Notre Dame rolls past Miami Hurricanes in Sun Bowl - MiamiHerald.com

EL PASO -- This wasn't a rivalry renewed.

It was a maddening mismatch.

All the Miami Hurricanes can do now is hope that new football coach Al Golden, famous for resurrecting Temple University, can weave his magic in Coral Gables.

In the first game between Notre Dame and Miami in 20 years, the Irish made the Hurricanes look helpless, cruising to four first-half interceptions and a 33-17 victory in the Hyundai Sun Bowl.

The Canes (7-6) have lost three games to end the season and four of their past five bowl games, their last postseason victory coming against Nevada in Larry Coker's final game as coach in 2006.

The Irish (8-5) ended their season with their fourth consecutive victory, as a bundled up pro-Notre Dame crowd of 54,021 -- the largest in Sun Bowl history -- watched approvingly.

Star receiver Michael Floyd scored two touchdowns in a 100-plus-yard performance, and senior safety Harrison Smith had three interceptions, two off starter Jacory Harris and the other off Stephen Morris.

UM has thrown 27 interceptions this season, the most in the Football Bowl Subdivision.

Hurricanes fans might have seen it coming, as the sun rose over a Sun Bowl Stadium field covered with snow and ice from a rare snowfall in the desert Thursday night. By kickoff, thanks to furious work, the artificial turf was green again -- but it was 34 degrees.

UM faltered from the start. The Canes missed tackles, racked up penalties, threw to the wrong team and couldn't make many plays -- poor execution overall.

Notre Dame had a 27-3 lead by halftime. By then, it was all but over, and the rivalry had become the rout. The Hurricanes finally scored with 10:36 remaining on a 6-yard pass from Morris to Leonard Hankerson.

UM got its second touchdown on a 42-yard pass from Morris to Tommy Streeter with 4:01 remaining.

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Solar cells for electricity, hot water to top White House - MiamiHerald.com

WASHINGTON — The most famous house in America is going solar.

The White House soon will have solar panels to supply the first family's hot water and some of its electricity, the Department of Energy announced Tuesday.

It's not yet clear whether the panels will be visible to tourists from below, but environmentalists and clean energy advocates hope that the buzz will give solar a boost, just as first lady Michelle Obama's vegetable garden got more people buying seeds.

The White House solar panels will be a demonstration project to show that "American solar technologies are available, reliable and ready for installation in homes throughout the country," the Energy Department said in a statement.

"This project reflects President Obama's strong commitment to U.S. leadership in solar energy and the jobs it will create here at home. Deploying solar energy technologies across the country will help America lead the global economy for years to come," Energy Secretary Steven Chu said in a statement.

Bill McKibben, the founder of 350.org — a campaign to find climate change solutions in communities around the world — said in a statement that the White House "did the right thing."

"If it has anything like the effect of the White House garden, it could be a trigger for a wave of solar installations across the country and around the world," he said.

President Jimmy Carter installed 32 solar panels on the roof of the White House above the Oval Office in 1979 to heat water in the staff kitchen, according to the National Museum of American History in Washington, which acquired one of them. President Ronald Reagan removed them in 1986.

McKibben obtained one of the old White House panels and drove it from Maine to Washington last month, trying to push the administration toward taking action on climate change.

After Tuesday's announcement, White House officials said solar had been in the plans since the early days of the administration.

Chu said in a blog post Tuesday that the new solar panels would be on the roof by the end of next spring.

The Energy Department will take bids from companies that want to install the panels and water heater. Among its criteria will be how well a company "showcases American technology, products and knowhow," said Christine Glunz, a spokeswoman for the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

The department expects the solar-powered system to produce about 19,700 kilowatt hours of electricity a year. Based on Washington commercial rates, that would mean an electricity bill savings for a typical household of $2,300 per year. The additional savings on hot water would be about $1,000.

The department is investing in the next generation of solar power, and it says that innovation and new technologies will make solar energy cost-competitive with conventional electricity across the country.

Solar today generates less than 1 percent of the nation's electricity. The costs of photovoltaic panels have been declining, however. The solar industry says that scaling up the use of solar would lower the cost further and make it competitive with coal and natural gas.

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Lula supporter dominates Brazil vote - MiamiHerald.com

RIO DE JANEIRO -- President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's hand-picked successor failed to win the presidency in national elections Sunday, but analysts predicted an easy victory when Brazilians return to the pollsOct. 31.

With 91 percent of votes counted late Sunday, Dilma Rousseff, a guerilla-turned-bureaucrat and the daughter of Bulgarian immigrants, had received 46.7 percent in a nine-candidate field. She needed 50 percent to avoid a runoff.

Rousseff heads into the second round against José Serra, a former governor and government minister, who received 32 percent.

In the months ahead of the election, several polls had predicted that Rousseff, riding Lula da Silva's 80 percent popularity wave, would win the presidency outright, avoiding the runoff. The latest, by O Globo television network right before the election, had shown Rousseff at 51 percent.

``I think it is a defeat not to win in the first round,'' says Arthur Ituassu, a professor of social communication at the Pontifícia Universade Católica in Rio de Janeiro. ``But she is in a very strong position. . . . The chances are that she will win in the second round.''

Rousseff's failure to win the presidency on Sunday may be due to the emergence of two corruption scandals, analysts said.

The Green Party's Marina Silva, herself a former activist and environment minister for Lula and native of the remote Amazonian state of Acre, came in third with nearly 20 percent. Final pre-election polls had put her only as high as 17 percent.

Over the next four weeks, the battle will be for voters who supported Silva. She is likely to throw her support to Serra or stay neutral, said David Fleischer, a professor of political science at the University of Brasília.

The former environment minister had resigned from Lula da Silva's cabinet and there is ``no love lost'' between her and Rousseff, Fleischer says.

During the campaign, many said that Serra and Rousseff lacked the charisma of Lula da Silva, who has had huge success in turning around the Brazilian economy over eight years.

The largest country in Latin America is also one of the most prosperous, and Lula da Silva has been credited with lifting 21 million Brazilians out of poverty. The country was also awarded the 2014 Soccer World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games.

Lula da Silva, however, had been criticized for his close relations to Iran. The issue has come up in the debates but has not been much of a factor in the campaign.

Serra has always said that his goal was to get into a runoff.

``We're going to lead to victory in the campaign in the second round,'' said the Brazilian Social Democracy party candidate and former minister in the cabinet of Lula da Silva's predecessor, Fernando Henrique Cardoso.

`NEW BALL GAME'

``We're going to have a completely new ball game'' with campaigning now, said Alexandre Barros, managing director of the Brasília political consultancy Early Warning Consulting.

This is the first election since the return to democracy in 1985 -- after 21 years of military dictatorship -- where Lula da Silva's name has not been on the ballot. The constitution bars him from running for a third consecutive term.

Since the campaign officially began in July, Rousseff was first viewed skeptically as an unknown since she had never run for public office. But from initial voter support for her in the upper-30 percent, she rose to above the 50 percent mark in September.

Two corruption scandals that emerged in recent weeks then began chipping away at her air of inevitability.

In one, members of her party were accused of illegally accessing the tax records of Serra's family. In the second scandal, one of Rousseff's and Lula da Silva's top aide's family was accused of running an influence-peddling scheme to secure government contracts.

`PERCEPTION'

``The perception was that if Lula [da Silva] had acted faster [to remove the implicated aide], voters would have been certain that he took a step in the good direction, the ethics direction,'' Barros said. ``As it took time, this gave people time to doubt. . . . [Though] the people who defected were fewer'' than many expected.

Still, many voters seemed unperturbed by the allegations and saw Rousseff as a replacement to Lula da Silva even if they were not enthusiastic about the candidate herself.

``When it's election season, I don't think much about these things [allegations of scandal],'' said Maria Luiza after voting in the Martin Luther King municipal school.

Luiza said she is ``very suspicious'' about why the allegations came out in the midst of the campaign.

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