Bills defense out to prove against high-scoring Lions that it's better than its dud vs. RamsBEIRUT (AP) — Insurgents' stunning march across Syria gained speed on Saturday with news that they had reached the suburbs of the capital and with the government forced to deny rumors that President Bashar Assad had fled the country. The rebels' moves around Damascus, reported by an opposition war monitor and a rebel commander, came after the Syrian army withdrew from much of southern part of the country, leaving more areas, including several provincial capitals, under the control of opposition fighters. The advances in the past week were among the largest in recent years by opposition factions, led by a group that has its origins in al-Qaida and is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the United Nations. In their push to overthrow Assad's government, the insurgents, led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group, or HTS, have met little resistance from the Syrian army. For the first time in the country's long-running civil war, the government now has control of only four of 14 provincial capitals: Damascus, Homs, Latakia and Tartus. The U.N.’s special envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, on Saturday called for urgent talks in Geneva to ensure an “orderly political transition.” Speaking to reporters at the annual Doha Forum in Qatar, he said the situation in Syria was changing by the minute. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, whose country is Assad's chief international backer, said he feels “sorry for the Syrian people.” In Damascus, people rushed to stock up on supplies. Thousands went to Syria's border with Lebanon, trying to leave the country. Many shops in the capital were shuttered, a resident told The Associated Press, and those still open ran out of staples such as sugar. Some were selling items at three times the normal price. “The situation is very strange. We are not used to that,” the resident said, insisting on anonymity, fearing retributions. “People are worried whether there will be a battle (in Damascus) or not.” It was the first time that opposition forces reached the outskirts of Damascus since 2018, when Syrian troops recaptured the area following a yearslong siege. The U.N. said it was moving noncritical staff outside the country as a precaution. Assad's status Syria’s state media denied social media rumors that Assad left the country, saying he is performing his duties in Damascus. He has had little, if any, help from his allies. Russia, is busy with its war in Ukraine . Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which at one point sent thousands of fighters to shore up Assad's forces, has been weakened by a yearlong conflict with Israel. Iran has seen its proxies across the region degraded by regular Israeli airstrikes. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday posted on social media that that the United States should avoid engaging militarily in Syria. Pedersen said a date for talks in Geneva on the implementation a U.N. resolution, adopted in 2015, and calling for a Syrian-led political process, would be announced later. The resolution calls for the establishment of a transitional governing body, followed by the drafting of a new constitution and ending with U.N.-supervised elections. Later Saturday, foreign ministers and senior diplomats from eight key countries, including Saudi Arabia, Russia, Egypt, Turkey and Iran, along with Pederson, gathered on the sidelines of the Doha Summit to discuss the situation in Syria. No details were immediately available. The insurgents' march Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, said insurgents were in the Damascus suburbs of Maadamiyah, Jaramana and Daraya. Opposition fighters were marching toward the Damascus suburb of Harasta, he added. A commander with the insurgents, Hassan Abdul-Ghani, posted on the Telegram messaging app that opposition forces had begun the “final stage” of their offensive by encircling Damascus. HTS controls much of northwest Syria and in 2017 set up a “salvation government” to run day-to-day affairs in the region. In recent years, HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani has sought to remake the group’s image, cutting ties with al-Qaida, ditching hard-line officials and vowing to embrace pluralism and religious tolerance. Syria’s military, meanwhile, sent large numbers of reinforcements to defend the key central city of Homs, Syria’s third largest, as insurgents approached its outskirts. The shock offensive began Nov. 27, during which gunmen captured the northern city of Aleppo, Syria’s largest, and the central city of Hama , the country’s fourth largest city. Opposition activists said Saturday that a day earlier, insurgents entered Palmyra, which is home to invaluable archaeological sites had been in government hands since being taken from the Islamic State group in 2017. To the south, Syrian troops left much of the province of Quneitra including the main Baath City, activists said. Syrian Observatory said government troops have withdrawn from much of the two southern provinces and are sending reinforcements to Homs, where a battle loomed. If the insurgents capture Homs, they would cut the link between Damascus, Assad’s seat of power, and the coastal region where the president enjoys wide support. The Syrian army said in a statement that it carried out redeployment and repositioning in Sweida and Daraa after its checkpoints came under attack by “terrorists." The army said it was setting up a “strong and coherent defensive and security belt in the area,” apparently to defend Damascus from the south. The Syrian government has referred to opposition gunmen as terrorists since conflict broke out in March 2011. Diplomacy in Doha The foreign ministers of Iran, Russia and Turkey, meeting in Qatar, called for an end to the hostilities. Turkey is a main backer of the rebels. Qatar's top diplomat, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, criticized Assad for failing to take advantage of the lull in fighting in recent years to address the country’s underlying problems. “Assad didn’t seize this opportunity to start engaging and restoring his relationship with his people,” he said. Sheikh Mohammed said he was surprised by how quickly the rebels have advanced and said there is a real threat to Syria’s “territorial integrity.” He said the war could “damage and destroy what is left if there is no sense of urgency” to start a political process. ____ Karam reported from London. Associated Press writers Albert Aji in Damascus, Syria and Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad contributed to this report. Bassem Mroue And Zeina Karam, The Associated Press
Jimmy Kimmel reveals the Christmas tradition he hopes his kids have outgrown: 'We resent it!'Oregon already secured its spot in the Big Ten championship game, but the top-ranked Ducks have plenty to play for in their regular-season finale. Revenge may be on Oregon's mind when the Ducks host longtime rival Washington on Saturday in Eugene, Ore. Oregon (11-0, 8-0 Big Ten) would perhaps be closing in on its second straight College Football Playoff appearance had the Huskies (6-5, 4-4) not dealt the Ducks their only two losses last season. Washington edged Oregon 36-33 in Seattle last October, then slipped past the Ducks 34-31 in the Pac-12 title game to secure a playoff spot for the second time in school history. Both teams joined the Big Ten in August. Third-year Oregon head coach Dan Lanning is 33-5 leading the Ducks. But he remains winless against the Huskies (0-3). Oregon plots to sprint out of its late-season bye after using time to heal injuries, but Lanning doesn't believe the break should stall the flow of an undefeated season. "It's always about what we're able to do on the field. Motivation is overrated," Lanning said. "Our guys have to want to go out there and execute at a really high level. Since the beginning of the season we've talked about playing our best football at the end of November. We're there. This is our opportunity to go play our best football against a good team." The Ducks could have star wide receiver Tez Johnson back from a shoulder injury this week. Johnson has missed the past two games. That would be good news for quarterback Dillon Gabriel, who would regain the team's leader in receptions (64), receiving yards (649) and receiving touchdowns (eight). Washington, under first-year head coach Jedd Fisch, is 63-48-5 all-time against Oregon but is just 1-12-1 when facing the No. 1-ranked team in the country. The Huskies are led on offense by running back Jonah Coleman, who has racked up 1,008 yards and nine scores on the ground this season. Coleman averages 5.8 yards per carry and has 36 runs of at least 10 yards. In the passing game, wide receiver Denzel Boston is tied for the Big Ten lead with nine in touchdown catches and ranks sixth in the conference with 764 receiving yards. Whom Boston will be catching passes from is not yet known, however. Washington has not revealed whether Will Rogers or Demond Williams Jr. will start at quarterback. Rogers has started every game for the Huskies but was benched in favor of Williams two weeks ago after throwing a pair of interceptions in a 31-19 win over UCLA. Fisch said he has a "good idea" of how he will use his quarterbacks on Saturday, and while he wouldn't go as far as to name a starter, he did say Rogers responded well in practices last week. "On the same token, Demond's energy and Demond's confidence showed up. His ability to jump right in and feel really good about leading the group whenever it was his turn... he did a really nice job there as well," Fisch told Seattle Sports. "I think both guys responded well to the week of practice, and now, really, it's important for us that the guy we believe will start the game gets a significant amount of reps in practice week. But as you know, we're not afraid to play two quarterbacks." --Field Level MediaWinless in rivalry, Dan Lanning, No. 1 Oregon determined to tame HuskiesAre there things you wish you could remember without fail yet somehow cannot, like extremely important passwords or that item you need to buy? And do you often wonder why your brain instead still stores the lyrics to a decades-old tune you haven’t heard since you were 12, but a few opening notes are enough to recall the whole song, word for word and in rhythm? When Norwegian girl group M2M announced their comeback, eagle-eyed fans pointed out that the duo had posted the video on Sep 22, a Sunday, at 9.25am local time. These random numbers wouldn’t mean anything to non-fans, but I immediately knew the significance. Without warning, I heard the opening lyrics to the second verse of The Day You Went Away in my head: “I remember date and time, September 22nd Sunday twenty-five after nine.” That was all it took to trigger a memory I never knew still existed. It had probably been 20 years since I last listened to the band's teenybopper tunes. I looked up the song, hit play, and surprised myself by singing the entire darn thing. Accurately. While this phenomenon may be responsible for many an aggrieved parent or partner when we can’t remember the crucial things despite easily calling up seemingly trivial facts, it is apparently rather common, with research spanning from neuroscience to psychology fields. RECALLING ENTIRE SONGS FROM A FEW NOTES It’s so common that a game is based on this very premise. In Heardle, a spinoff from internet sensation Wordle, players identify a song from the opening few seconds. The game taps into the “gating paradigm” – a recognition process that identifies a well-known melody as it unfolds progressively. The more familiar the melody, the fewer notes required for recognition, according to a 2003 study by researchers from the University of Montreal. And it seems the existence of a melody matters, the way scents bring to mind a specific memory and its accompanying emotions. Thinking of lyrics as words without a tune might make recalling the song harder. Case in point: You probably know a fully grown adult who still sings the alphabet song when they need to alphabetise. BUT WHY DO WE RECALL THESE SONGS SO EFFORTLESSLY? If you asked how I still remembered the lyrics to M2M's Pretty Boy, my best answer would be: I just do. And that’s not entirely wrong. According to an associate professor of music psychology from Durham University, a song may become lodged in our “implicit memory” if we’ve sung or heard it sung many times before. So when we hear it again decades later, we are tapping on “procedural memory” to recall the lyrics, says Kelly Jakubowski in The Conversation. This type of long-term memory allows you to perform actions without consciously recalling how to do them. For instance, brushing your teeth, riding a bicycle, tying your shoelaces. How do you know how to do those things? You just do. THE "REMINISCENCE BUMP" AND WHY IT MATTERS But unlike brushing your teeth, music is usually associated with emotion, and hence, so is the ability to recall lyrics from aeons ago. Against your best wishes, you might still remember the lyrics to that ballad you looped countless times during a period of intense infatuation. What’s worth noting, however, is the “reminiscence bump” in autobiographical memory. This describes the phenomenon where people tend to disproportionately recall memories from when they were 10 to 30 years old. As several explanations have suggested, this life period contains many “novel and self-defining experiences, which may be encoded in the brain more deeply and retrieved more easily”, says Jakubowski. A study done by Jakubowski and her colleagues among nearly 500 participants aged 18 to 82 found that music which was in the charts during a person’s adolescence was not only rated as “more familiar”, but also associated with more autobiographical memories. The findings also suggested that songs from our adolescence can become closely entangled with past memories, “even if we don’t personally value the music”. So you may not have enjoyed a certain overplayed emo song when you were, say, 14 years old. But a breakup at 14 could have fundamentally shaped your life that the song is now invariably linked with that experience and its associated emotions in your subconscious mind. IS THIS ALSO WHY WE QUOTE ICONIC TV AND MOVIE LINES? Sure, if you’ve rewatched a beloved TV episode or movie multiple times, you will likely be able to memorise its lines. But it is the objectively iconic quotes – the ones that spawn a whole cult following outside the TV or movie fandom – that seem to imply there are factors making certain quotes more memorable than others. In fact, a 2012 study by Cornell University researchers – You Had Me At Hello: How Phrasing Affects Memorability – suggests that memorable quotes tend to share two properties. The first is “lexical distinctiveness”, in which memorable quotes combine uncommon word choices with familiar sentence patterns. The second is that memorable quotes tend to be “more general”, making them easy to apply in a wide variety of contexts. In my experience, quotable lines also tend to be reinforced by the TV show or movie’s enduring impact on pop culture, like a gift that keeps on giving. A line that instantly comes to mind from a movie that needs no mention is, "On Wednesdays, we wear pink." Thanks to another iconic scene from the movie, the date Oct 3 has also been widely recognised as Mean Girls Day. “On October 3rd, he asked me what day it was,” says protagonist Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan) in a voiceover, referring to her crush Aaron Samuels (Jonathan Bennett). “It’s October 3rd,” she tells him in the scene. But my personal favourite is the chef's kiss of an answer by Miss Rhode Island Cheryl Frasier’s (Heather Burns) in Miss Congeniality when asked to describe the perfect date: "I'd have to say April 25th because it’s not too hot, not too cold. All you need is a light jacket." Even though it’s been over a decade since I last watched those movies, I didn’t have to fact-check that I got the quotes right. I know I did.
PARIS (AP) — France punished an undisciplined Argentina by 37-23 on Friday and swept its three autumn rugby tests. First-half tries from lock Thibaud Flament and right winger Gabin Villière, a penalty try and Thomas Ramos’ unerring goalkicking put Les Tricolores out of reach by halftime at 30-9 up. Left winger Louis Bielle-Biarrey added France’s fourth try in the second half while Argentina rallied with tries by prop Thomas Gallo and replacement hooker Ignacio Ruiz to trail 37-23 with 10 minutes left, but ran out of time at Stade de France. Fabien Galthié’s side scored freely in the three tests, routing Japan 52-12 and edging New Zealand 30-29 . “I would like to praise all the players, for me there are only positives to take,” the coach said. “They are all winners for me.” He also warned players who complained about being left out, after flyhalf Matthieu Jalibert reportedly asked to be left out of the New Zealand game because he did not want to be a reserve . “It’s very much a team sport. The squad is bigger than any individual,” Galthié said. “Players are here to strengthen the squad. Let there be no confusion about that.” RELATED COVERAGE Penalty-bitten Ireland defends unbeaten record against Fiji in Dublin Wing ‘wizard’ Harry Potter to play for Australia’s rugby team. He knows the puns are coming Etzebeth to start for Springboks as late replacement for Kleyn Felipe Contepomi’s Pumas didn’t carry their Rugby Championship form into the autumn. They crushed Italy 57-17 and just failed to beat Ireland for the first time. The Pumas beat France in July in Buenos Aires but they have not won in France for 10 years. Despite an early harsh-looking yellow card to captain Julian Montoya for twisting the leg of Jean-Baptiste Gros, who had to leave the game, Argentina was in the contest at 13-9 down after 33 minutes. Then came a dramstic seven minutes. Villiere smashed over from an offload by fullback Leo Barre, and consecutive chipped kicks by Antoine Dupont and Ramos set up Bielle-Biarrey to score until Pumas flanker Juan Martin Gonzalez batted the ball away, but forward. France received a penalty try and Gonzalez was yellow-carded. Right on halftime, Ramos’ fifth successful goalkick made it a commanding 30-9 and swept him past Thierry Lacroix, Morgan Parra and Dimitri Yachvili on France’s all-time list of highest point-scorers. Ramos’ next goalkick, perhaps in the Six Nations, will lift him past Christophe Lamaison’s 380 points with only Frederic Michalak’s 436 higher. The second half was better from Argentina and an attacking lineout led to Gallo’s try, which flyhalf Tomas Albornoz converted. Pumas hopes of a comeback were dashed moments later when Bielle-Biarrey chased down his own kick in the left corner for tries in every test this autumn. Both kickers were perfect off the tee, with Ramos nailing six for 15 points and Albornoz five for 13 points. “It’s one of our strengths having players who can perform in different positions,” said Ramos, who has converted from fullback into a slick flyhalf without losing any of his kicking accuracy. France had one last attack and thought it scored another try, but replacement center Emilien Gailleton’s effort down the left was ruled out for a knock-on in the buildup. “Three matches, three wins, and we finished things off here in front of our fans. What more could you ask for?” posed flanker Charles Ollivon, who made 16 tackles. “We knew Argentina would be aggressive, they seem to be even more so when they come to play here. We faced up to it.” ___ AP rugby: https://apnews.com/hub/rugby
Democrat Bob Casey concedes to Republican David McCormick in Pennsylvania Senate contest