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IRVING, Texas (AP) — NFL owners have set a special meeting to deal with a possible relocation of teams to Los Angeles for Jan. 12-13 in Houston.

Seeking more information from the cities hoping to retain their franchises — St. Louis, Oakland and San Diego — and without a clear consensus on approval of either of the stadium proposals for LA, the owners essentially punted for five weeks.

The Rams, Raiders and Chargers are interested in moving to LA, which has not had an NFL franchise since the Rams and Raiders left after the 1994 season.

Rams owner Stan Kroenke is planning a billion-dollar stadium in Inglewood, California, while the Raiders and Chargers have a joint project in mind for nearby Carson.

Kroenke also is willing to share his proposed stadium with either the Chargers or Raiders.

“All the proposals must be in by the end of December,” Giants co-owner Steve Tisch said, adding “it is the strong hope” of the league that the vote on relocation will come out of that meeting.

Colts owner Jimmy Irsay added that getting 24 owners to approve any of the proposals was a difficult chore.

“We want to hear more as we move forward in the next five weeks,” he said. “I think there will be a vote (in January).”

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

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CHICAGO (AP) — A police dash-cam video that captures a white Chicago officer fatally shooting a black teenager 16 times has no sound, nor do videos from four other squad cars at the scene. But department protocol indicates all the cruisers should have been recording audio that night.

The silence is almost sure to figure into the ongoing federal investigation of the case, and it raises questions about whether officers were careless with the recording equipment or, worse, attempting a cover-up.

“When you’ve got a standup cop with nothing to hide, the dash-cam is his friend,” said Gregg Stutchman, who has specialized in video forensics in California for 23 years. “But for cops who aren’t quite as standup, it would make sense that they wouldn’t what things recorded.”

Several experts on the type of equipment commonly installed in police vehicles told The Associated Press that it’s plausible for a single squad car to have a glitch preventing sound recording, but they could not imagine how an entire fleet of cars would ever lose audio at the same time and place by mere happenstance.

“I’ve never heard it before,” Stutchman said. “It raises a red flag.” The more likely explanation is that audio was intentionally switched off, he said.

The silent video at the core of the shooting case in Chicago shows officer Jason Van Dyke stepping out of his car on Oct. 20, 2014, and almost immediately opening fire on Laquan McDonald as he walks away from officers. Van Dyke continues to fire on the 17-year-old even after he crumples to the ground.

On the same day that the video was released last week by the city, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office charged Van Dyke with first-degree murder.

Dash-cam video and audio should switch on automatically when a vehicle’s emergency lights are activated. If the lights aren’t used during an incident, officers should turn on the system manually, according to a directive on the police department’s website.

Sound can be central to understanding what happened at a crime scene, said Michigan-based Ed Primeau, a Michigan-based audio and video forensics expert.

In the Chicago shooting, audio would have enabled investigators to gauge the level of anxiety among officers as they pursued McDonald, Primuea said. And sound could have been critical to piecing together how things played out in the minutes before the shooting as officers spoke to each other or to a dispatcher over their radios.

“That gives you a whole play-by-play, like who is coming around the corner in a chase or which officer is going where,” he said. “It can help with the entire narrative.”

Without sound, it’s hard to know just when the shooting started and stopped. Did the shots come in quick succession or was there a pause between bursts of gunfire? And just what did Van Dyke and fellow officers say in the seconds before Van Dyke opened fire? What, if anything, did McDonald say to them?

Neither police nor state prosecutors have offered any detailed explanation of why there is no audio with the video.

Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi suggested that the absence of audio was probably an unforeseen technological fault. In an email to The Associated Press, he wrote: “As with any technology, at times software issues or operator error may keep the cameras from operating as they normally should.”

Ensuring the audio system is fully functional also requires that officers, usually at the start of their shifts, place a unit that includes a microphone and transmitter on their bodies and make sure it’s synced with the audio system, Stutchman explained.

Videos from five police cars have been released by the city, and none has functioning sound. Videos from three other cars that responded have not been released.

Patrol officers have never liked the idea of being electronically monitored, regarding it as something imposed from the upper brass, Stutchman said.

But, he added, in his experience, better officers are meticulous about making sure at the start of each shift that their audio and video equipment is working.

Darrel Stephens, executive director of the Major Cities Chiefs Association and a former police chief in North Carolina, echoed that. He said there are malfunctions, or in some cases, officers who forget to switch audio on.

“It’s not a perfect technology. There are times that it doesn’t work every well,” he said.

Texas-based Coban Technologies supplies the dash-cams to Chicago, as it does to Los Angeles. Messages seeking comment from the company were not returned Wednesday.

Some of the Chicago videos released do contain faint buzzes, some of which sound similar to an engine or a siren. Stutchman said those are probably electrical pulses picked up by the dash-cam system that are not actual audio but could mimic sounds of sirens or engines.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office has not specified what issues it’s investigating.

Primeau said it’s likely that federal authorities would bring in forensics experts to determine why no useable audio seems to exist, with other investigators probably reviewing logs for any notes about how the systems were operating before and after the shooting.

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Associated Press Writer Sophia Tareen also contributed to this report.

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The Philadelphia 76ers announced Wednesday night that they have suspended third-overall pick Jahlil Okafor for two games.

The move comes after a video surfaced on Wednesday of Okafor fighting a fan in Boston last week.

It was the second such incident Okafor got into while in Boston.

It also comes after a string of troubling behavior over the past month. After news of Okafor’s first fight in Boston broke, another report said Okafor had gotten into a heated disagreement at a club and had a gun pulled on him. He also was recently pulled over for driving 108 miles per hour over the Ben Franklin Bridge in Philadelphia.

A report earlier this week said Okafor was going to be accompanied by a security guard from now on to avoid these situations.

Okafor is 19, and while he’s had some off-court issues, he’s been productive on the court, averaging 17 points and 8 rebounds per game for the 1-19 76ers.

The 76ers released a statement:

Okafor’s first game of the suspension will come Wednesday night against the Knicks. 

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CHICAGO (AP) — It took more than a year from the night a white Chicago police officer fatally shot a black teenager until the city’s top prosecutor announced murder charges against the patrolman — a long wait that has provoked sharp criticism of Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez.

Next it could cost Alvarez her job.

The first woman and first Hispanic to serve in the job, Alvarez was facing a tough 2016 re-election even before last week’s release of the footage of officer Jason Van Dyke shooting Laquan McDonald 16 times in October 2014.

Since then, protesters marching through Chicago streets have accused her of trying to cover up the crime and of only announcing a first-degree murder charge because a judge had ordered the video’s release. A majority of the city council’s Latino members and U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez — key political supporters — have said they will no longer back her.

Her opponents in the March primary say the race is suddenly attracting national attention — and campaign donations.

“The people don’t trust her to do the right thing,” said Donna More, a former state and federal prosecutor who along with Kim Foxx, former chief of staff to the county board president, is trying to unseat Alvarez.

Alvarez’s spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press on Wednesday. But Alvarez in recent days has defended her actions as those of a careful, experienced prosecutor, and has said she will stay in office as long as voters will have her.

“I have no intentions of resigning,” Alvarez told Chicago public television station WTTW in an interview Tuesday.

Alvarez is a career prosecutor who surprised many — herself included — when she defeated five men to win the 2008 Democratic primary, her first bid for public office. Running without the backing of any major local political organizations, she portrayed herself as a protective mom and tough-on-crime prosecutor who said she’d take on the “good ol’ boy mentality” that had driven the office for too long.

She pledged to hire more minority prosecutors and help end a deep distrust between law enforcement and the community — one that grew over decades as Chicago earned a reputation for police torture of suspects and wrongful convictions.

Alvarez points to her work increasing diversion programs for low-level offenders and strengthening gun and gang laws. But her tenure, like her predecessors’, has seen controversies.

In April, a judge acquitted a Chicago police officer who fatally shot an unarmed 22-year-old woman while off-duty, suggesting Alvarez’s office mishandled the case by charging him with involuntary manslaughter rather than murder.

A separate judge has criticized Alvarez’s reinvestigation of a 2004 fight between the nephew of former Mayor Richard Daley and another man, who died after he fell and hit his head. David Koschman’s mother filed a lawsuit accusing the state’s attorney’s office of a cover-up. In September, the office agreed to settle the suit for $50,000.

Alvarez has said her office acted properly.

The anger surrounding those cases, however, pales in comparison with the McDonald shooting.

Alvarez herself described the video as “violent” and “chilling,” and said she opened an investigation “immediately” after seeing it. That was Nov. 4, 2014 — more than a year before she charged Van Dyke with first-degree murder. In the meantime, he continued to work desk duty.

The video shows McDonald, who was armed with a 3-inch folding knife, running down the middle of the street. As Van Dyke gets out of his vehicle to face the teen, McDonald veers away from him. Van Dyke begins firing. He continues to empty his weapon, even after McDonald falls to the ground.

Alvarez said she understands why people are baffled by the delay. But she says the video is only one piece of evidence and that her office — working with the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office — has been working to build the strongest case possible to ensure a conviction. That’s included interviewing “many, many witnesses” and waiting for results of forensic testing.

“I’ve been doing this a long time. I know what a defense attorney is going to argue,” Alvarez said. “We were leaving no stone unturned.”

Others have questioned that logic.

Andrea Zopp, a former assistant state’s attorney and federal prosecutor running for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate, called the delay “incomprehensible.”

While she was in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office in the 1990s, Zopp said she indicted a police officer who fatally shot a homeless man who was unarmed.

“We brought those charges within two months of the killing — without a video,” said Zopp, who has called for a special prosecutor to handle the latest case.

Meanwhile Foxx’s campaign said the shooting has drawn national attention to the race, and the former chief of staff to county board President Toni Preckwinkle has started to receive contributions from across the U.S.

“It’s a time for sweeping changes,” Foxx said.

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Associated Press Writer Don Babwin contributed to this report.

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NEW YORK (AP) — Sandra Bullock has adopted a 3-year-old girl named Laila.

The adoption was reported by People Magazine in a cover story published Wednesday. Bullock posed for photos with Laila and her son for the magazine.

Bullock previously adopted Louis Bardo, a 3-year-old boy born in New Orleans.

A representative for Bullock didn’t return messages Wednesday.

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“Fallout 4” is a massive game. You could easily sink hundreds of hours into exploration and creation, to say nothing of the game’s main or side stories. 

And that’s why it’s so incredible that a team of just over 100 people created it.

The creative director of “Fallout 4,” Bethesda Game Studio’s Todd Howard, explained the process of creating the massive, fascinating game in a phone interview this week with Tech Insider.

“It actually started right after ‘Fallout 3,'” Howard said, in reference to the beginning of development on “Fallout 4.”

That’s late 2008, when Bethesda Game Studios’ last “Fallout” game — “Fallout 3” — launched for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC. “Fallout” games take place in a post-apocalyptic world 200 years in the future where humans have destroyed civilization with nuclear weapons.

“I knew I wanted to start the next one in the past,” Howard said. “I was really excited about showing the world before the bombs fell. And that moment of running to the vault and getting in as the bombs fall, and then emerging much later. So that was kind of the initial nugget, and that was in 2009.”

That initial germ of an idea made it through the six years of development to the final product.

Much of the team that worked on the previous “Fallout” game remains at Bethesda Game Studios to this day.

“Istvan Pely, the lead artist on ‘Fallout 3,’ he rolled right off of the DLC [downloadable content] into ‘Fallout 4.’ The first thing he built was the power armor,” Howard said. 

Following the launch of “Fallout 3” in late 2008, Bethesda Game Studios created a variety of “downloadable content” for the game — essentially major gameplay expansions to the original game: new missions, storylines, characters, etc. The studio is working on similar support content for “Fallout 4,” to be released at some point in 2016, but hasn’t given any details just yet.

So, while some staffers (like the aforementioned lead artist) and a small crew of programmers got to work on creating “Fallout 4” way back in 2009, the rest of the studio began working on “The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim” (referred to more simply as “Skyrim”).

Howard described that process of developing two blockbuster games at once, with a crew of around 100 for both, as a careful balance:

We’re always kind of designing one game while in production on one, and talking about one. Staggering our development somewhat. When we’re really working on a game, it takes everybody’s attention. We’ll discuss the other one. We’ll kick it around over lunch, and then we’ll have concept artists or other people start on stuff. So “Fallout 4,” we kind of picked away at things, and concepts, while we worked on “Skyrim,” but we were very focused on “Skyrim.” But once “Skyrim” was done, we’d had a couple “Fallout 4” things ready. And we knew what we wanted to do — what the big things would be in the game. And we just started attacking all of those things at once.

With the launch of “Skyrim” in 2011, Bethesda Game Studios set out to support the game with “patches” (updates to fix issues with the game) and downloadable content. Over the next two years, the studio gradually moved from “Skyrim” to full-on “Fallout 4” development. 

By 2013, the whole team was working on this year’s big game.

“It wasn’t until the middle of 2013 that the whole team was on “Fallout 4,” Howard said. “Usually it’ll start with most of the programmers, some artists and designers, starting to build the tech, build the first areas we’re gonna play in. And once we really know this is how we’re building content for the game, that’s when everybody comes on.” 

It was during the sprint from halfway through 2013 to the halfway mark of 2015 — just two years — that the game came together. That’s when the game was first shown off, during a Bethesda press conference at the game industry’s annual trade show in Los Angeles: E3.

Just before and following the game’s big coming out party in June 2015, the game was complete enough to start troubleshooting for the its impending November launch. 

But “Fallout 4” is a massive game with near-endless variables.

It’s nearly impossible to identify every possible scenario in such a game, reproduce it, and fix it (all without breaking something else in the process). The massive, incredibly difficult task was given to the game’s publisher, Bethesda Softworks, and its 100+ person team of quality assurance testers. 

You read that correctly: “Fallout 4” was tested for quality by a team nearly the same size as the development team.

“It’s really not till the last probably…six to seven months are a pretty big crunch on them breaking the game and us fixing it,” Howard said. “And every day is a new adventure. Something new is gonna happen.”

But even with that large of a staff testing “Fallout 4,” it’s impossible to make it perfect. There are simply too many variables. 

And don’t expect Bethesda to change the formula that it’s got: it’s working, after all.

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NEW YORK (AP) — Chewbacca never had it so good.

The ultra-hairy “Star Wars” character isn’t known for his fashion sensibility, but he was the inspiration for not one but two highly furry ensembles displayed Tuesday by designers indulging their inner “Star Wars” geekdom with new looks — to be auctioned off for charity — as fans hotly await the seventh installment later this month, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”

The dozen or so garments in the “Force 4 Fashion” collection — by the likes of Diane von Furstenberg, Rag & Bone and Opening Ceremony — were based mainly on new characters in the latest film, but also a few veterans. Most recognizable were the stormtrooper ensembles created by Ovadia & Sons, which presented a floor-length boxy white coat with black trim, and by Opening Ceremony, which displayed a more tightly tailored look — well, for a stormtrooper — in white microsuede.

As for Chewie, he (or it?) inspired a luscious merino shearling coat by Billy Reid, lined with brown leather and paired with a white turtleneck sweater and gray wool track pants. The creature was also embodied in a furry Todd Snyder ensemble, pairing a brown coat with white top and tan pants.

Some designers went for the glamour. Not surprisingly, Diane von Furstenberg incorporated her signature “wrap” effect into a gold, filmy ensemble for Rey, the new film’s female protagonist, played by Daisy Ridley. Parker presented a glittery Captain Phasma (Gwendoline Christie), inspired by ancient tribal warriors; the same character got a dramatic printed gown from Giles Deacon.

Marcus Wainwright and David Neville of Rag & Bone, self-professed “Star Wars” fans, also clothed Rey, but in a much sportier style emulating their athletic urban streetwear. (The designers also offered a darker look for villain Kylo Ren.)

There was some definite gender-bending happening, particularly with Halston. The label’s designer, Maria Mazelis, decided to give the male Kylo Ren (played by Adam Driver) a female identity, probably because, well, gowns are a lot more glamorous than menswear.

“I was really excited by the idea of a villain,” Mazelis said, standing alongside her sleek dark gown, with a plunging neckline, sheer back and revealing side slits, topped off with a beaded mask that covers the eyes. “The complexity of this character was intriguing. It’s powerful, but emotional too. Strong and yet vulnerable. I wanted to show that duality.”

And Cynthia Rowley gave a human character to the droid BB-8, putting the character in a white pants, a sweatshirt with a big ‘8’ on it, and a round football-style helmet.

Disney and Bloomingdale’s are partnering for the fundraising initiative; proceeds from the auction will go to the Child Mind Institute. (There are, as yet, no plans to recreate the pieces for sale.) A separate auction will feature a custom, bejeweled BB-8 created by Kay Jewelers, weighing more than one and a half pounds and made of gold and diamonds. Proceeds from that auction will go to St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital, a representative said, noting that the piece had been appraised at $135,000.

Though a number of the designers are said to be big “Star Wars” fans, Mazelis was thinking of her kids, ages 4 and 6, whom she called “superfans.” Will her design earn her some points with them?

“One day they will appreciate it,” she replied hopefully.

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London (AFP) – Britain’s parliament voted Wednesday in favour of joining international air strikes on Islamic State (IS) group targets in Syria.

The move proposed by Prime Minister David Cameron’s government was approved by a clear majority of 174 MPs, with 397 voting in favour and 223 voting against.

The vote in the House of Commons came after over ten hours of often heated debate.

British planes could now be poised to join air strikes on jihadist targets in Syria within hours.

Cameron had wanted to extend Britain’s role in the fight against IS for months but made a fresh push for the vote in the wake of the Paris attacks last month.

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On Spotify, the year belongs to Drake.

Mr. “Hotline Bling” himself was the music service’s top artist in 2015 with 1.8 billion streams, according to numbers shared by Spotify on Tuesday.

Rihanna was the year’s most streamed female artist, even though she didn’t release a new album this year.

While he didn’t make the top five artists list on Spotify in 2015, Justin Bieber set a new record for the most streams in a single day with 36 million streams on November 13, the day of his “Purpose” album release.

Some other stats from Spotify’s 2015 review:

• The Weeknd’s “Beauty Behind The Madness” was the most streamed album of the year with 60 million listeners.
• Drake’s unexpected mixtape “If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late” was the second most streamed album.
• “Lean On” by Major Lazer is the most streamed song in the history of Spotify with over 540 million streams in 2015.
• There are 2 billion playlists on Spotify, and the most popular one is “Today’s Top Hits.”

Here are the top five artists on Spotify in the U.S.

1.       Drake
2.       The Weeknd
3.       Kanye West
4.       Ed Sheeran
5.       Eminem

And the top five tracks in the U.S.

1.       Trap Queen – Fetty Wap
2.       The Hills – The Weeknd
3.       Earned It (Fifty Shades Of Grey) – The Weeknd
4.       Uptown Funk – Mark Ronson
5.       Lean On (feat. MØ & DJ Snake) – Major Lazer

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Google on Tuesday announced a new tool on Wednesday for app developers that’s absolutely amazing and also a little disturbing: it lets apps, robots and drones “see.”

The tech is called the Google Cloud Vision API and it allows any app developer to tap into Google’s smart “machine learning” service that can identify objects, including faces and emotions.

Cloud Vision solves a hard computer problem of “seeing.” For instance, your computer can scan and reproduce an image of a mountain or an image of a baby, but to the computer, they look the same: a bunch of pixels. Your computer can’t sift through your photos and find baby photos for you, unless you’ve tagged them “baby.”

Google Photos, on the other hand, can find the baby photos.

And now Google is making that technology available to programmers to add to their apps. 

Cloud Vision can even detect various emotions on a face such as a happy smile or an angry frown, Google says.

To demonstrate the power of Cloud Vision, Google built a cute little robot with Cloud Vision, via a DYI robot kit known as GoPiGo. 

At 1:14 in the video below, the robot demonstrates how it can follow faces and detect emotions. At 2:08, the robot demonstrates how it can detect and identify other objects like glasses, a banana, money.

As for the terrifying part …

While the demo robot is adorbs, it doesn’t take much imagination to see less cuddly uses for computer vision.

For instance, at least one drone maker has been testing Google Vision out: Aerosense, owned by Sony Mobile Communications. 

“We have drones that take thousands of photos per flight. We find that Google Cloud Vision API as the best way to turn those huge number of photos, automatically produced, into meaningful insights,”Aerosense General Manager Tomoaki Kobayakawa says on Google’s blog.

And given Amazon’s recent news that its drone delivery project is progressing, we can’t help thinking of that Audi commercial featuring people-seeking delivery drones run-amok.

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