Chinese looking for justice found another way to keep the issue alive. They took it to Washington.

Appealing to a White House online petition page, they soon gathered the 100,000 signatures required for an official response, and although there has been no response from Washington so far news of the request revived talk about the case in China. Beijing police issued an explanation after weeks of silence, and state media chimed in with editorials.

"The Chinese public went to a foreign site to vent off their frustration, and that speaks of the loss of credibility of the Chinese government," said Shen Dingli, professor of American studies at Fudan University.

Started in 2011 as a project in open government for the Internet age, the Obama administration's "We the People" site is a work in progress that already has spawned unintended consequences domestically, prompting updates of the ground rules for a successful petition.

Though clearly intended for U.S. citizens, the guidelines on gathering online signatories remain broad enough to hearten activists overseas who frustrated with their own governments hope to raise the international profile of their cases. The site does not ask for one's nationality, and one only needs to be 13 or older and have a verified email address to create an account to initiate a petition or sign one.

Malaysians have complained to the White House about election fraud in their country, drawing more than 222,000 signatures within a week to become the site's second-most popular issue. Other petitions ask President Barack Obama to secure the release of two abducted Orthodox Christian archbishops in Syria and to urge a recount of votes in Venezuela's presidential elections.

And in the past week, requests have poured in from China, where petitioning the central government in Beijing dates back to imperial eras, but where nowadays the tradition is usually fruitless and sometimes perilous.

Some of the petitions are serious, and some silly as with many of the U.S.-generated requests, which include a demand to build a "Star Wars"-style Death Star.

The Chinese petitions have asked Washington to disclose assets held by Chinese officials' children residing in the U.S., and have urged remembrance of the bloody Chinese government crackdown on the 1989 student protest in Tiananmen Square. Others have asked for adjudication on the official recipe for Lanzhou beef noodles, and on the debate over whether the flavor of bean curd stew a Chinese breakfast staple should be sweet or salty. The petitions often are written in bad English, and some are in Chinese.

The White House says that, for now, it will give equal treatment to petitions from overseas.

"'We the People' is just part of the administration's commitment to open government and the code powering the application has been made available to anyone, including other countries, who wish to set up a similar system," White House spokesman Matt Lehrich said.

The current threshold for White House response is when a petition gathers 100,000 signatures within 30 days up from lower thresholds that allowed for too many frivolous petitions.

The Malaysian petition crossed that barrier, but has drawn no response yet. Any hopes for U.S. condemnation of the election results evaporated this week when the U.S. State Department recognized the polling results, while acknowledging allegations of irregularities. Still, supporters feel they accomplished something.

The petition "spoke out the dissatisfactions to the international communities successfully," virologist and the petition's apparent organizer, Kuan Ping Ang, said on her Facebook page.

Shen said the White House page is one of a kind. "No other Western democratic country has a site where the government promises to respond to a petition with 100,000 signatures," she said.

It has rapidly become popular in China, where the tightly controlled media and Internet put politically sensitive topics off limits. People who bring their grievances to the central government as petitioners are routinely harassed, beaten and sent to labor camps as troublemakers or locked up in what are known as "black jails" in a kind of extralegal detention.

Enthusiasm for the White House site shows the lack of avenues at home to vent frustration, said David Zweig, professor of social science at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

"There is no mechanism for the Chinese citizens to really express their views. It's really as simple as that," Zweig said. "The citizens are looking for any strategies to make their grievances known."

It started with the case of Zhu Ling, a woman who was paralyzed for life from thallium poisoning during her third year at Tsinghua University in Beijing. No one was held responsible for the crime, and the cold case resurfaced in April in the wake of another poisoning at Fudan University. The Chinese public demanded an investigation into one of Zhu's roommates who had long been considered a suspect. They questioned whether the original investigation was squashed because of her family's political ties.

Before there was any satisfactory answer, Chinese censors began to remove posts and shush online commentators, effectively ending the discussion. But then someone started the petition on the White House page early this month, and by last Monday it had garnered more than 100,000 signatures in about three days. Since then, about a dozen more China-related petitions have appeared.

Shi Shusi, a well-known media commentator, sees black humor in the flood of petitions to the White House.

"For a very long time, the Chinese government has responded too slowly on social incidents. It has exhausted its credits," Shi said. "The public probably just need a place to vent their resentment."

___

Associated Press writer Sean Yoong in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and news assistant Flora Ji in Beijing contributed to this report.

"Kinky Boots" and "Matilda" each of which is led by a man dressed as a woman are virtual locks to get best musical Tony nods Tuesday morning.

The nominations will be announced by Tony-winner Sutton Foster and "Modern Family" star Jesse Tyler Ferguson.

In "Matilda," British actor Bertie Carvel plays a brutal headmistress, while Billy Porter is a drag queen in "Kinky Boots."

Other contenders for the best musical prize include "Bring It On: The Musical," ''Motown: The Musical," ''Hands on a Hardbody" and "A Christmas Story, The Musical."

Leading contenders for best play are "The Assembled Parties," ''The Other Place" and "Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike."

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Online: http://www.TonyAwards.com

"We're feeling very excited and gratified that we've reached this milestone," said Jane Alcorn, president of the Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe, on New York's Long Island. Her group announced last week that it had finalized the purchase of the Tesla lab and property for $850,000.

Tesla was a rival of Thomas Edison who imagined a world of free electricity. He conducted experiments in the early 20th century at his laboratory in Shoreham, about 65 miles east of New York City.

Volunteers have struggled for nearly two decades to raise money to acquire the property with limited success.

Their effort got a jolt of support last summer from Seattle cartoonist Matthew Inman, a Tesla fan who started promoting a fundraising effort on his website, theoatmeal.com.

Within six weeks, they had raised more than $1.3 million from 33,000 donors in the U.S. and 108 countries.

Tesla abandoned the lab in 1917. For many years it was a photo chemical processing plant; in 1993, officials determined that the property's groundwater had been polluted with cadmium and silver. A remediation effort overseen by state environmental regulators was completed last year.

Alcorn said that the purchase of the property was a key first step but noted much work needs to be done before the group can realize its goal: "to create a fitting memorial to Tesla and a science center to benefit the entire world."

She estimated another $10 million will be required to renovate the property, which is overrun with brush and includes several dilapidated buildings in the complex that will likely need to be demolished.

Alcorn said her group's first priority is to secure the property from further vandalism. Additional fundraisers are being discussed, but Alcorn had no specific details.

Among Tesla's accomplishments were developments in alternating current and research in the creation of wireless communication and radio. He died in New York City in 1943.

When people start downloading the Home software upon its April 12 release in the U.S., Facebook will become the new hub of their Android smartphones.

Switch on your phone and you'll see friends' photos, overlaid by status updates, links and eventually, advertisements in Facebook's quest to bring in more revenue and restore its stock price to where it stood when the company went public nearly 11 months ago.

About 80 percent of what currently appears within a Facebook user's News Feed will automatically be transferred into the "cover feed" of the Home service. For instance, a sibling's status update might be featured prominently on the phone's home screen when it's unlocked. Swipe a finger and there might be a photo posted by one of your best friends. Want to like what you see? Just tap on the home screen twice. Comments can be posted directly from the home screen, too.

If other friends happen to send you a message, their Facebook photo will pop up as a notification.

Other Facebook features, such as video, will be added to Home in future months. A Home version for Android-powered tablet computers also will be coming later this year.

Once they have had their fill of what Facebook is feeding them on the Home service, users can just swipe a finger on the screen to get to all the standard Android apps to listen to music, watch videos or send email.

At first, Home will only work on some Android devices, including HTC Corp.'s One X and One X Plus and Samsung Electronics Co.'s Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note 2. For now, Home isn't compatible with the Nexus phone designed by Google, a fierce Facebook rival whose pliable Android software is being modified to accommodate the new service.

A phone from HTC that comes pre-loaded with Home will be available starting April 12, with AT&T Inc. as the carrier. The HTC First will sell for $99.99 with a two-year data plan from AT&T.

Home is debuting after several years of speculation that Facebook intended to make its own phone or mobile operating system to drive more traffic to its social network. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the speculation never made sense to him because he believes a company-produced phone might only end up in the hands of 10 million to 20 million people. The Home service gives Facebook a chance to take control of the main screen of every phone running on Android, the leading mobile operating system. In the U.S. alone, about 64 million people will be relying on Android-driven phones this year, estimated the research firm eMarketer.

"Just building a phone isn't enough for Facebook," Zuckerberg said Thursday during Home's unveiling at the company's Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters.

The idea behind the software is to bring Facebook content right to users' home screens, rather than requiring them to check various apps to see what their friends are up to, or to chat. Down the line, Facebook will integrate its existing camera app and other features. Though cameras and calls won't be built into the initial version of Home, Zuckerberg promised the software will be updated at least once a month to add more features and fix bugs.

"Home" comes amid rapid growth in the number of people who access Facebook from phones and tablet computers. Of the social network's 1.06 billion monthly users, 680 million log in using a mobile gadget. As a result, the money Facebook makes from mobile advertising is also growing. Taking over the entire screen of smartphones and, eventually, tablet computers will provide Facebook for a larger canvas for selling mobile ads.

Zuckerberg, already a multibillionaire, didn't dwell on Home's moneymaking potential Thursday. Instead, he depicted the software as a noble attempt to put a higher priority on personal relationships than utilitarian apps.

"Why do we need to go into all the apps in the first place to see what is going on with the people we care about," he asked.

"We think this is the best version of Facebook there is," he said.

That statement implies that using Facebook on Apple's iPhone and other smartphones may become a less enriching experience. Apple Inc., which rigidly controls how apps work on the operating system built for the iPhone and iPad, has ingrained more Facebook features into the most recent versions of its mobile software.

Apple had no immediate comment about Home.

Zuckerberg said users can have an experience on Android phones unavailable on other platforms because Google makes the software available on an open-source basis. That allows phone manufacturers and software developers to adapt it to their needs.

Recognizing that text messaging is one of the most important tasks on a mobile phone, Facebook programmed Home to include a feature called "chat heads." This lets users communicate with their friends directly from their home screens without opening a separate app.

"What Facebook wants is to put itself at the front of the Android user experience for as many Facebook users as possible and make Facebook more elemental to their customers' experience," said Forrester analyst Charles Golvin.

While the Home service probably makes sense for Facebook, Golvin believes the company is overestimating "the extent to which this is something their users want."

"I'm sure there are people out there whose lives revolve around their social network and for them it makes sense to have it front and center," Golvin said. "But this doesn't describe the majority of consumers."

Google Inc. is among the companies hoping that Golvin is correct. The Internet search leader gives away its Android software for free, in the hope that it will steer phone users to ads sold by Google. With Home, Facebook will be muscling its way in between Android users and Google, creating an opportunity for Facebook to seize the advertising advantage.

This is not the first time a big Internet company has co-opted Android: Amazon.com's Kindle Fire tablets run a version of Android that strips out all Google services, replacing them with Amazon's equivalents. Google responded by releasing its own tablet to compete against the Kindle Fire last year.

The mobile advertising market is growing quickly, thanks in large part to Facebook and Twitter, which also entered the space in 2012. EMarketer expects U.S. mobile ad spending to grow 77 percent this year to $7.29 billion, from $4.11 billion last year.

Facebook, meanwhile, is expected to reel in $1.53 billion in worldwide mobile ad revenue this year according to eMarketer, up from $470.7 million last year.

Facebook's stock rose 82 cents, or 3.1 percent, to close Thursday at $27.07. That's 29 percent below its initial public offering price of $38. Meanwhile, the Standard & Poor's 500 index has surged by 20 percent since Facebook's rocky debut.

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Barbara Ortutay reported from New York. AP Technology Writer Peter Svensson contributed to this story from New York.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A modest tax increase that Republicans embraced months ago will be part of President Barack Obama's budget proposal set for release next week, White House officials said on Friday.

The proposal would change how Social Security pension benefits are periodically adjusted for inflation and, in doing so, also change the adjustment of federal individual income tax brackets, resulting in slightly higher taxes for many Americans.

The idea - involving a measure of inflation known as the chained Consumer Price Index, or chained CPI - was backed in December by House of Representative Republican leaders. White House officials detailed it ahead of Wednesday's budget release.

Chained CPI is staunchly opposed by many Democrats as well as labor and retiree groups because it would reduce some Social Security benefits. By offering it in his budget as a concession, Obama could be trying to bring Republicans back to the deficit-reduction negotiating table in coming weeks.

Republicans backed chained CPI as a way to raise $200 billion over a decade in an offer when the two sides were dueling over how to avert the $600 billion "fiscal cliff" mix of tax hikes and spending cuts that loomed at the start of the year.

House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner and other House Republican leaders signed a December 3 offer that proposed chained CPI. Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck said on Friday that the speaker is still open to such a move.

"There is a substantial bipartisan consensus that there's a more accurate measure of inflation," Buck said.

"And the Speaker has said if a measure is more accurate, it should be used wherever it is applied throughout government."

So where does the tax boost come in?

Switching to chained CPI from the CPI measure now used by Social Security would also change tax bracket adjustments so that they would occur less often. As a result, Americans with rising incomes would see more of their income move more quickly into higher tax brackets. This is known as "bracket creep."

"Chained CPI increases revenues because we adjust the tax code by that measurement of inflation," said Steve Bell, senior director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a think tank, and a former adviser to congressional Republicans.

BIPARTISAN IDEA

Many bipartisan deficit-cutting groups have proposed moving to chained CPI, including the so-called Simpson-Bowles commission and the Bipartisan Policy Center.

"I can't explain," how Republicans can back a tax hike, said Stephen Entin, an economist at the conservative Tax Foundation think tank and former Treasury official under President Ronald Reagan. "It is usually put forward as a technical adjustment, but it is also a tax increase."

Supporters of the switch say the standard CPI index overstates price rises, but opponents say moving to chained CPI would unfairly deprive older Americans of benefits they have been promised.

In addition, because more affluent taxpayers can't be bumped beyond the top bracket, the change would tend to bite hardest among middle-class taxpayers, according to the non-partisan Tax Policy Center.

About three-quarters of households would see a tax hike, TPC said in an analysis, with those making between $30,000 and $40,000 seeing the biggest cut in after-tax income - on average about 0.3 percent.

Obama's fiscal 2014 budget aims to cut the deficit by $1.8 trillion over 10 years, administration officials said.

Boehner, the top Republican in Congress, has ruled out any further revenue increases after letting taxes rise for the wealthiest Americans earlier this year.

(Additional reporting by Richard Cowan and Mark Felsenthal; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Eric Walsh)

NEW YORK (Reuters) - At first blush the two leading U.S. stock exchanges won a sweeping victory this week in a long-running legal battle over market data - the stock quotes, share prices and other trading information that are highly prized in the electronic marketplace.

But a ruling by the U.S. Appeals Court for the District of Columbia Circuit may also have opened the door for the Internet companies, brokers and others in the case to achieve a decade-old goal of cutting the fees the exchanges charge for the data.

The court ruled in a decision earlier this week it had no jurisdiction over a case brought by the NetCoalition of some 20 Internet companies, including Google Inc and Yahoo Inc, and the Securities Industry and Finance Markets Association, a 600-member lobby for brokers, bankers and asset managers.

The decision appeared to slam the door on the petitioners and remove a potential obstacle to efforts by the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq Stock Market to offset sharp drops in revenue from stock transactions by boosting market data sales.

But the court did offer a path for Sifma and the NetCoalition group to mount a new battle, several people close to the case said.

The court indicated the Securities Exchange Act, which governs exchanges and their responsibilities as self-regulatory organizations, requires that the exchanges provide for the "equitable allocation" of reasonable fees, among other dues and charges.

The petitioners have argued the exchanges are effectively monopolies and competition is not sufficient to restrain prices.

"I intend to submit a ... petition," said Roger Blanc, a lawyer with Willkie Farr who represented the NetCoalition, the name by which the case is also called. "As soon as we can put it together, we'll be back before the circuit court."

The case is notable because of the importance of market data in an electronic market that relies on "signal processing," the analysis of data by high-speed computers, to trade.

Sifma and the NetCoalition had sought judicial review of the proprietary data both NYSE and Nasdaq sell after the Securities and Exchange Commission let stand almost all their filings for new schedules and higher prices for market data in recent years.

The petitioners challenged the SEC over more than a dozen filings, saying the fees were exorbitant and regulators had abdicated their duties to ensure data fees were "fee and reasonable," a loosely defined standard the agency must uphold.

Four of the complaints were combined before the appeals court, which has oversight of the SEC, and the two exchanges with the regulators provided a joint opinion in the case.

Market data has been a thorn in the side of the SEC for years, with regulators unable to resolve the issue despite a series of high-profile hearings and studies from 1999 to 2005.

A former senior SEC official said market data is highly contentious with no easy answer.

Although the appeals court said the Dodd-Frank act stripped it of jurisdiction in the case, the court left intact its August 2010 ruling that there must be evidence that competition is constraining the fees the exchanges charge for the data.

The court also said the exchanges cannot enforce fee rules that are inconsistent with the exchange act, and said fees need to be tied to "some type of cost-based" standard to guard against excessive profits.

The latter point could be a boon for the petitioners' cause. They have long contended the cost of producing the data is negligible and the exchanges charge far in excess of its cost.

"We are pleased that the court has affirmed our ability to provide high-quality data at reasonable rates to vendors who profit from reselling the data to their customers," a spokesman for the Nasdaq said. The NYSE declined to comment.

The NYSE and Nasdaq presented academic studies to bolster their position that competition exists for market data, and they have strongly resisted any cost analysis of their data.

The Nasdaq's chief financial officer has been telling analysts that market data is an "extremely high-margin" business. Revenue from the U.S. sale of proprietary data at the Nasdaq has expanded at a compound annual growth rate of about 10.8 percent since 2007, a period in which data usage has exploded.

The emphasis on market data as a profit center is misplaced, according to former SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt. The exchanges are trying to staunch their hemorrhaging and charging for data is purely a short-term solution to a long-term problem, he said.

A good portion of market data is public and should not be proprietary as the exchanges see it, Pitt said in an interview before the court's ruling this week. Allowing data to be available only for those who can afford it will create hard-to-justify market dislocations, he warned.

"The question is when you've allowed people to treat market data as proprietary for so long, how do you justify making a shift and what accommodations do you make?" Pitt said.

The case is NetCoalition and Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association v Securities and Exchange Commission, U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit; No. 10-1421.

(Reporting by Herbert Lash; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

The Avs never got on track in the lockout-shortened season and finished last in the Western Conference.

Sacco was in his fourth season in charge of Colorado and wound up with a 130-134-30 mark. He had one year left on his contract.

"The organization believes a change of leadership behind the bench is needed going forward," general manager Greg Sherman said in a release. "Joe has worked for this franchise for eight seasons and he is a dedicated and hard-working coach. We appreciate all he has done and wish him the best in the future."

The Avs will soon begin their search for a replacement.

Sacco spent two seasons in charge of the organization's American Hockey League affiliate squad, the Lake Erie Monsters, before taking over the Avs in 2009 after the firing of Tony Granato.

A former NHL player, Sacco preached a fast-paced style and it served the youthful Avalanche well in his first season as the team earned a postseason spot. He was even a finalist for the NHL's coach of the year.

But Colorado couldn't duplicate that success.

Moments after a 3-1 loss to Minnesota on Saturday to close out the regular season, Sacco was asked about his future, saying, "We're certainly headed in the right direction."

His team was committed to his up-tempo philosophy. Matt Duchene recently said that Sacco's message was still getting across.

"We've all played the system he's put in place to the best of our ability. We've all worked at it," said Duchene, who finished tied with P.A. Parenteau for the team scoring lead with 43 points. "We're all still buying in and working."

Sacco will be back on the bench later this week when he leads the U.S. squad at the world championships. He will even take several Avalanche players with him, including Paul Stastny and Erik Johnson.

LONDON (Reuters) - For a band that thrives on taking risks, moving The Stranglers' music from the mosh pit to the orchestra pit was an easy decision.

The fact that the punk veterans, more used to fans thrashing around to their songs, are also working on a ballet based on of one their albums just adds to the spirit of adventure.

The Stranglers were named last week as among the line up of the 118-year-old BBC Proms, performing their music with the London Sinfonietta on August 12, as organizers aim to attract a younger crowd to Britain's largest classical music festival

Bassist Jean-Jacques Burnel, one of the group's founders, said he was "gobsmacked" when the BBC invited the band to join one of 92 events in the eight weeks of Proms concerts - some of the most sought after tickets in the London entertainment year.

"It has never been done before. I am still in adventure mode and anything that I haven't done is a box to be ticked," Burnel told Reuters in a pub by the River Thames, wearing black skinny jeans and dark sunglasses.

"I can't think of many more prestigious events in the world musical calendar," he said, adding it was yet to be decided which of the band's songs would be played at the event.

Burnel said band had always sought out risks and challenges since forming in 1974, releasing their debut album "Rattus Norvegicus" in 1977 and 16 others, as well as 23 hit singles such as "Golden Brown", "No More Heroes", and "Peaches".

BALLET MASH UP

He describes the ballet, based on 1981 album "The Gospel According to the Meninblack" as a mix of "Frankenstein with Madame Butterfly" - although it is still very much a work in progress and could take years to complete.

"We are entering uncharted territory here. Can you be an old punk? But while the creative juices are flowing anything is possible," said the 61-year-old.

Over the decades the band has come and gone from the spotlight, with a quiet period after original singer and guitarist Hugh Cornwell left in 1990. There has also been a few line-up changes.

The group now comprises Burnel and two other longstanding members, keyboardist Dave Greenfield and drummer Jet Black, who turns 75 this year and is often replaced by Jim Macaulay due to ill health. Guitarist Baz Warne joined in 2000.

Burnel said he was starting to think The Stranglers had reached the end of the line a few years ago.

But then the band enjoyed a resurgence in popularity, releasing their 17th album "Giant" last year and performing at a string of festivals - where the fans dancing right at the front in the throb of the speakers have changed as the band has aged.

"We have a loyal bunch of fans who have grown up with us and some more recently who have discovered us," said Burnel, hobbling on crutches after a knee operation.

"All the old punks with the baldy heads are being pushed to the back and the mosh pit is full of teenagers."

He said they had mellowed over the years, as has their sound from the growling aggression of the early punk years.

"We are not looking for punch-ups all the time. At one time we had an expression that 'truth is provocation' so we would just wind people up to annoy them," he said.

Do they have an expression now?

"Just survive another day," he said.

(Editing by Alison Williams)

Here's how it will work and what you need to know.

1. THINK BCS

The conference commissioners who spent more than a year putting the playoff together cringe when it's suggested that the new system is BCS 2.0, but to understand how it works, it helps to keep in mind how the Bowl Championship Series worked.

In the BCS, there were four, and then later five games played each season. Only one, the national championship game, had anything to do with the national championship. The others were glitzy bowl games played in showcase stadiums that hopefully had compelling matchups. Six conferences had automatic bids to those games, and other teams could earn automatic entry.

The new system will have a total of seven games, including two national semifinals and a final that will determine the national champion. The four other games will be glitzy bowl games played in showcase stadiums that hopefully will have compelling matchups. There will no longer be automatic bids for six conference champions, as was the case for the BCS. Now five conferences (the Big Ten, Big 12, SEC, ACC and Pac-12) each have guaranteed a spot for their conference champion in either the semifinals or one of the four glitzy bowls. There will also be a guaranteed spot for the best team from the five FBS conferences (the Big East, soon to be the American Athletic Conference, Mountain West, Sun Belt, Conference-USA and Mid-American).

2. THE MATCHUPS

The selection committee will, for the most part, make the matchups. Foremost it will seed the top four teams in the country, setting up the semifinals. No. 1 will play No. 4. No. 2 will play No. 3. The committee will try as best it can to avoid giving the lower-seeded team a geographical advantage. For example, if LSU is seeded fourth the committee is unlikely to let the Tigers play a semifinal in New Orleans.

The selection committee will also set some of the matchups in the glitzy bowls, with a priority on getting as many highly ranked teams as possible into the games.

But this is important: when the Rose Bowl does not host a semifinal it will always be Big Ten vs. Pac-12. The Sugar Bowl in years it does not host a semifinal will always be Southeastern Conference vs. Big 12. The Orange Bowl in the years it does not host a semifinal will always be Atlantic Coast Conference vs. either an SEC team, a Big Ten team or Notre Dame.

3. CONFERENCE LIMITATIONS

None. Unlike the BCS, which capped the number of teams from a conference at two, in the new system there is no limit to how many teams a league can put in the two semifinals or the other bowls. Four SEC teams? Sure, why stop there.

4. WHERE?

The semifinals will rotate through six bowl games: the Rose (Pasadena), Orange (Miami), Sugar (New Orleans), Fiesta (Glendale, Ariz.), Cotton (Arlington, Texas) and Chick-fil-A (Atlanta). When those games don't host a semifinal, they will put on one of the glitzy bowls.

The championship game will be bid out like the Super Bowl and move all over the country. The first one will be played at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas, also home of the Cotton Bowl.

5. WHEN?

Three games will be played back-to-back-to-back on New Year's Eve and there will be another tripleheader on New Year's Day. Adjustments will be made if Dec. 31 or Jan. 1 falls on a Sunday so as to not conflict with the NFL.

The championship game will always be played on a Monday, at least a week after the semifinals.

The first season the semifinals will be in the Rose and Sugar bowls on Jan. 1, 2015. The Rose will kickoff around 5 p.m. EST. The Sugar around 8:30 p.m. EDT.

The championship game in Texas will be played Jan. 12, and kickoff around 8:30 p.m.

The Rose and Sugar bowls will always be played on New Year's Day, so in most seasons the semifinals will be played on New Year's Eve.

6. TV

All these games will be shown on ESPN. It has reportedly paid about $7.2 billion for the entire package.

7. WHERE ALL THAT MONEY GOES

About 85 percent of it will go to the Big Five conferences. The other five will split the rest, but don't feel too badly for them. Most will be making about five times the amount they made with the BCS.

8. AND ABOUT THAT SELECTION COMMITTEE

The idea was to make it similar to the one that puts together the NCAA basketball tournament, made up of athletic directors and conference commissioners. But make no mistake, this will be much tougher to put together, and the commissioners know that.

"This is an issue of considerable complexity and given how much time we have until the playoff begins, we're in no rush," BCS executive director Bill Hancock said Thursday, the final of three days of meetings at a resort hotel in the Rose Bowl's backyard.

Everything is apparently still up for debate, from who will be on the committee current or former athletic administrators? to how many people will be on it 16? 18? 20? to what kind of metrics and rankings it will be given to guide decisions.

9. HOW LONG BEFORE THIS SYSTEM CAN BE CHANGED?

The conferences and ESPN worked out a 12-year deal based on a four-team playoff format. So it appears to be locked in for 12 years, even though the structure is there for it to grow.

10. WHY COLLEGE FOOTBALL WON'T GROW THE SYSTEM TO EIGHT OR 16 TEAMS

"Because we don't want to," Hancock said.

Of course, a few years ago some of the same people working on this didn't want a playoff system at all.

The orchestra plans to mark the Verdi anniversary with several performances of his work during its 2013-2014 season. The "Requiem" performance led by Muti will be Oct. 10.

"I will continue to work on how to perform Verdi," Muti, who is in his third year as the orchestra's music director, told at a news conference at Chicago's Orchestra Hall. "That doesn't mean that I have the truth in my pocket but certainly I know something about this composer."

Muti is in Chicago this month and will be part of three weeks of performances that include works from Johann Sebastian Bach and Antonio Vivaldi. The orchestra said Muti also will travel with the orchestra in January 2014 to the Canary Island, Germany and Luxembourg, marking his fifth international tour with the group.

He also plans to continue his community outreach this year, including conducting a free community concert at Morton East High School in the Chicago suburb of Cicero on Sept. 18.

Muti, 71, who also is honorary director of the Rome Opera, missed concerts in Chicago earlier this year when he became ill with flu-like symptoms.

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Online: http://www.cso.org