Cowboys beat Bucs, improve playoff hopes

Romo throws for 3 TDs, runs for another in first half of 31-15 victory

Brian Blanco / AP

Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo throws a pass over Buccaneers middle linebacker Mason Foster during the second quarter Saturday night.

updated 12:41 a.m. ET Dec. 18, 2011

TAMPA, Fla. - Tony Romo made it look easy, shredding Tampa Bay's secondary at will and helping the Dallas Cowboys get back on track in the NFC East.

"This was an important game," Romo said after throwing for three touchdowns and running for a fourth first-half score Saturday night to lead the first-place Cowboys to a 31-15 rout of the struggling Buccaneers.

"Really the playoffs started for us; that's the way we approached it. Guys came out with great energy and it was a great week of practice. We just had to go forward."

Dallas stopped a two-game losing streak in which it blew fourth-quarter leads to allow a seemingly solid grip on the division lead slip away.

The victory gave the Cowboys (8-6) a half-game lead over New York. Although the Giants hold a tiebreaker advantage after beating Dallas 37-34 last week, the Cowboys can claim the division title and host a playoff game by finishing with wins the next two weeks over Philadelphia at home and the Giants on the road.

"I think it showed our character, our resolve, what we're made of," Dallas linebacker Keith Brooking said. "It was obviously doom and gloom around Valley Ranch for the past couple of weeks ? kind of the world was caving in on us. But we just kept fighting and kept plugging away, and we still control our own destiny."

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The Bucs (4-10), meanwhile, lost for the eighth straight time and played a miserable first half that certainly didn't do anything to help coach Raheem Morris make a case for keeping his job.

Romo threw a pair of 8-yard TD passes to Miles Austin and Dez Bryant in the first quarter, then finished a seven-play, 89-yard drive with a 9-yarder to Laurent Robinson to make it 21-0 with just under 5 minutes remaining in the second quarter. Romo increased the lead to 28 points on a quarterback sneak in the closing seconds of the opening half.

"I thought he just had a good feel for what we were doing against what they were doing," Cowboys coach Jason Garrett said. "I thought he got back quickly and got the ball out of his hands, and when he had to move and make plays, he was able to do that too. He made a lot of big plays and not many bad plays."

Tampa Bay managed just one first down and was outgained 279 yards to 55 in the first two quarters, yet found a way to make it more interesting in the second half.

The Bucs, who had yielded 69 consecutive points dating to the second quarter of the previous week's 41-14 loss at Jacksonville, finally got on the scoreboard in the third quarter when rookie Adrian Clayborn sacked Romo from behind, forcing a fumble that linebacker Dekoda Watson returned 4 yards for a TD for a much-needed spark.

Josh Freeman's 13-yard TD pass to Dezmon Briscoe and a two-point conversion throw to Kellen Winslow cut it to 31-15 heading into the final quarter.

The Cowboys have led in the fourth quarter in five of their six losses, however there wouldn't be a late collapse this time. Tampa Bay turned the ball over on downs twice in the last 6 minutes, and Sammy Morris picked up a first down inside the Bucs 10 to give the Cowboys an opportunity to run out the clock.

"Too little, too late," Morris said about Tampa Bay's comeback. "Not enough ... at the beginning. You can't dig holes like that for yourself."

Austin's TD midway through the first quarter was set up by Tampa Bay's NFL-leading 32nd turnover, a fumble by Freeman on the fifth play of the game.

The Tampa Bay quarterback scrambled 25 yards on third-and-5 to march the Bucs near midfield, but the opening possession of the night came to an abrupt halt on the next play when Freeman took off again for a 7-yard gain and was stripped of the ball at the Cowboys 44.

Linebacker Bradie James recovered and it took Romo seven plays to get Dallas in the end zone for the first time. The Cowboys marched 69 yards in 10 plays on their next possession, with Romo finishing the drive by finding a wide-open Bryant in the back of the end zone to make it 14-0.

In three career games against Tampa Bay ? all lopsided victories ? Romo has thrown for 908 yards, 11 touchdowns and no interceptions. He was 23 of 30 for 249 yards and was sacked twice Saturday night.

"I was just finding guys who were open and the guys do the rest," Romo said. "I thought the offense played good as a whole."

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Cowboys beat Bucs, improve playoff hopes

Tony Romo threw for three touchdowns and ran for a fourth score Saturday night, helping the Dallas Cowboys stop a two-game losing streak with a 31-15 victory over the struggling Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Source: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/45710883/ns/sports-nfl/

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9 states win early education grant

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Nine states won a collective $500 million Friday from the federal government to help make pre-K and other early learning programs more accessible and better capable of narrowing the achievement gap between those who start kindergarten without any formal schooling and those who do.

California, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island and Washington state were announced as winners at the White House.

"Nothing is more important than getting our babies off to a good start," said Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

The money to aid the nation's youngest learners is part of the administration's cornerstone education initiative ? the "Race to the Top" grant competition. It has states competing for federal dollars to create programs intended to make schools more effective in exchange for education initiatives it favors. Last year, it handed out $4 billion in similar grants focused on K-12 education.

The goal of this competition is to get more children from birth to age 5 ready for kindergarten. Thirty-five states along with the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico applied for the chance to win between about $50 million to $100 million apiece in prize money.

The winnings are to help build statewide systems that affect all early learning programs, including child care, Head Start centers and public or private preschools.

Billions are spent annually in America on early education programs, but the quality and availability of those programs varies greatly. Roughly half of all 3-year-olds and about a quarter of 4-year-olds do not attend preschool, said Steve Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University.

Kids who attend quality early education programs have been shown to do better in school, be less likely to spend time in prison later and to make more money as adults. But children from low-income families who start kindergarten without any schooling are estimated to start school 18 months behind their peers, a gap that is extremely difficult to overcome.

Sharon Lynn Kagan, co-director of the National Center for Children and Families at Columbia University, said during a conference call with reporters that the contest has helped jumpstart what she describes as one of the most exciting times in early education in 40 years.

It's like "an alarm has gone off and finally everyone is waking up to what the research is showing for a very, very long time about the importance of intervening with very high quality programs for all young children," she said.

To win, states were asked to demonstrate a commitment to making such programs more accessible, coordinated and more effective. Providing professional development for teachers and creating ways to assess the education level of kids entering kindergarten were among the areas states were asked to focus on in their applications.

The top scoring state in the competition was North Carolina, Duncan said. The state's plan included the creation of a "transformation zone" in the distressed northeastern corner of the state where specialty services would be available.

Other states took similar but different approaches in their comprehensive proposals. Massachusetts, for example, said it will use the funding to help conduct better and earlier screenings of children's learning needs. And, Rhode Island plans to connect health care and early learning providers.

Duncan was joined at the White House by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, whose agency helped run the competition. HHS oversees the federal Head Start program, which provides early education to nearly 1 million low-income children.

Sebelius said the goal is to provide high-profile encouragement to programs that improve teaching skills, encourage healthy eating and exercise and get parents ? especially in low-income neighborhoods ? more directly involved.

"By pushing everyone ... to raise their game, we intend to foster innovation in early education programs around the country," Sibelius said.

Last month, Obama announced new rules that require lower-performing Head Start programs to compete for funding. The Education Department also has proposed creating a new office to oversee the grants and better coordinate early learning programs.

_____

Associated Press writer Alex Dominguez in Baltimore contributed to this report.

_____

Online: Education Department: http://www.ed.gov/

Department of Health and Human Services: http://www.hhs.gov/

_____

Kimberly Hefling can be followed at http://twitter.com/khefling

Associated Press

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Amy Winehouse To Be Honored At 'VH1 Divas' Concert

Florence Welch, Nas and others will pay tribute to the late soul singer on Sunday night.
By Jocelyn Vena

Amy Winehouse
Photo: MTV News

Amy Winehouse will be remembered on Sunday at the "VH1 Divas concert. Florence Welch of Florence and the Machine, Wanda Jackson, and Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings will all take the stage to honor the late singer. The tribute will be introduced by Nas.

Jackson and Welch will perform Winehouse's "Back to Black," while Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings will take the stage with "You Know I'm No Good." The Dap-Kings played on the singer's Back to Black album. Nas and Winehouse worked together on the track "Like Smoke," which appears on her posthumous album Lioness: Hidden Treasures.

Mary J. Blige, Kelly Clarkson, Jennifer Hudson, Jill Scott, Florence and the Machine, and Jessie J will participate in the star-studded lineup for the long-running concert event, which airs Monday at 9 p.m. ET/PT on VH1.

This year, VH1 is paying tribute to prominent birthplaces of soul music, including Chicago, Detroit, London, Memphis and Philadelphia. The divas are expected to pay homage to these cities and the genre with their own soulful tracks as well as some of soul music's classic tunes onstage at New York's Hammerstein Ballroom.

And the celebration is not exclusive to women. The Roots have been confirmed as the event's house band, and ?uestlove is set to pull double duty during the concert as musical director. Boyz II Men and Travie McCoy will also perform.

Bruno Mars, Russell Brand and Tony Bennett paid tribute to Amy Winehouse at the VMAs back in August. Mars performed Winehouse's cover of the Zutons' "Valerie," while Bennett was on hand to present footage of their recording session for his album Duets II.

"This is not just another London chancer, not just another person milling about waiting to be famous," Brand recalled of seeing Winehouse perform during the tribute. "What is this incredible sound? This timeless sound like a roar from the guts of humanity? The kind of voice that Billie Holiday sung with, the kind of voice that Ella Fitzgerald sung with."

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Aerospace dream team aims to launch people into orbit

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has formed a new company that aims to launch people to orbit by 2015 using the world's largest aircraft and a rocket built by SpaceX, he announced in a press conference today.

Called Stratolaunch Systems, the company plans to launch people using a two-part system. First, a giant carrier jet ? with the world's largest wingspan of 116 metres ? will carry a rocket and space capsule high above the ground.

Then the rocket will detach and ignite, carrying the capsule and its passengers into orbit.

Allen has assembled some big names from the space world to be part of the new company. Burt Rutan, who designed the SpaceShipOne vehicle that won the Ansari X Prize in 2004 ? sits on the board of directors. Mike Griffin, a former NASA chief, is also on the board.

The enormous carrier aircraft will be built by Scaled Composites, the same company providing the vehicles to be used in Virgin Galactic's suborbital space tourism flights.

The rocket will be built by SpaceX, which is also developing a capsule to take cargo to the International Space Station.

Space tourists

The company, based in Huntsville, Alabama, plans to start construction soon on a vast hangar in Mojave, California, in which the carrier aircraft will be built.

They are targeting a maiden flight in 2015. After testing, the company hopes to initially launch uncrewed payloads to low-Earth orbit, with human flights to follow once the system's reliability has been demonstrated.

The system could loft six space tourists into orbit, the team said in a press briefing on Tuesday. Allen hinted that the company might try to ferry people to the ISS. "The Russians are charging north of $60 million a seat [for ISS flights]," he said. "So if you can come up with ... a manned version of this, we can be very, very competitive."

Moving launch site

Unlike a traditional rocket, which must launch from a fixed launch pad, the carrier aircraft can travel 2100 kilometres from its runway before releasing the rocket that launches to space. The company hopes the ability to launch from many places on Earth and to quickly prepare for the next flight will slash the cost of space travel.

The concept of air launches is not new. Pegasus rockets, developed by Orbital Sciences Corporation, have launched small satellites into low-Earth orbit since 1990.

Henry Spencer, a spacecraft engineer in Toronto, Canada, says the benefits of such a scheme include launching over water, far from inhabited areas that would be at risk in case of a crash. "It lets you move the launch point to suit the orbit you're aiming for," he adds. "In particular, if you're going to a space station, you can launch directly into exactly the station's orbit, avoiding the need to spend the first two or three days in space waiting around to match orbits."

Reusable launcher

Another advantage is that launching from higher in the atmosphere reduces the amount of energy the rocket must spend fighting atmospheric friction, says Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Since the carrier aircraft can be used over and over, the project could get the world closer to achieving the dream of a fully reusable launch vehicle that could travel to orbit and back many times, hopefully at much lower cost, he says.

Mike Griffin said the technology could make space flight much easier. "We believe this technology has the potential to someday make space flight routine by removing many of the constraints associated with ground-launched rockets," he said.

Routine flights

The main problem with such an air-launch plan "is that the size of the aircraft limits the size of the rocket", Spencer says. "This would be a problem for some traditional markets like comsats [communications satellites], where the payloads keep getting bigger."

Spencer says Rutan's track record suggests the plan has a good chance of success. "Developing an aircraft is a big job and a huge up-front investment," he told New Scientist. "However, having Scaled Composites do it reduces the problem considerably. If anyone can pull this off at a reasonable cost, it's them."

Allen, who once dreamed of becoming an astronaut, has a long-standing interest in space flight, having funded the development of SpaceShipOne. "I have long dreamed about taking the next big step in private space flight after the success of SpaceShipOne ? to offer a flexible, orbital space delivery system," Allen said in a press release.

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