DEARBORN, Michigan (Reuters) – A Dearborn, Michigan jury will consider on Friday whether a controversial Florida pastor will have to post a "peace bond" before a planned demonstration in front of the largest mosque in the United States.

District Court Judge Mark Somers issued a preliminary ruling on Thursday in favor of prosecutors who have sought the bond on the grounds that the appearance by Terry Jones would require heavy police protection to prevent violence.

A six-person jury will hear the case on Friday morning.

Dearborn, which includes one of the largest Muslim American communities in the United States, has denied Jones and a handful of his supporters a permit to protest outside the Islamic Center of America.

Detroit area clergy and community activists have rallied against the planned protest by Jones in recent days, calling him a divisive figure who practices hate speech.

Other commentators have argued that police and prosecutors have overstepped by trying to block Jones and violate the constitutional protection of free speech.

Jones, 59, is the leader of a fringe, fundamentalist church in Gainesville, Florida, who was unknown until his announced plans to burn a Koran catapulted him into headlines last year.

Jones, who represented himself in court on Thursday, said he would attempt to protest outside the mosque with a handful of supporters even if he is barred.

"We have already, I think, made it very clear that our intentions are to continue to go on to protest in front of the Islamic Center," Jones told reporters after an afternoon hearing on his planned protest.

A handful of protesters heckled Jones outside the Dearborn court and carried signs that read "Racist Terry Jones Get Out of Town" and "Stop Racist Muslim Attacks."

Meanwhile, several hundred community activists and Christian clergy rallied at the nearby mosque to show their support for the local Muslim community.

"Terry Jones does not represent the Christian community. He represents himself and only himself. What we see today is the real America," Imam Hassan Al-Qazwini, the mosque's spiritual leader, told reporters.

Jones has outraged the Muslim world with his publicity-grabbing protests against "radical Islam."

In a move that prompted riots in Afghanistan, Jones' tiny church in northern Florida burned a Koran last month following a mock "trial" of the text.

Jones says he is not against all Muslims but believes their religion can lead to violence and terrorism.

His Dove World Outreach Center, a single-storey church backed by woods on the outskirts of Gainesville, reportedly has a congregation of only a few dozen adherents, including Jones family members and supporters, some of whom also wear guns.

The church's website has been offering for sale a book written by Jones entitled "Islam is of the Devil", and also T-shirts, baseball caps and mugs emblazoned with the words.

Jones is a former hotel manager who was previously ejected from a church he headed in Germany by his own followers there.

(Additional reporting by Ruchi Naresh.)

(Editing by Kevin Krolicki and Peter Bohan)

SALMON, Idaho (Reuters) – Montana authorities are examining the remains of a bison from Yellowstone National Park found dead from suspicious circumstances on Thursday after at least two other buffalo were illegally shot to death in the area.

The killings come just over a week after the state and federal agencies that oversee the nation's last pure-bred herd of wild buffalo struck a deal to allow the animals to roam into some parts of Montana without facing capture or slaughter.

The buffalo, or bison, have for decades been barred from making their historic winter migration into Montana when food is scarce in the park's snow-covered high country.

Ranchers are outraged by the free-roaming plan because some Yellowstone bison carry brucellosis, a bacterial infection that can cause pregnant cows to spontaneously abort. Wildlife advocates have hailed the agreement for ushering in a new era of tolerance for the famed herd.

In recent days, tensions over the agreement have escalated in Gardiner, the Montana town near Yellowstone's north entrance, where some have taken exception to the roaming bison.

Last Friday, state game wardens were called to the area to investigate a mass shooting of a group of bison bulls that ultimately left two of the animals dead.

Some of the animals were struck by dozens of gunshots from a small-caliber firearm not intended for large game.

On Thursday, the investigation took a new twist when the carcass of another bison was uncovered by officers for Montana's wildlife agency in what wardens said appears to be unrelated to the shootings last Friday.

Sam Sheppard, state warden captain, said the killings are all but unprecedented, adding: "This is not something we want to see happen."

It is unlawful to shoot Yellowstone bison in the park and illegal to shoot them in Montana outside of a licensed hunt.

Findings from the probe of the first incident were expected to be delivered next week to a local prosecutor, who ultimately must decide if poaching or other charges will be brought.

Wildlife advocates said the crimes underscore the need to protect Yellowstone's bison.

"These animals were shot numerous times with a small gun, which prolonged their pain and terror," said Buffalo Field Campaign head Dan Brister.

Roughly 700 of the 3,700 Yellowstone bison herd have been captured and corralled this winter for migrating into Montana.

A legal furor that erupted over plans to slaughter those bison that tested positive for brucellosis ended when Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer in February granting the captured animals a stay of execution.

(Editing by Dan Whitcomb and Steve Gorman)

SEATTLE (Reuters) – A reputed neo-Nazi accused of planting a backpack bomb along the parade route of a Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration was newly charged on Thursday with committing federal hate crimes.

The latest charges against Kevin Harpham, 36, were added to a federal indictment originally returned last month in an alleged bombing attempt in Spokane, Washington, on January 17, a national holiday celebrating the birth of the slain civil rights leader.

The three-page superseding indictment charges that Harpham tried to use the backpack bomb to injure individuals attending the parade because of their "actual or perceived race, color and national origin."

It also accuses him of seeking to use a destructive device in the furtherance of a hate crime.

Harpham faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted, the U.S. Justice Department said in a statement.

He was arrested at his home in Colville, Washington, on March 9, about seven weeks after the bomb was discovered along the parade route. The device was neutralized by bomb technicians after it was found, and no one was hurt.

About 1,500 people attended the parade, which was rerouted when the bomb was discovered.

Harpham pleaded not guilty in March to charges of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and possessing an improvised explosive device.

Officials from the Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama-based civil rights group, said Harpham was a member of the neo-Nazi National Alliance in 2004.

U.S. officials have said little about the findings of the investigation that led to Harpham's arrest.

His lawyer, Roger Peven, a federal public defender, was not immediately available for comment on the latest charges.

(Writing by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Steve Gorman and Peter Bohan)

DENVER (Reuters) – A busy shopping mall near Columbine High School was evacuated on Wednesday after authorities responding to a small fire at the retail complex found two propane tanks and a pipe bomb, officials said.

Twelve years to the day after two Columbine High School students shot dead a teacher, 12 students and themselves on April 20, 1999, the devices were discovered at Southwest Plaza Mall, about a mile from Columbine.

Jacki Kelley, spokeswoman for the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office, said the security scare began when a small blaze broke out in the mall's food court around noon on Wednesday.

Firefighters arriving on the scene discovered the propane tanks "at the origin of the fire," and police ordered an estimated 10,000 shoppers and mall employees out of the complex, Kelley said.

Bomb squads later uncovered the pipe bomb nearby as they combed through the sprawling plaza with explosives-detecting dogs, she said.

Among the arsenal that Columbine assailants Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris brought to school during their assault in 1999 were pipe bombs and propane tanks fashioned into bombs.

The similarity of devices found at the mall to the explosives in the school attack was not lost on investigators, Kelley said.

"It's very disturbing that this happened today of all days," Kelley said.

FBI agents called to the scene were treating the bomb placements as "a case of domestic terrorism," Kelley said.

FBI spokesman Dave Joly later told reporters that investigators believe the pipe bomb was intended to trigger a larger explosion of the propane tanks.

Kelley said the bomb fell apart while explosives technicians were handling the device as they prepared to detonate it, and it was "rendered safe."

Investigators reviewed videotapes from surveillance cameras for clues, and later released two still images from the tapes showing a gray-haired man with a mustache and baseball cap they described as a "person of interest."

The FBI asked for the public's help in locating the unidentified man, who was captured in one photo near a door by a stairwell, carrying a plastic grocery bag in one hand.

Columbine cancels classes each year on the anniversary of the massacre there. But other schools in the area were placed on lock-down during Wednesday's bomb scare at the mall as a precaution until the all-clear was given, Kelley said.

The mall will remain closed until the investigation is complete.

Discovery of the pipe bomb came a day after police in Colorado Springs, about 50 miles to the southeast, confronted a teenage boy who admitted posting "Columbine-style threats" against his high school on his Facebook account.

A police spokesman said the Palmer High School ninth grader told officers who visited his home Tuesday that the threats were meant as a joke, and he apologized, along with his family.

The student, whose name was not released, also agreed to stay home from school on Wednesday. Police patrols and security at the school were stepped up for the day, police said.

(Reporting by Keith Coffman and Steve Gorman; Editing by Dan Whitcomb, Greg McCune)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Obama administration has full confidence in the top U.S. aviation safety official and his agency following a string of highly publicized lapses by air traffic controllers, including one this week involving a plane carrying first lady Michelle Obama.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told Reuters on the sidelines of a transportation conference on Wednesday that he supports Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) chief Randy Babbitt "1,000 percent."

He also said he saw no need for an independent review of the FAA's performance beyond the investigations already under way.

LaHood said the FAA has started nine investigations into embarrassing disclosures of controllers sleeping on the job and other safety-related incidents and is working as quickly as possible to find out what went wrong in each case.

"We are doing a top-to-bottom review," LaHood said. "We think we're looking into this as thoroughly as we possibly can."

On the PBS "NewsHour" program, LaHood said the FAA had fired two controllers who had been on suspension --including one who had been sleeping on the job in Knoxville, Tennessee.

"A controller actually made a bed in the control tower, brought a pillow, brought blankets, he's been fired," he said. "We're not going to sit by and let that kind of behavior take place in control towers."

A second controller, in Miami, was violating procedures by directing a 737 to fly too closely to a smaller plane to monitor it, LaHood said.

Hank Krakowski, the FAA official in charge of day-to-day operations involving the nation's 15,000 air traffic controllers, resigned last week over the uproar accompanying disclosures of controllers sleeping on the job in several locations, including Washington.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is also looking into controller errors and fatigue. The board, which is an independent agency, said on Wednesday it would investigate Monday's incident involving Michelle Obama's jet.

Representative John Mica, chairman of the House of Representatives Transportation Committee, told Reuters in a separate interview that he also supported Babbitt, a former airline pilot and financial consultant who took the job in 2009.

"He still has my confidence," Mica said. "I think he inherited a mess and he's trying to sort through it."

LaHood said he had not spoken with the White House about the latest mishap involving a government jet carrying Mrs. Obama and Jill Biden, the wife of Vice President Joe Biden, on a flight from New York.

NEW POLICY

The first lady's plane was ordered to abandon its landing approach to Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington after controllers at a Virginia radar center allowed the Boeing 737 to get too close to a military cargo plane flying about 3 miles ahead.

There was a concern that the lumbering Air Force C-17 would not clear the runway before Mrs Obama's plane, the next in line on the approach path, was ready to land.

The Boeing jet made a series of subtle maneuvers before making a new approach without incident. Neither plane was ever in any imminent danger and both landed safely, the FAA said.

The mistake, called an operational error, is not uncommon and usually they are corrected easily and quickly with little, if any, outside notice.

(Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Jackie Frank)

GRAND ISLE, Louisiana (Reuters) – A year after the worst U.S. offshore oil spill swamped the Gulf coast with petroleum and misery, officials on Wednesday declared the hard-hit region reborn.

It is still too early to know the long-term damage to the Gulf's rich and complex ecosystem. But, so far, predictions made at the height of the spill of an impending environmental Armageddon appear well overstated.

"We're inviting America to come down here, have a great time, enjoy our seafood and be part of the greatest rebirth you will ever see," said Louisiana's Republican Governor Bobby Jindal at a ceremony to mark the event's anniversary.

An explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig on April 20, 2010, killed 11 workers and released nearly 5 million barrels of oil that fouled the shorelines of four Gulf Coast states.

Louisiana bore the brunt of the BP Plc spill's damage -- about 650 miles of its coastline were oiled, versus 174 miles in Florida, 159 miles in Mississippi and 90 miles in Alabama.

On Grand Isle, a barrier island at the mouth of Barataria Bay which was heavily oiled, business is returning to normal after the spill shut down fisheries and caused widespread economic damage.

"Everything's opening up again now," said J.T. Hood, a retired offshore platform worker who came down from Donaldson, La., for some offshore fishing. "I can't wait to get back out there." When Hood's son, a commercial fisherman, ventured out recently, he had a respectable haul.

"By 10 a.m. he had 75 speckled trout," Hood said.

Nearby, local TV chef Kevin Diez whipped up the region's signature seafood dish -- shrimp etouffee - made with the famous Gulf crustacean.

The scene was a far cry from the early days of the spill when there were images of oiled pelicans and the undersea "spill cam" dominated the media. Then, environmentalists warned of the death of the Gulf Coast's fisheries and said that undersea currents threatened to carry the oil to the shores of the United Kingdom and beyond.

"The greatest environmental disaster with no end in sight!" a group called Seize BP, an advocacy group that gathered petitions to ask the federal government to seize BP's assets, said in a statement in May 2010. "Millions of gallons of oil gushing for months (and possibly years) to come. Jobs vanishing. Creatures dying."

To be sure, in places like Bay Jimmy and Barataria Bay, the oil lingers in the form of brownish, sometimes caramel-colored tar and there are dead or dying marsh grasses.

There are also perhaps millions of barrels of oil lingering beneath the ocean surface, according to federal government estimates. The effect of that oil on life in the sea are still largely unknown.

NO EXXON VALDEZ

But the spill's effects are far less serious than the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, which soaked Alaska's environmentally fragile coast in heavy oil, said Edward Overton, an ecologist and professor emeritus at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.

"I think it's too early to tell, but I am extremely optimistic," Overton said. "We're way off what Exxon Valdez was, way off."

In Florida, where the oil spill cost the state's tourist-dependent economy more than $1 billion, officials were eager to tout their hotels, restaurants and resorts.

"Bookings are up and our beaches are spotless," Florida Gov. Rick Scott declared after touring Destin's white-sand beaches. "The fishing is good and the seafood tastes great."

But across the Gulf Coast, residents who still feel the spill's impact fear they will be abandoned by BP and an army of contractors who swarmed over the coast in the largest oil-spill response in U.S. history, involving nearly 50,000 workers and 7,000 offshore vessels at its height.

"Oil is still washing up on our beaches and on the islands. Now that the media is gone, the BP effort has all but disappeared and so has our livelihood," said Craig Moore, a charter boat captain in Long Beach, Mississippi.

President Barack Obama, who was criticized as reacting too slowly to the spill, said the government will keep pressure on BP, and that "the job isn't done."

"We continue to hold BP and other responsible parties fully accountable for the damage they've done and the painful losses that they've caused," Obama said in a statement.

BP has paid out about $5 billion in claims for economic losses through a spill fund administered by Washington attorney Kenneth Feinberg. The spill wiped about $70 billion from BP's market value and spurred it to replace its gaffe-prone British chief executive with an American, Bob Dudley.

"At BP we regret that the accident happened and the impact it has had on the environment of the Gulf Coast and the people living there," Dudley wrote in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.

Also in separate actions on Wednesday, BP sued Transocean, the company that owned the Deepwater Horizon rig, seeking at least $40 million in damages, and Cameron International Corp, the maker of the blowout preventer, the fail-safe device that failed to automatically shut down BP's Macondo well.

The lawsuits filed in New Orleans federal court accuse both companies of negligence.

Transocean said the suit was "specious and unconscionable."

"This is the latest desperate bid by BP to turn its back on the agreement they made with Transocean to assume full responsibility for the costs and liability of any pollution, contamination and environmental damage caused by hydrocarbons that leaked from the Macondo well," the company said in a statement.

(Additional reporting by Leigh Coleman, Michael Peltier and Jeremy Pelofsky, writing by Chris Baltimore; editing by Mary Milliken, Vicki Allen, Martin Howell and Anthony Boadle)

CHICAGO (Reuters) – President Barack Obama on Tuesday issued a federal disaster declaration for North Carolina, which has been battered by storms, tornadoes and flooding.

At least 45 people were killed across the southern United States in three days of storms last week, nearly half of them in North Carolina alone, the highest storms-related death toll in more than three years.

North Carolina Governor Bev Perdue had asked for a federal disaster declaration for 18 counties in her state.

Obama's action makes federal funding available to individuals affected by severe weather in 10 counties, and allows state and local governments to obtain funding in another eight counties.

On Tuesday, as severe storms spread to other parts of the country, the National Weather Service issued tornado warnings for southwest Missouri including Branson, and for parts of eastern Oklahoma where a tornado could be produced "at any time" as well as "hail up to baseball size."

The weather service also issued a tornado warning for northwest Arkansas.

Conditions were also favorable for tornadoes to develop in northeast Texas through parts of Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri and Illinois through Tuesday night, the National Weather Service said.

Farther north, a band of wet heavy snow was expected from northern Iowa, through southeast Minnesota, and from southeast to northeast across Wisconsin, the National Weather Service said. Up to 8 inches of snow were expected in Wisconsin.

South central North Dakota received some snow on Tuesday and the National Weather Service was forecasting wet and heavy snow for southwestern North Dakota.

Flooding is widespread in North Dakota as snow slowly melts on ground saturated from last year's rains. It is most severe in the Red River Valley, which extends into Minnesota.

In sharp contrast, drought conditions in Texas were producing wildfires moving toward more populated areas on the outskirts of the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area, officials said.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis, Barbara Goldberg, Rod Nickel and David Bailey)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A jet carrying first lady Michelle Obama abandoned a landing approach outside Washington to avoid another plane in an apparent mistake by air traffic controllers, U.S. aviation officials said on Tuesday.

The Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement her government-owned Boeing 737 was approaching Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland when it was told to "go around," or to climb and attempt another approach, shortly after 5 p.m. EDT Monday.

The agency said Mrs. Obama's plane was about three miles behind an Air Force C-17 that was landing, rather than the five-mile spacing required when trailing in the wake of a much larger aircraft like the military cargo plane.

"The aircraft were never in any danger" and both planes landed safely, the FAA said.

Andrews is a military facility where Air Force One -- the presidential aircraft -- and other top level government planes are based. But the air space around it is handled by the civilian FAA, which is under fire over disclosures in recent weeks that a handful of controllers had fallen asleep on the job while working overnight shifts.

Mrs. Obama's plane was being overseen by a radar facility in Virginia when it was given the order to attempt a second landing approach to Andrews due to the apparent aircraft separation error.

The FAA said it was investigating the incident.

Suspected controller errors in 2010 hit 1,887 from 1,233 the previous year, according to the FAA. More than half were considered relatively minor, but reports in the most severe category rose to 43 from 37, FAA figures show.

(Reporting by John Crawley; editing by Todd Eastham)

DETROIT (Reuters) – A Detroit prosecutor has filed a petition in district court to stop a Florida fundamentalist Christian preacher, who recently caused riots in Afghanistan after he burned a Koran, from holding a rally outside a large Michigan mosque.

Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said the threat of violence was too great to allow Terry Jones to hold the planned gathering on Friday near the Islamic Center of America -- the largest U.S. mosque -- in the heavily Muslim Detroit suburb of Dearborn.

A hearing on Worthy's bid to block Jones and his supporters from holding the rally at the mosque will be held on Thursday in a Dearborn court. The petition is dated April 15.

Jones, in a telephone interview with Reuters, said he will proceed with the Friday demonstration in front of the mosque regardless of what the court decides on Thursday.

"That's absolutely ridiculous to us," Jones said of the so-called "free speech zones" away from the mosque that city officials want him to use. "For one thing, I think that's totally unconstitutional."

He also said that he will not pay a "peace bond" to cover costs of police security for the demonstration, which was sent to him by Dearborn officials.

He said he has heard that the bond is as high as $100,000, but the papers he has show that it is to cover all costs of holding the demonstration.

Prosecutors argue that the planned gathering by Jones could incite a riot, citing hundreds of email death threats against the preacher.

Jones said he wants to provoke no one, but he will be packing his gun for his own protection. He will appear on Friday, he said with another man from his church and "five or six" supporters in Michigan.

"I have a .40-caliber semiautomatic and a concealed license permit, and I will be wearing that," Jones said. "There will be no provocative actions from us. We are coming in peace."

More than 20 people were killed and dozens injured when riots erupted in Afghanistan after Jones burned a Koran on March 20 inside his Gainesville, Florida, church.

Jones claims he is protesting only against radical Muslims and is not against all who practice Islam.

In a city north of Kandahar earlier this month, seven foreign U.N. staff and five Afghan protesters were killed after demonstrators overran a U.N. office.

Worthy's filing cites the deaths that followed the March 20 Koran burning.

The 58-year-old Jones, the head of a small church called the Dove World Outreach Center, drew worldwide condemnation in September over his initial plans to burn the Koran on the anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks.

He backed down after pleas from the U.S. government and other world officials, but then presided over a March 20 mock trial of the Koran that included a torching of the book.

Jones has called his demonstration "Stand Up America Now." Local demonstrators in Michigan plan a counter rally under the banner "Stop the Hate."

Jones plans to hold his gathering on Good Friday, the day that Christians honor the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

(Additional reporting by David Bailey. Editing by Peter Bohan)

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times each won two coveted Pulitzer Prizes for journalism on Monday, and for the first time no award was given for breaking news coverage.

The Los Angeles Times, whose publisher Tribune Co. filed for bankruptcy in 2008, won the public service award for exposing corruption in the Californian city of Bell where officials paid themselves large salaries.

The coverage led to arrests and reforms.

Los Angeles Times photographer Barbara Davidson was awarded the feature photography Pulitzer for her pictures of bystanders trapped in the cross-fire of Los Angeles gang violence.

The New York Times' Clifford J. Levy and Ellen Barry won in the international reporting category for putting "a human face on the faltering justice system in Russia, remarkably influencing the discussion inside the country."

David Leonhardt of The New York Times won the commentary Pulitzer for "his graceful penetration of America's complicated economic questions, from the federal budget deficit to health care reform."

The Pulitzer Prizes prizes honor journalism, books, drama and poetry and are awarded annually by the Pulitzer Prize Board at New York City's Columbia University. Each winner receives $10,000.

For the first time no prize was awarded for breaking news.

Sig Gissler, the administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes, said there had been 25 other occasions when awards were not given in some categories.

"The board does not discuss or debate specific decisions, the awards are supposed to basically speak for themselves," Gissler told a news conference.

Many U.S. newspapers including the Los Angeles Times have faced financial strain in recent years as a result of dwindling advertising revenue and increasing Internet readership.

ProPublica, a nonprofit organization which last year became the first online news service to win a Pulitzer Prize, took home the national reporting award for Jesse Eisinger and Jake Bernstein' exposure of questionable practices on Wall Street that contributed to the U.S. economic downturn.

The Wall Street Journal's Joseph Rago won the prize for editorial writing that challenged "the health care reform advocated by President Obama," and The Washington Post's Carol Guzy, Nikki Kahn and Ricky Carioti won the breaking news photography award for their work after the Haiti earthquake.

Paige St. John of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune won the investigative reporting prize for her examination of weaknesses in the property insurance system vital to Florida homeowners.

Amy Ellis Nutt of The Star-Ledger, Newark, N.J., won the feature writing award for her story of the mysterious sinking of a commercial fishing boat that killed six men.

Author Jennifer Egan won the fiction prize for "A Visit from the Goon Squad," Bruce Norris picked up the drama award for "Clybourne Park" and Siddhartha Mukherjee was awarded the nonfiction prize for "The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer."

(Additional reporting by Bernd Debusmann Jr., editing by Laura MacInnis)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) – NASA divided up more than $269 million on Monday among several companies vying to build commercial spaceships to carry astronauts to the International Space Station, the space agency said.

Boeing received $92.3 million and privately held Sierra Nevada Corp got $80 million, NASA said.

Space Exploration Technology, the privately held company founded by Internet entrepreneur Elon Musk, was awarded $75 million. The company, also known as SpaceX, is considering an initial public offering next year, Musk recently said.

Blue Origin, founded by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, received a contract worth $22 million.

The companies were competing for the next round of funding in NASA's Commercial Crew Development program.

The program is aimed at developing a U.S. commercial alternative to fly astronauts to and from the International Space Station after the U.S. space shuttles are retired later this year.

The United States has already turned over flights to Russia at a cost of $51 million per person. The price is expected to increase to $63 million in 2014.

"We're committed to safely transporting U.S. astronauts on American-made spacecraft and ending the outsourcing of this work to foreign governments," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a statement.

"These agreements are significant milestones in NASA's plans to take advantage of American ingenuity to get to low-Earth orbit so we can concentrate our resources on deep space exploration."

The companies chosen for the program came from a pool of 22, Philip McAlister, acting director of Commercial Spaceflight Development at NASA, told reporters during a conference call.

"At this stage of the game, competition is a very important part of our strategy," McAlister said. "We also believe that having skin in the game is important."

In addition to government funds, the companies will be expected to invest their own resources, a shift from how the United States has developed spacecraft in the past.

The agreement covers work for about 14 months. NASA hopes to follow the program with another competition to develop an actual flight system. The goal is for NASA to be able to buy commercial orbital space transportation services by about 2015.

Those losing out on NASA funding included Orbital Sciences Corp, Alliant Techsystems and United Space Alliance. Orbital Sciences has contracts to fly cargo for NASA. Alliant Techsystems proposed a new rocket based on the space shuttle booster, and United Space Alliance had sought funds to study if the shuttles could be flown commercially instead of being retired.

(Reporting by Irene Klotz; editing by Jane Sutton and Kevin Gray)

RALEIGH, North Carolina (Reuters) – Three days of severe storms and tornadoes in the southern United States have killed at least 43 people while downing power lines and wrecking hundreds of buildings, officials said on Sunday.

North Carolina accounted for the bulk of casualties and property losses, with 22 people killed and about 130 others injured. Significant damage was reported in at least 26 counties and power outages affected more than 200,000 people.

"Despite all the damage, the thing we heard the most today was how grateful people are to be alive," North Carolina governor Beverly Perdue told reporters after touring storm-damaged areas on Sunday.

She spoke with President Obama, who pledged "whatever it takes to rebuild North Carolina," Perdue said.

In Virginia, there were four confirmed deaths and reports of three unconfirmed deaths, according to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. Virginia emergency officials said that 177 structures had been damaged by the severe weather.

It appeared to be the deadliest U.S. storm since February 2008, when 57 people died in two days from tornadoes in the South and Ohio Valley, said AccuWeather.com meteorologist Andy Mussoline, who said the death toll may change.

Dominion Virginia Power said the two nuclear reactors at its Surry Power Station in southeastern Virginia shut down automatically on Saturday when an apparent tornado touched down and cut off an electrical feed to the station.

Backup generators operated normally and both units "are in safe and stable condition," the utility said in a statement.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Roger Hannah said on Sunday no radiation was released during the storm and shutdown. "Everything worked the way it should," he said.

A SWATHE FROM OKLAHOMA TO THE ATLANTIC

The storms began in Oklahoma on Thursday, then moved through the South and hit the East Coast by Saturday. There were 241 tornadoes reported, with 50 confirmed.

Seven people died as a result of the storms in Alabama, seven died in Arkansas and one died in Mississippi. Two people were killed in Oklahoma when a tornado flattened buildings.

Governors in North Carolina and Virginia declared a state of emergency as authorities scrambled with rescue and cleanup operations.

In North Carolina, high winds destroyed more than 130 homes and damaged more than 700, the governor's office said.

Bertie County, a sprawling, rural area in northeastern North Carolina, was the hardest hit. Eleven residents died and 50 others were taken to hospitals, officials said on Sunday.

"We're used to hurricanes. We're used to tornadoes. We're used to floods. But we're not used to losing 11 of our citizens," said Bertie County Manager Zee Lamb.

Lamb said the powerful winds destroyed 75 homes, scattering their contents over a mile-wide area.

"The thing about this storm that is different than a typical tornado was the width," Lamb said. "It wasn't just 100 or 200 yards wide, but a half-mile wide and it stayed on the ground for six miles or so."

There were tales of survival.

"One couple went into a room for no particular reason. It's just where they decided to camp out. And every room in the house was destroyed except for that room," Lamb said.

In Sanford, North Carolina, a Lowe's and Wal-Mart were destroyed, as was a middle school in Greene County along with half the school buses parked nearby. In Raleigh, Shaw University and other buildings absorbed significant damage.

Progress Energy, the main utility in eastern North Carolina, said 220,000 customers were without electricity at the peak of the storm, with 78,000 homes and utilities still without power on Sunday morning.

The storm snapped hundreds of power poles and 30 transmission structures were damaged, company spokesman Mike Hughes said. In some areas, tornadoes swept away poles and wires and dropped them elsewhere.

"There are some parts where a tornado took the utility structure away and we cannot find it," Hughes said.

The stormy weather let up on Sunday, but Mussoline said more tornadoes could threaten the southern plains and Ohio Valley in the coming week, notably on Tuesday.

"At this point, it looks like the southeast will be spared the worst this upcoming week," he said.

(Additional reporting by Colleen Jenkins, Wendell Marsh and David Morgan in Washington; Editing by Peter Bohan)

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) – Texas Gov. Rick Perry sought additional federal help in battling wildfires across his drought-parched state as a woodland blaze gutted at least six homes on Sunday and threatened hundreds more in Austin, the state capital.

An estimated 1.5 million acres of tinder-like brush and grasslands have gone up in flames in Texas since January 1, about half of that during the past week alone under some of the driest conditions in Texas history.

Some 220 homes in all have been lost, according to a letter released on Sunday from Perry to President Barack Obama requesting a federal disaster declaration.

One firefighter was killed on Friday in Eastland, Texas, about 80 miles southwest of Fort Worth.

"As wildfires continue to rage across our state, Texas is reaching its capacity to respond to these emergencies and is in need of federal assistance," the governor said in a statement.

Flames have blazed most fiercely for the past couple of weeks in West Texas, where a dozen wildfires have charred thousands of acres of open rangeland and prompted ranchers to move hundreds of thousands of cattle to safer pastures.

Fires have also forced hundreds of rural Texans from their homes across the state. But Austin, in central Texas, marked the largest and most heavily populated city placed in harm's way so far.

By Sunday afternoon, the blaze there had scorched 80 acres of oak and juniper woodlands in the southwestern corner of the capital, an area called Oak Hill, flanked by residential subdivisions and a community college.

Six to 10 homes were destroyed within hours of the fire's outbreak on Sunday, and about 100 more were evacuated as two U.S. Air Force cargo planes dumped fire retardants over the area, joined by a water-dropping helicopter.

"It does have the chance to get into the canopies of those trees and produce some pretty good flame lengths," Texas Forest Service spokesman Jim Carse told Reuters. "There's hundreds of homes, several different neighborhoods, that are in the area that are threatened."

It was not immediately clear how the fire started.

About 160 miles away in north-central Texas, the town of Strawn, population 764, was evacuated as a 1,000-acre wildfire closed in on the area. More than 30 homes in the area already were destroyed during the past week, fire officials said.

The blaze advancing on Strawn was part of a group of fires that burned 45,000 acres around Possum Kingdom Lake and then merged. Wind-whipped flames had managed to jump portions of the lake, fire information officer Steve Deffibaugh said.

(Corrects location of Austin in 7th paragraph)

(Reporting by Elliott Blackburn; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Peter Bohan)

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Chris Paul ran circles around the Los Angeles Lakers in a scintillating performance to lead his New Orleans Hornets to a 109-100 upset victory over the defending champions in their NBA playoff series opener Sunday.

Paul scored 15 of his 33 points in the final five minutes and dished out 14 assists to spur the underdog Hornets to a 1-0 best-of-seven series lead. Game Two is on Wednesday.

"It's the playoffs. My teammates are looking for me to be aggressive," Paul told reporters after adding seven rebounds and four steals. "In the playoffs there aren't as many fouls called. Sometimes you have to force the issue."

Kobe Bryant scored a game-high 34 points but sidekick Pau Gasol struggled through a 2-for-9 shooting effort as the Lakers' recent inconsistent play carried over into the post-season.

In their quest for a third consecutive title Los Angeles has endured a roller-coaster season of winning and losing streaks, dropping five straight before capping the regular season with two straight wins.

Their lack of steady play continued against a New Orleans team that lacks size and had lost all four regular season meetings with the Lakers.

But in their series opener the Hornets nearly led from start to finish and turned to their All Star point guard for a final surge after their lead was cut to 90-87 in the fourth.

Paul ran off six straight points to put the Hornets up six with 3:10 remaining, and after Los Angeles inched within four at 96-92 New Orleans scored eight straight to permanently quiet the Staples Center crowd.

Carl Landry had 17 points and Jarrett Jack added 15 for the Hornets who shot 51 percent from the field.

"Our defense was late on everything," said Lakers coach Phil Jackson, who admitted to being stunned by the performance. "We did not get the ball inside which is one of our strengths. They were capable of crowding the lane and making it difficult for us."

Center Andrew Bynum returned to the court with 13 points and nine rebounds, having missed the final game of the regular season with a knee injury.

Ron Artest recorded 16 points and 11 rebounds for Los Angeles but the team was defenseless against Paul and the Hornets.

(Writing by Jahmal Corner; editing by Rex Gowar. To query or comment on this story email sportsfeedback@thomsonreuters.com)

MADISON, Wisconsin (Reuters) – Conservative Sarah Palin returned to the U.S. political arena on Saturday after several months absence with a feisty speech attacking both the establishment Republican Party and Democratic President Barack Obama and proclaiming "the 2012 elections begin here."

In a move apparently aimed at keeping her name in the running for the Republican nomination in next year's presidential election, Palin addressed several thousand people in Wisconsin, a state bitterly divided by a political fight over union rights.

Palin has been mostly absent from politics since the January shooting of U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona, when she was criticized for accusing opponents of manufacturing a "blood libel" against her.

That absence has seen her standing slide among potential frontrunners for the Republican nomination.

As snow and sleet fell on Madison's main square, Palin attacked the budget compromise between Republicans and Obama on cuts of around $38 billion instead of $100 billion promised by Republicans in elections last November.

"That is not courage, that is capitulation," she said, adding that a recent bruising battle in Wisconsin over union bargaining rights provided a number of lessons.

"We didn't elect you just to rearrange the deck chairs on a sinking Titanic," she said. "We didn't elect you just to stand back and watch Obama redistribute those deck chairs."

While former governors Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty have announced they hope to be candidates to challenge Obama, Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate, has not said whether she will seek the Republican nomination for president.

KEEP HER NAME OUT THERE

By coming to Madison, the scene of mass demonstrations over a bill to limit union bargaining rights that Governor Scott Walker and local Republicans passed in March, Republican strategists said Palin was guaranteed media exposure.

"In the past couple of months Michele Bachmann has sucked up much of the Sarah Palin oxygen in the Republican Party," said Whit Ayres, president of Ayres, McHenry & Associates, which provides research and advice for Republican candidates.

"This seems to be a way to keep her name out there and the venue appears to be designed to give her maximum exposure."

Palin took fresh aim at the media, which she has frequently accused of attacking her unfairly.

"Hey media, it's not inciting violence and it's not hateful rhetoric to call someone out on their record," she said in a reference to criticism aimed at her after Gifford's shooting. Her past comments include the refrain "don't retreat, reload."

Palin has been largely invisible since then and a March 25 Gallup Poll saw her support fall to 12 percent from 16 percent. Meanwhile Republican Representative Michele Bachmann has been carving out a role as a Tea Party favorite.

Among the crowd in Madison, Sarah Slye, 60, a grandmother of five who held a sign saying "Grandma is a right-wing extremist," said she would vote for Palin for president.

"But I don't think she would get a fair shot from the media," she said. "She stands for what she believes in."

Tim Wersland, 44, an iron worker holding a sign that read "I'd rather guzzle the Kool-Aid than sip the tea" said Palin was like all other Republican politicians.

"They say they want Americans to have jobs. But what they mean is they want us all to have two or three jobs to get by."

(Editing by Alistair Bell and Chris Wilson)

HOPE, Arkansas (Reuters) – Former President Bill Clinton returned to his childhood home on Saturday to celebrate its dedication as a national historical site.

Clinton was born in Hope's Julia Chester Hospital in 1946 and lived the first four years of his life in the two-story wood frame house with his grandparents, who owned the house, and his mother, the late Virginia Kelley. His father, William Blythe, died before Clinton was born.

During his 1992 campaign, Clinton used the name of his home town as a campaign slogan, saying he grew up in a "place called Hope." He was often called "The Man From Hope" and used the word 10 times in his 1992 Democratic Party acceptance speech.

The house sits near the quaint downtown and on the edge of a train track. A train whistle interrupted Clinton's speech on Saturday. He said he listened to them as a child and it was a welcoming sound.

"I wondered where those trains were going and if I would ever get to go there," he said.

The Clinton Birthplace Foundation bought the house in 1992 and began raising money to restore it. The home opened to the public in 1997.

The house became part of the National Park System on March 30, 2009, when President Barack Obama signed the measure into law. Arkansas' congressional delegation spent more than ten years trying to get legislation passed for the designation.

In December 2010, the property deed, which had been held by a private foundation, was transferred to the federal government for management by the National Park Service.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis attended the event. The dedication kicked off National Park Week, which President Obama declared for next week.

The house becomes the 394th national park unit, Jarvis said. Salazar said that the house would benefit Hope, a town of 10,000 sits located 112 miles from Little Rock.

"With of all of the things we do, it's about job creation and tourism," Salazar told a crowd of 400 at the dedication. "They will come here and see this great house and help the economy of Hope, Arkansas."

During his speech Clinton told stories about growing up in Hope and addressed problems facing the country with his boyhood home as a backdrop.

"We have gotten away from being a people-centered society," Clinton said. "Everyone is looking for their 15 minutes of fame."

He said people had forgotten how to listen to each other.

"One thing I learned in this home was arithmetic, evidence and aspirations of ordinary people are more important than anyone's ideology," Clinton said.

Many of Clinton's childhood friends attended Saturday's event along with tourists and school children.

(Editing by Peter Bohan)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. aviation regulators, investigating unsettling disclosures of sleeping air traffic controllers, will ban scheduling practices most likely to result in drowsiness at work.

The Federal Aviation Administration also said on Saturday it had suspended a controller in Miami for nodding off on the job, the fifth incident of that type identified in recent weeks and the second at a major center.

"We will do everything we can to put an end to this," FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt said in a statement.

The string of cases, including one at Washington's Reagan National airport where the lone controller fell asleep on the March 23 midnight shift with two jetliners en route, have alarmed regulators and safety advocates and raised questions about scheduling.

The FAA official responsible for overseeing the day-to-day operations of 15,000 controllers at more than 400 airports resigned on Thursday.

The agency also ended the practice of staffing overnight shifts with one controller, which had occurred at more than two dozen airports. Those were mainly small centers with very light traffic after midnight.

In addition, the FAA said on Saturday it would by early next week prohibit scheduling practices most likely to result in tired controllers.

Any changes must be negotiated with the union representing controllers, but they could include doing away with midnight schedule swaps, curbing efforts to compress work schedules, or eliminating cases where controllers end one shift and then report for another after a short period.

"We are taking important steps today that will make a real difference in fighting air traffic controller fatigue. But we know we'll need to do more," Babbitt said.

Controller schedule changes would not reduce tower operations, which would affect airline flights.

The biggest centers, like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, have more than one controller on duty at all times. This also includes Miami, where FAA on Saturday said it suspended another controller for sleeping on the job at an air traffic facility that handles aircraft routing.

A preliminary review of the incident showed the controller did not miss any radio contact from aircraft and that no flights were affected. There were 12 controllers on duty at the time, the FAA said.

(Reporting by John Crawley; Editing by Jackie Frank)