor cells — are then dripped back into the patient’s veins, and if all goes well they multiply like crazy and start destroying the cancer.

The T-cells home in on a protein called CD-19 that is found on the surface of most B-cells, whether they are healthy or malignant.

A sign that the treatment is working is that the patient becomes terribly ill, with raging fevers and chills — a reaction that oncologists call “shake and bake,” Dr. June said. Its medical name is cytokine-release syndrome, or cytokine storm, referring to the natural chemicals that pour out of cells in the immune system as they are being activated, causing fevers and other symptoms. The storm can also flood the lungs and cause perilous drops in blood pressure — effects that nearly killed Emma.

Steroids sometimes ease the reaction, but did not help Emma. Her temperature hit 105. She wound up on a ventilator, unconscious and swollen almost beyond recognition, surrounded by friends and family who had come to say goodbye.

But at the eleventh hour, a battery of blood tests gave the researchers a clue as to what might help save Emma: Her level of one of the cytokines, interleukin-6 or IL-6, had shot up a thousandfold. Doctors had never seen such a spike before and thought it might be what was making her so sick. Dr. June knew that a drug could lower IL-6 — his daughter takes it, for rheumatoid arthritis. It had never been used for a crisis like Emma’s, but there was little to lose. Her oncologist, Dr. Stephan A. Grupp, ordered the drug. The response, he said, was “amazing.”

Within hours, Emma began to stabilize. She woke up a week later, on May 2, the day she turned 7; the intensive-care staff sang “Happy Birthday.”

Since then, the research team has used the same drug, tocilizumab, in several other patients.

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As Recovery Inches Ahead, Banks Face a New Reckoning

The nation’s largest banks are facing a fresh torrent of lawsuits asserting that they sold shoddy mortgage securities that imploded during the financial crisis, potentially adding significantly to the tens of billions of dollars the banks have already paid to settle other cases.

Regulators, prosecutors, investors and insurers have filed dozens of new claims against Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and others, related to more than $1 trillion worth of securities backed by residential mortgages.

Estimates of potential costs from these cases vary widely, but some in the banking industry fear they could reach $300 billion if the institutions lose all of the litigation. Depending on the final price tag, the costs could lower profits and slow the economic recovery by weakening the banks’ ability to lend just as the housing market is showing signs of life.

The banks are battling on three fronts: with prosecutors who accuse them of fraud, with regulators who claim that they duped investors into buying bad mortgage securities, and with investors seeking to force them to buy back the soured loans.

“We are at an all-time high for this mortgage litigation,” said Christopher J. Willis, a lawyer with Ballard Spahr.

Efforts by the banks to limit their losses could depend on the outcome of one of the highest-stakes lawsuits to date — the $200 billion case that the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees the housing twins Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, filed against 17 banks last year, claiming that they duped the mortgage finance giants into buying shaky securities.

Last month, lawyers for some of the nation’s largest banks descended on a federal appeals court in Manhattan to make their case that the agency had waited too long to sue. A favorable ruling could overturn a decision by Judge Denise L. Cote, who is presiding over the litigation and has so far rejected virtually every defense raised by the banks, and would be cheered in bank boardrooms. It could also allow the banks to avoid federal housing regulators’ claims.

At the same time, though, some major banks are hoping to reach a broad settlement with housing agency officials, according to several people with knowledge of the talks. Although the negotiations are at a very tentative stage, the banks are broaching a potential cease-fire.

As the housing market and the nation’s economy slowly recover from the 2008 financial crisis, Wall Street is vulnerable on several fronts, including tighter regulations assembled in the aftermath of the crisis and continuing investigations into possible rigging of a major international interest rate. But the mortgage lawsuits could be the most devastating and expensive, bank analysts say.

“All of Wall Street has essentially refused to deal with the real costs of the litigation that they are up against,” said Christopher Whalen, a senior managing director at Tangent Capital Partners. “The real price tag is terrifying.”

Anticipating painful costs from mortgage litigation, the five major sellers of mortgage-backed securities set aside $22.5 billion as of June 30 just to cushion themselves against demands that they repurchase soured loans from trusts, according to an analysis by Natoma Partners.

But in the most extreme situation, the litigation could empty even more well-stocked reserves and weigh down profits as the banks are forced to pay penance for the subprime housing crisis, according to several senior officials in the industry.

There is no industrywide tally of how much banks have paid since the financial crisis to put the mortgage litigation behind them, but analysts say that future settlements will dwarf the payouts so far. That is because banks, for the most part, have settled only a small fraction of the lawsuits against them.

JPMorgan Chase and Credit Suisse, for example, agreed last month to settle mortgage securities cases with the Securities and Exchange Commission for $417 million, but still face billions of dollars in outstanding claims.

Bank of America is in the most precarious position, analysts say, in part because of its acquisition of the troubled subprime lender Countrywide Financial.

Last year, Bank of America paid $2.5 billion to repurchase troubled mortgages from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and $1.6 billion to Assured Guaranty, which insured the shaky mortgage bonds.

But in October, federal prosecutors in New York accused the bank of perpetrating a fraud through Countrywide by churning out loans at such a fast pace that controls were largely ignored. A settlement in that case could reach well beyond $1 billion because the Justice Department sued the bank under a law that could allow roughly triple the damages incurred by taxpayers.

Bank of America’s attempts to resolve some mortgage litigation with an umbrella settlement have stalled. In June 2011, the bank agreed to pay $8.5 billion to appease investors, including the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Pimco, that lost billions of dollars when the mortgage securities assembled by the bank went bad. But the settlement is in limbo after being challenged by investors. Kathy D. Patrick, the lawyer representing investors, has said she will set her sights on Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo next.

Of the more than $1 trillion in troubled mortgage-backed securities remaining, Bank of America has more than $417 billion from Countrywide alone, according to an analysis of lawsuits and company filings. The bank does not disclose the volume of its mortgage litigation reserves.

“We have resolved many Countrywide mortgage-related matters, established large reserves to address these issues and identified a range of possible losses beyond those reserves, which we believe adequately addresses our exposures,” said Lawrence Grayson, a spokesman for Bank of America.

Adding to the legal fracas, the New York attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, accused Credit Suisse last month of perpetrating an $11.2 billion fraud by deceiving investors into buying shoddy mortgage-backed securities. According to the complaint, the bank dismissed flaws in the loans packaged into securities even while assuring investors that the quality was sound. The bank disputes the claims.

It is the second time that Mr. Schneiderman — who is also co-chairman of the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group, created by President Obama in January — has taken aim at Wall Street for problems related to the subprime mortgage morass. In October, he filed a civil suit in New York State Supreme Court against Bear Stearns & Company, which JPMorgan Chase bought in 2008. The complaint claims that Bear Stearns and its lending unit harmed investors who bought mortgage securities put together from 2005 through 2007. JPMorgan denies the allegations.

Another potentially costly headache for the banks are the demands from a number of private investors who want the banks to buy back securities that violated representations and warranties vouching for the loans.

JPMorgan Chase told investors that as of the second quarter of this year, it was contending with more than $3.5 billion in repurchase demands. In the same quarter, it received more than $1.5 billion in fresh demands. Bank of America reported that as of the second quarter, it was dealing with more than $22 billion in unresolved demands, more than $8 billion of which were received during that quarter.

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Shintaro Ishihara, Right-Wing Japanese Politician, Makes Gains

TOKYO — Shintaro Ishihara has been a rare, flamboyant presence in Japan’s otherwise drab political world for half a century. A novelist turned right-wing firebrand, he has long held celebrity status on the political margins, where he was known for dramatic flourish. He once signed a pact in blood to oppose diplomatic ties with China because of its communist government, and he published a book at the height of Japan’s economic power that lectured his countrymen on the need to end what he considered its postwar servility to the United States.

Now, at 80, Mr. Ishihara is leading a newly formed populist party and has emerged as a contender for prime minister, vowing to turn Japan into a more independent, possibly nuclear-armed nation. While political analysts deem him a long shot, they say the fact that he has gotten this far after decades of pushing what was seen as a fringe agenda is a worrying sign of how desperate this nation is for strong leadership after years of cascading troubles.

With his promises to restore Japan’s battered national pride, Mr. Ishihara has staked out an even more stridently nationalistic position than the current front-runner, Shinzo Abe, the leader of the conservative Liberal Democratic Party, who has called for revising Japan’s pacifist constitution. Analysts worry that if Mr. Ishihara succeeds in his bid to become prime minister, he could weaken relations with the United States, yank Japan to the right and damage ties with China, which is already angered by his almost single-handedly rekindling a territorial dispute over an island chain.

But even in the likely event that Mr. Ishihara loses, they say, his campaign could still have a lasting effect, bringing patriotic populism into the political mainstream of a nation that has shunned such open jingoism since its devastating defeat in World War II.

“This election will be a test of whether Japan is really losing its dovishness,” said Takeshi Sasaki, a politics professor at Gakushuin University in Tokyo. “There is so much irritation at how everything seems to be going wrong, and Japan is losing its pride. Politicians on the right like Ishihara and Abe are trying to fan these flames.”

The rise of the two hard-liners has already contributed to hand-wringing among liberals who are anxious that the foreboding sense that Japan is fast becoming an international has-been has left the Japanese vulnerable to long-suppressed nationalism. Even those who call those fears overblown acknowledge that anti-China feelings, which could be easily exploited, are rising as that country eclipses Japan, builds a formidable military and makes its territorial ambitions clear.

From Mr. Ishihara’s vantage point, those geopolitical realities make now the perfect time for Japan to put him in charge.

“Here I am, the old man who has run amok!” he bellowed to a wave of applause at a recent campaign appearance in front of Shinjuku train station in Tokyo. “I am 80 years old, and I am standing here because I want to break through the indecisive and barren politics that is stifling Japan!”

A tall, bespectacled figure, Mr. Ishihara spent most of his short speech emphasizing what has become the central campaign message of his Japan Restoration Party: offering forceful leadership to end Japan’s long political drift by breaking the grip of bureaucrats and vested interests.

Much of the party’s message, however, has become vintage Ishihara. He goes further than Mr. Abe, calling for an outright scrapping of Japan’s antiwar constitution, written by its postwar American occupiers. He still speaks about ending what he sees as political and cultural subservience to the United States and pledges to resist Chinese territorial appetites, promising to build permanent structures on the disputed islands in a move likely to further antagonize China.

“I cannot allow myself to die until my Japan, which has been made a fool of by China, and seduced as a mistress by the United States, is able to stand up again as a stronger, more beautiful nation,” Mr. Ishihara said last month to reporters, explaining why he resigned after 13 years as Tokyo’s governor to return to national politics. He did so after being asked to lead the fledgling Restoration Party’s slate in this month’s parliamentary election by its founder, the popular mayor of Osaka who did not yet want to run for national office.

So far, polls show that Mr. Ishihara has only limited appeal. His party’s approval ratings are in the low teens, about the same as the unpopular incumbent Democratic Party, but below Mr. Abe’s Liberal Democrats, who poll only slightly better, at around 20 percent. Polls also show that more than half of voters disapprove of Mr. Ishihara and of scrapping the antiwar clause of Japan’s constitution.

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Are Online Degrees as Valuable as Traditional College Diplomas?

Millennials are the first generation to grow up with constant technology and personal computers. That might explain why they see such a value in online education.

A recent poll by Northeastern University showed that 18 to 29 year olds had a more negative view about attending college because of the high cost, and a more positive opinion about online classes than their older counterparts. The survey also showed more than half of the millennials had taken an online course.

Online education is attracting hundreds of thousands of students a year. Perhaps this is why more brick-and-mortar universities are searching for an online identity.

This week Wellesley College announced that it will offer free online classes to anyone with an Internet connection as part of the nonprofit project edX. Earlier this year, Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology teamed up to fund and launch the online platform.

More: Harvard and MIT Want to Educate You for Free

Online education was even the talk in Washington this week when a group of panelists convened to discuss Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC), which is an open source network like edX. These courses are very much like correspondence classes in the early 20th century.

But there are still those universities that only exist in a virtual world and students pay to attend. Are they as beneficial to students as attending a two- or four-year college?

“It depends at what level and what subject,” says Isabelle Frank, dean of Fordham College of Liberal Studies. “In general, fully online degrees are not valued as highly as degrees from brick-and-mortar institutions. This is because online-only universities do not have the faculty quality and interaction that occurs with full-time faculty and secure positions.”

She says that Fordham has online master programs and some online courses, but the model is “that of a small seminar style class with a lot of faculty feedback and involvement.”

Just like a physical college, a quality online education depends on the institution.

For example, students at Arizona State University’s W. P. Carey School of Business take online classes and communicate with other students around the world—something students 25 years ago couldn’t have dreamed of doing.

“This affords the opportunity to learn leadership, team-building and managerial skills by solving problems and coordinating efforts for projects through the process of establishing real-time meetings, coordinating time zones and dealing with potential language issues,” Sher Downing, executive director of online academic services at the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University, said. “This value cannot be mirrored as easily in a traditional classroom, and for many companies with offices located around the world, this is a valuable skill, when the workforce is required to handle these types of situations.”

Downing said that students can save money by taking online classes because they no longer have to commute, live on or near a campus or relocate.

The millennials surveyed by Northeastern University are keen to take online courses. In fact, nine in 10 said online classes should be used as a tool and mixed with other teaching methods. The poll also found that students want flex­i­bility, which is exactly what online colleges offer.

Employers may not yet see an online degree in the same light as a traditional university but that is likely to change in the near future. It may just be that millennials, who don’t want to go in debt for an education like some of their parents did, are just a bit ahead of educators and employers.

Related Stories on TakePart:

• Top Universities Want You to Take Free Online Classes in Your Pajamas

• Military Gives ‘F’ to Online Diplomas

• 2012 List: The Most Expensive Colleges in America

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Suzi Parker is an Arkansas-based political and cultural journalist whose work frequently appears in The Washington Post and The Christian Science Monitor. She is the author of two books. @SuziParker | TakePart.com 

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Cowboy charged after player dies in auto accident

IRVING, Texas (AP) — Dallas Cowboys practice-squad linebacker Jerry Brown was killed in a one-car accident Saturday and teammate Josh Brent was charged with intoxication manslaughter.

Irving police spokesman John Argumaniz said the accident happened about 2:20 a.m. Saturday in the Dallas suburb. Brent was speeding when the vehicle hit a curb and flipped at least once, Argumaniz said.

Argumaniz said the 25-year-old Brown — also Brent's teammate at the University of Illinois for three seasons — was found unresponsive at the scene and pronounced dead at a hospital.

The police spokesman said officers conducted a field sobriety test on Brent and arrested him. The charge was upgraded after Brown was pronounced dead.

"We are deeply saddened by the news of this accident and the passing of Jerry Brown," Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said in a statement. "At this time, our hearts and prayers and deepest sympathies are with the members of Jerry's family and all of those who knew him and loved him."

The team said in a statement that Brent was not on the team flight to Cincinnati, where the Cowboys play the Bengals on Sunday.

Argumaniz said Brent was being held without bond. Brent is named as Joshua Price-Brent in the police news release. Argumaniz also said Brent missed a 10 a.m. Saturday booking session with a judge because he was intoxicated. He did not know if Brent had an attorney.

Police received 911 calls from motorists who saw the upside-down vehicle but they did not immediately have any eyewitnesses to the wreck. Argumaniz said.

He said when officers arrived at the scene on a state highway service road, Brent was dragging Brown from the vehicle, a Mercedes, which was on fire. Officers quickly put out the small blaze, he said.

Argumaniz wasn't sure if the vehicle was a car or SUV and said it wasn't known how fast the vehicle was travelling. The road has a 45 mph limit.

"I can say investigators are certain they were travelling well above the posted speed limit," Argumaniz said.

Before he was taken to the jail, Brent went to a hospital for a blood draw for alcohol testing and also received treatment for some minor scrapes.

Argumaniz said Brent identified himself to officers as a Cowboys player.

Brent was arrested in February 2009 near the Illinois campus for driving under the influence, driving on a suspended license and speeding, according to Champaign County, Ill., court records.

In June 2009, Brent pleaded guilty to DUI and was sentenced to 60 days in jail, two years of probation, 200 hours of community service and a fine of about $2,000. As part of his plea deal, prosecutors dropped one count of aggravated DUI/no valid driver's license. Brent successfully completed his probation in July 2011, court records show.

The accident happened a week after another NFL tragedy. Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher killed his girlfriend and then committed suicide Dec. 1.

Brent has played in all 12 games this season and has been a bigger presence on defense with starting nose guard Jay Ratliff battling injuries. He made his first career start in the season opener against the New York Giants and has 35 tackles and 1 1/2 sacks.

The Cowboys signed Brown to their practice squad Oct. 24, but he hasn't been on the active roster. He was released from the Indianapolis Colts' practice squad Oct. 20.

"On behalf of the entire Colts family, our sincerest condolences go out to Jerry's family and friends, Colts general manager Ryan Grigson said in a statement. "He was a good teammate that was well liked by all. Today's tragic news is just another reminder of how fragile life is and how everyday given is a gift."

Brown played for San Antonio in the Arena Football League this year. In 2011, he played for Jacksonville in the AFL and the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in the Canadian Football League.

He was born and grew up in St. Louis, attending Vashon High School.

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Associated Press Writers Michael Graczyk in Houston and Sara Burnett in Chicago contributed to this report.

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The Lede Blog: Updates on Protests in Egypt

“@ssaadani: محمد محمود في الإتحادية. http://t.co/cTfsNeKB”my favorite Mohamed Mahmoud graffiti made it to presidential palace

— Abdel-Rahman Hussein (@ElFoulio) 7 Dec 12

The Lede is following the political crisis in Egypt, where supporters and opponents of President Mohamed Morsi rallied on Friday.

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iPad mini fails to draw crowds for China launch

Either Apple’s (AAPL) reservation-only system works better than anyone could have expected, or consumers in China have little interest in the company’s new iPad mini. Apple’s tiny tablet launched on schedule on Friday but according to IDG News Service, the turnout for Apple’s new slate was minimal. At Apple’s new flagship store in the well-trafficked Wangfujing district in Beijing, for example, turnout was “nearly nonexistent” according to the report, with no lines forming at all on Friday.

We’ve seen Apple rack up big numbers despite small launch-day turnouts in the past, but Apple’s reservation system does not appear to be responsible for the seemingly slow launch — according to IDG, many consumers who did turn up at Apple stores looking to purchase an iPad mini were unable to do so because they weren’t even aware that the reservation-only system existed.

Apple’s iPhone 5, which will presumably draw more of a crowd, launches in China next Friday.

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The New Old Age Blog: A Son Lost, a Mother Found

My friend Yvonne was already at the front door when I woke, so at first I didn’t realize that my mother was missing.

It was less than a week after my son Spencer died. Since that day, a constant stream of friends had been coming and going, bringing casseroles and soup, love, support and chatter. Mom hated it.

My 94-year-old mother, who has vascular dementia, has been living in my home in upstate New York for the past few years. Like many with dementia, mom is courteous but, underneath, irascible. Pride defines her, especially pride in her Phi Beta Kappa intellect. She hates to be confronted with how she has become, as she calls it, “stupid.”

The parade of strangers confused her. She had to be polite, field solicitous questions, endure mundane comments. She could not remember what was going on or why people were there. It must have been stressful and annoying.

That night, like every night since the state troopers brought the news, I woke hourly, tumbling in panic. As if it were not too late to save my son. Mom knew something was wrong, but she could not remember what. As I overslept that morning, she must have decided enough was enough. She was going home.

In a cold sky, the sun blazed over tall pines. As I opened the door, the dogs raced out to greet Yvonne and her two housecleaners. Yvonne often brags about her cleaning duo. They were her gift to me. They were going to clean my house before the funeral reception, which was scheduled for later that week. This was a very big gift because, like my mother before me, I am a very bad housekeeper.

Mom’s door was shut. I cautioned the housecleaners to avoid her room as I showed them around. Yvonne went to the kitchen to listen to the 37 unheard messages on my answering machine; the housecleaners went out to their van to get their instruments of dirt removal.

I ducked into Mom’s room to warn her about the upcoming noise. The bed was unmade; the floor was littered with crumpled tissues; the room was empty.

Normally, I would have freaked out right then. I knew Mom was not in the house, because I had just shown the whole house to the cleaners. Although Mom doesn’t wander like some dementia patients, she does on occasion run away. But I could not muster a shred of anxiety.

“Yvonne,” I called, “did you see my mother outside?”

Yvonne popped her head into the living room, eyebrows raised.“Outside? No!” She was alarmed. “Is she missing?”

“Yeah,” I said wearily, “I’ll look.” I stepped out onto the front porch, tightening the belt of my bathrobe and turning up the collar. Maybe she had walked off into the woods. The dogs danced around my legs, wanting breakfast.

I had no space left in my body to care. Either we would find her, or we would not. Either she was alive, or she was not. My child was gone. How could I care about anything ever again?

Then I saw my car was missing. My mouth fell open and my eyeballs rolled up to the right, gazing blindly at the abandoned bird’s nest on top of the porch light: What had I done with the keys?

Mom likes to run away in the car when she is angry. She used to do it a lot when my father was still alive — every time they fought. Since Mom took off in my car almost a year ago, after we had had a fight, I’d kept the keys hidden. Except for this week; this week, I had forgotten.

I was reverting to old habits. I had left the doors unlocked and the keys in the cupholder next to the driver’s seat. Exactly like Mom used to do.

“Uh-oh,” I said aloud. Mom was still capable of driving, even though she did not know where she was going. I just really, really hoped that she didn’t hurt anybody on the road. I pulled out my cellphone, about to call the police.

“Celia!” Yvonne shouted from the kitchen. She hurried up behind me, excited. “They found your mother. There are two messages on your machine.”

At that very moment, Mom was holed up at the College Diner in New Paltz, a 20-minute drive over the mountain, through the fields, left over the Wallkill River and away down Main Street.

Yvonne called the diner. They promised to keep the car keys until someone arrived. By that time, Yvonne had to go to work. She drove my friend Elizabeth to the diner, and Elizabeth drove Mom home in my car.

Half an hour later, they walked in the front door. Mom’s cheeks were rouged by the chill air and her eyes sparkled, her white hair riffing with static electricity. “Hello, hello,” she sang out. “Here we are.” She was wearing the flannel nightgown and robe I had dressed her in the night before. It was covered by her oversized purple parka, and her bare feet were shoved into sneakers.

I started laughing as soon as I saw her. I couldn’t help it. Elizabeth and Mom started laughing too. “You had a big adventure,” I said, hugging them both. “How are you?”

“I’m just marvelous,” said my mother. Mom always feels great after doing something rakish. We settled her on the sofa with her feet on the ottoman. By the time I got her blanket tucked in around her shoulders, she had fallen asleep.

Elizabeth couldn’t stop laughing as she described the scene. “Your mother was holding court in this big booth. She was sitting there in her nightgown and her parka, talking to everybody, with this plate of toast and coffee and, like, three of the staff hovering around her.”

The waitress said Mom seemed “a little disoriented” when she got there. Mom said she was meeting a friend for breakfast, but since she was wearing a nightgown and didn’t know whom she was meeting or where she lived, the staff thought there might be a problem. They convinced Mom to let them look in the glove compartment of the car, where they found my name and number.

It was then that I realized I was laughing – something I’d thought I would never be able to do again. “Elizabeth, Elizabeth, I’m laughing,” I said.

“Ha, ha, ha,” laughed Elizabeth, holding her belly.

“Ha, ha, ha,” I laughed, rolling on the floor.

And she who gave me life, who had suffered the death of my child and the extinction of her own intellect, snoozed on: oblivious, jubilant, still herself, still mine.

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Wider Chaos Feared as Syrian Rebels and Kurds Clash

Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

Syrian Kurds in Ras al-Ain are seeking refuge across the border in Ceylanpinar, Turkey.

CEYLANPINAR, Turkey — In plain view of the patrons at an outdoor cafe here in this border town, the convoy of gun trucks waving the flag of the Syrian rebels whizzed through the Syrian village of Ras al-Ain. They had not come to fight their primary enemy, the soldiers of Bashar al-Assad’s government. They had rushed in to battle the ethnic Kurds.

The confrontation spoke not only to the violence that has enveloped Syria, but also to what awaits if the government falls. The fear — already materializing in these hills — is that Syria’s ethnic groups will take up arms against one another in a bloody, post-Assad contest for power.

The Kurdish militias in northern Syria had hoped to stay out of the civil war raging in Syria. They were focused on preparing to secure an autonomous enclave for themselves within Syria should the rebels succeed in toppling the government. But slowly, inexorably, they have been dragged into the fighting and now have one goal in mind, their autonomy, which also means the balkanization of the state.

“We want to have a Kurdish nation,” said Divly Fadal Ali, 18, who fled the fighting and was recently staying in a local community center here for Kurdish refugees. “We want our own schools, our own hospitals. We want the government to admit our existence. We want recognition of our Kurdish identity.”

These skirmishes between Kurds and Arabs take on a darker meaning for Syria as the rebels appear each day to gain momentum, and the government appears less and less able to restore control. The rebels have taken over military bases, laid siege to Damascus and forced the shutdown of the airport.

But the rebels are largely Sunni Arabs, and the most effective among them are extremists aligned with Al Qaeda, a prospect that worries not only the West, but the Christians, Shiites, Druze — and Kurds — of Syria.

The fighting in Ras al-Ain, which came after a fierce battle between rebel and government forces last month, demonstrated the complexity of a bloody civil war that has already claimed more than 40,000 lives. Like the sectarian battles in Iraq after the American invasion, the recent violence between Arabs and Kurds in Syria indicates the further unraveling of a society whose mix of sects, identities and traditions were held together by the yoke of a dictator.

Analysts fear this combustible environment could presage a bloody ethnic and sectarian conflict that will resonate far beyond Syria’s borders, especially if it involves the Kurds. There is concern that Iraq’s Kurds, who are already training Syrian Kurds to fight, may jump into the Syria fight to protect their ethnic brethren. That could also pull in Turkey, which fears that an autonomous Kurdish region in Syria would become a haven for Kurdish militants to carry out cross-border attacks in the Kurdish areas in southeastern Turkey.

“The fear that an Arab-Kurdish confrontation has been ignited might lead the Kurds to ask for additional security forces to protect their lands,” said Maria Fantappie, Iraq analyst at the International Crisis Group, who is helping to prepare a report on the Syrian Kurds.

She said that the Syrian Kurdish fighters being trained in northern Iraq were on standby and could be sent to Syria, which would escalate the situation.

Before the uprising in Syria, the Kurds in Ras al-Ain lived peacefully with their Arab neighbors, they say. But the war has shredded those old bonds just as surely as the revolutions in the region have prompted the Kurds to dream of an independent nation uniting the Kurds in Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Iran, and put their own stamp on the great contest for power under way in the Middle East.

“Our time has come after so much suffering and persecution,” said Barham Salih, the former prime minister of Iraq’s regional Kurdish government. “The 20th century was cruel to the Kurds. Our rights, identity and culture were brutally suppressed.”

Sebnem Arsu contributed reporting from Ceylanpinar, and an employee of The New York Times contributed reporting from Ras al-Ain, Syria.

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