Singer Kelly Clarkson has paired up with Microsoft to promote their store openings offering to perform free concerts to bring customers in.
The ?American Idol? alum was at the Fashion Mall at Keystone in Indianapolis on Saturday night, where fans lined up for hours to get free tickets.
Clarkson's free outdoor concert in Troy, Mich., on Friday was unfortunately canceled after she performed five songs, due to a downpour.
Kelly tried to tough it out, saying ?I?ll stand out here in the rain with you! Well, at least we?re not sweating,? but then had to exit the stage when the conditions became unsafe. Five minutes later, an official told the crowd the event was canceled.
In move to appease marketers, Facebook will no longer show ads with offensive content.?
By Alexei Oreskovic,?Reuters / June 28, 2013
Advertising makes up 85 precent of revenue at Facebook, the world's largest social network with 1.1 billion users.
AP Photo/Paul Sakuma
Enlarge
Facebook said it will no longer allow ads to appear on pages with sexual or violent content, as the online social network moves to appease marketers being associated with objectionable material.
Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS of The Christian Science Monitor Weekly Digital Edition
The moves come a month after several businesses pulled their ads from Facebook?amid reports of pages on Facebook?that promoted violence against women.
Facebook?said at the time that it needed to improve its system for flagging and removing content that violated its community standards, which forbid users from posting content about hate-speech, threats and pornography, among other things.
Ads account for roughly 85 percent of revenue at Facebook, the world's largest social network with 1.1 billion users.?Facebook?said the changes would not have a meaningful impact on its business.
On Friday,?Facebook?said it also needed to do more to prevent situations in which ads are displayed alongside material that may not run afoul of its community standards but are deemed controversial nonetheless.
A?Facebook?page for a business that sells adult products, for example, will no longer feature ads. Previously such a page could feature ads along the right-hand side of the page so long as the page did not violate?Facebook's prohibition on depicting nudity.
The move underscores the delicate balance for social media companies, which features a variety of unpredictable and sometimes unsavory content shared by users, but which rely on advertising to underpin their business.
"Our goal is to both preserve the freedoms of sharing on Facebook?but also protect people and brands from certain types of content,"?Facebook?said in a post on its website on Friday.
Facebook?said on Friday that it would expand the scope of pages and groups on its website that should be ad-restricted and promised to remove ads from the flagged areas of the website by the end of the coming week.
Pages and groups that reference violence will also be off limits to ads, the company said. A Facebook?spokeswoman noted that the policy would not apply to the pages of news organizations on?Facebook.
Facebook?said the process of flagging objectionable pages and removing ads would initially be done manually, but that the company will build an automated system to do the job in the coming weeks.
The genome of the endophytic bacterium H. frisingense GSF30T identifies diverse strategies in the Herbaspirillum genus to interact with plants
Microbes whose habitat is inside other organisms, such as so-called "endophytic" bacteria that live inside plants, have evolved genes that enable them to overcome their host's defensive mechanisms. But once they have entered the host tissue, such microbes may actually benefit their host, for example, by activating genes that capture atmospheric nitrogen and turn it into natural fertilizer to promote plant growth. Daniel Straub and colleagues from the University of Hohenheim and the Helmholtz Zentrum Mnchen, Germany, found that the genomic "toolbox" of the endophytic bacterium H. frisingense, which lives inside grasses, is very different from the toolbox of its closest relatives: unlike other Herbaspirillum species, H. frisingense can fix atmospheric nitrogen to benefits its host, and also uses very different molecular pathways and metabolic modules to enter and survive in host cells. These results can help to identity endophytic bacteria that can be added to soil to improve the yield of crops, without posing a risk to human health or to the environment.
Researcher contact:
Dr. Daniel Straub
Crop Science Institute,
University of Hohenheim, Germany
Email: d.straub@uni-hohenheim.de
Flying fruit flies correct for visual sideslip depending on relative speed of forward optic flow
Flies are spectacular in flight, executing precise maneuvers at high speed. But because they are small, they are easily blown off course, and must correct their heading using tiny brains with limited neural resources. When moving forward, images of distant objects travel across the retina more slowly than nearby ones. This geometrical effect, called motion parallax, informs us if we run through the forest that the hovering moon is far off, and that the tree branches whizzing by are near and must be dodged. To determine if flies use motion parallax for corrective flight maneuvers, Stephanie Cabrera and Jamie Theobald, of Florida International University, used a cube with images on the sides to simulate three dimensional forward flight for a fruitfly that was held in place in the cube's center. They found that fruitflies responded more strongly to images that, by virtue of speed, appeared closer. But the crucial variable wasn't absolute speed; it was that some images moved faster than others. These results suggest that tiny fly brains use geometrical clues to identify the closest objects during flight.
Researcher contact:
Prof. Jamie Theobald
Department of Biological Sciences
Florida International University, USA
E-mail: theobald@fiu.edu
Clustering the lexicon in the brain: a meta?analysis of the neurofunctional evidence on noun and verb processing
Virtually every known human language features two different classes of words, one for "calling" things like dogs, clouds, or rumours and one for saying something about how they are or what they do dogs bark, clouds are coming, rumours spread. These classes are called nouns and verbs in Western languages, and sits at the very heart of human communication. It was widely believed that separate areas in the brain subserve the production and comprehension of nouns and verbs, based on the outcome of individual studies using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). Davide Crepaldi, Manuela Berlingeri and colleagues from the University of Milan Bicocca and the University of Milan have put together the evidence coming from those individual studies through a hierarchical clustering technique, and have found that, once results from different experiments are considered as a whole, evidence shows instead that the brain areas deputed to nouns and verbs are mostly overlapping, and the difference in the neural circuitries deputed to either grammatical class scale down to spatial and temporal resolutions that are far out of the grasp of current brain-snapshot techniques. According to the researchers, these results impact deeply on how functional specialization of individual brain areas is currently conceived.
Researcher contact:
Dr. Davide Crepaldi
Department of Psychology
University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy
E-mail: davide.crepaldi1@unimib.it
A double-edged sword: how oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes can contribute to chromosomal instability
Cells rely on an intricate network of signaling pathways to govern a number of processes ranging from tissue repair to programmed cell death. De-regulation of signaling pathways is a hallmark of cancer and responsible for driving tumor formation. Aneuploidy, defined as an abnormal chromosome number, is a distinct feature commonly observed in most solid tumors that arises from errors in cell division during mitosis. While some tumors maintain a stably aneuploid genome, many cancer cells persistently mis-segregate their chromosomes during mitosis, a phenomenon known as chromosomal instability (CIN). CIN is thought to drive the genomic re-shuffling that enables cells to acquire new phenotypes such as drug resistance and is intimately associated with loss of mitotic fidelity. Emerging data show that CIN and de-regulated cell signaling pathways are closely interrelated suggesting the roles that signaling pathways play in the accuracy of mitosis may be underappreciated. These results imply that the induction of CIN can no longer be thought of as a separate event from the cancer-associated driver mutations found in cell signaling pathways. In the context of tumorigenesis this may turn out to be a double-edged sword that combines de-regulated cell cycle progression with the disruption of mitosis to generate the highly complex genomic rearrangements typical of solid tumors. These results change the way we think about how to intervene therapeutically in cancer patients and provide insights on the molecular targets that may contribute significantly to improve patient prognosis.
Researcher contact:
Prof. Duane A. Compton
Department of Biochemistry
Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, USA
Email: duane.a.compton@dartmouth.edu
For copies of embargoed papers, please contact: Gozde Zorlu, Communications Officer: Tel: +41 (0) 21 693 9203. Interview requests should be directed to the corresponding author and appropriate contact details are provided above.
For online articles, please cite "Frontiers in xxx" followed by the name of the field as the publisher and include a link to the paper; active URLs for each paper are listed.
About Frontiers
Frontiers is a community driven open-access publisher and research networking platform. Launched and run by scientists since 2007, and based in Switzerland, Frontiers empowers researchers to advance the way science is evaluated, communicated and shared in the digital era. Frontiers joined the Nature Publishing Group family in 2013.
The "Frontiers in" series of journals publish around 500 peer-reviewed articles every month, which receive 5 million monthly views and are supported by over 25,000 editors and reviewers around the world. Frontiers has formed partnerships with international organizations such as the Max Planck Society and the International Union of Immunological Societies (IUIS). For more information, please visit: http://www.frontiersin.org.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
The genome of the endophytic bacterium H. frisingense GSF30T identifies diverse strategies in the Herbaspirillum genus to interact with plants
Microbes whose habitat is inside other organisms, such as so-called "endophytic" bacteria that live inside plants, have evolved genes that enable them to overcome their host's defensive mechanisms. But once they have entered the host tissue, such microbes may actually benefit their host, for example, by activating genes that capture atmospheric nitrogen and turn it into natural fertilizer to promote plant growth. Daniel Straub and colleagues from the University of Hohenheim and the Helmholtz Zentrum Mnchen, Germany, found that the genomic "toolbox" of the endophytic bacterium H. frisingense, which lives inside grasses, is very different from the toolbox of its closest relatives: unlike other Herbaspirillum species, H. frisingense can fix atmospheric nitrogen to benefits its host, and also uses very different molecular pathways and metabolic modules to enter and survive in host cells. These results can help to identity endophytic bacteria that can be added to soil to improve the yield of crops, without posing a risk to human health or to the environment.
Researcher contact:
Dr. Daniel Straub
Crop Science Institute,
University of Hohenheim, Germany
Email: d.straub@uni-hohenheim.de
Flying fruit flies correct for visual sideslip depending on relative speed of forward optic flow
Flies are spectacular in flight, executing precise maneuvers at high speed. But because they are small, they are easily blown off course, and must correct their heading using tiny brains with limited neural resources. When moving forward, images of distant objects travel across the retina more slowly than nearby ones. This geometrical effect, called motion parallax, informs us if we run through the forest that the hovering moon is far off, and that the tree branches whizzing by are near and must be dodged. To determine if flies use motion parallax for corrective flight maneuvers, Stephanie Cabrera and Jamie Theobald, of Florida International University, used a cube with images on the sides to simulate three dimensional forward flight for a fruitfly that was held in place in the cube's center. They found that fruitflies responded more strongly to images that, by virtue of speed, appeared closer. But the crucial variable wasn't absolute speed; it was that some images moved faster than others. These results suggest that tiny fly brains use geometrical clues to identify the closest objects during flight.
Researcher contact:
Prof. Jamie Theobald
Department of Biological Sciences
Florida International University, USA
E-mail: theobald@fiu.edu
Clustering the lexicon in the brain: a meta?analysis of the neurofunctional evidence on noun and verb processing
Virtually every known human language features two different classes of words, one for "calling" things like dogs, clouds, or rumours and one for saying something about how they are or what they do dogs bark, clouds are coming, rumours spread. These classes are called nouns and verbs in Western languages, and sits at the very heart of human communication. It was widely believed that separate areas in the brain subserve the production and comprehension of nouns and verbs, based on the outcome of individual studies using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). Davide Crepaldi, Manuela Berlingeri and colleagues from the University of Milan Bicocca and the University of Milan have put together the evidence coming from those individual studies through a hierarchical clustering technique, and have found that, once results from different experiments are considered as a whole, evidence shows instead that the brain areas deputed to nouns and verbs are mostly overlapping, and the difference in the neural circuitries deputed to either grammatical class scale down to spatial and temporal resolutions that are far out of the grasp of current brain-snapshot techniques. According to the researchers, these results impact deeply on how functional specialization of individual brain areas is currently conceived.
Researcher contact:
Dr. Davide Crepaldi
Department of Psychology
University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy
E-mail: davide.crepaldi1@unimib.it
A double-edged sword: how oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes can contribute to chromosomal instability
Cells rely on an intricate network of signaling pathways to govern a number of processes ranging from tissue repair to programmed cell death. De-regulation of signaling pathways is a hallmark of cancer and responsible for driving tumor formation. Aneuploidy, defined as an abnormal chromosome number, is a distinct feature commonly observed in most solid tumors that arises from errors in cell division during mitosis. While some tumors maintain a stably aneuploid genome, many cancer cells persistently mis-segregate their chromosomes during mitosis, a phenomenon known as chromosomal instability (CIN). CIN is thought to drive the genomic re-shuffling that enables cells to acquire new phenotypes such as drug resistance and is intimately associated with loss of mitotic fidelity. Emerging data show that CIN and de-regulated cell signaling pathways are closely interrelated suggesting the roles that signaling pathways play in the accuracy of mitosis may be underappreciated. These results imply that the induction of CIN can no longer be thought of as a separate event from the cancer-associated driver mutations found in cell signaling pathways. In the context of tumorigenesis this may turn out to be a double-edged sword that combines de-regulated cell cycle progression with the disruption of mitosis to generate the highly complex genomic rearrangements typical of solid tumors. These results change the way we think about how to intervene therapeutically in cancer patients and provide insights on the molecular targets that may contribute significantly to improve patient prognosis.
Researcher contact:
Prof. Duane A. Compton
Department of Biochemistry
Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, USA
Email: duane.a.compton@dartmouth.edu
For copies of embargoed papers, please contact: Gozde Zorlu, Communications Officer: Tel: +41 (0) 21 693 9203. Interview requests should be directed to the corresponding author and appropriate contact details are provided above.
For online articles, please cite "Frontiers in xxx" followed by the name of the field as the publisher and include a link to the paper; active URLs for each paper are listed.
About Frontiers
Frontiers is a community driven open-access publisher and research networking platform. Launched and run by scientists since 2007, and based in Switzerland, Frontiers empowers researchers to advance the way science is evaluated, communicated and shared in the digital era. Frontiers joined the Nature Publishing Group family in 2013.
The "Frontiers in" series of journals publish around 500 peer-reviewed articles every month, which receive 5 million monthly views and are supported by over 25,000 editors and reviewers around the world. Frontiers has formed partnerships with international organizations such as the Max Planck Society and the International Union of Immunological Societies (IUIS). For more information, please visit: http://www.frontiersin.org.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
WASHINGTON (AP) ? With a solemnity reserved for momentous occasions, the Senate passed historic legislation Thursday offering the priceless hope of citizenship to millions of immigrants living illegally in America's shadows. The bill also promises a military-style effort to secure the long-porous border with Mexico.
The bipartisan vote was 68-32 on a measure that sits atop President Barack Obama's second-term domestic agenda. But the bill's prospects are highly uncertain in the Republican-controlled House, where party leaders are jockeying for position in advance of expected action next month.
Spectators in galleries that overlook the Senate floor watched expectantly as senators voted one by one from their desks. Some onlookers erupted in chants of "Yes, we can" after Vice President Joe Biden announced the vote result.
After three weeks of debate, there was no doubt about the outcome. Fourteen Republicans joined all 52 Democrats and two independents to support the bill.
In a written statement, Obama coupled praise for the Senate's action with a plea for resolve by supporters as the House works on the issue. "Now is the time when opponents will try their hardest to pull this bipartisan effort apart so they can stop commonsense reform from becoming a reality. We cannot let that happen," said the president, who was traveling in Africa.
In the final hours of debate, members of the so-called Gang of 8, the group that drafted the measure, frequently spoke in personal terms while extolling the bill's virtues, rebutting its critics ? and appealing to the House members who turn comes next.
"Do the right thing for America and for your party," said Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., who said his mother emigrated to the United States from Cuba. "Find common ground. Lean away from the extremes. Opt for reason and govern with us."
Arizona Republican Sen. Jeff Flake said those seeking legal status after living in the United States illegally must "pass a background check, make good on any tax liability and pay a fee and a fine." There are other requirements before citizenship can be obtained, he noted.
He, too, spoke from personal experience, recalling time he spent as a youth working alongside family members and "undocumented migrant labor, largely from Mexico, who worked harder than we did under conditions much more difficult than we endured."
Since then, he said, "I have harbored a feeling of admiration and respect for those who have come to risk life and limb and sacrifice so much to provide a better life for themselves and their families."
The bill's opponents were unrelenting, if outnumbered.
"We will admit dramatically more people than we ever have in our country's history at a time when unemployment is high and the Congressional Budget Office has told us that average wages will go down for 12 years, that gross national product per capita will decline for 25-plus years, that unemployment will go up," said Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala.
"The amnesty will occur, but the enforcement is not going to occur, and the policies for future immigration are not serving the national interest."
But with a weeklong July 4 congressional vacation looming, the bill's foes agreed to permit the final vote one day before Senate rules mandated it.
In the Senate, at least, the developments marked an end to years of gridlock on immigration. The shift began taking shape quickly after the 2012 presidential election, when numerous Republican leaders concluded the party must show a more welcoming face to Hispanic voters who had given Obama more than 70 percent of their support.
Even so, division among Republicans was evident as potential 2016 presidential contenders split. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida was one of the Gang of 8, while Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas were opposed to the bill.
The legislation's chief provisions includes numerous steps to prevent future illegal immigration ? some added in a late compromise that swelled Republican support for the bill ? and to check on the legal status of job applicants already living in the United States. At the same time, it offers a 13-year path to citizenship to as many as 11 million immigrants now living in the country unlawfully.
Under the deal brokered last week by Republican Sens. John Hoeven of North Dakota and Bob Corker of Tennessee and the Gang of 8, the measure requires 20,000 new Border Patrol agents, the completion of 700 miles of fencing and deployment of an array of high-tech devices along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Those living in the country illegally could gain legal status while the border security plan was being implemented, but would not be granted permanent resident green cards or citizenship.
A plan requiring businesses to check on the legal status of prospective employees would be phased in over four years.
Other provisions would expand the number of visas available for highly skilled workers relied upon by the technology industry. A separate program would be established for lower-skilled workers, and farm workers would be admitted under a temporary program. In addition, the system of legal immigration that has been in effect for decades would be changed, making family ties less of a factor and elevating the importance of education, job skills and relative youth.
With the details of the Senate bill well-known, House Speaker John Boehner said at a news conference the separate legislation the House considers will have majority support among Republicans. He also said he hopes the bill will be bipartisan, and he encouraged a group of four Democrats and three Republicans trying to forge a compromise to continue their efforts.
He offered no details on how a House bill could be both bipartisan and supported by more than half of his own rank and file, given that most of the bills that have moved through the House Judiciary Committee recently did so on party line votes over the protests of Democrats. None envisions legal status for immigrants now in the country illegally.
Boehner declined to say if there were circumstances under which he could support a pathway to citizenship, but he made clear that securing the border was a priority.
"People have to have confidence that the border is secure before anything else is really going to work. Otherwise, we repeat the mistakes of 1986," he said, referring to the last time Congress overhauled the immigration system.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader, also said he favors a bipartisan approach. At the same time, she noted that Democratic principles for immigration include "secure our borders, protect our workers, unite families, a path to legalization and now citizenship for those" without legal status.
___
Associated Press writer Donna Cassata contributed to this story.
Governor-General Quentin Bryce, left, poses with newly commissioned Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, second from left, his wife Therese Rein, right, and his granddaughter Josephine Tse, at Government House in Canberra, Australia, Thursday, June 27, 2013. Rudd was sworn in as prime minister three years and three days after he was ousted from the same job in an internal government showdown. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)
Governor-General Quentin Bryce, left, poses with newly commissioned Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, second from left, his wife Therese Rein, right, and his granddaughter Josephine Tse, at Government House in Canberra, Australia, Thursday, June 27, 2013. Rudd was sworn in as prime minister three years and three days after he was ousted from the same job in an internal government showdown. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)
Former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, right, with her former deputy Wayne Swan, arrive in chambers at parliament for question time for what is likely to be its last day before elections, in Canberra, Australia, Thursday, June 27, 2013. Gillard was dumped in a party ballot and Kevin Rudd was sworn in as Australian prime minister three years and three days after he was ousted from the same job in an internal government showdown. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)
Governor-General Quentin Bryce, right, commissions Kevin Rudd with in half an hour of Parliament resuming for what is likely to be its last day before elections, in Canberra, Australia, Thursday, June 27, 2013. Rudd is sworn in as Australian prime minister three years and three days after he was ousted from the same job in an internal government showdown. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)
Kevin Rudd signs his commission at Government House within half an hour of Parliament resuming for what is likely to be its last day before elections, in Canberra, Australia, Thursday, June 27, 2013. Rudd is sworn in as Australian prime minister three years and three days after he was ousted from the same job in an internal government showdown. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, second from left, is congratulated by opposition leader Tony Abbott, left, deputy opposition leader Julie Bishop, right, and shadow treasurer Joe Hockey just before Rudd addresses Parliament for what is likely to be its last day before elections, in Canberra, Australia, Thursday, June 27, 2013. Rudd was sworn in as Australian prime minister three years and three days after he was ousted from the same job in an internal government showdown. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) ? Dubbed "Recycled Rudd" in newspaper headlines, Kevin Rudd returned as Australia's prime minister Thursday, reviving his party's hopes of avoiding an election massacre but giving voters few clues where he plans to take the country.
Rudd was sworn in a day after wrenching the job back from Julia Gillard, his former deputy, who took over through her own internal coup three years ago but had a strained relationship with Australian voters from the start.
He is seen as more charismatic than Gillard, though his abrasiveness toward his fellow lawmakers helped lead to his 2010 downfall. In Parliament on Thursday, he urged lawmakers to be "a little kinder and gentler" toward each other following Gillard's ouster.
With Gillard as leader, the ruling center-left Labor Party had appeared headed for an overwhelming election defeat at the hands of the conservative coalition opposition, but Rudd's supporters said they now have a chance to win.
"What this fundamentally does is put us in a position where we can win the next election, and no one would have been talking about that even at the beginning of this week," said Richard Marles, a Rudd supporter who quit as a junior minister in March after an aborted leadership challenge by Rudd.
"We were looking at a very bad defeat. We were not in the contest," he added.
Gillard had set elections for Sept. 14, though Rudd can now decide to hold them as early as Aug. 3. Rudd on Thursday refused to commit to a date but said "there's not going to be a huge variation" from Sept. 14.
Rudd has said he will perform with renewed "energy and purpose," but has yet to spell out what will be different under his leadership. His government remains in a state of confusion, with a Cabinet yet to be named.
Marles said he expects Rudd will "reset some policies" in the next two weeks, including on the unpopular carbon tax levied on Australia's largest polluters and on how Australia deals with a growing number of asylum seekers reaching the country by boat.
"He's the best communicator that exists in Australian politics today," Marles said. "People just love him; they really relate to him and react to him and there is part of that I think is an intangible."
Successive opinion polls have suggested that the government would be more popular with Rudd, a Mandarin-speaking former diplomat, at the helm than Gillard, a former lawyer and political staffer who was Australia's first female prime minister.
A poll by market researcher Nielsen published last week in Fairfax Media newspapers found that Labor under Rudd would be on equal pegging with the opposition at 50 percent voter support. Under Gillard, Labor trailed with only 43 percent of voter support, compared to 57 percent support for the opposition.
The poll was based on a random nationwide telephone survey of 1,400 voters on June 13-15 and had a 2.6 percent margin of error.
Nielsen director John Stirton was skeptical that the poll would translate to an election victory for Labor, saying that would assume a smooth leadership transition to Rudd, the party uniting behind him and his public popularity enduring until the election.
Under Gillard, polls had suggested that Labor could lose between 30 and 35 of their 71 lawmakers in the 150-seat House of Representatives, where parties form government.
Rudd forced Gillard out in nearly the same way she ousted him in 2010. Each faced a party leadership vote in the face of a revolt from Labor lawmakers, but while Rudd did not contest Gillard's earlier challenge, she went ahead with a vote that she lost 57-45.
Gillard tendered her resignation Wednesday night, and Governor-General Quentin Bryce commissioned Rudd as prime minister on Thursday.
Anthony Albanese was sworn in as deputy prime minister and Chris Bowen was sworn in as treasurer during the same ceremony. Rudd has yet to say when he will announce his complete Cabinet after seven ministers resigned following Gillard's ouster.
Since it holds fewer than half of the seats in Parliament, the Labor Party has required support from independent lawmakers and the minor Greens party to hang on to power. Those lawmakers were not obliged to support Rudd, though at least some of them did.
The opposition could have challenged Rudd's control of the government with a no-confidence motion, but it did not. Parliament was adjourned Thursday and it will not reconvene until after the elections.
The bitter rivalry and infighting between the Gillard and Rudd camps has damaged Labor's image. Rudd had tried twice previously to oust Gillard, last year and in February. Many took the fact that he never posed for a Parliament House portrait, as other former prime ministers had done, as a sign that he never gave up on returning.
"As we all know in this place, political life is a very hard life; a very hard life indeed," Rudd told Parliament before it adjourned. "Let us try ? just try ? to be a little kinder and gentler with each other in the further deliberations of this Parliament."
Opposition leader Tony Abbott demanded an explanation from Rudd of why Gillard was deposed with elections looming. Abbott also called for an election date to be confirmed.
"Politics is a tough business and sometimes it is far more brutal than it needs to be," Abbott said.
"This is a fraught moment in the life of our nation. A prime minister has been dragged down; her replacement owes the Australian people and the Australian Parliament an explanation," he added.
LONDON (AP) ? Disappointing U.S.economic growth figures failed to alter the mood in financial markets Wednesday, which has seen most stocks eke out solid gains for the second day running.
However, gold prices remained under pressure, falling to near three-year lows at one stage as the strength of the dollar continues to undermine the precious metal.
Over recent weeks, markets have been volatile amid concerns over U.S. monetary policy. Last week's confirmation from Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, that the central bank may start reining in its monetary stimulus this year prompted big falls in stock markets as well as a sharp appreciation in the dollar. The extra money provided by the stimulus in recent years has found its way back into financial markets, shoring up stock markets, but keeping a lid on the dollar.
However, U.S. economic growth figures for the first quarter suggested that the so-called tapering in asset purchases by the Fed may not happen as soon as many investors have predicted.
Instead of the previous 2.4 percent annualized increase estimated, the Commerce Department said the U.S. economy only grew at a 1.8 percent tick, with most components contributing less than thought.
Though the news may be positive for stocks in that it may ease tightening fears, investors were disappointed that the U.S. economy is not as strong as thought. As a result, stocks were largely unchanged from the levels they were before the release.
"Although the reading is strictly taper-negative, it is by now rather outdated with this Friday marking the end of the second quarter," said Andrew Wilkinson, chief economic strategist at Miller Tabak & Co. "As such the stock market appears to be taking the revision in its stride."
In Europe, the FTSE 100 index of leading British shares was up 1 percent at 6,165 while Germany's DAX rose 1.6 percent to 7,940. The CAC-40 in France was 2.1 percent higher at 3,726.
In the U.S., the Dow Jones industrial average was up 0.7 percent at 14,869 while the broader S&P 500 index rose the same rate to 1,599.
Despite signs that the recent correction in stock markets may have stabilized, investors remain cautious.
"It still feels as if markets are simply looking to catch their breath after all the excitement of the past week, and so it is perhaps unwise to suggest that two days of positive trading make a trend," said Chris Beauchamp, market analyst at IG.
Elsewhere, gold was in focus, as it fell over $50 at one stage to a near three-year low of $1,223 an ounce. However, it picked up slightly to trade $42.80, or 3.4 percent, down at $1,232. Many gold-watchers think the metal, which has shed around 20 percent of its value this year, has further to fall given the dollar's appreciation and the prospect of less Fed stimulus. Gold has advanced over the past few years as a store of value at a time central banks had opened the printing taps, as well as through its status as a safe haven for nervous investors.
Earlier, the mood in Asia was calmer as traders digested comments from the People's Bank of China that it would act to keep credit markets functioning, if needed.
China's central bank caused a global rout in markets on Monday after it moved to curb so-called shadow banking ? unregulated lending to companies starved of credit by traditional banks. Investors worried that would cause an increase in borrowing rates for companies, hurting business.
Mainland Chinese shares were mixed after enduring sharp losses earlier this week. The Shanghai Composite Index fell 0.4 percent to 1,951.50. But the smaller Shenzhen Composite Index jumped 2.5 percent to 901.72. In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng surged 2.4 percent to 20,338.55.
Elsewhere, Japan's Nikkei 225 fell 1 percent to close at 12,834.01 as the yen recovered some of its recent losses against the dollar, which was trading 0.5 percent lower at $97.61 yen.
WASHINGTON (AP) ? For President Barack Obama, National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden's globe-trotting evasion of U.S. authorities has dealt a startling setback to efforts to strengthen ties with China and raised the prospect of worsening tensions with Russia.
Indeed, Russia's foreign minister on Tuesday called U.S. demands for Snowden's extradition "ungrounded and unacceptable."
Relations with both China and Russia have been at the forefront of Obama's foreign policy agenda this month, underscoring the intertwined interests among these uneasy partners. Obama met just last week with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the Group of Eight summit in Northern Ireland and held an unusual two-day summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping in California earlier this month.
Obama has made no known phone calls to Xi since Snowden surfaced in Hong Kong earlier this month, nor has he talked to Putin since Snowden arrived in Russia.
Former Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., said it wasn't clear that Obama's "charm offensive" with Xi and Putin would matter much on this issue. The U.S. has "very little leverage," she said, given the broad array of issues on which the Obama administration needs Chinese and Russian cooperation.
"This isn't happening in a vacuum, and obviously China and Russia know that," said Harman, who now runs the Woodrow Wilson International Center.
Both the U.S. and China had hailed the Obama-Xi summit as a fresh start to a complex relationship, with the leaders building personal bonds during an hour-long walk through the grounds of the Sunnylands estate. But any easing of tensions appeared to vanish Monday following China's apparent flouting of U.S. demands that Snowden be returned from semi-autonomous Hong Kong to face espionage charges.
White House spokesman Jay Carney, in unusually harsh language, said China had "unquestionably" damaged its relationship with Washington.
"The Chinese have emphasized the importance of building mutual trust," Carney said. "We think that they have dealt that effort a serious setback. If we cannot count on them to honor their legal extradition obligations, then there is a problem."
A similar problem may be looming with Russia, where Snowden arrived Sunday. He had been expected to leave Moscow for a third country, but the White House said Monday it believed the former government contractor was still in Russia.
While the U.S. does not have an extradition treaty with Russia, the White House publicly prodded the Kremlin to send Snowden back to the U.S., while officials privately negotiated with their Russian counterparts.
"We are expecting the Russians to examine the options available to them to expel Mr. Snowden for his return to the United States," Carney said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Tuesday bluntly rejected the U.S. request, saying Snowden hasn't crossed the Russian border, and angrily lashed out at the U.S. for warnings of negative consequences if Moscow fails to comply.
"We consider the attempts to accuse Russia of violation of U.S. laws and even some sort of conspiracy, which on top of all that are accompanied by threats, as absolutely ungrounded and unacceptable," Lavrov said.
The U.S. has deep economic ties with China and needs the Asian power's help in persuading North Korea to end its nuclear provocations. The Obama administration also needs Russia's cooperation in ending the bloodshed in Syria and reducing nuclear stockpiles held by the former Cold War foes.
Members of Congress so far have focused their anger on China and Russia, not on Obama's inability to get either country to abide by U.S. demands. However, Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., said in an interview with CNN on Monday that he was starting to wonder why the president hasn't been "more forceful in dealing with foreign leaders."
Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton echoed the White House's frustration with China. "That kind of action is not only detrimental to the U.S.-China relationship but it sets a bad precedent that could unravel the intricate international agreements about how countries respect the laws ? and particularly the extradition treaties," the possible 2016 presidential contender told an audience in Los Angeles.
Snowden fled to Hong Kong after seizing highly classified documents disclosing U.S. surveillance programs that collect vast amounts of U.S. phone and Internet records. He shared the information with The Guardian and Washington Post newspapers. He also told the South China Morning Post that "the NSA does all kinds of things like hack Chinese cellphone companies to steal all of your SMS data." SMS, or short messaging service, generally means text messaging.
Snowden still has perhaps more than 200 sensitive documents, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said over the weekend.
Hong Kong, a former British colony with a degree of autonomy from mainland China, has an extradition treaty with the U.S. Officials in Hong Kong said a formal U.S. extradition request did not fully comply with its laws, a claim the Justice Department disputes.
The White House made clear it believes the final decision to let Snowden leave for Russia was made by Chinese officials in Beijing.
Russia's ultimate response to U.S. pressure remains unclear. Putin could still agree to return Snowden to the U.S. But he may also let him stay in Russia or head elsewhere, perhaps to Ecuador or Venezuela ? both options certain to earn the ire of the White House.
Fiona Hill, a Russia expert at the Washington-based Brookings Institution, said she expected Putin to take advantage of a "golden opportunity" to publicly defy the White House.
"This is one of those opportunities to score points against the United States that I would be surprised if Russia passed up," Hill said.
___
Follow Julie Pace on Twitter at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC
JOHANNESBURG (AP) ? South Africa's president visited a gravely ill Nelson Mandela in the hospital on Wednesday night, and canceled a visit planned for the next day to Mozambique, an indication of heightened concern over the deteriorating health of the man widely considered the father of the country.
President Jacob Zuma found 94-year-old Mandela to still be in critical condition during the 10 p.m. visit and was briefed by doctors "who are still doing everything they can to ensure his well-being," Zuma's office said in a statement.
It said the president decided to cancel a visit to Maputo, the Mozambican capital, on Thursday, where he was to attend a meeting on regional investment.
As worries over Mandela mounted, Mac Maharaj, the presidential spokesman, declined to comment on media reports that the former president and anti-apartheid leader was on life support systems in the Pretoria hospital where he was taken June 8 to be treated for what the government said was a recurring lung infection.
"I cannot comment on the clinical details of these reports because that would breach the confidentiality of the doctor/patient relationship," Maharaj said in an interview with South Africa's Radio 702.
South Africans were torn on Wednesday between the desire not to lose Mandela, who defined the aspirations of so many of his compatriots, and resignation that the beloved former prisoner and president is approaching the end of his life.
The sense of anticipation and foreboding about Mandela's fate has grown since late Sunday, when the South African government declared that the condition of the statesman had deteriorated.
A tide of emotional tributes has built on social media and in hand-written messages and flowers laid outside the hospital and Mandela's home. On Wednesday, about 20 children from a day care center posted a hand-made card outside the hospital and recited a poem.
"Hold on, old man," was one of the lines in the Zulu poem, according to the South African Press Association.
In recent days, international leaders, celebrities, athletes and others have praised Mandela, not just as the man who steered South Africa through its tense transition from white racist rule to democracy two decades ago, but as a universal symbol of sacrifice and reconciliation.
In South Africa's Eastern Cape province, where Mandela grew up, a traditional leader said the time was near for Mandela, who is also known by his clan name, Madiba.
"I am of the view that if Madiba is no longer enjoying life, and is on life support systems, and is not appreciating what is happening around him, I think the good Lord should take the decision to put him out of his suffering," said the tribal chief, Phathekile Holomisa.
"I did speak to two of his family members, and of course, they are in a lot of pain, and wish that a miracle might happen, that he recovers again, and he becomes his old self again," he said. "But at the same time they are aware there is a limit what miracles you can have."
For many South Africans, Mandela's decline is a far more personal matter, echoing the protracted and emotionally draining process of losing one of their own elderly relatives.
One nugget of wisdom about the arc of life and death came from Matthew Rusznyah, a 9-year-old boy who stopped outside Mandela's home in the Johannesburg neighborhood of Houghton to show his appreciation.
"We came because we care about Mandela being sick, and we wish we could put a stop to it, like snap our fingers," he said. "But we can't. It's how life works."
His mother, Lee Rusznyah, said Mandela, who spent 27 years in prison under apartheid before becoming South Africa's first black president in all-race elections in 1994, had made the world a better place.
"All of us will end," Thabo Makgoba, the Anglican archbishop of Cape Town, said in an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday. "We just want him to be peacefully released, whatever he's feeling at this moment, and to be reunited with his Maker at the perfect time, when God so wills."
The archbishop said: "Ultimately, we are all mortal. At some stage or another, we all have to die, and we have to move on, we have to be recalled by our Maker and Redeemer. We have to create that space for Madiba, to come to terms within himself, with that journey."
On Tuesday, Makgoba visited Mandela and offered a prayer in which he wished for a "peaceful, perfect, end" for the anti-apartheid leader, who was taken to the Pretoria hospital to be treated for what the government said was a recurring lung infection.
In the prayer, he asked for courage to be granted to Mandela's wife, Graca Machel, and others who love him "at this hard time of watching and waiting," and he appealed for divine help for the medical team treating Mandela.
Visitors to the hospital on Wednesday included Mandela's former wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. The couple divorced in 1996.
Mandela, whose 95th birthday is on July 18, served a single five-year term as president and afterward focused on charitable causes, but he withdrew from public life years ago and became increasingly frail in recent years. He last made a public appearance in 2010 at the World Cup soccer tournament, which was hosted by South Africa. At that time, he did not speak to the crowd and was bundled against the cold in a stadium full of fans.
On April 29, state television broadcast footage of a visit by Zuma and other leaders of the ruling party, the African National Congress, to Mandela's home. Zuma said at the time that Mandela was in good shape, but the footage ? the first public images of Mandela in nearly a year ? showed him silent and unresponsive, even when Zuma tried to hold his hand.
"Let's accept instead of crying," said Lucas Aedwaba, a security officer in Pretoria who described Mandela as a hero. "Let's celebrate that the old man lived and left his legacy."
MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) ? When a bank transfers money to Somalia, can it be sure it's not sending money to terrorists? That question is forcing one of Britain's largest banks to cut ties with the largest cash transfer bank in Somalia, a company that brings in the majority of the country's $1.2 billion in yearly remittances.
Many in Somalia are in desperate need of money. Payments from family and friends overseas are how many get by, and that's why more than 100 aid workers and Somalia experts signed a letter this week pleading with the British government to find a solution.
Barclays bank will no longer allow customers to send money to Somalia via the Somali bank Dahabshil. A financial power-house in Somalia, Dahabshil describes itself as "the most trusted money transfer company for many immigrants willing to support their families and friends." But anti-terror laws hold banks ? like Barclays ? responsible if they transfer money to criminal or terror elements. As a result, fewer are willing to send money into Somalia.
Such transactions for Somalis in the United States became more difficult in late 2011, when a bank in Minnesota closed accounts that facilitated such transfers. Sunrise Community Banks decided to halt the transactions after two women were convicted of sending money to the terrorist group al-Shabab.
"It is recognized that some money service businesses don't have the proper checks in place to spot criminal activity and could therefore unwittingly be facilitating money laundering and terrorist financing," Barclays said in a statement. "We want to be confident that our customers can filter out those transactions, because abuse of their services can have significant negative consequences for society and for us as their bank."
Abdirashid Duale, chief executive of Dahabshiil, noted that his company is one of a number of transfer businesses affected by of Barclays' decision.
"Naturally, Dahabshiil is appealing this decision and would like to emphasize that to date Barclays' has acknowledged that our Anti-Money Laundering and Anti-Terrorist Financing policies are fully compliant with industry regulations," he said.
Dahabshiil, he said, remains operational while it explores alternative banking arrangements.
The group of aid workers and researchers said the decision at stake here "is a lifeline that provides essential support to an estimated 40 percent of the population of Somalia." The group said it has seen firsthand the impact remittances have on families in the Horn of Africa.
"My son is in the U.K. He sent us money every month for our sustenance and school fees for the children. Where are we going to get the money to pay our bills?" said Dahabo Afrah, a longtime customer of Dahabshil in Mogadishu. "This is unfair to us and will affect hundreds of thousands of Somali people."
Many big banks in the U.S. have already stopped handling transfers to Somalia, saying the federal requirements designed to crack down on terrorism financing were too complex and not worth the risk. Last April, U.S. Bank confirmed it is working with Dahabshil to allow Somalis in Minnesota to send money back home. U.S. Bank spokeswoman Teri Charest said Monday that the bank is working closely with Dahabshil but the transactions have not yet started.
Barclays said it remains happy to maintain a relationship with businesses that have anti-financial crime controls. Western Union operates in Somalia but does not have a presence in many places, including Mogadishu, the capital.
The aid groups said that one study of financial transactions in Somalia found that 73 percent of remittance recipients said that they use the money they receive from relatives ? an average of $2,040 per year ? to pay for basic food, education, and medical expenses.
"One-third of recipients said that they would not be able to afford basic food if the remittances were stopped," the group said in a letter to the British government on Monday.
The group is calling on the British government to help money transfer businesses to find alternative banking partners. It also asked that Barclays extend its termination deadline for six months until other solutions are found.
A study released earlier this month by the Food Security Nutrition Analysis Unit for Somalia, a project by the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization found yearly remittances to Somalia to be a minimum of $1.2 billion per year. The aid group Oxfam said that soon to be published research shows that Somali immigrants in the U.K. send more than $154 million back to Somalia each year, behind only the U.S.
___
Straziuso reported from Nairobi, Kenya. Associated Press reporter Amy Forliti in Minneapolis, Minnesota contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Americans' confidence in the economy rose to its highest level in more than five years, bolstered by a more optimistic outlook for hiring.
The Conference Board, a New York-based private research group, said Tuesday that its consumer confidence index jumped to 81.4 in June. That's the best reading since January 2008. And it is up from May's reading of 74.3, which was revised slightly downward from 76.2.
Consumers' confidence in the economy is watched closely because their spending accounts for about 70 percent of U.S. economic activity.
The report shows consumers are more positive about current economic conditions and have a more optimistic view of the economy and job market in the next six months.
Lynn Franco, director of economic indicators at the Conference Board, said that "suggests the pace of growth is unlikely to slow in the short-term, and may even moderately pick up."
Employers added 175,000 jobs in May, nearly matching the average monthly gain for the past year. That's enough to slowly lower the unemployment rate. The rate ticked up to 7.6 percent last month but has fallen 0.6 percentage points in the past year.
Americans have been resilient this year, despite tax increases and steep government spending cuts. Consumer spending rose at the fastest pace in two years in the first three months of the year. That helped the overall economy grow at a 2.4 percent annual pace during the January-March quarter.
Economists forecast that overall economic growth is slowing to a 2 percent annual pace in the April-June quarter, in part because they expect consumers have eased up on spending from the robust first-quarter pace.
So far, reports on consumer spending for the second quarter have been mixed. In April, consumer spending fell as income was unchanged. But spending appears to have rebounded in May, based on a preliminary report on retail sales. Americans spent more on cars, home improvements and sporting goods, boosting retail sales 0.6 percent.
The Commerce Department will release a more complete report on May consumer spending and income on Thursday.
The Conference Board survey is conducted in the first half of the month. So the June report didn't capture the impact of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's comments last week after the Fed's policy meeting.
Bernanke said the Fed could begin to slow its bond purchases by the end of the year. Since then, stocks have plunged and interest rates have spiked.
The home of The Huffington Post's Girls in STEM Mentorship Program. Join the discussion as we explore STEM education and careers, the issues facing women in STEM, and what it takes to be a mentor to females in these fields. Need to get in touch? Email STEM@huffingtonpost.com.
White House press secretary Jay Carney gestures during the daily press briefing at the White House in Washington, Monday, June 24, 2013. Carney said the U.S. assumes that Edward Snowden is now in Russia and that the White House now expects Russian authorities to look at all the options available to them to expel Snowden to face charges in the U.S. for releasing secret surveillance information . (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
White House press secretary Jay Carney gestures during the daily press briefing at the White House in Washington, Monday, June 24, 2013. Carney said the U.S. assumes that Edward Snowden is now in Russia and that the White House now expects Russian authorities to look at all the options available to them to expel Snowden to face charges in the U.S. for releasing secret surveillance information . (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Aeroflot flight SU150 sits at the tarmac of the Jose Marti international airport after arriving from Moscow to Havana, Cuba, Monday, June 24, 2013. Confusion over the whereabouts of National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden grew on Monday after SU150 Aeroflot flight filled with journalists trying to track him down flew from Moscow to Cuba with the empty seat booked in his name. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? For President Barack Obama, National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden's globe-trotting evasion of U.S. authorities has dealt a startling setback to efforts to strengthen ties with China and raised the prospect of worsening tensions with Russia.
Relations with both China and Russia have been at the forefront of Obama's foreign policy agenda this month, underscoring the intertwined interests among these uneasy partners. Obama met just last week with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the Group of Eight summit in Northern Ireland and held an unusual two-day summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping in California earlier this month.
Obama has made no known phone calls to Xi since Snowden surfaced in Hong Kong earlier this month, nor has he talked to Putin since Snowden arrived in Russia.
Former Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., said it wasn't clear that Obama's "charm offensive" with Xi and Putin would matter much on this issue. The U.S. has "very little leverage," she said, given the broad array of issues on which the Obama administration needs Chinese and Russian cooperation.
"This isn't happening in a vacuum, and obviously China and Russia know that," said Harman, who now runs the Woodrow Wilson International Center.
Both the U.S. and China had hailed the Obama-Xi summit as a fresh start to a complex relationship, with the leaders building personal bonds during an hourlong walk through the grounds of the Sunnylands estate. But any easing of tensions appeared to vanish Monday following China's apparent flouting of U.S. demands that Snowden be returned from semi-autonomous Hong Kong to face espionage charges.
White House spokesman Jay Carney, in unusually harsh language, said China had "unquestionably" damaged its relationship with Washington.
"The Chinese have emphasized the importance of building mutual trust," Carney said. "We think that they have dealt that effort a serious setback. If we cannot count on them to honor their legal extradition obligations, then there is a problem."
A similar problem may be looming with Russia, where Snowden arrived Sunday. He had been expected to leave Moscow for a third country, but the White House said Monday it believed the former government contractor was still in Russia.
While the U.S. does not have an extradition treaty with Russia, the White House publicly prodded the Kremlin to send Snowden back to the U.S., while officials privately negotiated with their Russian counterparts.
"We are expecting the Russians to examine the options available to them to expel Mr. Snowden for his return to the United States," Carney said.
The U.S. has deep economic ties with China and needs the Asian power's help in persuading North Korea to end its nuclear provocations. The Obama administration also needs Russia's cooperation in ending the bloodshed in Syria and reducing nuclear stockpiles held by the former Cold War foes.
Members of Congress so far have focused their anger on China and Russia, not on Obama's inability to get either country to abide by U.S. demands. However, Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., said in an interview with CNN on Monday that he was starting to wonder why the president hasn't been "more forceful in dealing with foreign leaders."
Snowden fled to Hong Kong after seizing highly classified documents disclosing U.S. surveillance programs that collect vast amounts of U.S. phone and Internet records. He shared the information with The Guardian and Washington Post newspapers. He also told the South China Morning Post that "the NSA does all kinds of things like hack Chinese cellphone companies to steal all of your SMS data." SMS, or short messaging service, generally means text messaging.
Snowden still has perhaps more than 200 sensitive documents, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said over the weekend.
Hong Kong, a former British colony with a degree of autonomy from mainland China, has an extradition treaty with the U.S. Officials in Hong Kong said a formal U.S. extradition request did not fully comply with its laws, a claim the Justice Department disputes.
The White House made clear it believes the final decision to let Snowden leave for Russia was made by Chinese officials in Beijing.
Russia's ultimate response to U.S. pressure remains unclear. Putin could still agree to return Snowden to the U.S. But he may also let him stay in Russia or head elsewhere, perhaps to Ecuador or Venezuela ? both options certain to earn the ire of the White House.
Fiona Hill, a Russia expert at the Washington-based Brookings Institution, said she expected Putin to take advantage of a "golden opportunity" to publicly defy the White House.
"This is one of those opportunities to score points against the United States that I would be surprised if Russia passed up," Hill said.
___
Follow Julie Pace on Twitter at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC
NEW YORK (AP) ? Stocks are ending slightly higher after a report of tepid U.S. economic growth raised expectations that the Federal Reserve will continue its stimulus program.
The government lowered its estimate for growth in the first three months of the year to 2.4 percent from 2.5 percent.
Stocks slid last week on concerns that the Fed might slow its bond purchases.
The Dow Jones industrial average rose 21 points to 15,324 Thursday, or 0.1 percent. The Dow was up 95 points in the afternoon, then faded in the last hour.
The Standard & Poor?s 500 rose six to 1,654, or 0.4 percent. The Nasdaq rose 23 points to 3,491.
Three stocks rose for every two that fell on the New York Stock Exchange. Volume was average at 3.5 billion shares.
To paraphrase the words of our reviewer, ASUS' Zenbook Prime UX31A is the third-best thin and light laptop you can buy. That's high praise indeed when the only two superior devices are the MacBook Air and Samsung's Series 9. So, why does it deserve such love? That's probably down to its sleek design, six-hour battery life and smooth performance. The only things it has in the "demerit" column is a wonky trackpad and weak audio, but we can forgive that, can't we? No, this is How Would You Change, which means we want to know exactly that: what, if you've owned one of these units, would you change about it?
Pakistani rescue workers unload the casket of a foreign tourist who was killed by Islamic militants from an ambulance to shift in a morgue of local hospital in Islamabad, Pakistan, Sunday, June 23, 2013. Islamic militants wearing police uniforms shot to death foreign tourists and at least one Pakistani before dawn as they were visiting one of the world?s highest mountains in a remote area of northern Pakistan that has been largely peaceful, officials said. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed)
Pakistani rescue workers unload the casket of a foreign tourist who was killed by Islamic militants from an ambulance to shift in a morgue of local hospital in Islamabad, Pakistan, Sunday, June 23, 2013. Islamic militants wearing police uniforms shot to death foreign tourists and at least one Pakistani before dawn as they were visiting one of the world?s highest mountains in a remote area of northern Pakistan that has been largely peaceful, officials said. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed)
FILE - In this May 4, 2004 file photo, Nanga Parbat, the ninth highest mountain in the world, is seen from Karakorum Highway leading to neighboring China in Pakistan's northern area. Gunmen wearing police uniforms killed 11 foreign tourists and one Pakistani before dawn Sunday, June 23, 2013 as they were visiting one of the world?s highest mountains in a remote area of northern Pakistan, officials said. (AP Photo/Musaf Zaman Kazmi, File)
Pakistani rescue workers unload the casket of a foreign tourist, who was killed by Islamic militants, from an ambulance to shift in a morgue of local hospital in Islamabad, Pakistan, Sunday, June 23, 2013. Islamic militants wearing police uniforms shot to death nine foreign tourists and one Pakistani before dawn as they were visiting one of the world?s highest mountains in a remote area of northern Pakistan that has been largely peaceful, officials said. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed)
Pakistani rescue workers unload the casket of a foreign tourist who was killed by Islamic militants, from an ambulance to shift in a morgue of local hospital in Islamabad, Pakistan, Sunday, June 23, 2013. Islamic militants wearing police uniforms shot to death foreign tourists and at least one Pakistani before dawn as they were visiting one of the world?s highest mountains in a remote area of northern Pakistan that has been largely peaceful, officials said. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed)
ISLAMABAD (AP) ? Islamic militants disguised as policemen killed 10 foreign climbers and a Pakistani guide in a brazen overnight raid against their campsite at the base of one of the world's tallest mountains in northern Pakistan, officials said Sunday.
The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack at the base camp of Nanga Parbat, saying it was to avenge the death of their deputy leader in a U.S. drone strike last month.
The attack took place in an area that has largely been peaceful, hundreds of kilometers (miles) from the Taliban's major sanctuaries along the Afghan border. But the militant group, which has been waging a bloody insurgency against the government for years, has shown it has the ability to strike almost anywhere in the country.
The Taliban began their attack by abducting two local guides to take them to the remote base camp in Gilgit-Baltisan, said Pakistani Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan. One of the guides was killed in the shooting, and the other has been detained for questioning. The attackers disguised themselves by wearing uniforms used by the Gilgit Scounts, a paramilitary force that patrols the area, Khan said.
Around 15 gunmen attacked the camp at around 11 p.m. Saturday, said the Alpine Club of Pakistan, which spoke with a local guide, Sawal Faqir, who survived the shooting. They began by beating the mountaineers and taking away any mobile and satellite phones they could find, as well as everyone's money, said the club in a statement.
Some climbers and guides were able to run away, but those that weren't were shot dead, said the club. Faqir was able to hide a satellite phone and eventually used it to notify authorities of the attack.
Attaur Rehman, the home secretary in Gilgit-Baltistan, said 10 foreigners and one Pakistani were killed in the attack. The dead foreigners included three Ukrainians, two Slovakians, two Chinese, one Lithuanian, one Nepalese and one Chinese-American, according to Rehman and tour operators who were working with the climbers. Matt Boland, the acting spokesman at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, confirmed that an American citizen was among the dead, but could not say whether it was a dual Chinese national.
The shooting ? one of the worst attacks on foreigners in Pakistan in recent years ? occurred in a stunning part of the country that has seen little violence against tourists, although it has experienced attacks by radical Sunni Muslims on minority Shiites in recent years.
Pakistani Taliban spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan claimed responsibility for the attack, saying their Jundul Hafsa faction carried out the shooting as retaliation for the death of the Taliban's deputy leader, Waliur Rehman, in a U.S. drone attack on May 29.
"By killing foreigners, we wanted to give a message to the world to play their role in bringing an end to the drone attacks," Ahsan told The Associated Press by telephone from an undisclosed location.
The U.S. insists the CIA strikes primarily kill al-Qaida and other militants who threaten the West as well as efforts to stabilize neighboring Afghanistan. In a recent speech, President Barack Obama outlined tighter restrictions on the highly secretive program.
Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who wants to pursue peace talks with militants threatening his country, has insisted the U.S. stop the drone strikes, saying they violate Pakistan's sovereignty and are counterproductive because they often kill innocent civilians and stoke anti-U.S. sentiment in this nation of 180 million.
Sharif responded to the attack on the camp by vowing "such acts of cruelty and inhumanity would not be tolerated and every effort would be made to make Pakistan a safe place for tourists."
Officials expressed fear the attack would deal a serious blow to Pakistan's tourism industry, already struggling because of the high level of violence in the country.
The interior minister promised to take all measures to ensure the safety of tourists as he addressed the National Assembly, which passed a resolution condemning the incident.
"A lot of tourists come to this area in the summer, and our local people work to earn money from these people," said Syed Mehdi Shah, the chief minister of Gilgit-Baltistan. "This will not only affect our area, but will adversely affect all of Pakistan."
He said the base camp was cordoned off by police and paramilitary soldiers after the attack, and a military helicopter searched the area.
Volodymyr Lakomov, the Ukrainian ambassador to Pakistan, also condemned the attack and said, "We hope Pakistani authorities will do their best to find the culprits of this crime."
Many foreign tourists stay away from Pakistan because of the country's reputation as being a dangerous place. But a relatively small number of intrepid foreigners visit Gilgit-Baltistan during the summer to marvel at the towering peaks in the Himalayan and Karakoram ranges, including K2, the second-highest mountain in the world.
An even smaller group tries to climb them. Nanga Parbat is over 8,000 meters (26,250 feet) tall and is notoriously difficult to summit. It is known as the "killer mountain" because of numerous mountaineering deaths in the past.
Pakistan has very close ties with neighboring China and is sensitive to any issue that could harm the relationship. Pakistani officials have reached out to representatives from China and Ukraine to convey their sympathies, the Foreign Ministry said.
The government suspended the chief secretary and top police chief in Gilgit-Baltistan following the attack and ordered an inquiry into the incident, said Khan, the interior minister.
The shooting was one of the worst attacks on foreigners in Pakistan in the last decade. A suicide attack outside a hotel in the southern city of Karachi killed 11 French engineers in 2002. In 2009, gunmen attacked the Sri Lankan cricket team in the eastern city of Lahore, killing six Pakistani policemen, a driver and wounding several players.
___
Associated Press writer Rasool Dawar contributed to this report from Peshawar, Pakistan.
![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](http://www.eurekalert.org/images/back2e.gif){kind=small}
Public release date: 27-Jun-2013
Share ] 
