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SPARTANBURG, S.C. (AP) — Republican presidential hopeful Ben Carson appeared Wednesday to walk back his previous support for widespread government monitoring of citizens and groups deemed “anti-American.”

Carson repeated his support for increasing FBI funding “so that we can follow people appropriately who are suspicious characters.” But, he added at a national security forum in South Carolina, it should be done with a warrant that complies with the Fourth Amendment’s protection against illegal searches and seizures.

“I don’t think we need to be spying on all Americans,” he said.

Last month, also campaigning in South Carolina, Carson said he supported monitoring “a mosque or any church or any organization or any school or any press corps where there was a lot of radicalization and things that were anti-American.”

Carson did not at the time address potential constitutional concerns, nor did he explain how his administration would determine who and what is “anti-American” or “radicalized.”

He made the original comments amid a flurry of GOP reaction to the Paris attacks attributed to Islamic State militants. Carson and others followed the lead of front-runner Donald Trump, who went so far as to suggest the U.S. government keep a database and track American citizens who are Muslim.

Carson repeated Wednesday at Wofford College that he opposes resettling Syrian war refugees in the U.S., for fear that ISIS warriors will use the program to gain entry. But he argued that fear should not lead to an overreaction.

“We need to do this in an appropriate way,” he said of counter-terrorism efforts, including surveillance. “If you need to look into somebody’s background, it’s easy enough to get a warrant to be able to do that.

“We must not allow our civil liberties to be violated, our Fourth Amendment to be violated because we are afraid,” he said, “because that’s happened in too many countries.”

___

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Box had a bumpy ride to the public markets, taking nearly 10 months after filing its prospectus before finally celebrating its IPO earlier this year.

Even after going public, the company experienced a share count mishap by analysts in its first earnings report, that caused its stock to plunge more than 17%. The press hasn’t been particularly friendly either, with its outsized sales and marketing cost and its bleeding losses representing a perennial point of criticism in tech circles.

Yet, looking back at his first year as the head of a public company, its 30-year old CEO Aaron Levie says he’s enjoying every moment, and that it’s all part of a growth process for his $1.7 billion business.

“We’ve definitely got thrown a lot of punches over the past year,” Levie told Business Insider. “It’s had its trickiness here and there, but for us, it’s been a great experience.”

Levie points out the biggest advantage to being a public company, especially in the enterprise tech space he’s in, is the ability to be transparent and clear about his business with potential customers. Despite claims by “unicorn” startups that say life is easier as a private company, because you don’t have to deal with the public scrutiny, Levie argues that when you’re dealing with big enterprise customers, it’s better to have that validation as a public company.

“If you’re the CIO of GE or IBM, you want to ensure that you’re betting on a company that’s going to be around for the long-run, and understand its financials,” Levie said. “For us, being public is a dramatic accelerant to answering and addressing all of those kind of questions and concerns.”

All part of the grind

Indeed, Box has been able to sign up some of the largest companies lately, including General Electric, Coca Cola, and Eli Lily, while adding Amgen, Southwest Airlines and Nest Labs in the previous quarter alone. Its recent partnership deal with IBM will only help it get into larger accounts that it said on Wednesday has led to over 100 potential deals in the pipeline.

Still, Wall Street has not been kind to the company, with its share price slumping over the past 5 months, essentially wiping out all of the IPO gains it saw early on.

And the hits keep coming. 

Box reported solid quarterly results on Wednesday, beating its revenue forecast and boosting its full year revenue guidance. Yet its shares dipped about 1.8% in after hours, hovering around its $14 IPO stock price.

Levie says that’s all part of the grind of being a public company, in which you have to deal with the daily and quarterly volatility, that at times, has nothing to do with the underlying health of the core business.  

“In the public market, there’s going to be a lot of reasons for that that have nothing to do with the realities of the company, but more to do with the trading dynamics of your specific stock or your specific sector,” he said.

Levie acknowledged the company’s widening losses may be one of the reasons for some investor bearishness. Box’s non-GAAP operating loss grew to $37.9 million in the third quarter from last year’s $34.2 million, although relative to the total revenue, the amount shrunk to 48% of total revenue from 60%, respectively.

“We are investing aggressively to grow the business as rapidly as possible,” Levie added. “Some investors are going to look at our losses and say we don’t understand how that business gets profitable.”

The long game

For what it’s worth, Box’s billings, which includes both revenue and change in deferred revenue, also jumped 38% to $89.4 million in the third quarter. The company reiterated its forecast to be cash flow positive by the last quarter of next fiscal year.

“Some don’t understand why we’re making the investments we are, but many others do, and that’s what you deal with as a public company, and that’s why you see these fluctuations,” he said.

On top of that, Levie stressed that being public makes it easy for employees to trade their equity in the market, whereas private companies are at risk of losing their perceived value, as has been the case for some of the “unicorn” startups lately.

But regardless, Levie says it’s still very early in the game, and Box is going after a big opportunity. The move to cloud software in the enterprise is only beginning, and especially in the content management space it’s in, there hasn’t been a clear market leader like Salesforce in the CRM space or Workday in the HR market.

“We believe that there is a once in a lifetime move from on-premise technology to the cloud,” Levie said. “So for us, we’re very much worried about the next decade as opposed to the next week.”

SEE ALSO: The former CEO of a rival company explains why he defected to Box

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Seoul (AFP) – After a debate stretching back more than 40 years, South Korea’s parliament has approved a bill that will finally compel the country’s influential clergy to pay taxes.

The bill was passed shortly before midnight Wednesday by 195 votes to 20, with 50 legislators abstaining.

It has been a long road to legislation, with previous efforts to bring monks, priests and pastors into the national tax fold being repeatedly foiled by vehement clerical opposition and political timidity.

In a reflection of the issue’s sensitivity, the new bill has a lengthy built-in time delay, only coming into effect from the start of 2018.

Kang Seog-Hoon, a legislator with the ruling Saenuri Party, said the grace period would be used to communicate with religious groups “so that the policy can settle down without turbulence”.

South Korea has an estimated 360,000 priests whose earnings will be re-classified as “religious income” rather than the current label of “honorarium”.

A sliding bracket means those earning 40 million won (34,500 dollars) or less a year will only be taxed on 20 percent of their income.

At the upper end, those earning more than 150 million won will have to pay tax on 80 percent of their income.

Public opinion polls have long favoured extending tax responsibilities to religious groups, some of whom are highly secretive about their financial arrangements.

“Pastors who receive benefits and gifts outside of their monthly income and do not pay income taxes can be perceived as not doing their duties as members of the community,” said Kim Ai-Hee, secretary general of the Korean Christian Alliance for Church Reform.

– Muscular religious faith –

For many first-time visitors to Seoul, a common take-away memory is the surprising multitude of neon crosses glowing across the South Korean capital’s nightscape.

The theory that prosperity and socio-economic development tend to breed secularism holds little water in a country where modernity appears to have fuelled religiosity.

In the last national census to include religious affiliation, conducted in 2005, close to 30 percent of South Koreans identified themselves as Christian, and 23 percent as Buddhist.

Catholic priests have voluntarily paid income tax since the mid-1990s, and the most vocal opponents of the new policy are within the larger Protestant community which wields considerable political clout.

Some individual Protestant churches boast enormous congregations and considerable wealth, and are run like mini-fiefdoms with pastors passing control of the church and its business down to their children.

Last year, the pastor of the biggest congregation of all, at the Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul, was handed a three-year suspended jail term for embezzling millions of dollars.

But the opponents of taxation insist their stance is grounded in principle rather than self-interest.

“Taxing religious practitioners equates religious activities with commercial activities,” a conservative Protestant group, the Commission of Churches in Korea, said in a statement.

A spokesman for the commission, Choi Kwi-Soo, also noted that Protestant pastors who, unlike monks and Catholic priests, generally marry and have families, would be hardest hit.

“They are different from monks or priests who can live on a relatively meagre income. That should be taken into account,” Choi told AFP.

– Fears of a backlash –

Attempts to tax the clergy date back to 1968 when Lee Nak-Yeon, the first head of the National Tax Service, argued they should not be exempt from what amounted to a basic civic duty.

Lee’s baton was picked up many times over the years, most recently in 2013 when the government pushed to legalise taxes but then folded in the face of strong opposition from powerful religious figures.

South Korea holds parliamentary elections in April next year, followed by a presidential vote at the end of 2017, and many observers say those events are the real reason for the tax bill’s two-year grace period.

The protestant church enjoys substantial political influence in some constituencies, and MPs from the conservative Saenuri Party fear they will be the main victims of any backlash.

Supporters of the bill are concerned that the 2018 start date leaves the policy vulnerable to political changes that could delay implementation.

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KINGSLEY, Mich. (AP) — Kash finally made it home after a few days. A missing dog? No, a missing calf.

Allison Fewless says her 650-pound calf was found wandering in the woods Tuesday in Grand Traverse County in northern Michigan, two days after he ran away during a walk.

The teenager tells The Grand Rapids Press (http://bit.ly/1MXhIMP ) that Kash had traveled 4 miles from home in the Kingsley area. Allison says her calf will be competing soon at the Michigan State University Winter Beef Classic.

She says she’s just happy that “my moo is home.”

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For 30 years, Abby Wambach’s focus was on soccer, eating right, and staying fit. 

Now that the leading goal scorer in the world — for both men and women — is retiring, Wambach is starting to look back on her career and there’s one thing that stands out: the gender pay gap. 

“The minute I announced my retirement, I started to reflect on my career,” Wambach said onstage at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Next Gen Summit.

“And I got pissed because I look to my counterparts across the aisle — résumes aside, the Ronaldos, the Messis, and the Landon Donovans get to leave the sport battered and bruised and not have to worry about what they’re going to do next.”

The gender pay gap in sports is both startling and well-documented. The U.S. women’s World Cup team that won made $2 million, split among all the players. In contrast, the men’s team from Germany made $35 million. The U.S. men’s team that got knocked out in the round of 16 made $9 million.

Looking at the total payouts, the men’s teams were rewarded $576 million. The women’s teams made only $15 million.

“Enough is enough,” Wambach said of the pay gap. “We have to stop allowing this to happen. If I have to be the face of it, that’s fine. But it has to, has to, has to stop.”

Some argue that the pay gap is fair. Simply, women’s sports generate less revenue and female soccer players are paid less as a result. While the US women’s World Cup match was the most-watched match in the history of US soccer, it only generated $17 million in ads. ESPN’s broadcasting of the World Cup, in contrast, netted the company $529 million in sponsorship revenue, according to the Washington Post.

To Wambach, the pay gap is unacceptable regardless. There has to be a way to change it — whether it’s a law or a movement or both, she said. Her goal after retirement is to change the world, and she say she’s not scared of saying it.

“The reality is, as Alyssa Milano said earlier, one moment can literally create a movement,” Wambach said. “I think for me, my moment was realizing that I accepted being paid and being treated unequally the entirety of my career. And I’m going to make that different. I’m going to make that different for the next generation.”

SEE ALSO: Here’s why it’s fair that female athletes make less than men

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A woman in Tennessee has been sentenced to two years in prison after leaving her dog inside a hot car for more than two hours.

Alexis Cain was arrested on aggravated animal cruelty charges in August, following a July incident in which she left her 3-month-old terrier locked inside her car at a Memphis shopping mall.

It was 99 degrees outside, and as high as 140 degrees inside the car, police noted.

Bystanders noticed the dog and managed to remove it from the car, but it died before they could reach a nearby animal shelter. The cause of death was ruled as dehydration and heat stroke, according to the WREG report. 

“You could tell it was on the verge of death,” Madison Ford, one of the bystanders who attempted to save the dog, told WMCActionNews5. “Its tongue was sticking out.”

Local and state governments have enacted increasingly severe penalties for animal abuse over the past 20 years, the Christian Science Monitor reported. But according to the Animal League Defense Fund, “hot car” cases remain a common form of animal negligence.

“This is a victory for animal welfare,” said Andrew Jacuzzi, executive director of the Humane Society of Memphis and Shelby County, in a press release. “We’re proud to see our justice system take animal cruelty seriously. We applaud this decision and hope to see more stiff penalties like it in the future.”

Cain can return to court Dec. 8 to file for a suspended sentence.

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MIAMI (AP) — Legendary rocker Lenny Kravitz’s photo exhibit was never meant to turn out the way it did.

While shooting photos on his days off from touring, Kravitz set out hoping to capture soulful photographs and people in their everyday environments. But each time he stepped out with his camera, fans followed and paparazzi flocked.

“It started out being a real nuisance because I wanted to shoot. I wanted time to do my thing and be anonymous,” Kravitz told The Associated Press during a personal tour of his exhibit Wednesday. The black and white collection titled “Flash” runs through Dec. 6 as part of Art Basel Miami Beach.

He blames the social media craze for people forgetting basic manners and respect for one another.

“It’s really weird that people feel they have a right to invade your space in any kind of way.”

After several frustrating encounters, the rocker turned the camera on the crowds and started clicking — almost a joke at first. But then something changed.

“Life and art is about accepting and taking what you’re organically given … this is what life is bringing me at this moment, don’t be pissed off about it.”

As he developed the photos, he found himself no longer categorizing the people, but sensing their individual stories in their eyes, expressions and moods.

“I just began to really look into the people” and found “curiosity, happiness, pain, intrigue … frustration, love, everything, just people, human emotions.”

Kravitz is among dozens of celebs, including Hilary Swank, Sylvester Stallone, Eva Longoria and Katie Holmes, who are in town for the prestigious art fair, which is an extension of the annual contemporary art fair in Basel, Switzerland. The fair officially opens Thursday, but many independent fairs and star-studded parties are already underway.

Kravitz, who has lived in Miami on and off for decades, said the exhibit also speaks to the culture’s obsession with documenting everything from food to nail art, yet often don’t realize the human connections they’re giving up in return.

It “shows me how lonely and empty and hurt and unloved people feel,” he said, looking every bit a rock star in a suede leopard jacket, blue paisley button down and characteristic sunglasses.

“Sometimes people will say to me, ‘Can I have a picture?’ And I’ll say, ‘Look, I can’t right now,’ but I’ll say, ‘It’s so nice to meet you’ and I’ll take my glasses off and look them in the eye … and I’ll give them a hug and they’ll say, ‘No, no, no, I want the picture’… and I’m like, ‘We just had a moment.'”

The rocker is releasing an album in 2016, but declined to give any details on the upcoming project, which he said he hoped to finish in the next two or three months.

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LIMA, Peru (AP) — In the five years since she was paroled, Lori Berenson has lived in a limbo of sorts, trying to raise a young son in a society that largely refuses to forgive her for aiding Peru’s No. 2 leftist rebel group in the 1990s.

Now a 46-year-old single mother, the woman who arrived in Peru two decades ago bent on revolutionary change has finally gone home to her native New York.

Berenson was officially expelled late Wednesday. With her 6-year-old son Salvador in her arms, she passed quickly through Lima’s airport terminal ringed by police officers and followed by reporters. Recognizing her, some people shouted “get out of here terrorist!” Her flight to New York was scheduled to leave at midnight.

Berenson was allowed to leave the South American country after her 20-year sentence for “collaboration with terrorism” for her role in the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement lapsed.

Before her departure, in an interview granted on condition it not be published until she was gone, Berenson had harsh words for Peru’s economic and political elite. She accused it of being unwilling to confront the open wounds of the country’s 1980-2000 internal conflict.

And she said she still believes, as she declared when arrested in 1995, that Tupac Amaru was not a terrorist group.

“It could have acted at times using terrorist tactics, but that it was a terrorist organization, I don’t think the label fits,” said Berenson, calling it similar to the Salvadoran rebels, who negotiated peace in 1992. She worked for them before moving on to Lima in late 1994.

Berenson says that while she regrets any harm she may have done — Tupac Amaru robbed banks and kidnapped and killed civilians but did not commit massacres like the fanatical and much larger Shining Path — she also remains upset by economic inequality and racism in Peru.

“It’s not like feudalism went away recently,” she said, recalling how rural estate holders denied peasants education well into the 20th century.

Berenson said she and Salvador initially plan to live in New York City with her university professor parents while she gets established. She hopes for employment in social work. Last year, she finished a bachelor’s degree in sociology from the City University of New York.

“My objective is to continue to work in social justice issues, in a different capacity obviously,” she said.

While on parole, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology dropout did translations at home for clients she would not name, including a human rights group.

The view from her 6th-floor apartment in Lima’s middle-class Pueblo Libre district provided comfort after years behind bars.

The streets below were not very friendly.

People would shout “terruca” at her — a slang term for “terrorist.” Several times people threatened Salvador’s life, she said, including speaking from the street into her home’s intercom.

Many Peruvians were angered when she and her son were allowed to visit her family in New York in 2011. In response, Congress passed a law barring paroled foreigners from travel abroad.

Two presidents could have commuted her sentence, allowing her to leave sooner, but declined.

Initially convicted of treason by hooded military judges, Berenson was retried in 2001 by a civilian court.

Before that, her health suffered behind bars, the skin of her hands cracking and turning blue during nearly three years in a frigid penitentiary at 12,700 feet.

Today, she says most Peruvians who despise her have been misinformed by a media establishment largely controlled by the country’s conservative elite.

“Terrorist Lori Berenson Expelled from Peru,” read a headline Wednesday in Lima’s dominant newspaper, El Comercio.

Peruvians tend to lump the Tupac Amaru group, which a truth commission blamed for 1.5 percent of the deaths in the internal conflict, together with the Shining Path rebels, which it held responsible for 54 percent.

The conflict claimed nearly 70,000 lives, three-fourths of the victims impoverished Quechua-speaking highlanders. The truth commission found that security forces committed more than 40 percent of the slayings.

Berenson was convicted of assisting the Tupac Amaru as it prepared to seize Congress and take lawmakers hostage.

She denies knowledge of the plot, but had visited Congress with journalist’s credentials accompanied by a “photographer” married to top Tupac Amaru leader Nestor Cerpa.

The scheme was foiled on Nov. 30, 1995, when police stormed the safe house that Berenson and Panamanian Pacifico Castrellon had rented. Three rebels and a police officer were killed, and police found an arsenal of which Berenson said she was unaware.

Paraded after her arrest before TV cameras, Berenson shouted angrily that the Tupac Amaru was a revolutionary movement, not a terrorist group. That outburst probably added five years to her sentence, said Castrellon, who served 11 years before his 2007 release.

Tupac Amaru projected a Robin Hood image, stealing food and distributing it to the poor. But it also committed ransom kidnappings, killed police and soldiers and assassinated an army general.

The rebel group’s 1996 hostage-taking at the Japanese ambassador’s residence in Lima sealed its fate. Berenson’s name was No. 3 on the list of people whose release rebel leader Cerpa demanded in the 126-day ordeal, which ended when commandos killed him and other hostage-takers.

“There is no way anyone can look at her story and conclude anything other than she knowingly, willingly and enthusiastically worked for a terrorist organization,” said Dennis Jett, then the U.S. ambassador.

Supporting that argument is Castrellon’s claim that he and Berenson met with Cerpa in Ecuador in 1994 on their way to Peru. Berenson denies ever having met Cerpa.

Asked whether she had any regrets — and about criticism that she was arrogant and naive for falling in with the Tupac Amaru — Berenson was typically circumspect.

“That’s my life. I chose that, and I’ll live with that.”

She did allow, though, that she wished she’d finished college before moving to Latin America.

Asked whether she thought taking up arms against abusive governments could be morally justified, she demurred.

The 1980s and 1990s were different times; people in the region now prefer the ballot box, she said.

In New York, Berenson said she hopes to find a job as a social worker “supporting disenfranchised populations.”

As far as political activism goes, she said “I don’t believe much in electoral politics,” preferring “community empowerment.”

“I could be out in the streets,” she said. “But I don’t need to be a leader. I can be a follower.”

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Hundreds of porn sites have been targeted by criminals using malicious advertising – commonly known as malvertising – to infect visitors’ devices with malware. The latest campaign comes after similar attacks in recent months on a number of popular adult websites, including xHamster, RedTube and PornHub.

Malicious adverts were discovered by the US-based security firm Malwarebytes on what it said were moderately popular porn sites attracting millions of visitors each day. The sites included DrTuber, Nuvid, Eroprofile, IcePorn and Xbabe. The adverts are hosted and served by the adult ad network AdXpansion and do not need to be clicked on to potentially affect a visitor to a site.

“It isn’t so much that pornography sites are targeted, so much as the adult advertising networks,” Chris Boyd, an analyst at Malwarebytes, told IBTimes UK. “The end result of infected PCs is still the same, but as with most forms of malvertising, the websites themselves tend to have little control over which adverts are served to their visitors.

“Everyone is reliant on a chain of trust which is easily broken by unscrupulous individuals willing to pollute the stream with rogue adverts. The challenge is to find ways of reducing the threat to those at risk from the bad ads.”

Malwarebytes contacted the AdXpansion network to inform them of the malvertising campaign but no response had been given at the time of publication.

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NEW YORK (AP) — Baltimore added a bat as protection in case it loses Chris Davis, acquiring power-hitting Mark Trumbo and left-hander C.J. Riefenhausen from Seattle on Wednesday for catcher Steve Clevenger.

In another deal ahead of the midnight EST deadline to offer contracts to unsigned players on 40-man rosters, Oakland obtained first baseman Yonder Alonso and left-hander Marc Rzepczynski from San Diego for left-handers Drew Pomeranz and Jose Torres plus a player to be named.

Trumbo is an outfielder, first baseman and possible designated hitter. He batted .262 with 22 homers and 64 RBIs in 142 games this year with Arizona and the Mariners, who wanted to shed his expected salary of about $9 million.

“The addition of a proven major league hitter like Mark Trumbo today lengthens our lineup,” Orioles executive vice president of baseball operations Dan Duquette said.

Baltimore will be the 29-year-old Trumbo’s fourth team since 2013, when current Seattle GM Jerry Dipoto traded him from the Los Angeles Angels to the Diamondbacks. Trumbo averaged more than 30 home runs and 90 RBIs from 2011-13 with the Angels.

“I was aware that I was in the position that this might well happen,” Trumbo said. “There were a few teams that were mentioned before, but to be honest, the Orioles weren’t one that I had heard, at all.”

Trumbo can become a free agent after next season. Davis, who led the major leagues with 47 homers this year, became a free agent last month.

Alonso batted .282 with five home runs and 31 RBIs this year. He was on the disabled list from May 9 to June 1 with a bone bruise in his right shoulder and Sept. 14 through the end of the season with a lower back strain.

“One of, if not the best, defensive first basemen in the game,” Oakland general manager David Forst said. “Obviously the knock on him is he doesn’t profile the power of a first baseman, but still a very productive offensive player, high contact rate, low walk-to-strikeout rate, a guy who’s a professional hitter. Excited to have him under control for a couple years.”

Pomeranz had surgery on his pitching shoulder in October and is expected to be ready by spring training. He was 5-6 with three saves and a 3.66 ERA in a career-high 53 appearances (nine starts) spanning 86 innings for the A’s in 2015.

In addition, the Padres announced they hired Mark McGwire as bench coach.

Ahead of its $217 million, seven-year contract with left-hander David Price, a deal likely to be completed Friday, Boston finalized a $13 million, two-year agreement with right-handed-hitting outfielder Chris Young.

“I feel good about the roster as it is. I think we’ve been able to address really our biggest needs,” new Red Sox president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski said. “I think our major moves are done. But when you go into the winter meetings, you never know what happens.”

Young, 32, had been with the New York Yankees since August 2014, batting .252 with 14 homers and 42 RBIs in 318 at-bats this year. He hit .327 against left-handers this season; with its 37-foot-high Green Monster just 310 feet from the plate in left field, Fenway Park seems ideal for his swing.

“One of my major strengths is pulling the ball. I think that Fenway can be advantageous to that,” Young said. “Hopefully, my just-misses, I can get rewarded for that.”

Seattle agreed to a one-year contract with outfielder Nori Aoki, according to two people with knowledge of the deal who spoke on condition of anonymity because it has not been finalized. Aoki was limited to 93 games with San Francisco this year due to a broken right leg and a severe concussion in the second half of the season.

Seattle also agreed to a $750,000 deal with reliever Justin De Fratus, who became a free agent after the season rather than accept an outright assignment to the minors by the Phillies. Philadelphia claimed outfielder Peter Bourjos off waivers from St. Louis, and Kansas City acquired backup catcher Tony Cruz from St. Louis for infielder Jose Martinez.

Veteran infielder Gordon Beckham, an Atlanta native and former University of Georgia standout, agreed to a $1.25 million, one-year contract with the Braves, pending a physical.

There were 206 players eligible for arbitration at the start of the day. Any player offered a contract is entitled to, at a minimum, roughly one-sixth of his 2016 salary as termination pay if he gets released.

Among those who became free agents when they were not offered contracts were injured Kansas City closer Greg Holland; Oakland first baseman Ike Davis; Detroit right-handers Neftali Feliz and Al Alburquerque; White Sox catcher Tyler Flowers and right-hander Jacob Turner; and Cincinnati right-hander Ryan Mattheus.

Arbitration-eligible players who agreed to one-year deals were Dodgers catcher A.J. Ellis ($4.5 million), Toronto first baseman Justin Smoak ($3.9 million), Baltimore right-hander Vance Worley ($2.6 million), Oakland left-hander Felix Doubront ($2 million), Cubs left-hander Rex Brothers ($1.42 million) and Washington first baseman Tyler Moore ($900,000).

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