Boston, MA, United States (AHN Sports) – Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick doesn’t agree with Boston Bruins goalie Tim Thomas’s decision not to attend a meeting with President Obama at the White House.

President Obama welcomed the Bruins to Washington earlier this week to honor the Stanley Cup champions. Thomas chose not to attend saying he was protesting a federal government that had “grown out of control, threatening the rights, liberties, and property of the people.”

Governor Patrick said Thomas was entitled to his views but said he was disappointed in his decision not to go to the White House on the “Ask the Governor” show on WTKK-FM.

“He’s a phenomenal hockey player and he’s entitled to his views, but it just feels to me like we’re losing in this country basic courtesy and grace,” Patrick said. “I didn’t think much of President Bush’s policies – two wars on a credit card, prescription drug benefit that we couldn’t afford, deficit out of control – but I always referred to him as ‘Mr. President.’ I stood when he came in the room,”

Thomas helped the Bruins win their first Stanley Cup in 39 years last season with a victory over the Vancouver Canucks in the finals.

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New York, NY, United States (AHN) – Rates for U.S. 30 year mortgages dropped to the lowest level on record as the number of homeowners seeking to reduce their monthly payments soared.

The average rate for a 30-year fixed loan for the week ending Jan. 19 fell to 3.88 percent, an all time record low, and down from 3.89 percent in the prior week, according to mortgage giant Freddie Mac.

The average rate on 15-year mortgage edged up slightly, ending the current week at 3.17 percent, a hair higher than last week’s 3.16 percent.

Refinancing applications soared 26 percent in the period ending Jan. 13, the highest level since August 2011, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported. The Washington based group noted that the measure of  purchase applications rose 10 percent.

The news is very welcome for the ailing U.S. housing market which has been weighed down by an 8.5 percent unemployment rate, tight credit and foreclosures that drag down prices.

Other bright spots include the rising confidence among U.S. home builders, which increased in January to the highest level in more than four years, and signs that buyer traffic has picked up, according a report released Wednesday by the National Association of Home Builders.

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Jerusalem, Israel David Rosenberg / The Med – The hacker attack that exposed the credit card numbers and other personal information of thousands of Israelis last week shows every sign of being an unsophisticated break-in that exploited the weaknesses of a poorly secured website. But experts warn that for Israel, like other highly networked economies, the worst is yet to come.

Lone-wolf hackers have gradually gained the knowledge and experience once the preserve of intelligence agencies and armies. Instead of defacing websites or shutting them down by flooding them with e-mails, growing numbers of hackers have the ability to disrupt electricity, water, medical and other critical services, they say.

“To shut down a major network, even for a government, is considered to be difficult, and demands excellent experience and knowledge, but there are a few tens of thousands of people around the world who could do it,” Ron Porat, who co-founded Hacktics, an Israeli maker of anti-hacking technology, told The Media Line. “Some of them have the motivation also.”

A group of Saudi hackers dubbed Group-XP led by someone who goes by the web name OxOmar claimed last week to have obtained the personal information of some 400,000 Israelis through credit card data. The Bank of Israel said the numbers were in fact much smaller, probably about 15,000 names, and that the credit card issuers had blocked the exposed accounts.

Nevertheless, the attack drew a sharp response from Israel as well as its arch-nemesis, the Palestinian militant movement Hamas. Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon termed the cyber-attack “a breach of sovereignty comparable to a terrorist operation” and hinted at unspecified “retaliatory action.”

Hamas, which is not believed to have had anything to do with this attack, termed it “a new form of resistance.” Spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri was quoted by Reuters urging others to ignore Ayalon’s threat and “use all means available in the virtual space to confront Israeli crimes.”

Much attention has been focused on governments engaging in cyber-warfare, such as the Stuxnet worm that allegedly wreaked havoc on Iran’s nuclear program or when a Chinese state-controlled telecommunications company hijacked a big chunk of the world’s Internet traffic, including data from the U.S. military, for 18 minutes in April 2010.

But hackers like OxOmar are a growing threat as well.

Israel and Palestinian hackers have been engaged in a cyber cold war for more than a decade. Israeli teenagers blocked websites belonging to the Lebanese Shiite movement Hizbullah, provoking Palestinians and other Arabs to declare an e-Jihad. Those attacks consisted mainly of denial of service attacks and defacing websites, although embarrassingly for Israel these included over the years high-profile sites like those of the Knesset and Foreign Ministry. During Operation Cast lead in 2009, Hamas was probably responsible for an attack on Israel’s Amos 3 spy satellite. More recently, Israeli hackers took over an official Hamas website and uploaded Israel’s national anthem onto it.

Other cyber wars have erupted across the Middle East. Anonymous, a loose collection of so-called “hacktivists,” launched denial of service attacks against government websites in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere during the Arab Spring uprisings. In November, Anonymous turned its sights on the Muslim Brotherhood. “The Muslim Brotherhood has become a threat to the revolution Egyptians had fought for, some with their lives,” it declared in a video.

While Israeli credit card companies were handling the Saudi break-in, Turkish hackers were threatening to unleash a wave of attacks against French websites after lawmakers in Paris approved legislation that would ban the denial of the Armenian genocide.

They have already assaulted French websites, including that of Valerie Boyer, the French politician who introduced the law that could punish genocide deniers with jail time.

But that is small change compared to what hackers are potentially capable of doing, say experts. Indeed, hackers now take the trouble to exploit human weaknesses to enter networks, for instance, applying for a job and using the interview to gain access to a company’s headquarters and physical access to a computer.

“These kind of things were once done by the CIA, but now they are being done by hackers. It’s becoming very, very hard to defend any organization including the army and intelligence units,” said Porat. “In the past most hackers used a single vector or two to hack into system. They use multi-vector attacks now.”

Danny Dolev, a leading computer scientist and engineer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said that Israel was as well protected as any heavily networked economy even if it remains vulnerable. Policy makers and defense officials have over the past year come to recognize the extent of the threat.

In August, he noted, the government created a National Cyber Directorate to coordinate activities of the agencies that deal with the issue and to secure infrastructure against cyber attacks. The exposure of credit card details will awaken the public’s attention, which is as critical as technology defenses.

“I’m glad in a certain way it happened because it will awaken awareness,” Dolev told The Media Line. “Awareness means being careful when you plug in a disk on key, being careful when you change a password and being careful when you put your information on a social network.”

Dolev expressed doubt that a lone hacker is capable of bringing down an entire economy, but he said they are capable of doing serious damage. “Let’s assume a single hacker enters the blood database and changes few of the blood types of the database,” he said. “This would be horrendous. It would not bring down a country but it could do a lot of harm. There is damage that would be significant.”

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New York, NY, United States (AHN) – United States stocks slipped Wednesday after a successful auction of Italian debt gave European stocks a boost but failed to excite equity traders here in the states.

Just after the opening bell on Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was lower by 10 points, the Standard and Poor’s 500 Index fell 2 points, and the NASDAQ dropped 4 points.

With little other news for investors to trade on in an otherwise quiet day for economic news, the success of the Italian bond sale was welcome, but light volume and lack of market participants failed to give U.S. markets a lift.

Demand for Italian six-month bills increased from the previous auction. The average yield of 3.21 percent was half of the 6.504 average, a euro-era high, paid a month earlier for the same maturity.

European markets traded higher following the robust demand for the auction. The Stoxx Europe 600 was up 0.5 percent in late afternoon trading, reversing a 0.5 percent decline earlier in the day.

In commodities, gold fell $2.90 to $1,592.60 a troy ounce, and oil was up 10 cents at $101.44 a barrel.

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Indianapolis, IN, United States (AHN Sports) – Butler dipped into its bag of magic tricks a little early this season.

The Bulldogs, who are known for their heart stopping runs through the NCAA tournament in March, used an Andrew Smith tip-in with one second to play to beat in-state rival Purdue 67-65 in the Close the Gap Crossroads Classic, Saturday, in Indianapolis.

“The play was for Roosevelt (Jones) to get the ball and drive it. If he had an open lane for the layup, go for it, if not, he’s just going to get it up on the rim and hopefully we could get an offensive rebound,” said Smith. “Fortunately Purdue did not block out and I was right there and the ball came right to me so I was able to tip it in.”

The win snaps a three game losing streak for Butler. For Purdue, it’s another tough loss.

It’s the second time this month the Boilermakers have squandered a double-digit lead. Purdue lost to Xavier, December 3rd after being ahead by 19.

The Boilers were up by 15 at one point, but allowed the Bulldogs to mount a comeback.

“We had them,” said Purdue guard Lewis Jackson. “Give Butler credit though, we punched them in the mouth, they punched back. We punched them and as soon as we think it was over, they kept fighting.”

Butler’s fight was a team effort. Smith and Kameron Woods each scored 12, but no other Bulldog was in double figures. Erik Fromm helped them stay afloat when Purdue ballooned the lead in the first half. He scored all nine of his points in the opening frame and Khyle Marshall scored nine, as well.

But, it was Butler’s defense that turned the tide. The Bulldogs held Purdue to just 20-percent shooting in the second half (6-29) after going 20-36 in the first. Purdue didn’t score a field goal in the final 8:48.

“It’s amazing when the ball goes in it looks like you have great offense and when it doesn’t, you have bad offense,” said Purdue head coach Matt Painter.

“I thought Rob Hummel had some good looks that didn’t go down. I thought Ryne Smith had a couple of looks that didn’t go down and in the first half they did go down. So I think it really compounds at that point to you are running bad offense, when in reality Butler is pretty good on D and we had some shots that just didn’t go down.”

Hummel finished with a game-high 16-points, but just four in the second half. Ryne Smith added 14 including three triples, but was held scoreless in the second frame.

Lewis Jackson added 13-points, six assists, and seven rebounds. But, made just one of two free-throws with ten seconds left that kept the game tied and opened the door for Smith’s heroics.

“It hurts,” Jackson said. “I’m at a loss for words. It hurts right now.”

Purdue (9-3) heads back to West Lafayette to play IPFW, Tuesday.

“We felt like we should have won the last two games that we lost,” said Painter. “I think we have a positive to look at, but we don’t have a lot to show for it.”

Butler (5-6) travels west for its next two games, first to Gonzaga then to Stanford. Butler captain Ronald Nored thinks the win against Purdue can serve as a catalyst for turning the team’s slow start around.

“Hopefully we learn from this. We learn from the things we did well, the things that led to winning and then also grow from the things that we didn’t do well, “he said. “I think if we do that and take this game and ride along with it, ride along with the things we did well, it can change things.”

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Dubai, United Arab Emirates David Rosenberg (The Medi – More than two years after one of its showcase companies announced a “standstill” on its loan repayments, signaling the end of a real estate-fueled boom, a mountain of debt continues to cast a long shadow over Dubai’s economy.

Moody’s Investors Service brought the extent of the problem home in a report released Tuesday that sent local share prices falling. The credit-rating company estimated that even after two years of restructuring, refinancing and help from the neighboring emirate of Abu Dhabi, Dubai’s government and its state-owned companies owe some $101.5 billion.

In fact, total debt may be higher because of the difficultly of getting data on the bank debt of closely held companies, Moody’s said.

“Although we believe a substantial portion of this debt has been captured in our analysis, the total amount of debt is likely to be higher than the amount we have identified. In particular, we note that off-balance-sheet debt in special-purpose vehicles is difficult to estimate and capture,” David Staples, Moody’s managing for corporate finance, said in the report.

While the biggest repayment hump doesn’t arrive until 2014, Dubai Inc., as the network of state-owned entities is popularly known, must repay some $13.8 billion in bank and bond debt from the fourth quarter of 2011 through the end of 2012. Another $11.2 billion is being restructured. Of that, Staples pointed to some $3.8 billion owed by three state-linked entities that looks especially problematic.

With little of the oil resources other Gulf countries enjoy, Dubai transformed itself into a glittering real estate, finance and tourism hub in the space of a few years with borrowed money. But when the global financial crisis hit in 2008, Dubai’s borrowers found their cash-flows as well as access to new loans constrained. In November 2009, Dubai World, a holding company whose interests span from ports to luxury real estate, set off a debt crisis that drags on till today by announcing it wanted to delay its repayments.

The pint-size emirate has struggled to emerge from under its debt pile, which exceeds its 2010 gross domestic product of about $80 billion by a wide margin. But its efforts have been undermined by a huge overhang of unsold real estate and declining house prices. The International Monetary Fund expects economic growth to pick up to 2.8 percent this year and to 3.2 percent in 2012, but those rates pale in comparison to the 8 percent annual rate it chalked up in the boom years.

Nakheel, a developer that was forced to erase some $21 billion from the value of its real estate assets, reported a first-half net profit on Monday, citing “a relatively more stable real estate market in Dubai.” Nakheel was bailed out to the tune of $16 billion by Dubai, which is now owned by the government, but it owes another $4.8 billion, Moody’s estimates.

Dubai saw 1,603 real estate deals in the first 10 months of the year, according to Dubai Land Department. That was up from 2009, when the market hit rock bottom, but in only a fraction of the 5,363 during the same period in 2008 before the crisis hit. While home prices have stabilized, an enormous overhang of properties coming onto the market is likely to send them down again, say analysts.

Nevertheless, Daniel Broby, chief investment officer of the London-based Silk Invest, said he isn’t concerned about Dubai Inc.’s near-term outlook. He said the repayments coming due in 2012 could probably be rolled over, with a good prospect that any shortfall might be covered by Abu Dhabi.

“It’s a lot of money, but it’s not a lot when you think of challenges ahead. I don’t think it’s too much of a hurdle,” Broby told The Media Line. “Certainly 2014 looks like a real hurdle they have to get over.”

Moody’s suggested in its report on Tuesday that the emirate has exacerbated its debt hangover by failing to reduce it by selling assets. Instead, the government has pursued a strategy of repaying bondholders in full while negotiating loan extensions with banks. As a result, its repayment bills remain substantial and some companies – Dubai Holding Commercial Operations Group, Jebel Ali Free Zone and DIFC Investments LLC by Moody’s estimate – face “execution risk” in trying to meet their obligations.

On Monday The Financial Times reported that Dubai officials are weighing the prospect of restructuring some bonds next year to meet the next round of debt repayments. While the British newspaper said the emirate is also pursuing other options, including raising $2 billion from liquid local banks, the news combined with the Moody’s report gave the shivers to investors.

Shares on the Dubai Financial Market fell the most in five weeks on Tuesday, with the DFM General Index down 1.2 percent. Emaar Properties PJSC, the developer of the world’s tallest skyscraper, slumped 3.6 percent, Dubai Financial Market by 2.1 percent, and Drake and Scull by 1.7 percent.

The Financial Times quoted an unnamed official as saying that government funds might buy the distressed assets from state-related entities at higher-than-market valuations to help them generate cash. The government may make use a law that allows borrowers to restructure their bonds if they win backing from two-thirds of the holders

The Moody’s report also heightened investors’ concerns by suggesting that the government would only back less than half the $68.6 billion of Dubai state-owned corporate debt. Staples and his team divided the debt pile into three categories, including one of companies that are unlikely to need any support and companies Moody’s believes Dubai’s government has deemed “strategic” and are likely to get assistance.

Among the “non-strategic” borrowers are companies like Dubai World, Emaar Properties and Nakheel, which have interests overseas or in speculative real estate projects. The report estimated their outstanding debt at $34.8 billion.

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New York, NY, United States (AHN) – Mortgage rates were down slightly this past week, approaching, but not quite hitting, the lowest mortgage rates on record.

Adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs), did reach new record lows. The initial interest rate on a five-year Treasury-indexed ARM dropped to 2.91 percent, Freddie Mac reported. That was lower than last week’s 2.97 percent, and it breaks the previous record low of 2.96 percent for five-year ARMs, set during the week of Oct. 6.

Average rates on a 30-year fixed rate mortgage dipped to 3.98 percent, down from 4 percent. The average rate for the 15-year fixed home loan slipped to 3.30 percent, down from 3.31. Both are just a hair–0.04 percentage points–above their respective all-time lows, according to Freddie Mac, also set on Oct. 6.

Mortgage rates have shown little change over the past four weeks. Loan demand has been lackluster and refinancing dropped an average of 1.39 percent over the previous four weeks, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported.

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Washington, DC, United States (IRIN) – United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s announcement that the American government now prioritizes creating an AIDS-free generation could be more than just political lip-service: it may also shape the next several years of US global health programming and funding, analysts say.

Clinton’s 8 November speech at the National Institute of Health reflects recent scientific breakthroughs. She said a three-pronged approach – eliminating mother-to-child transmission of HIV, scaling up male circumcision procedures and expanding early treatment for people living with HIV and AIDS – offered a combination prevention strategy that would help reach the goal of having virtually no child born with HIV within three years.

“It’s the first time the US has outlined a policy goal on how to reach an AIDS-free generation,” explained Jennifer Kates, director of HIV policy at the Washington DC-based Kaiser Family Foundation.

“We’re starting to think about this and talk about this and with some of the recent studies, it is really changing the way we are approaching the epidemic… this provides reorientation for how programs are approached and trying to figure out combination prevention on the ground.”

Clinton also committed an additional US$60 million to rapidly scale up combination prevention in four unspecified countries in sub-Saharan Africa to measure the impact of this approach.

About 53 percent of pregnant women living with HIV in the developing world receive antiretroviral drugs to prevent transmission to their infants, according to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF). Last year, the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) helped prevent 114,000 babies from being born with HIV, Clinton said.

Recent studies have shown that male circumcision can help reduce a man’s risk of becoming infected with HIV by 60 percent during heterosexual sex, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Earlier this year, the HIV Prevention Trial Networks 052 study found that men and women living with HIV reduced their risk of transmitting HIV to their partners by up to 96 percent if they received an early initiation of combination antiretroviral therapy.

Kates cautioned that it may be too soon to tell how much these three new policy priorities – the first the US has put forth since the Bush Administration’s approach of abstinence, fidelity and condoms – will guide US foreign programs, and that interventions will have to be tailored to different populations.

Reproductive rights

But some women’s and girls’ sexual and reproductive health advocates are concerned that these new priorities sideline reproductive rights. Clinton did not specifically discuss family planning or access to safe abortions.

That exclusion might be reflect the domestic agenda, where reproductive rights continue to play a divisive role between liberal and conservative politicians, says Serra Sippel, president of the NGO Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE).

“There is a legitimate fear that Congress controls the purse strings, so if the Secretary thinks this could give them an inclination to think PEPFAR money would be supporting programs addressing these rights, Congress can at any time step back and decide to use that as a way to pull that money back,” said Sippel.

Ann Starrs, co-founder and president of the NGO Family Care International, says Clinton’s prevention-as-treatment approach could have been furthered by presenting contraception as an option to HIV-positive women, instead of just prevention of transmission interventions.

“Studies done by a number of researchers show that 50 to 85 percent of HIV-positive women don’t want a baby,” Starrs told IRIN/PlusNews. “You provide them with contraception and you have a greater impact in terms of reducing the number of HIV-positive infants born at a greater cost.”

But programs under the umbrella of USAID and the $63 billion Global Health Initiative, which stresses country-led ownership and focuses on women’s and girls’ health, may well continue to foster a holistic approach on their own, said Sippel.

Natasha Billmoria, president of the Friends of the Global Fight Against AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which advocates for US partnership with the Global Fund, says she hopes Clinton’s “incredibly strong message” will be backed by strong funding commitments for the next financial year.

America continues to be the largest donor to the Global Fund, but between 2010 and 2011, kept its contribution flat at $1.05 billion. Kates of the Kaiser Foundation says the financial crisis makes the ability to back up strong words with even bigger money unclear.

“There’s an irony of having these new tools before us to combat HIV, and at the same time there’s a downward pressure on the budget, so it isn’t clear,” she said.

al/kn/mw

– Provided by Integrated Regional Information Networks.

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Washington, DC, United States (ProPublica) – by Braden Goyette

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office recently released a much-discussed study showing that over the past three decades the income of the highest-paid Americans has soared while the income of others has grown much more modestly. Here’s a rundown of some statistics illustrating the growing income gap.

But first, some context. These numbers reflect income, not wealth. So a retiree who owns two houses and three cars may be far better off than someone with a higher annual income, two kids in college and a mortgage. It’s worth noting that income includes investment income and capital gains.

Also, although a 2010 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development study suggests that there is less income mobility in the United States than in many other developed countries, someone in the richest 1 percent this year may have been in an entirely different category 30 years ago. Take Bill Gates. In’79, Gates was 24, and Microsoft hadn’t even incorporated. He was likely in the bottom tier of earners. More recently, of course, he has easily been in the top 1 percent. According to a 2007 Treasury Department study , “roughly half of taxpayers who began in the bottom income quintile in’96 moved up to a higher income group by 2005.”

Third, though income growth has been unequally distributed, real income for all groups has grown over the past three decades.

In spite of those caveats, the gap between richest and poorest is far greater than it used to be. All income numbers have been adjusted for inflation, and all household income data are adjusted for differences in household size . Please note that different subsections take different years as a baseline.

Overall income growth for the country as a whole

– Provided by ProPublica.org

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Detroit, MI, United States (AHN Sports) – The Atlanta Falcon defense knew what needed to be done to stop the dangerous Detroit Lions combination of Matthew Stafford-to-Calvin Johnson.

To put it simply, they did get the job done.

Quarterback Matt Ryan both ran and passed for a touchdown and threw for 218 yards to lead the Falcons over the Lions Sunday afternoon at Ford Field 23-16.

The Falcons only allowed one Detroit touchdown, a 57-yard pass from Stafford to Johnson for a touchdown in the third quarter.

“We knew we were in for a 60-minute battle today,” said Falcons coach Mike Smith. “We needed every man in our locker room to step up and make some plays and I really like the fight and the determination and the effort that our teams played with today. We made some mistakes but we made some plays when we had to.

“I’m very pleased with the way we played on third down defensively and how we made it hectic and chaotic for the quarterback for the most part around the throwing spot and that was the thing that we wanted to do. There were some unbelievable plays in that game for both football teams.”

The Falcons are 4-3 with their first two-game winning streak of the season. The Lions fall to 5-2 with their second straight loss.

“It was a big win, we marked this one on the calendar,” said Falcons wide receiver Roddy White. “After getting back to 500 last week, we felt like this would be a crucial point in our seasons. We are coming up almost on the halfway point. We felt like we had to get over .500. We did this week and we got to go after the bye week and get us another road win.”

With the Lions trailing 17-6 at halftime, Jason Hansen booted a 29-yard field goal midway in the third quarter. Matt Bryant kicked a 47-yard field for a 20-9 Falcon lead.

Ryan left the game briefly in the third quarter after sustaining a knee injury after a sack but only missed a few plays.

A 57-yard pass from Stafford to Johnson later in the quarter produced Detroit’s first touchdown. Bryant’s third field goal of the game, a 40-yarder, early in the fourth quarter improved Atlanta’s lead to seven points.

“One of the things that I think was very important for us is that were were able to put pressure on the quarterback,” said Smith. “I thought that our guy had a very good understanding of what we were trying to get done and they executed it.

“There were some things formationally that we wanted to take advantage of when we saw certain formations and we wanted to take away their two prime threats (Calvin Johnson and Brandon Pettigrew) and I thought they did that on third down especially.”

Late in the game, as he was trying to lead the Lions to the tying touchdown, Stafford limped off the field after being hit on a fourth-down pass attempt. Injuries limited Stafford’s playing time extensively the past two seasons.

“A guy just fell on me a little bit awkward,” Stafford said. “I’m moving around on it OK right now. We’ll see.”

The two teams traded field goals in the first quarter with Hanson booting a 43-yarder for the Lions and Bryant kicking a 23-yarder for Atlanta. Ryan had a 1-yard run later in the quarter after Jason Snelling recovered a Lions fumble at the Detroit 28.

Hanson’s 38-yard field goal for Detroit in the second quarter cut the Falcon lead to 10-6. But late in the half, Ryan led the Falcons on an 81-yard scoring drive and passed 18 yards to White for the touchdown and an 11-point halftime lead.

“It was a disappointing loss,” said Lions coach Jim Schwartz. “I think when you look at the game, when we finish tomorrow, we’ll talk about missed opportunities in the kicking game, on defense and particularly on offense. But it’s a good football team, the Falcons. We have to give credit to them.”

Atlanta had a 328-263 edge in total yards. Michael Turner had 122 yards rushing. Stafford led Detroit with 183 passing yards.

“We went out there today with the right attitude,” said Falcons linebacker Sean Weatherspoon. “Defensively, we came out there, I felt we did a good job of slowing them down in the first half as well. We came out in the second half and have to put up a big one. But that’s what we are; we just want to fight throughout the whole game. Four quarters, that’s what it’s going to take.”

“I just think we are learning to play with each other,” said Falcons defensive end John Abraham. “Sometimes, not being around each other a lot and not having a lot of practice time together, we are just learning each other.”

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