Feds drop escape charge in downtown prison break

In a surprise move, federal prosecutors today dropped an escape charge against Joseph Jose Banks, a convicted bank robber who made a daring escape from a high-rise South Loop jail by rappelling down some 15 stories with a rope fashioned from bed sheets only to be captured three days later on the North Side.

When he made the bold break for freedom from the Metropolitan Correctional Center, Banks, 37, already faced up to 80 years in prison for his conviction the previous week for holding up two banks and trying to rob two others.

To try to obtain the stiffest sentence possible for Banks, prosecutors can use the escape as aggravation at his sentencing for the bank holdups.

The escape charge, by comparison, carried only a maximum of five additional years in prison on conviction.

By dropping the escape charge, prosecutors also avoid another trial for Banks.

After his indictment for the bank robberies, Banks changed his attorneys multiple times and flooded the court with motions, all serving to stall the start of the trial for nearly five years after his 2008 arrest.

Then at trial Banks represented himself and caused repeated interruptions by refusing to recognize the rules of the court and defying orders from the judge.

At one point, he was briefly restrained in a chair.

Banks’ cellmate, Kenneth Conley, also took part in the escape on Dec. 18 and remains at large.

asweeney@tribune.com

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Regulators to make announcement on Google probe

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. regulators said on Thursday they would make an announcement at 1 p.m. EST (1800 GMT) about their long-running investigation of the Web search giant Google.

The Federal Trade Commission is expected to announce that Google will agree to end the practice of using reviews and similar data from rivals for its own products, and will allow advertisers to export data to independently evaluate ad campaigns, according to three sources.

Google is also expected to refrain from asking for sales bans when it files infringement lawsuits related to essential patents, except in exceptional cases, the sources said.

The three sources asked to not be named to protect business relationships.

(Reporting By Diane Bartz; editing by John Wallace)

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NHL, union resume talks in hopes to save season

NEW YORK (AP) — After a long night of talks, the NHL and the union are returning to negotiations — just later than expected.

The sides were supposed to meet at the league office Thursday at 10 a.m. EST. That, however, did not happen. The Players Association said it was updating its members on negotiations.

Players and union staff began arriving at NHL headquarters a little before a 1 p.m., although union head Donald Fehr was not part of the group.

With the lockout in its 110th day, both sides understand the urgency to save a shortened season. They have moved closer to one another while swapping proposals, but key issues remain — pensions and salary cap, among them.

Commissioner Gary Bettman has said that the league told the union a deal needs to be in place by next week so a 48-game season can begin Jan. 19. All games through Jan. 14 along with the All-Star game have been canceled, claiming more than 50 percent of the original schedule.

The sides met in small groups throughout the day Wednesday. They then held a full bargaining session with a federal mediator at night that lasted nearly five hours and didn't wrap up until about 1 a.m. Thursday.

The biggest detail to emerge from those talks was that Fehr is still the executive director of the players' association, which passed on its first chance to declare a disclaimer that would dissolve the union and turn it into a trade association.

Last month, players voted overwhelmingly to give its executive board the right to declare the disclaimer, but that permission expired at midnight Wednesday. The disclaimer would allow individual players to file antitrust lawsuits against the NHL. Fehr wouldn't address the issue, calling it an "internal matter."

"The word disclaimer has yet to be uttered to us by the players' association," Bettman said. "It's not that it gets filed anywhere with a court or the NLRB. When you disclaim interest as a union, you notify the other side. We have not been notified and it's never been discussed, so there has been no disclaimer."

The thought was that the union wouldn't take action Wednesday if it saw progress was being made. Neither side would characterize the talks or address what, if any, movement toward common ground was reached.

"There's been some progress but we're still apart on a number of issues," Bettman said. "As long as the process continues I am hopeful."

A deal can't be done without a resolution on pensions. Bettman called the pension plan a "very complicated issue." A small group meeting on the pension issue was held Wednesday morning before the players' association presented its offer.

"The number of variables and the number of issues that have to be addressed by people who carry the title actuary or pension lawyer are pretty numerous and it's pretty easy to get off track. That is something we understand is important to the players."

The union's proposal Wednesday makes four offers between the sides since the NHL restarted negotiations Thursday with a proposal. The league presented the players with a counteroffer Tuesday night in response to one the union made Monday.

Fehr believed an agreement on a players-funded pension had been reached before talks blew up in early December. That apparently wasn't the case, or the NHL has changed its offer regarding the pension in exchange for agreeing to other things the union wanted.

The salary-cap number for the second year of the deal — the 2013-14 season — hasn't been established, and it is another point of contention. The league is pushing for a $60 million cap, while the union wants it to be $65 million.

In return for the higher cap number players would be willing to forgo a cap on escrow.

"We talk about lots of things and we even had some philosophical discussions about why particular issues were important to each of us," Bettman said. "That is part of the process."

The NHL proposed in its first offer Thursday that pension contributions come out of the players' share of revenues, and $50 million of the league's make-whole payment of $300 million will be allocated and set aside to fund potential underfunding liabilities of the plan at the end of the collective bargaining agreement.

Last month, the NHL agreed to raise its make-whole offer of deferred payments from $211 million to $300 million as part of a proposed package that required the union to agree on three nonnegotiable points. Instead, the union accepted the raise in funds, but then made counterproposals on the issues the league stated had no wiggle room.

"As you might expect, the differences between us relate to the core economic issues which don't involve the share," Fehr said of hockey-related revenue, which likely will be split 50-50.

The NHL is the only North American professional sports league to cancel a season because of a labor dispute, losing the 2004-05 campaign to a lockout. A 48-game season was played in 1995 after a lockout stretched into January.

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Putin gives tax exile Depardieu Russian citizenship

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin has granted citizenship to Gerard Depardieu, the French movie star who is quitting his homeland to avoid a tax hike on the rich, the Kremlin said on Thursday.

The “Cyrano de Bergerac” actor bought a house across the border in Belgium last year to avoid a new tax rate for millionaires in France planned by Socialist President Francois Hollande but said he could also seek tax exile elsewhere.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Depardieu had applied for citizenship after Putin told reporters last month the actor would be welcome in Russia. “The citizenship could not have been granted to him without (such an) appeal,” Peskov added.

Russia has a flat income tax rate of 13 percent, compared to the 75 percent on income over 1 million euros ($ 1.32 million) that Hollande wants to impose in France.

Asked, whether Depardieu had plans to move to Russia, Peskov said it was up to him and was “absolutely not mandatory”. Putin did not speak to Depardieu before taking the decision, he added.

Depardieu’s publicist Francois Hassan Guerrar told Reuters he did not want to comment on the Russian announcement.

Depardieu, 63, had told friends he was considering three options to escape France’s new tax regime: settling in Belgium, relocating to Montenegro, where he has a business, or moving to Russia, French daily Le Monde reported in December.

Depardieu has also said he plans to hand in his French passport and social security card.

“Putin has already sent me a passport,” Le Monde quoted the actor as jokingly saying in December.

WELCOME IN RUSSIA

Depardieu is well-known in Russia where he has appeared in many advertising campaigns. He worked in the country in 2011 on a film about the eccentric Russian monk Grigory Rasputin.

In 2012 he was one of several Western celebrities invited to celebrate the birthday of Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya’s Kremlin-backed leader.

Muscovites said they would welcome Depardieu. “He is a normal guy, he is fond of drinking too, I suppose, the Russian way, so let him come here,” said resident Lev Nikolaevich.

Putin has in the past touted good relations with France, which he visited in the summer, but the two nations have disagreed sharply on Syria and Putin is a frequent critic of the West. He had a tense summit with the EU last month and wants the bloc to move faster toward visa-free travel.

Russia does not require people to hand in their foreign passports once they acquire a Russian one. Many Russians have citizenship of other countries and travel without problems.

Depardieu could also request Belgian nationality but has not yet made such a request, said Georges Dallemagne, head of Belgium’s parliamentary committee that oversees naturalizations.

“As a Russian he could certainly remain in Belgium, he would possibly need the necessary visas but for a short period he could stay here,” said Dallemagne.

“He would need to request a residency permit for longer stays but as a Russian he should be able to get that. It depends on certain factors,” Dallemagne added.

France’s Constitutional Council last month blocked the planned 75 percent tax rate due to the way it would be applied – but Hollande plans to propose redrafted legislation which will “still ask more of those who have the most”.

(Writing by Megan Davies; Additional reporting by Steve Gutterman, Nikolai Isayev and Alexander Fedorov in Moscow, Catherine Bremer in Paris and Robert-Jan Bartunek in Belgium; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

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Flu? Malaria? Disease forecasters look to the sky

NEW YORK (AP) — Only a 10 percent chance of showers today, but a 70 percent chance of flu next month.

That's the kind of forecasting health scientists are trying to move toward, as they increasingly include weather data in their attempts to predict disease outbreaks.

In one recent study, two scientists reported they could predict — more than seven weeks in advance — when flu season was going to peak in New York City. Theirs was just the latest in a growing wave of computer models that factor in rainfall, temperature or other weather conditions to forecast disease.

Health officials are excited by this kind of work and the idea that it could be used to fine-tune vaccination campaigns or other disease prevention efforts.

At the same time, experts note that outbreaks are influenced as much, or more, by human behavior and other factors as by the weather. Some argue weather-based outbreak predictions still have a long way to go. And when government health officials warned in early December that flu season seemed to be off to an early start, they said there was no evidence it was driven by the weather.

This disease-forecasting concept is not new: Scientists have been working on mathematical models to predict outbreaks for decades and have long factored in the weather. They have known, for example, that temperature and rainfall affect the breeding of mosquitoes that carry malaria, West Nile virus and other dangerous diseases.

Recent improvements in weather-tracking have helped, including satellite technology and more sophisticated computer data processing.

As a result, "in the last five years or so, there's been quite an improvement and acceleration" in weather-focused disease modeling, said Ira Longini, a University of Florida biostatistician who's worked on outbreak prediction projects.

Some models have been labeled successes.

In the United States, researchers at Johns Hopkins University and the University of New Mexico tried to predict outbreaks of hantavirus in the late 1990s. They used rain and snow data and other information to study patterns of plant growth that attract rodents. People catch the disease from the droppings of infected rodents.

"We predicted what would happen later that year," said Gregory Glass, a Johns Hopkins researcher who worked on the project.

More recently, in east Africa, satellites have been used to predict rainfall by measuring sea-surface temperatures and cloud density. That's been used to generate "risk maps" for Rift Valley fever — a virus that spreads from animals to people and in severe cases can cause blindness or death. Researchers have said the system in some cases has given two to six weeks advance warning.

Last year, other researchers using satellite data in east Africa said they found that a small change in average temperature was a warning sign cholera cases would double within four months.

"We are getting very close to developing a viable forecasting system" against cholera that can help health officials in African countries ramp up emergency vaccinations and other efforts, said a statement by one of the authors, Rita Reyburn of the International Vaccine Institute in Seoul, South Korea.

Some diseases are hard to forecast, such as West Nile virus. Last year, the U.S. suffered one of its worst years since the virus arrived in 1999. There were more than 2,600 serious illnesses and nearly 240 deaths.

Officials said the mild winter, early spring and very hot summer helped spur mosquito breeding and the spread of the virus. But the danger wasn't spread uniformly. In Texas, the Dallas area was particularly hard-hit, while other places, including some with similar weather patterns and the same type of mosquitoes, were not as affected.

"Why Dallas, and not areas with similar ecological conditions? We don't really know," said Roger Nasci of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He is chief of the CDC branch that tracks insect-borne viruses.

Some think flu lends itself to outbreak forecasting — there's already a predictability to the annual winter flu season. But that's been tricky, too.

Seasonal flu reports come from doctors' offices, but those show the disease when it's already spreading. Some researchers have studied tweets on Twitter and searches on Google, but their work has offered a jump of only a week or two on traditional methods.

In the study of New York City flu cases published last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the authors said they could forecast, by up to seven weeks, the peak of flu season.

They designed a model based on weather and flu data from past years, 2003-09. In part, their design was based on earlier studies that found flu virus spreads better when the air is dry and turns colder. They made calculations based on humidity readings and on Google Flu Trends, which tracks how many people are searching each day for information on flu-related topics (often because they're beginning to feel ill).

Using that model, they hope to try real-time predictions as early as next year, said Jeffrey Shaman of Columbia University, who led the work.

"It's certainly exciting," said Lyn Finelli, the CDC's flu surveillance chief. She said the CDC supports Shaman's work, but agency officials are eager to see follow-up studies showing the model can predict flu trends in places different from New York, like Miami.

Despite the optimism by some, Dr. Edward Ryan, a Harvard University professor of immunology and infectious diseases, is cautious about weather-based prediction models. "I'm not sure any of them are ready for prime time," he said.

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Former Michigan Gov. Granholm leaving Current TV

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm says she soon will leave Current TV, where she has hosted a public affairs program for the past year.

Granholm made the announcement in a Facebook post late Wednesday, the same day it was revealed that Pan-Arab news channel Al-Jazeera has acquired Current TV.

In the post, Granholm says her "agreement with Current was for the duration of the election (and the sale)." She says "The War Room" will air "for the next few weeks through the transition, but after that" she plans to go "back to teaching, speaking and other things."

Granholm spokeswoman Liz Boyd says the ex-governor would have no additional comment on the move.

Granholm is a Democrat who served two terms as Michigan governor from 2003 through 2010.

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Net worth of world's richest rose by $241B in 2012

The richest people on the planet got richer in 2012, adding $241 billion to their collective net worth, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a daily ranking of the world's 100 wealthiest individuals.

The aggregate net worth of the world's top moguls stood at $1.9 trillion at the market close on Dec. 31, according to the index. Retail and telecommunications fortunes surged about 20 percent on average during the year. Of the 100 people who appeared on the final ranking of 2012, only 16 registered a net loss for the 12-month period.

"Last year was a great one for the world's billionaires," said John Catsimatidis, the billionaire owner of Red Apple Group, in an e-mail written poolside on his BlackBerry in the Bahamas. "In -- that will give them an advantage."

Amancio Ortega, the Spaniard who founded retailer Inditex SA, was the year's biggest gainer. The 76-year-old tycoon's fortune increased $22.2 billion to $57.5 billion, according to the index, as shares of Inditex, operator of the Zara clothing chain, rose 66.7 percent.

"It's an amazing company that has done great and the gains are quite justified given its performance," said Christodoulos Chaviaras, an analyst at Barclays Plc in London who has had an "equalweight" rating on Inditex for about a year. "Can they repeat that? It will be harder. A lot of the positive news is already reflected in the share price."

Global stocks soared in 2012. The MSCI World Index gained 13.2 percent during the year to close at 1,338.50 on Dec. 31. The Standard and Poor's 500 Index rose 13.4 percent to close at 1,426.19.

European stocks surged in the second half of the year. The Stoxx Europe 600 is up 19.6 percent since June 4, advancing as the European Central Bank introduced bond-buying programs, S&P upgraded Greece's debt and German business confidence rose more than forecast. The benchmark gauge's 14.4 percent advance for the year was the best annual return since 2009.

Carlos Slim, the telecommunications magnate who controls Mexico's America Movil SAB, remained the richest person on Earth for the year. The 72-year-old's net worth rose $13.4 billion -- or 21.6 percent -- through Dec. 31, making him the second-biggest gainer by dollars.

Gains by Slim's industrial conglomerate, Grupo Carso, and Grupo Financiero Inbursa, his banking and insurance operation, more than offset the decline posted by America Movil, his biggest holding. The largest mobile phone operator in the Americas by subscribers fell 5.8 percent to close at 14.9 pesos at the end of the year.

"America Movil is no longer the growth story that it has been, given the increase in Latin American wireless penetration over the last five years," said Chris King, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus & Co. in Baltimore, Md. "It continues to generate a very high amount of cash flow and has the best set of telecom assets across Latin America."

According to King, one of Slim's biggest challenges will be dealing with regulation in Mexico and Colombia designed to punish or even-out the market share between America Movil and its competitors. Of the 14 analysts who cover the stock, 71 percent have a buy rating on the company, with an average target price of 19.15 pesos per share, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

U.S. software mogul Bill Gates, 57, ranks second on the list, trailing Slim by $12.5 billion. The Microsoft co-founder added $7 billion to his net worth as shares of the Redmond, Wash.-based company rose 2.9 percent. Microsoft stock accounts for less than 20 percent of the billionaire's fortune.

Warren Buffett, 82, lost his title as the world's third- richest man to Ortega Aug. 6. The Berkshire Hathaway chairman gained $5.1 billion during the year, even after donating 22.3 million Berkshire Class B shares in July to charity. The billionaire, who has pledged to give away most of his fortune, spent much of the year pressing for higher taxes on the wealthy.

"On incomes of over $1 million, the excess $1 million should have a minimum tax of 30 percent. And then over $10 million, 35 percent," Buffett said in an interview with Charlie Rose in November. "Tax law should be progressive. And I think that when people make $15 million or $20 million or $200 million and pay a 10 percent rate, something should be done about it."

IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad, 86, is the world's fifth- richest person with a $42.9 billion fortune. The complex ownership structure behind IKEA, the world's largest furniture retailer, became more transparent in August after IKEA's franchisor published its financial performance publicly for the first time. His net worth rose 16.6 percent in 2012.

Brazil's Eike Batista, 56, was the year's biggest loser by dollars, falling $10.1 billion. The commodities maven, who vowed a year ago that he'd become the world's wealthiest man by 2015, sold a 5.63 percent stake in his EBX Group in March to Abu Dhabi's Mubadala Development.

As part of the deal, he pledged an unspecified additional stake in 2019 if he fails to meet a 5 percent annual return on the sovereign wealth fund's $2 billion investment, according to a person with knowledge of the deal. Batista now ranks 75th in the world with a $12.4 billion net worth. On March 27, he was worth $34.5 billion and ranked 8th on the Bloomberg index.

"Next year is going to be a lot of work for Eike," said Lucas Brendler, who helps manage about 6 billion reais at Banco Geracao Futuro de Investimentos in Porto Alegre, Brazil. "It's going to be a year for him to recover investors' confidence, and to leave the realm of theory and start delivering results. The EBX companies have great growth potential."

Batista's former title as the richest Brazilian is now held by 73-year-old banker Jorge Paulo Lemann, who ranks 37th with an $18.8 billion fortune. The country's second-richest person is Dirce Camargo, the matriarch behind Camargo Correa SA, the Sao Paulo-based conglomerate that has interests in cement, electricity and Havaianas flip-flops. Her net worth is $13.4 billion, according to the Bloomberg ranking.

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'Fiscal cliff' aftermath: Fights loom on spending cuts, debt ceiling

President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans looked ahead today toward the next round of even bigger budget fights after reaching a hard-fought "fiscal cliff" deal that narrowly averted potentially devastating tax hikes and spending cuts.

The agreement, approved late on Tuesday by the Republican-led House of Representatives after a bitter political struggle, was a victory for Obama, who had won re-election on a promise to address budget woes in part by raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans.

But it set up political showdowns over the next two months on spending cuts and on raising the nation's limit on borrowing. Republicans, angry the deal did little to curb the federal deficit, promised to use the debt ceiling debate to win deep spending cuts next time.

Republicans, who acknowledged they had lost the fiscal cliff fight by agreeing to raise taxes on the wealthy without gaining much in return, vowed the next deal would have to include significant cuts in government benefit programs like Medicare and Medicaid health care for retirees and the poor that were the biggest drivers of federal debt.

"This is going to be much uglier to me than the tax issue … this is going to be about entitlement reform," Republican Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee said on CNBC.

Obama urged "a little less drama" when the Congress and White House next address thorny fiscal issues like the government's rapidly mounting $16 trillion debt load.

While the tax package that Congress passed will protect 99 percent of Americans from an income tax increase, most of them will still end up paying more federal taxes in 2013.

That's because the legislation did nothing to prevent a temporary reduction in the Social Security payroll tax from expiring. In 2012, that 2-percentage-point cut in the payroll tax was worth about $1,000 to a worker making $50,000 a year.

The Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan Washington research group, estimates that 77 percent of American households will face higher federal taxes in 2013 under the agreement negotiated between President Barack Obama and Senate Republicans. High-income families will feel the biggest tax increases, but many middle- and low-income families will pay higher taxes too.

Households making between $40,000 and $50,000 will face an average tax increase of $579 in 2013, according to the Tax Policy Center's analysis. Households making between $50,000 and $75,000 will face an average tax increase of $822.

"For most people, it's just the payroll tax," said Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center.

The tax increases could be a lot higher. A huge package of tax cuts first enacted under President George W. Bush was scheduled to expire Tuesday as part of the "fiscal cliff." The Bush-era tax cuts lowered taxes for families at every income level, reduced investment taxes and the estate tax, and enhanced a number of tax credits, including a $1,000-per-child credit.

The package passed Tuesday by the Senate and House extends most the Bush-era tax cuts for individuals making less than $400,000 and married couples making less than $450,000.

Obama said the deal "protects 98 percent of Americans and 97 percent of small business owners from a middle-class tax hike. While neither Democrats nor Republicans got everything they wanted, this agreement is the right thing to do for our country."

The income threshold covers more than 99 percent of all households, exceeding Obama's claim, according to the Tax Policy Center. However, the increase in payroll taxes will hit nearly every wage earner.

Social Security is financed by a 12.4 percent tax on wages up to $113,700, with employers paying half and workers paying the other half. Obama and Congress reduced the share paid by workers from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent for 2011 and 2012, saving a typical family about $1,000 a year.

Obama pushed hard to enact the payroll tax cut for 2011 and to extend it through 2012. But it was never fully embraced by either party, and this time around, there was general agreement to let it expire.

The new tax package would increase the income tax rate from 35 percent to 39.6 percent on income above $400,000 for individuals and $450,000 for married couples. Investment taxes would increase for people who fall in the new top tax bracket.

High-income families will also pay higher taxes this year as part of Obama's 2010 health care law. As part of that law, a new 3.8 percent tax is being imposed on investment income for individuals making more than $200,000 a year and couples making more than $250,000.

Together, the new tax package and Obama's health care law will produce significant tax increases for many high-income families.

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Apple testing new iPhone, iOS 7: report

(Reuters) - Apple Inc has started testing a new iPhone and the next version of its iOS software, news website The Next Web reported.

The company's shares rose as much as 4.3 percent but eased a little to trade up 3 percent at $546.11 by mid-day on the Nasdaq.

Application developers have found in their app usage logs references to a new iPhone identifier, iPhone 6.1, running iOS 7 operating system, the website reported.

Apple's iPhone 5 bears the identifiers "iPhone 5.1" and "iPhone 5.2" and is powered by the iOS 6 operating system.

Developer logs show that the app requests originate from an internet address on Apple's Cupertino campus, suggesting that Apple engineers are testing compatibility for some of the popular apps, the website said.

"Although OS and device data can be faked, the unique IP footprint leading back to Apple's Cupertino campus leads us to believe this is not one of those attempts," the website said.

Raymond James analyst Tavis McCourt, however, expects the next version of the iconic smartphone to be called iPhone 5S and not iPhone 6.

Apple typically tags the interim version of its phones with an "S" before moving on to a new version. iPhone 3GS followed iPhone 3G and the iPhone 4S followed iPhone 4.

McCourt also said he wouldn't be surprised if Apple looked at an earlier launch because of the stress on its supply chain caused by late-year launches.

Apple launched iPhone 5 in September and it has been reported that the new iPhone will be released in the middle of 2013.

Techradar.com reported last month that Apple could unveil the next version of its iPhone as early as the spring of 2013.

(Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee and Chandni Doulatramani in Bangalore; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)

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Ray Lewis to retire after playoffs

OWINGS MILLS, Md. (AP) — Ray Lewis will end his brilliant 17-year NFL career after the Baltimore Ravens complete their 2013 playoff run.

Lewis has been sidelined since Oct. 14 with a torn right triceps. The 13-time Pro Bowl middle linebacker intends to return Sunday to face the Indianapolis Colts in what will almost certainly be his final home game.

"I talked to my team today," Lewis said Wednesday. "I talked to them about life in general. And everything that starts has an end. For me, today, I told my team that this will be my last ride."

Lewis will walk away from the game because he wants to spend more time with his two sons. While working to return from his injury, Lewis watched them play on the same high school football team, and he intends to watch Ray Lewis III perform as a freshman next year for his alma mater, the University of Miami.

"God is calling," the 37-year-old Lewis said. "My children have made the ultimate sacrifice for their father for 17 years. I don't want to see them do that no more. I've done what I wanted to do in this business, and now it's my turn to give them something back."

Which means he'll pull off his No. 52 uniform for the last time after the Ravens are eliminated or win the Super Bowl.

"It's either hold onto the game and keep playing and let my kids miss out on times we can be spending together," Lewis said. "Because I always promised my son if he got a full ride on scholarship Daddy is going to be there. I can't miss that."

Lewis was the AP Defensive Player of the Year in 2000, when Baltimore won the Super Bowl title, and in 2003.

"I never played the game for individual stats. I only played the game to make my team a better team," he said.

___

Online: http://pro32.ap.org/poll and http://twitter.com/AP_NFL

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