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By GRAHAM DUNBAR
updated 7:53 a.m. ET Dec. 16, 2011
NYON, Switzerland - Former European champions Manchester United and Ajax will meet in the last 32 of the Europa League.
The two were drawn to face each other Friday.
Defending champion FC Porto will take on Manchester City, while 2010 Europa League champion Atletico Madrid will face Lazio.
In other matches, it's: Stoke vs. Valencia; Udinese vs. PAOK; and Locomotiv Moscow vs. Athletic Bilbao.
The first legs will be played Feb. 16, with the return matches scheduled for Feb. 23.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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More newsLONDON (AP) -Manchester United could briefly forget about injury problems, Champions League elimination and its resurgent neighbor on Sunday.
Getty ImagesSource: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/45695539/ns/sports-soccer/
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SANTA MONICA, Calif. ? Atheist messages have displaced most of the Christmastime nativity scenes that for nearly six decades a coalition of local churches had placed in Santa Monica's ocean-view park.
Local churches have traditionally claimed 14 of the 21 Palisades Park display spaces to illustrate the story of the birth of Jesus Christ. But atheists managed to get all but three of the spaces this year because of a new city lottery system.
The Santa Monica Daily Press ( http://bit.ly/tr8h1T) reported that churches had little or no competition for the spaces during the past 57 years. This year, 13 people bid for spaces, prompting City Hall to use a random lottery system to allot the spots.
Two individuals snagged 18 spaces. One person can request a maximum of nine spaces.
"Our belief is that these new applicants have been working together to displace and push out the nativity scenes from the park, rather than erecting a full display of their own," said Hunter Jameson, a spokesman for a coalition of the city's churches.
Secularist Damon Vix is behind the anti-Christian crusade.
Last year, he put up a sign quoting Thomas Jefferson: "Religions are all alike ? founded on fables and mythologies." There were also selections on U.S. Supreme Court decisions about the importance of separating church and state.
Vix, who doesn't live in Santa Monica, now helps other atheists populate Palisades Park spaces, including American Atheists Inc. and the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Secularists feel a need to be more vocal and express their civil rights, he said.
"For 60 years, it's almost exclusively been the point of view of Christians putting up nativity scenes for a whole city block," Vix said.
Jameson pushed the city to give "local preference" in awarding the spaces.
City Attorney Marsha Moutrie wrote, however, that the Christmastime displays cross the boundary into First Amendment rights, which know no geographical boundaries.
"Everyone has equal rights to use the streets and parks for expressive activities, irrespective of residency," Moutrie wrote.
___
Information from: Santa Monica Daily Press , http://www.smdp.com/
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FILE - In this Sept. 12, 2011 file photo, TV personality Giuliana Rancic attends the Rachel Zoe Spring 2012 fashion show during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in New York. Six weeks after revealing that she has breast cancer, E! News host Giuliana Rancic, 37, announced Monday, Dec. 5, 2011, on NBC's ?Today? show that she will have a double mastectomy. (AP Photo/Charles Sykes, file)
FILE - In this Sept. 12, 2011 file photo, TV personality Giuliana Rancic attends the Rachel Zoe Spring 2012 fashion show during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in New York. Six weeks after revealing that she has breast cancer, E! News host Giuliana Rancic, 37, announced Monday, Dec. 5, 2011, on NBC's ?Today? show that she will have a double mastectomy. (AP Photo/Charles Sykes, file)
LOS ANGELES (AP) ? Six weeks after revealing she has breast cancer, E! News host Giuliana Rancic says she will have a double mastectomy. The 37-year-old made the announcement Monday on NBC's "Today" show.
"It was not an easy decision but it was the best decision for me," she said.
She plans to have the surgery next week and said she hopes to be recovered by New Year's Eve, when she and husband Bill Rancic are planning to be in Times Square.
Rancic said she received an "overwhelming outpouring of love, prayers and support" after announcing her breast cancer diagnosis in October.
"I want to make sure to thank everyone and give them an update for being so kind and loving and supportive," she said Monday.
E! expressed its support for Rancic in a statement Monday.
"Giuliana's strength continues to amaze us," the network said. "We admire her courage and are proud to stand by her side through every step on her path to full recovery."
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COMMENTARY | BlackBerry manufacturer RIM hasn't quite crossed the threshold set by HP's $99 fire sale of its TouchPad tablet. But its BlackBerry PlayBook tablet dropped to the $199 mark on the weekend of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and has been the subject of numerous promotions aimed at businesses, such as a buy-two-get-one-free offer.
In a December 2 press release, RIM announced that it was writing off $485 million in unsold PlayBooks for the third quarter of 2012, an amount that Morgan Stanley analyst Ehud Gelblum estimates amounts to about 1.4 million tablets. The question is, where did RIM go wrong with the PlayBook?
Mixed marketing messages
"Amateur hour is over," the PlayBook's early ads announced, in an obvious jab at the iPad ... and all others besides "The world's first professional-grade tablet." But if its "Amplified BlackBerry Experience" didn't win over corporate customers, many of which are now investigating internal iPad deployments, its widely-touted ability to play Need for Speed at the same time as HD movies didn't impress the IT department either. Meanwhile, its enterprise features like BlackBerry messaging were lost on the crowd at Best Buy.
Lack of unique features
Besides a seeming confusion over whether it was targeting businesses or home users, the PlayBook's inability to set itself apart from other tablets didn't help matters either. It promised Adobe Flash web browsing, but so did every Android tablet; and it offered "True Multitasking," but for some reason that never captured people's attention.
The PlayBook's most distinctive feature was actually an anti-feature: Its inability to access your email, calendar, and contacts without being connected to a BlackBerry smartphone. RIM has promised to solve this in a February update, but that will leave almost a year that it will have been on the market without them.
Lack of quality apps and content
App developers like Jamie Murai were turned off by RIM's requirements for PlayBook developers, including a convoluted process to install the necessary tools and a notarized proof of identity that had to be physically mailed to RIM. Partly because of this, the PlayBook suffered from a dearth of apps.
Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble were able to achieve success in the tablet market by selling half-sized e-readers, each tied to their online bookstores and to services like Netflix. But with few big-name content partnerships, the PlayBook was all dressed up with nothing to read or watch.
The PlayBook isn't the iPad
The iPad continues to not only define the tablet category, but break its own records in sales. Any tablet that isn't the iPad has an uphill battle to fight to gain traction ... the BlackBerry PlayBook included.
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MOSCOW (Reuters) ? Russians voted on Sunday in a parliamentary election seen as a test of Vladimir Putin's personal authority before his planned return to the presidency, and an electoral watchdog complained of 'massive cyber attacks' on a website alleging violations.
Putin remains by far the most popular politician in the vast country of more than 140 million people but there are some signs Russians may be wearying of his cultivated strong-man image after 12 years in power.
The 59-year-old ex-spy looked stern and said only that he hoped for good results for his ruling United Russia party as he walked past supporters to vote in Moscow.
"I will vote for Putin. Everything he gets involved in, he manages well," said Father Vasily, 61, a white-bearded monk from a nearby monastery. "It's too early for a new generation. They will be in charge another 20 years. We are Russians, we are Asians, we need a strong leadership."
A Western-financed electoral watchdog and two liberal media outlets said their sites had been shut down by hackers intent on silencing allegations of violations. Sites belonging to the Ekho Moskvy radio station, online news portal Slon.ru and the watchdog Golos went down at around 8 a.m.
"Massive cyber attacks are taking place on the sites of Golos and the map showing violations," Golos said on Twitter.
"I believe that nobody but government structures and the FSB (Security service) is capable of conducting such a campaign," Golos executive director Liliya Shibanova told reporters.
Golos said it had been excluded from several polling booths in the Siberian region of Tomsk. Moscow prosecutors launched an investigation last week into Golos' activities after lawmakers objected to its Western financing.
On Saturday, customs officers held Golos's director for 12 hours at a Moscow airport and Washington said on Friday it was concerned by "a pattern of harassment" against the watchdog.
Ekho Moskvy editor-in-chief Alexei Venediktov wrote on Twitter: "It is obvious the election day attack on the (radio) site is part of an attempt to prevent publishing information about violations."
President Dmitry Medvedev, who is stepping aside next year so that Putin can return to the presidency, has dismissed talk of electoral fraud. The general prosecutor's office and the Central Election Commission could be reached for comment.
SOME RUSSIANS WEARY OF PUTIN
Opinion polls before the vote put Putin's party on course to win a majority but less than the 315 seats it now has in the 450-seat lower house of parliament, the State Duma.
If Putin's party gets less than two-thirds of seats, it would be stripped of its so called constitutional majority which allows it to change the constitution and even approve the impeachment of the president.
Some voters said they would vote for Just Russia, which calls itself 'new socialist', or the Communists, who retain support largely among poorer citizens 20 years after the fall of the Soviet Union and the advent of a free-market system.
"United Russia has lost touch with reality," said a 30-year-old history teacher in St Petersburg who gave his name only as Alexander. He was planning to switch his vote to the Communists.
Others in Russia's second city said they would vote for liberal, Western-leaning Yabloko but the biggest liberal opposition group was barred from taking part.
One of its co-leaders, former First Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov, put a big X across the ballot paper and wrote: "Give us back our elections, vermin."
About 30 opposition protesters gathered by the Kremlin screaming: "Your elections are a farce!" through loudspeakers. Twelve were detained by police, Reuters witnesses said.
Witnesses said police also detained at least 20 people after more than 200 gathered in St Petersburg to protest against election fraud, whistling and chanting: "Shameful Elections!"
Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, voting at a cultural centre decked out with Soviet-style hammer and sickle flags, said there appeared to be election violations in several parts of the country spanning 9,000 km (5,600 miles).
"I just spoke to our people in Siberia and the Far East and the situation is very worrying," he said.
PUTIN'S PARTY
Supporters say Putin saved Russia during his 2000-2008 presidency, restoring Kremlin control over sprawling regions and reviving an economy mired in post-Soviet chaos.
His use of military force to crush a rebellion in the southern Muslim region of Chechnya also won him broad support, and security was tight there on election day.
Opposition parties say the election was unfair from the start because of authorities' support for United Russia with cash and television air time.
Putin has no serious personal rivals as Russia's leader. He remains the ultimate arbiter between the clans which control the world's biggest energy producer.
But his party has had to fight against opponents who have branded it a collection of "swindlers and thieves" and combat a growing sense of unease among voters at Putin's grip on power.
"I shall not vote. I shall cross out all the parties on the list and write: 'Down with the party of swindlers and thieves,'" said Nikolai Markovtsev, an independent deputy in the Vladivostok city legislature on the Pacific seaboard.
"These are not elections: this is sacrilege," he said.
Opponents say Putin has crafted a brittle political system which excludes independent voices and that Russians are growing tired of Putin's swaggering image.
Putin is almost certain to win the March 4 presidential election and could extend his rule until 2024 if he wins the maximum two more terms.
But sports fans booed and whistled at Putin at a Moscow martial arts fight last month -- an exceptional event in a country inclined to show respect and restraint towards leaders. ($1 = 30.8947 Russian roubles)
(Writing by Ralph Boulton, Editing by Timothy Heritage)
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By NBC News and msnbc.com staff
SEATTLE -- Another Occupy encampment is facing ouster.
A judge ruled Friday that Seattle Central Community College can evict Occupy Seattle protesters from its campus on Seattle's Capitol Hill.
In denying?a restraining order that would have prevented the eviction, ?Thurston County Judge Christine Pomeroy?said protesters have a right to protest, but not to camp at the campus, NBC station KING reported on its website.?The judge also mentioned health and safety risks at the encampment as a reason for eviction.
Under the ruling, the school must post an eviction notice, which could happen as early as Monday, KING.com reported. Then the protesters would have 72 hours to leave, meaning eviction could be as early as Thursday.
Next 'Occupy' targets: foreclosed homes, vacant lots
Occupy Seattle protesters shifted their tents to the SCCC campus last month after several battles with the city of Seattle over camps at Westlake Park and City Hall Plaza.
Just before Thanksgiving, the SCCC Board of Trustees approved an emergency rule banning camping on the college's property.
Immediately after, an Occupy Seattle protester named Patrica Sulley filed an injunction for a restraining order to stop the new rule, sending the case to court.
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"In the news sometimes we're portrayed as a this horrible, messy community, with all these problems. And it's a really beautiful mess,"?Sulley said?after the ruling.
SCCC administrators have said the Occupy camp costs the school about $20,000 a week. They have also expressed concerns about protesters entering the college's buildings.
Cities across the nation, including New York,?Los Angeles, Philadelphia?and Oakland?have evicted Occupy protesters from public spaces. Hundreds of people have been arrested in the raids, which have resulted in injuries to protesters and police in some places.
In Seattle, a large?Occupy encampment?in downtown Westlake Park was forcibly removed in October, and many of the?protesters then moved to the college campus.
This article includes reporting from NBC station KING of Seattle and msnbc.com staff.
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