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LONDON (AP) — The British Parliament is set to decide whether to take more aggressive action against Islamic State extremists by launching airstrikes inside Syria.

The vote expected Wednesday evening would authorize bombing inside Syria. Britain has been participating in U.S.-led coalition attacks against IS positions in Iraq only.

Prime Minister David Cameron argues that expanding the airstrikes would strengthen Britain’s security by degrading the IS forces responsible for recent attacks in Paris, Beirut and elsewhere. Cameron has said he wouldn’t seek Parliament’s backing unless he was confident of getting it.

Opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn accuses Cameron of leading a rush to war, but several dozen Labour legislators are expected to support airstrikes.

Attacks may start within days if authorized by Parliament, which defeated a similar measure two years ago.

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JOHANNESBURG (AP) — A South African charity says it received videos of a South African and a Swede who have been held hostage by Islamic extremists in Mali for four years.

Gift of the Givers, a charity trying to broker the release of the hostages, said late Tuesday that the videos of Stephen McGowan and Johan Gustafsson were made on Oct. 20.

In the videos, the men say they are well and have heard a South African organization is making efforts to secure their release.

Gift of the Givers says the men are being held by al-Qaida’s branch in North Africa.

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MADRID (AP) — Official figures show the number of Spanish people registered as unemployed fell by 27,071 in November, the biggest drop on record for that month and welcome news for the conservative government ahead of Dec. 20 general elections.

The Labor Ministry said Wednesday the total number of people registered as jobless was 4.15 million.

Quarterly unemployment surveys — considered more accurate by economists — put Spain’s unemployment rate at 21.2 percent in the third quarter, with 5 million people out of work. The rate is the second highest in the European Union after Greece.

Unemployment began to rocket in Spain in 2008 with the global financial crisis.

The ruling Popular Party is hoping the country’s gradual economic recovery over the past two years will boost its fortunes in this month’s election.

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Microsoft is encouraging developers into sharing the apps they have made for HoloLens, the augmented reality headset that is set to launch in 2017, on Twitter. 

Most of the videos, which can be found at #MadeWithHoloLens, are a few seconds long and show Microsoft employees messing around with the headset, usually with their children. 

Other demos show the more serious side to the headset, which could eventually change how we use computers. HoloLens project manager Varun Mani has shared a demo of “Halo 5: Guardians” streamed from an Xbox One to the headset using Windows 10. 

The game, which was released in October, appears on a floating screen in his living room. The gaming isn’t anywhere near as good as it would be on an Xbox, but it shows the potential of HoloLens. 

Microsoft has bigged up the gaming potential for HoloLens, showing off Minecraft — which the company acquired for $2.5 billion (£1.6 billion) — on stage. 

A developer headset, which costs $3,000 (£1,900), is being rolled out at the start of 2016 opening up the device to more than just Microsoft employees. 

Here are some other demos from Microsoft employees: 

YouTube: 

Floating text above a baby: 

Creating a mountain for the enjoyment of a child: 

A young girl holding the sun: 

Candy Crush on HoloLens: 

Netflix: 

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BRUSSELS (AP) — Inflation across the 19-country eurozone held steady in November at 0.1 percent over the year, reinforcing the case for the European Central Bank to deliver a further big stimulus for the region this week.

The increase reported Wednesday by the European Union’s statistics agency was below market expectations for a modest uptick to 0.2 percent. The ECB targets an inflation rate of just below 2 percent.

Perhaps more concerning for policymakers is that the core rate, which strips out volatile items such as energy, food, alcohol and tobacco, was also unchanged at 0.9 percent. The consensus in the markets was for an increase, to 1.1 percent.

Low inflation is the main reason why the ECB is expected to deliver another stimulus for the eurozone economy Thursday.

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Eurozone inflation stayed still in November, with price growth holding at year-on-year. That’s a long way from the European Central Bank’s 2% target.

Analysts were expecting CPI to have risen by 0.2% year-on-year, up from 0.1% in October.

Core consumer prices rose by 0.9%, less than last month’s figure and less than was forecast.

Analysts had expected core prices to rise by 1%, down from 1.1% in October.

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LE BOURGET, France (AP) — With world leaders back home, it’s time for the hardcore climate negotiators to work on the more mundane guts of a deal.

Generally climate negotiations follow a certain rhythm, veteran negotiators and observers say. Wednesday is the middle of the nitty-gritty time when the building blocks of a deal start to form.

“It’s like seeing an action movie,” said former U.S. climate negotiator Nigel Purvis, who is now president of Climate Advisers. “There’s generally a plot, bad guys come to threaten the world. Eventually humanity rallies together and overcomes. That’s the kind of thing that happens here.”

For the next two days negotiators will be working to get the less controversial subjects finished and explore possible compromises on the bigger sticking points, all before work gets kicked up to higher levels. The lower-level negotiators have a Thursday night deadline to come up with language for a new text of a deal that narrows the options to something the big guns start with, according to negotiations experts.

“It’s a pretty important day to make progress where they can make progress,” said Alden Meyer, strategy and policy director at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “In some ways it’s really the guts of the regime. It’s really the key building blocks you have to have to make it work. It’s not necessarily the headline-grabbing elements.”

Jennifer Morgan, global climate program director for World Resources Institute, said the thousands of lower-level negotiators are in smaller groups where they have to narrow options on each issue from, say, six to two for the higher-level officials to peruse. Negotiators talk formally and informally, including on the bus rides back to the hotel.

“It’s pretty clear that if this level doesn’t deliver something that’s much more streamlined, it just makes it much more hard for the ministers to negotiate,” Morgan said.

The language negotiators are now using is “wonky and acronym laden” Meyer said. “But it’s important; without it you couldn’t get the ingredient.”

While it is tense, Morgan said it’s not time for yelling — yet. That comes later in the higher negotiations, Purvis said.

“It does get worse before it gets better,” Purvis said. He said experienced negotiators know there will be some kind of “crisis” where all appears lost, and then a solution is found.

“It may seem like there’s a breakdown on the outside of the negotiations, but there’s usually a lot of patience and perseverance on the inside,” Purvis said.

Out in public, there may be theatrics, but at times it is just for show, Purvis said. Other times an impasse can be solved in an unusual way. Purvis gave an example in 2008 of an issue that boiled into public worries, but was solved by the insertion of a single comma — “a magic comma” — in the language of the deal.

“Once this magic comma was inserted, then peace ruled and we were able to move forward,” Purvis said.

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Simon Nixon, the founder of Moneysupermarket.com, the online price comparison site famous for its incredibly cheesy adds, just made nearly £100 million ($150 million) by selling around half of his shares in the company.

Nixon launched the company, which allows users to compare insurance, utility prices, and other personal finance products, in 1999. He has had a controlling interest for much of that time.

As well as cashing in nearly £100 million in shares, it was also announced that Nixon will step down from Moneysupermarket’s board at the end of the year. This marks the first time since it was founded that Nixon will not have a direct say in the running of the company.

On Wednesday morning, Moneysupermarket’s chairman Bruce Carnegie-Brown said: “In 2008, Simon stepped down as CEO, but has continued to play an active role as executive deputy chairman and more recently as non-executive deputy chairman.

“In the last two years Simon has been reducing his shareholding and increasing his involvement in other activities. As a result, we have agreed that he will step down from the Board at the end of the year. We are grateful to Simon for his contribution to the Group and to the Board.”

The sale, which is of 32 million shares, totalling £98 million ($148 million), marks the latest in a series of share offloads by Nixon, who is clearly looking to cash in on his once huge stock holding, and as Carnegie-Brown says, increase his involvement in “other activities.” Nixon also runs a holiday company called Simon Escapes, which rents out luxury holiday homes.

According to regulatory filings, Nixon sold around £200 million ($300 million) of shares in June 2013, and another £129 million ($194 million) in March last year, a combined 30% of the company’s total shares. In March 2015, he announced that he planned to sell £100 million ($150 million) of shares, before eventually selling £56 million ($84 million) of stock in May.

Nixon once controlled more than half of all shares in Moneysupermarket, but Wednesday’s sale means his holding is now around 6.9%, the company said.

Investors in Moneysupermarket are clearly worried by Nixon’s impending departure, and shares in the company have fallen nearly 7% in trading on Wednesday morning.

Nixon is not the only price comparison guru to get a huge windfall recently. In October, money saving expert and former journalist Martin Lewis made £19 million($29 million) from a massive bonus. The pay-out linked to the sale of his website MoneySavingExpert.com, to Moneysupermarket, in 2012.

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Tokyo (AFP) – Japan’s usually sedate stationery sector has been rocked by a pencil supply crisis that is drawing a backlash — and panic buying — among architects and animators.

The drama erupted in response to a plan by Mitsubishi Pencil — one of the nation’s oldest stationery makers — to stop producing a line of a dozen coloured pencils, sparing only the red version from the chopping block.

The company, which traces its roots back to the 19th century, earlier said the move was in response to weak demand.

But that failed to satisfy pencil-loving architects and the animators behind Japan’s well-known manga cartoons.

In a dramatic turnaround this week, Mitsubishi Pencil said it would keep churning out three key colours — light blue, yellow-green and orange — in addition to its coveted red pencil.

But “we will end production of the other colours by the end of the current year as scheduled”, a company spokeswoman told AFP Wednesday.

Worries over the coloured pencil line — first produced in 1971 — saw buyers rush to scoop up existing stock this week.

Major art supply chain Ito-ya’s location in Tokyo’s busy Ginza shopping district had already sold out of eight of the dozen colours on Wednesday, with only brown, pink, white and dark blue still on offer.

Mitsubishi Pencil’s reversal did not stop the Japan Animation Creators Association from airing its concerns over a looming supply crunch.

“The inventory of coloured pencils is already gone,” it warned on its website.

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ENGLEWOOD, Colo. (AP) — The Denver Broncos already lost one quarterback. They can’t afford to lose another.

So, they have to protect the passer better in San Diego this weekend.

It was the beatings that sent Peyton Manning to the sideline with a foot injury and it’s the clobbering that Brock Osweiler is taking that have the Broncos concerned about him, too.

“Yeah, real concerned,” coach Gary Kubiak acknowledged this week.

Osweiler has been sacked 11 times in 10 quarters since replacing Manning in the third period against Kansa City three weeks ago.

“That’s way too many,” Kubiak said.

Manning was sacked 15 times in 34 quarters.

Osweiler took some really big hits while bringing the Broncos (9-2) back from a 14-point, fourth-quarter deficit against New England on Sunday night, a game Denver won in overtime, 30-24.

Although Osweiler would get up, dust off the snow and keep right on going, you can bet Kubiak and general manager John Elway cringed, especially when Osweiler limped away after one hard hit.

“Some of those are his (responsibility) that we’ve got to get corrected,” Kubiak said. “A couple of those are protection issues, but they came after us, especially in the second half they came after us, blitzed us a little bit more and he’ll learn from that. Yes, protecting him and doing a better job, that’s important right now. It really is.”

Part of the problem is that at 6-foot-7, the athletic and agile 25-year-old Osweiler is a big target even though he’s much more mobile than the 39-year-old quarterback he’s replaced.

C.J. Anderson, whose 48-yard touchdown in overtime sent the Patriots (10-1) trudging off the field cursing and clinging to a one-game lead over Denver and Cincinnati in the AFC standings, said Osweiler’s ability to bounce right back up showed what kind of leader the Broncos have.

“I saw the TV copy, there was one hit he took, I saw his whole face looking like this,” Anderson said, scrunching his nose. “I was like, ‘Whoa!’ You know, he’s got a huge frame and they’re going to attack it, but he’s a tough kid, he’s going to get up and he’s going to do what’s best for the team.”

The Broncos are 2-0 in Osweiler’s starts, and the Broncos are now able to open up Kubiak’s playbook, with its assortments of bootlegs and play-action passes. Not only has the running threat improved under Osweiler — 175 yards a game compared to 86 when Manning was the QB — but the Broncos’ passing game has improved, too.

Osweiler hit Demaryius Thomas for 36 yards and Emmanuel Sanders for 39 on the go-ahead touchdown drive late in the fourth quarter, the kinds of throws that have become few and far between for Manning, whose last game featured just five completions and four interceptions before he was yanked.

The Broncos are plus-2 in turnover differential in Osweiler’s starts. With Denver owning the NFL’s best defense, that’s just the kind of ball control Kubiak needs out of his offense.

“I think the No. 1 thing that’s impressed me is I think he understands exactly what he needs to do for the team to be successful,” Kubiak said of Osweiler. “What I mean by that, sometimes guys will get put in situations and they’ll try to do too much. I think he understands he’s on a good football team. If he’ll just do his job, handle the ball well, handle the team well, then our football team will have a chance to be successful.

“I’m really impressed with how he’s approached that. He’s very comfortable in his preparation, his work and obviously he’s confident in his abilities. I really think just understanding the situation he’s in and handling it might be the No. 1 thing.”

With Manning still in a walking boot this week and facing more arduous rehab, Kubiak said rookie Trevor Siemian remains Osweiler’s backup a week after Christian Ponder was signed as insurance.

Asked for a timetable for getting Ponder up to speed, Kubiak said, “I don’t really have one. I just think it’s a matter of us having an idea. Is he comfortable enough to go in there and battle with Trevor to be our 2? Do we get to that point? Trevor is doing a good job. I think we just stay the course and continue to work with Christian.”

Quarterbacks coach Greg Knapp “has got his hands full,” Kubiak said. “He’s got a young quarterback he’s working with right now going on his third start, then he’s got Trevor and now he’s got a new guy.”

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AP NFL website: www.pro32.ap.org and http://www.twitter.com/AP_NFL

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Follow AP Pro Football Writer Arnie Melendrez Stapleton on Twitter: http://twitter.com/arniestapleton

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