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The body of actor James Gandolfini, who died of a heart attack in Rome last week, was flown out of Italy on Sunday on a flight bound for New York, Rome airport authorities said. _0"> Gandolfini, best known for his leading role in the Emmy-winning series "The Sopranos", was found dead in his Rome hotel late on Wednesday.   The actor's body left Rome's Fiumicino airport at around 1600 GMT (1200 ET) on a private flight, an airport official said. Family friend Michael Kobold, speaking to reporters in Rome, thanked the Italian authorities and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry for helping to accelerate procedures. Gandolfini was on holiday in Italy with his 13-year-old son and was due to attend the closing of the Taormina Film Festival in Sicily on Saturday. An autopsy showed had died of natural causes. Gandolfini's performance as New Jersey mob boss Tony Soprano made him a household name and helped usher in a new era of American television drama. Sinc

Russian President Vladimir Putin is calling a truce in the War of the Ring - sort of. _0"> Accused of pocketing a diamond-encrusted Super Bowl ring that New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft showed him back in 2005, Putin came up with a peace offering, albeit barbed. "You know, I remember neither Mr Kraft nor a ring," Putin said when asked about the incident during an economic forum on Friday in St Petersburg - the city where the ring saga started. "I remember some souvenirs were handed out. But if it is so precious to Kraft and the team, I have a proposal," Putin said - he would ask a Russian jeweler to make "something really good, noticeable - so that it is clear that it is an expensive thing, with good metal and a stone." The Russian ring could "be handed down from generation to generation of the team that Mr Kraft represents", he said, and would be "the smartest, most partner-like solution to this difficult international

An Arabic-English interpreter confused the al Qaeda magazine Inspire with the gentlemen's magazine Esquire during a pretrial hearing in the Guantanamo war crimes tribunal on Friday. The mix-up came in a hearing for five prisoners who could face execution if convicted of launching the September 11, 2001, hijacked plane attacks that killed 2,976 people and propelled the United States into a global war against al Qaeda.   A week-long hearing has focused on whether military and intelligence agents at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base snooped into legal documents and attorney-client conversations that are supposed to be confidential. Defense attorneys said stringent restrictions on their communications had interfered with their attempts to prepare a defense. The outgoing legal adviser for the Guantanamo detention operation, Navy Captain Thomas Welsh, testified that attorney-client mail was carefully screened to prevent the introduction of physical and informational contraband. He

Plants do complex arithmetic calculations to make sure they have enough food to get them through the night, new research published in journal eLife shows. _0"> Scientists at Britain's John Innes Centre said plants adjust their rate of starch consumption to prevent starvation during the night when they are unable to feed themselves with energy from the sun.   They can even compensate for an unexpected early night. "This is the first concrete example in a fundamental biological process of such a sophisticated arithmetic calculation," mathematical modeler Martin Howard of John Innes Centre (JIC) said. During the night, mechanisms inside the leaf measure the size of the starch store and estimate the length of time until dawn. Information about time comes from an internal clock, similar to the human body clock. "The capacity to perform arithmetic calculation is vital for plant growth and productivity," JIC metabolic biologist Alison Smith said. "

Daredevil Nik Wallenda completed a historic high-wire walk on a 2-inch (5-cm) steel cable over the Grand Canyon on Sunday and was greeted by wild cheers after his hair-raising stunt. Wallenda, the self-described "King of the High Wire," took 22 minutes and 54 seconds to walk 1,400 feet across the crimson-hued canyon with just a distant ribbon of the Little Colorado River beneath him. The event was broadcast live around the world.   Wallenda, the first person to cross the canyon, made the walk without a tether or safety net. Wallenda could be heard praying almost constantly during the walk, murmuring "Thank you, Jesus." He kissed the ground when he reached the other side. "It took every bit of me to stay focused that entire time," Wallenda said. "My arms are aching like you wouldn't believe." He said he stopped and crouched down twice, first because of the wind, the second because the cable had picked up an unsettling rhythm. He spat o

An Australian public service ad campaign that became an internet hit for its black-humored list of reckless ways to die - such as "poke a stick at a grizzly bear" - has added to its luster by scooping up a record number of international advertising prizes. _0"> The three-minute short co-produced by Melbourne private rail service Metro Trains to teach people to be careful around trains, 'Dumb Ways to Die', has notched up more than 50 million views on YouTube since its release in November 2012, sparked hundreds of parodies and even become a smartphone game.   The clip employs an insanely catchy tune and colorful blobs which die in a variety of ways, including "keeping a rattlesnake as a pet" and "selling both kidneys on the Internet," before culminating in train-related deaths that are described as "the dumbest way to die". It swept the awards at Sunday's Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, winning a record f

The United States said on Saturday it wants Hong Kong to extradite Edward Snowden and urged it to act quickly, paving the way for what could be a lengthy legal battle to prosecute the former National Security Agency contractor on espionage charges. Legal sources say Snowden, who is believed to be hiding in Hong Kong, has sought legal representation from human rights lawyers since leaking details about secret U.S. surveillance activities to news media.   "If Hong Kong doesn't act soon, it will complicate our bilateral relations and raise questions about Hong Kong's commitment to the rule of law," a senior Obama administration official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity. U.S. National Security Adviser Tom Donilon told CBS News the United States had a "good case" to bring Snowden back to America to face trial and expected Hong Kong to comply with its extradition treaty. "We have gone to the Hong Kong authorities seeking extradition of S

Edward Snowden, the former contractor for the U.S. National Security Agency, left Hong Kong on a flight for Moscow on Sunday and his final destination may be Ecuador or Iceland, the South China Morning Post said. _0"> It did not give any source for the information. A Hong Kong government spokesman said Snowden had left voluntarily. The paper earlier quoted Snowden offering new details about America's spy activities, including accusations of U.S. hacking of Chinese mobile phone companies and targeting China's Tsinghua University.   Documents previously leaked by Snowden revealed that the NSA has access to vast amounts of internet data such as emails, chat rooms and video from large companies, including Facebook and Google, under a government program known as Prism. (Writing by Nick Macfie)

The head of the National Security Agency said on Sunday he did not know why his agency failed to prevent former NSA contractor Edward Snowden from leaving Hawaii for Hong Kong with a trove of secrets about U.S. surveillance programs. _0"> "It's clearly an individual who's betrayed the trust and confidence we had in him. This is an individual who is not acting, in my opinion, with noble intent," General Keith Alexander told the ABC News "This Week" program. Snowden had been working as a contractor for the NSA in Hawaii when he fled to Hong Kong and he flew to Moscow on Sunday. Asked if he knew why the NSA did not catch Snowden before he left Hawaii, Alexander said: "No, I don't." (Reporting by Paul Eckert; Editing by Bill Trott)

Malaysia declared a state of emergency in two parts of the southern state of Johor on Sunday, as smoke from land-clearing fires in Indonesia pushed air pollution above the level considered hazardous. _0"> The illegal burning of forests and other land on Indonesia's Sumatra island, to the west of peninsular Malaysia and Singapore, to clear space for palm oil plantations is a chronic problem during the June-September dry season.   The "haze" caused by fires in Riau province on Sumatra has also shrouded neighboring Singapore but air quality in the city state improved over the weekend after reaching hazardous levels. "Prime Minister Najib Razak has agreed to declare emergency status in Muar and Ledang with immediate effect," Malaysian Natural Resources and Environment Minister G. Palanivel said in a Facebook post. Palanivel said the air pollution index in the two districts had exceeded 750. A reading above 300 indicates that air pollution is hazardous

Gunmen stormed a mountaineering base camp in northern Pakistan on Sunday and shot dead nine foreign trekkers and a Pakistani guide as they rested during an arduous climb up one of the world's tallest peaks, police said. The night-time raid - which killed five Ukrainians, three Chinese and a Russian - was among the worst attacks on foreigners in Pakistan in a decade and underscored the growing reach of militants in a highland region once considered secure.   One of the victims also held a U.S. passport, a U.S. official said, without giving further details. Police said a 15-strong gang of attackers wearing uniforms used by a local paramilitary force arrived at about 1 a.m. at a group of tents and ramshackle huts used by hikers scaling the flanks of the snow-covered 8,125-metre Nanga Parbat peak. The assailants shot dead a Pakistani guard and held other workers at gunpoint, a senior official from the northern Gilgit-Baltistan province said. A Chinese climber managed to escape.

Since his first day in office, President Barack Obama's foreign policy has rested on outreach: resetting ties with Russia, building a partnership with China and offering a fresh start with antagonistic leaders from Iran to Venezuela. But the global travels on Sunday of former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden highlight the limits of that approach. Leaders Obama has wooed - and met recently - were willing to snub the American president.   The cocky defiance by so-called "non-state actors" - Snowden himself and the anti-secrecy group, WikiLeaks, completes the picture of a world less willing than ever to bend to U.S. prescriptions of right and wrong. Snowden flew out of Hong Kong, the semi-autonomous Chinese territory, early on Sunday after Hong Kong authorities rebuffed a U.S. request to detain him pending extradition to the United States for trial. Snowden has acknowledged leaking details of highly classified NSA surveillance programs. Beijing may m

A new and deadly strain of bird flu that emerged in China in February but seems to have petered out in recent months could reappear later this year when the warm season comes to an end - and could spread internationally, scientists said on Monday.   A study by researchers in China and Hong Kong found only one human case of the H7N9 bird flu strain has been identified since early May. In the preceding months, the virus, which was unknown in humans until February, has infected more than 130 people in China and Taiwan, killing 37 of them, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). "The warm season has now begun in China, and only one new laboratory-confirmed case of H7N9 in human beings has been identified since May 8, 2013," the researchers wrote in a study published in The Lancet medical journal. But they added: "If H7N9 follows a similar pattern to H5N1, the epidemic could reappear in the autumn." H5N1 is another deadly strain of bird flu which emerged

Fugitive former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden was seeking asylum in Ecuador on Sunday after Hong Kong allowed his departure for Russia in a slap to Washington's efforts to extradite him on espionage charges. In a major embarrassment for President Barack Obama, an aircraft thought to have carried Snowden landed in Moscow on Sunday, and the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks said he was "bound for the Republic of Ecuador via a safe route for the purposes of asylum."   Earlier, Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino, visiting Vietnam, tweeted: "The Government of Ecuador has received an asylum request from Edward J. #Snowden." It was a blow to Obama's foreign policy goals of resetting ties with Russia and building a partnership with China . The leaders of both countries were willing to snub the American president in a month when each had held talks with Obama. The United States continued efforts to prevent Snowden from gaining asylum. It warned

Investors worldwide poured $4.8 billion into stock funds in the latest week, reversing the prior week's outflows, on expectations that the U.S. Federal Reserve would keep its bond-buying steady, data from EPFR Global showed on Friday. The inflows into stock funds in the week ended June 19 came largely ahead of Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's comments on Wednesday that the central bank could reduce its bond-buying later this year. The inflows reversed outflows of $8.51 billion the previous week, and were the first cash gains in four weeks, fund-tracking firm EPFR Global said.   "There was a widespread expectation that Bernanke would give out a more dovish statement," said Michael Jones, chief investment officer of RiverFront Investment Group in Richmond, Virginia. The S&P 500 rose 1 percent over the week on expectations that the Fed would keep its $85 billion in monthly purchases of Treasuries and agency mortgages unchanged. Bernanke disappointed stock markets when

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan piled ridicule on activists behind weeks of protests against his government during a rally on Sunday and defended riot police who fired water cannon at crowds in Istanbul a day earlier. Looking out of over a sea of Turkish flags waved by his AK Party faithful in the eastern city of Erzurum, Erdogan praised his supporters and the general public for opposing what he called a plot against his country.   "The people saw this game from the start and frustrated it. They (the protesters) thought the people would say nothing. They said we will burn and destroy and do what we want but the people will do nothing," he said. Sunday's mass rally was the fifth which Erdogan has called since protests began in Istanbul in an unprecedented challenge to his 10-year rule. The unrest was triggered when police used force against campaigners opposed to plans to develop Istanbul's Gezi Park, but they quickly turned into a broader show of anger at

The dollar scaled a fresh two-week peak against a basket of major currencies in Asia on Monday, having posted its best weekly gain in 19-months as momentum builds after the Federal Reserve laid out a roadmap for scaling back stimulus.   The dollar index rose 0.2 percent to 82.580, adding to last week's 2.2 percent rally. Against the yen, the greenback put on 0.6 percent to 98.40, while the euro fell as much as 0.3 percent to $1.3086, a low not seen since June 6. The common currency has given back about 50 percent of its mid-May to mid-June rally, bringing in focus support at $1.3034, a level representing the 61.8 percent retracement. The move came as U.S. benchmark Treasury yields shot to their highest in over 22 months, a factor that could make the dollar more attractive against other currencies. The 10-year yield hit 2.542 percent on Friday, the highest intraday level since August 2011 and up an astonishing 41 basis points for the week. "While the volatility is likely

High-wire daredevil Nik Wallenda walked untethered across a section of the Grand Canyon on Sunday on a 2-inch-(5-cm-)diameter steel cable. Following are some facts about the self-styled "King of the High Wire" and his family:   * Wallenda, 34, is a seventh-generation member of The Flying Wallendas, a family of high-wire acrobats, or aerialists, descended from circus performers in the Austro-Hungarian Empire of the late 1700s. * Wallenda was born in Sarasota, Florida, in 1979, although he says his first experience on the tightrope came a few months earlier, as his mother, Delilah Wallenda, was still performing while six months pregnant with him. * His first public performance followed in 1981, when he featured in a show as a tiny clown carried around in a pillow case. He also began walking the wire the same year, but was not allowed to perform professionally on a high wire until his teens. * Last year, Wallenda became the first person to walk a cable suspended over t

Indian tycoon Mukesh Ambani hopes his multi-billion dollar bet on cheap high-speed wireless broadband could change the way nearly a billion of his countrymen use mobile devices from the way they do banking to watching cricket. In a country where most people own a mobile phone yet lack basic Internet access, it is a risky gamble even for India's richest man. He is counting on an unproven strategy and still-developing technology in a market with very little pricing power.   Three years ago energy conglomerate Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) won an exclusive nationwide licence to roll out 4G across India, giving it a foothold to tap a potentially lucrative market in phones, tablets, computers and television. The data-focused service could start to roll-out in New Delhi and Mumbai by the end of the year, sources familiar with the matter, who asked not be named, told Reuters. Eventually, the plan is to run it across hundreds of cities. Ambani has refused to divulge any specifics on th

Chinese companies are getting more creative in the business of money lending as they struggle to keep profits ticking over in a cooling economy, raising concerns they are adding to the mountain of debt risks building in the world's No.2 economy. _0"> Big state companies in industries struggling with over-capacity but with easy access to credit are borrowing funds, not to invest in their business but to lend to smaller firms sometimes at several times the official interest rate, part of an informal lending market in China that authorities are taking aim at. China's central bank increased pressure on banks to rein in such informal lending and speculative trading last week in money markets, letting short-term interest rates spike to extraordinary levels. In the $3.7 trillion so-called shadow banking market, the fastest growing area is in so-called entrusted loans, which are arranged by banks on the companies' behalf, and in bankers' acceptance notes, tradable

Daredevil Nik Wallenda completed a historic high-wire walk on a 2-inch (5-cm) steel cable over the Grand Canyon on Sunday and was greeted by wild cheers after his hair-raising stunt. Wallenda, the self-described "King of the High Wire," took 22 minutes and 54 seconds to walk 1,400 feet (427 metres) across the crimson-hued canyon with just a distant ribbon of the Little Colorado River beneath him. The event was broadcast live around the world.   Wallenda, the first person to cross the canyon, made the walk without a tether or safety net. Wallenda could be heard praying almost constantly during the walk, murmuring "Thank you, Jesus." He kissed the ground when he reached the other side. "It took every bit of me to stay focused that entire time," Wallenda said. "My arms are aching like you wouldn't believe." He said he stopped and crouched down twice, first because of the wind, the second because the cable had picked up an unsettling rhythm

Daredevil Nik Wallenda completed a historic high-wire walk on a 2-inch (5-cm) steel cable over the Grand Canyon on Sunday and was greeted by wild cheers after his hair-raising stunt. Wallenda, the self-described "King of the High Wire," took 22 minutes and 54 seconds to walk 1,400 feet across the crimson-hued canyon with just a distant ribbon of the Little Colorado River beneath him. The event was broadcast live around the world.   Wallenda, the first person to cross the canyon, made the walk without a tether or safety net. Wallenda could be heard praying almost constantly during the walk, murmuring "Thank you, Jesus." He kissed the ground when he reached the other side. "It took every bit of me to stay focused that entire time," Wallenda said. "My arms are aching like you wouldn't believe." He said he stopped and crouched down twice, first because of the wind, the second because the cable had picked up an unsettling rhythm. He spat o