High stakes if Apple e-books antitrust case goes to trial

NEW YORK (Reuters) - As the only remaining defendant in the U.S. government's e-books antitrust case, Apple Inc appears headed for a high-stakes trial that could significantly increase the personal computer company's liability in related litigation.

Apple faces a June 3 trial date over civil allegations by the U.S. Department of Justice that it conspired with five publishers to raise the price of e-books and to fight the dominance of Amazon.com Inc.

On Friday, Macmillan became the fifth and final publisher to settle with the government. The Justice Department alleges that Apple came to agreements with each of the publishers meant to ensure that e-book prices at its iBookstore and other retailers would remain higher than those offered by Amazon.com.

At the Apple trial, to be overseen by U.S. District Judge Denise Cote in Manhattan, the Justice Department will seek not monetary damages but a judicial decree that Apple violated antitrust law, court papers said.

Among other things, government lawyers want the judge to issue an order enjoining Apple from engaging in any conduct similar to that alleged in the case. Such a judgment could make Apple vulnerable to steep damages in related litigation.

Apple and the publishers also face a class-action suit filed on behalf of consumers and a similar suit filed by dozens of state attorneys general. Neither suit puts a figure on the exact amount of damages sought.

The Consumer Federation of America estimated in a letter last year to the Senate antitrust subcommittee that e-book price fixing would likely cost consumers more than $200 million in 2012. State and federal antitrust laws allow plaintiffs to recover triple the amount of actual damages established at trial.

If Apple loses against the Justice Department, those plaintiffs would be in a "powerful position" to win their cases, according to Harry First, a professor at New York University School of Law specializing in antitrust.

Under the Clayton Act, an antitrust statute, plaintiffs can use judgments obtained by the U.S. government as evidence against defendants.

If Apple loses, it is unclear whether both the states and the private plaintiffs will be able to seek and recover damages for the same conduct.

By contrast, if Apple were to prevail, it would cause "a lot more trouble" for the plaintiffs in the other cases, First said.

Apple declined to comment. It still may settle with the U.S. government.

In December, Apple and four publishers came to an agreement with European Union regulators over their antitrust probe into e-books. The fifth publisher, Pearson Plc's Penguin group, also under investigation, was not part of the European deal announced in December.

LITTLE TO GAIN

Apple may have little to gain by going to trial in the United States, according to some legal experts.

Under settlements with the Justice Department, the five publishers were required to terminate or not renew deals with Apple and other retailers that the government claimed were anti-competitive.

Apple and the government have less to argue over since those deals have been undone, Daniel Crane, a law professor at the University of Michigan Law School, said.

"What are they fighting over?" he said.

Crane added that Apple may be interested in going to trial to establish an antitrust principle that might help other aspects of its business such as content deals with entertainment companies.

The trial would be a big test for the Justice Department's Antitrust Division, which has sought to enhance its reputation for its trial capabilities under the Obama administration.

The government has been represented by Mark Ryan, who is director of litigation, a new position in the Antitrust Division. Ryan, who began in January 2012, was hired by Joseph Wayland, the former acting assistant attorney general for the Antitrust Division.

Last year Wayland cited Ryan in a speech about the Antitrust Division's focus on enhancing its litigation capabilities. Under the Obama administration, the Antitrust Division has scored a number of high-profile trial victories, including a criminal price-fixing case against Taiwan-based AU Optronics Corp last year and a successful challenge of H&R Block Inc's acquisition of 2SS Holdings Inc, developer of the TaxACT digital tax preparation business, in 2011.

Apple is represented by lawyers at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. One of the law firm's attorneys who recently made an appearance in the case, Orin Snyder, won a favorable settlement last year for Voom HD Holdings, once a unit of Cablevision, following a trial against Dish Network.

Voom sued Dish for $2.4 billion alleging it violated a 15-year contract to carry a suite of high-definition channels, including those devoted to Kung Fu and video games. Under the settlement, Dish agreed to pay $700 million to Cablevision and AMC Networks, which Cablevision spun off last year.

The case is United States v. Apple Inc et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 12-02826.

(Reporting by Andrew Longstreth; Editing by Howard Goller and Eric Beech)

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Player regrets getting entangled with match-fixing

ZAGREB, Croatia (AP) — Soccer player Mario Cizmek thought it would just be one match. Ease up and let the other team win, he told himself, then collect the payoff and start paying off your debts.

But the broke and desperate athlete soon learned that one match wouldn't do it. He would have to throw another game, then another, then another.

And so it went until, in what he described as his "worst moment," he was arrested at his home in front of his two daughters on charges of match-fixing, frantically dialing his wife to take the children because police were hauling him off to jail.

"Twenty years of hard work I destroyed in just one month," he said.

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EDITOR'S NOTE: This story is part of a six-month, multiformat AP examination of how organized crime is corrupting soccer through match-fixing.

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The Croatian midfielder was the perfect target for fixers: He was nearing the end of his career, his financially unstable club hadn't paid him a regular salary for 14 months, and he owed money on back taxes and his pension.

Cizmek's story is typical of how the world's most popular sport is increasingly becoming a dirty game — sullied by criminal gangs like the one that bribed Cizmek, and by corrupt officials or others cashing in on the billion-dollar web of match-fixing.

An examination of Cizmek's case turns up contrasting portraits of the 36-year-old with quick feet and an engaging smile.

One is of a victim — a player forced into match-fixing by an unscrupulous club and preyed upon by a shadowy former coach convicted of bribery, fraud and conspiracy in a Croatian match-fixing case and banned for life from soccer by FIFA, the world soccer body. That's the picture painted by FIFPro, the global players' union, which has used Cizmek's story to warn players.

Croatian prosecutors, armed with reams of phone calls and text messages from police wiretaps, have a different take. At a match-fixing trial at the County Court of Zagreb, they portrayed Cizmek as the ringleader who got several FC Croatia Sesvete players to throw six games and tried to fix a seventh in spring 2010. The authorities said he organized the players, handed out sealed blue envelopes of euros, and promised that they could stop whenever they wanted.

Cizmek readily admits he delivered the payments but says it was only because his apartment was closest to the fixer. Looking back, he says, he realizes he was manipulated.

"Now I see that he didn't want to be seen handing over the money," he said in an interview with The Associated Press.

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Cizmek joined FC Zagreb on a junior scholarship, signed at 18, and played there for eight years.

"Those were the best years. All my dreams came true," he said. "I signed a professional contract and was among the better players. They thought highly of me. I was even a captain of this club."

After stints in Israel and Iceland, he returned home to play for FC Croatia Sesvete in the country's second league. In 2008, Cizmek scored the goal that sent his team into the top division. That goal benefited every player on the team and lined the pockets of the club's owner, Zvonko Zubak.

But the team fell on hard times, especially with the European economic downturn.

The entire FC Croatia Sesvete locker room was in an uproar for months, with players trying to make ends meet, Cizmek said. A study by the FIFPro union reported that more than 60 percent of Croatian players do not get paid on time.

"We had no money, and we no longer spoke about training or football, but only about how we were going to survive," Cizmek said.

"Every other day we would ask whether we would be paid, and they would say 'Yes, on Monday.' Then we say, 'OK, on Monday,'" he said. But there would be no pay on Monday — only a promise to be paid Wednesday — and then no money that day either.

"It would go on for weeks," Cizmek said, shaking his head.

One man who hung around the players offering advice and sympathy — and loans to those short on cash — was Vinko Saka, a former assistant coach for Dinamo Zagreb, the soccer powerhouse that has won Croatia's national title every year since 2006.

Saka was always somewhere around the field or at the bars where the players gathered, Cizmek said.

A flashy figure in his 50s who drove a BMW X6, he promised to introduce young players to the dozens of foreign coaches and clubs he said he knew.

"He was always offering presents," Cizmek said. "I had known Vinko for years. We were kind of friends. He was someone who was related to sports, whom I was seeing at the matches. He coached junior teams."

Midfielder Dario Susak, then 22, testified that Saka suggested he could help him get a contract with a foreign club, then loaned him $2,550 at a high interest rate. Once he owed the money, Susak testified, Saka told him he would have to lose matches.

Unbeknownst to any of them, Croatian police were already running a wiretap on Saka after being tipped off by German investigators.

Croatian prosecutors said Saka bribed up to 10 people on Cizmek's team, and another five tied to either FC Varteks or FC Medimurje.

Saka ended up being convicted of fraud, bribery and conspiracy and going to jail. His lawyer confirmed the plea bargain but wouldn't discuss the case.

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The deal involving Cizmek came together at Fort Apache, a steakhouse on the truck route between Zagreb, the Croatian capital, and Slovenia. Cizmek and his goalkeeper met there with Saka and two associates on March 25, 2010, to fix a game with FC Zadar two days later, according to players' testimony and police transcripts.

Six players would get $24,220, although the money was not divided equally. One of the unwritten rules of match-fixing is that the goalkeeper gets the biggest share because his statistics suffer the worst blow; defenders get the next-biggest, midfielders get less and strikers often are not even included in the fix.

The result: Zadar won 2-1 as Cizmek, one of the best players, stayed on the bench. After the game, he said, he collected $2,550, bought his kids a bunk bed and stashed the rest away, saving up to pay an overdue tax bill.

Cizmek saw himself as a Robin Hood-sort of figure: stealing money from crooks to put food on the table for his teammates and their families who were being crushed by an unjust system.

The match-fixing train had begun rolling, and it would prove difficult to stop.

The stakes were raised for an April 3 match against FC Slaven Belupo, according to players' testimony. This time it was $51,000 for eight players. They not only had to lose, but to do so by at least three goals. That enabled those in on the deal to win two bets in one match.

Cizmek's team lost 4-0. Saka, however, delivered only $43,300, eight Croatia Sesvete players testified in court. Cizmek said Saka did not explain why.

The demands for an April 14 game against FC Rijeka were even greater: $51,000 to trail at halftime, a final score that included more than three goals, with the team losing by at least two goals, Cizmek testified.

Player Ante Pokrajcic testified that he was happy to have scored a goal until the team's owner stormed into the locker room, cursing about the 1-1 halftime score. Only then did Pokrajcic realize the game had been fixed.

The team lost 4-2, but Saka delivered only about half of what was promised, according to players' testimony.

The players were furious. In the next game, they won 3-1 against Inter Zapresic.

But another unwritten rule of match-fixing soon became clear to Cizmek: Once a player has fixed a game, he is trapped forever.

The criminal gang usually has enough evidence to get a player thrown out of the sport for life. Plus, the shame alone will keep him silent, and the fixer's demands will keep escalating until the player quits, retires or gets caught. Some implicated in match-fixing have even committed suicide.

When Cizmek approached the goalkeeper and a midfielder about fixing an April 17 game against FC Lokomotiva, they refused. He handed the money back to Saka two hours before the game, he said.

"If I was really the ringleader, I could have made them do it," he told the AP. "But I couldn't do it. ... We told them, 'No more.'"

Saka exploded in anger but made sure not to bet, Cizmek said. FC Lokomotiva won 2-1 anyway, and Cizmek said he scored a goal "just for pride" in the second half.

For the last three games of the season, Saka went above the players' heads to fix the game, according to players' testimony. Those involved now included the coach and one of the owner's sons — both of whom were convicted in the case.

"Saka came to me and said, 'I have arranged everything higher up. If you want you can check with the son,'" Cizmek said.

Cizmek said he refused to deliver that message to the other players, making the son talk individually with each athlete. Other players confirmed his account in court. Cizmek said the fixer made sure not to involve the owner's other son, a young player on the team.

With substantial bribes now going to the coach, the payouts for the players grew meager: $22,300 for seven players in the last game, according to testimony.

Overall, Cizmek earned $26,130 from match-fixing, not as much as goalkeeper Ivan Banovic ($37,600), defender Jasmin Agic ($35,000) or coach Goran Jerkovic ($33,000), according to the findings of the court in its sentencing document.

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The season ended in early May but police did not come knocking until June 8.

Cizmek was arrested at his home and taken to Zagreb's Remetinec jail, where he stayed until July 15. His wife handed police the $20,000 he had been saving for his tax bill. The bunk beds were all he had to show for his money.

He went on trial for match-fixing with 14 others.

With the wiretaps, prosecutors had a very strong case. Cizmek made a full confession, pleaded guilty and gave testimony to the players' union against match-fixing. But he and the coach still got the longest sentence — 10 months.

The goalkeeper, the owner's son and three others were given nine months; two players got eight months; and the youngest member of the team, a 20-year-old midfielder, got a seven-month suspended sentence.

They are now free, awaiting the result of their appeal.

Saka cut a plea bargain with prosecutors in which he was convicted of fraud, bribery and conspiracy to commit a crime against the public order and sentenced to one year in prison. The Zagreb court ordered him to pay back $58,800 of the $844,000 it estimated his fixing operation made in Croatia.

Saka served his time in jail and then went to Italy to be questioned in a match-fixing investigation there. His lawyer in Italy, Kresimir Krsnik, said prosecutors have six months to decide whether to press charges.

"Saka will answer any call from the court. He has given his statement there and returned home," Krsnik told the AP.

Saka is back living in an affluent Zagreb neighborhood, driving around in his BMW.

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Cizmek is trying hard not to be bitter.

Chain-smoking Marlboros at a Zagreb coffee bar, he dreads going back to jail.

"I was in there already, with murderers and rapists and drug addicts," he said. "It was a scary place."

He is angry that Saka got a much better plea deal than the players and doesn't hold out hope for his appeal, which is pending.

He says his club still owes him salary but went bankrupt in 2012 and dissolved.

He works on his family's organic farm, peddling jams and berry tea at farmers' markets, but is just scraping by. In one of his last interviews with the AP, Cizmek mentioned his recent divorce, and worry lines around his eyes seemed deeper.

He mourns for his lost soccer career and doesn't know what he will do with the rest of his life.

"I should have just taken my football shoes and hung them on the wall and said: 'Thank you, guys' and gone on to do something else," Cizmek said.

Still, he knows what he did was wrong.

"Everything I lost is my fault. I need to take the responsibility. I don't blame anyone, not even Saka," he said. "No one made me do this."

He cited an old Balkan expression: "The one who confesses, half their sins will be forgiven."

"I have opened my soul to you," he said. "I hope it will pay me back in karma for being so honest."

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Norman-Culp is AP's Assistant Europe Editor in London. Prior to that, she covered FIFA for AP in Zurich. Follow her at snormanculp(at)twitter.com

EDITOR'S NOTE: This story is part of a six-month, multiformat AP examination of how organized crime is corrupting soccer through match-fixing.

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Study questions kidney cancer treatment in elderly

In a stunning example of when treatment might be worse than the disease, a large review of Medicare records finds that older people with small kidney tumors were much less likely to die over the next five years if doctors monitored them instead of operating right away.

Even though nearly all of these tumors turned out to be cancer, they rarely proved fatal. And surgery roughly doubled patients' risk of developing heart problems or dying of other causes, doctors found.

After five years, 24 percent of those who had surgery had died, compared to only 13 percent of those who chose monitoring. Just 3 percent of people in each group died of kidney cancer.

The study only involved people 66 and older, but half of all kidney cancers occur in this age group. Younger people with longer life expectancies should still be offered surgery, doctors stressed.

The study also was observational — not an experiment where some people were given surgery and others were monitored, so it cannot prove which approach is best. Yet it offers a real-world look at how more than 7,000 Medicare patients with kidney tumors fared. Surgery is the standard treatment now.

"I think it should change care" and that older patients should be told "that they don't necessarily need to have the kidney tumor removed," said Dr. William Huang of New York University Langone Medical Center. "If the treatment doesn't improve cancer outcomes, then we should consider leaving them alone."

He led the study and will give results at a medical meeting in Orlando, Fla., later this week. The research was discussed Tuesday in a telephone news conference sponsored by the American Society of Clinical Oncology and two other cancer groups.

In the United States, about 65,000 new cases of kidney cancer and 13,700 deaths from the disease are expected this year. Two-thirds of cases are diagnosed at the local stage, when five-year survival is more than 90 percent.

However, most kidney tumors these days are found not because they cause symptoms, but are spotted by accident when people are having an X-ray or other imaging test for something else, like back trouble or chest pain.

Cancer experts increasingly question the need to treat certain slow-growing cancers that are not causing symptoms — prostate cancer in particular. Researchers wanted to know how life-threatening small kidney tumors were, especially in older people most likely to suffer complications from surgery.

They used federal cancer registries and Medicare records from 2000 to 2007 to find 8,317 people 66 and older with kidney tumors less than 1.5 inches wide.

Cancer was confirmed in 7,148 of them. About three-quarters of them had surgery and the rest chose to be monitored with periodic imaging tests.

After five years, 1,536 had died, including 191 of kidney cancer. For every 100 patients who chose monitoring, 11 more were alive at the five-year mark compared to the surgery group. Only 6 percent of those who chose monitoring eventually had surgery.

Furthermore, 27 percent of the surgery group but only 13 percent of the monitoring group developed a cardiovascular problem such as a heart attack, heart disease or stroke. These problems were more likely if doctors removed the entire kidney instead of just a part of it.

The results may help doctors persuade more patients to give monitoring a chance, said a cancer specialist with no role in the research, Dr. Bruce Roth of Washington University in St. Louis.

Some patients with any abnormality "can't sleep at night until something's done about it," he said. Doctors need to say, "We're not sticking our head in the sand, we're going to follow this" and can operate if it gets worse.

One of Huang's patients — 81-year-old Rhona Landorf, who lives in New York City — needed little persuasion.

"I was very happy not to have to be operated on," she said. "He said it's very slow growing and that having an operation would be worse for me than the cancer."

Landorf said her father had been a doctor, and she trusts her doctors' advice. Does she think about her tumor? "Not at all," she said.

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Online:

Kidney cancer info: http://www.cancer.net/cancer-types/kidney-cancer

and http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/types/kidney

Study: http://gucasym.org

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Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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MacFarlane gets Oscar-hosting advice from Crystal

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Despite getting advice from Billy Crystal and working as hard as he can to prepare to host the Academy Awards, Seth MacFarlane thinks his hosting gig is a "one-off" and that he'll be "flayed by the press" no matter what he does.

Speaking to reporters Tuesday from the Dolby Theatre, where he'll host the 85th annual Oscar ceremony on Feb. 24, the entertainer was alternately confident and self-deprecating.

"I'm not feeling a lot of pressure from myself," he said. "There is sort of a comfort in knowing that no matter what you do, you're going to get the same reactions in the reviews. So I could put on the worst or the best show in the world and I will still be flayed by the press."

Still, he said he's spent five months trying to strike a comedic balance that will satisfy the fans of his animated shows and the comparatively highbrow audience inside the Dolby Theatre.

"I've set myself up for the hardest job in the world because the fans of 'Family Guy' and 'Ted' and the shows and whatnot that I do are expecting one thing. If I deliver that, this crowd will walk out," he said.

He promises to add bite to the show —"The whole point of their bringing me on was to give it a little bit more of an edge"— but acknowledges there will be a lot of ego in the audience.

"You have a room full of people who are at the top of their game — they're successful, they're being honored, they're attractive — and yet this is also the group with the thinnest skin on the planet," he said, "so it's a tough group."

Ultimately, he hopes to hybridize the pointed barbs of three-time Golden Globes host Ricky Gervais with the classy style of Crystal, who hosted the Oscars nine times, most recently last year.

The 39-year-old entertainer said Crystal gave him some helpful advice, including "get comfortable with your shoes before you go on stage."

MacFarlane will sing during the show and is also a nominee for his original song for "Ted," but said he expects to lose the category to Adele.

He's aiming for "very much a classic Oscars with a much more current edge," and said, "It's impossible to work any harder than I have in preparation for this," but he still doesn't think he'll be invited back.

"This will probably be the only time I'm asked to do this," he said. "It feels like a one-off. But I'm still thrilled to be doing it. It's going to be a lot of fun. I will very much enjoy having done it once it's over."

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Contact AP Entertainment Writer Sandy Cohen at www.twitter.com/APSandy.

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Online:

www.oscars.org

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Downtown condo market showing signs of life

Downtown Chicago's condo market is on the rebound after many moribund years, as sales volume and pricing improve in a market constrained by a lack of inventory.

It's a rare piece of good news for downtown condo owners as well as for developers pondering projects and trying to line up financing.

With a steady stream of apartment projects delivering in the next two years, the lack of new condo construction could signal opportunities for companies interested in pursuing smaller projects in key neighborhoods because the demand is there. Until those projects materialize, condo owners looking to sell face a better market than they have in several years.

Sales of existing downtown condos rose 31.2 percent last year, to 4,675 units sold, while the median sales price of $300,000 was a gain of about 2.6 percent from 2011, according to data from Appraisal Research Counselors.

Another piece of good news for current condo owners: Of the 65 downtown buildings studied by the firm, the average sales price per square foot of units sold during the second half of last year rose while the number of distressed condo sales in those buildings saw a substantial drop. Distressed sales, which accounted for  28 percent of sales since 2010, fell to 17 percent of sales during the second half of 2012.

In addition, only 1,104 newly constructed condo units remain unsold downtown.

"When we see more transactions occurring, that's a really good indication of demand," said Gail Lissner, a vice president at the firm. "The look of the condo market has changed in terms of unsold inventory."

Lissner's remarks came Tuesday during a lunchtime briefing on the local housing market.

Most of the unsold inventory, more than 500 units, is in the South Loop and the bulk of it is in the newly named and repositioned 500-unit South Loop Luxury by Related.

The three buildings, once called One Museum Park West, 1600 Museum Park and Museum Park Place 2 were taken over by New York-based Related Cos. in July have been renamed the Grant, Adler Place and Harbor View, respectively.

Since December, 40 units there are under contract, according to Related Midwest, which officially launched sales in the project Tuesday.

Other new projects reporting positive sales trends are Park Monroe Phase II, a 48-unit adaptive reuse project with 16 sales and CA3, a 40-unit building with 18 sales.

"These are all great indicators of strong sales," Lissner said. "Price stabilization has occurred in the market. You don't hear people talking about bottoming out. That was so yesterday."

mepodmolik@tribune.com | Twitter @mepodmolik

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China joins U.S., Japan, EU in condemning N. Korea nuke test

AFP) - North Korea stages its most powerful nuclear test yet, claiming a breakthrough with a "miniaturized" device in a striking act of defiance that drew condemnation from global powers, including its sole patron China.

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea conducted its third nuclear test on Tuesday in defiance of existing U.N. resolutions, drawing condemnation from around the world, including from its only major ally, China, which summoned the North Korean ambassador to protest.

The reclusive North said the test was an act of self-defense against "U.S. hostility" and threatened further, stronger steps if necessary.

It said the test had "greater explosive force" than the 2006 and 2009 tests. Its KCNA news agency said it had used a "miniaturized" and lighter nuclear device, indicating that it had again used plutonium which is more suitable for use as a missile warhead.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, the third of his line to rule the country, has presided over two long-range rocket launches and a nuclear test during his first year in power, pursuing policies that have propelled his impoverished and malnourished country closer to becoming a nuclear weapons power.

China, which has shown signs of increasing exasperation with the recent bellicose tone of its neighbor, summoned the North Korean ambassador in Beijing and protested sternly, the Foreign Ministry said.

Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said China was "strongly dissatisfied and resolutely opposed" to the test and urged North Korea to "stop any rhetoric or acts that could worsen situations and return to the right course of dialogue and consultation as soon as possible".

China is a permanent member of the Security Council.

U.S. President Barack Obama labeled the test a "highly provocative act" that hurt regional stability and pressed for new sanctions.

"The danger posed by North Korea's threatening activities warrants further swift and credible action by the international community. The United States will also continue to take steps necessary to defend ourselves and our allies," Obama said in a statement.

The Security Council will meet on Tuesday to discuss its reaction to the test, although North Korea is already one of the most heavily sanctioned states in the world and has few external economic links that can be targeted.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said the test was a "grave threat" that could not be tolerated. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the test was a "clear and grave violation" of U.N. Security Council resolutions.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov urged North Korea to abandon its nuclear arms program and return to talks. NATO condemned the test as an "irresponsible act" that posed a grave threat to world peace.

The test "was only the first response we took with maximum restraint", an unnamed spokesman for the North Korean Foreign Ministry, which acts as Pyongyang's official voice to the outside world, said in a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency.

"If the United States continues to come out with hostility and complicates the situation, we will be forced to take stronger, second and third responses in consecutive steps."

North Korea often threatens the United States and its "puppet", South Korea, with destruction in colorful terms.

North Korea told the U.N. disarmament forum in Geneva that it would never bow to resolutions on its nuclear program and that prospects were "gloomy" for the denuclearization of the divided Korean peninsula because of a "hostile" U.S. policy.

South Korea, still technically at war with the North after the 1950-53 civil war ended in a mere truce, also denounced the test.

The magnitude was roughly twice as large as that of 2009, Lassina Zerbo, director of the international data centre division of the Vienna-based Comprehensive Nuclear-Test Ban Treaty Organization, said. The U.S. Geological Survey said that a seismic event measuring 5.1 magnitude had occurred.

"It was confirmed that the nuclear test that was carried out at a high level in a safe and perfect manner using a miniaturized and lighter nuclear device with greater explosive force than previously did not pose any negative impact on the surrounding ecological environment," KCNA said.

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Nokia protests against Indian tax probe

HELSINKI (Reuters) - Finnish phone maker Nokia said on Tuesday it was protesting against a tax investigation in India, a crucial market, in the latest dispute involving a foreign company's tax.

Nokia said it has not yet received any information on potential claims resulting from the investigation that started in January.

Last week, Anglo-Dutch oil major Royal Dutch Shell's Indian unit said it would challenge a local tax claim on a share sale, while British mobile phone firm Vodafone is trying to settle a long-running $2 billion tax dispute with Indian authorities.

Countries like India are crucial for Nokia's attempt to hold on to global market share. Earlier on Tuesday, it announced an expansion of its Asha line of low-end smartphones and India is widely seen as a key market for such cheaper models.

Nokia said the actions of the tax authorities were "unacceptable and inconsistent with Indian standards of fair play and governance."

The company objected to officials entering its factory in Chennai, southern India, which is one of its biggest facilities. Nokia said it has invested over $330 million in Chennai since setting up the factory in 2006.

A senior Indian tax official said in January that the investigation related to allegations that Nokia may have evaded around 30 billion rupees ($558 million) in taxes.

Nokia said on Tuesday it was in full compliance with local laws as well as a bilateral tax treaty between India and Finland related to withholding tax.

(Reporting by Ritsuko Ando; Editing by Erica Billingham)

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IOC drops wrestling from 2020 Olympics

LAUSANNE, Switzerland (AP) — IOC leaders dropped wrestling from the Olympic program on Tuesday, a surprise decision that removes one of the oldest Olympic sports from the 2020 Games.

The IOC executive board decided to retain modern pentathlon — the event considered most at risk — and remove wrestling instead from its list of 25 "core sports."

The IOC board acted after reviewing the 26 sports on the current Olympic program. Eliminating one sport allows the International Olympic Committee to add a new sport to the program later this year.

Wrestling, which combines freestyle and Greco-Roman events, goes back to the inaugural modern Olympics in Athens in 1896.

"This is a process of renewing and renovating the program for the Olympics," IOC spokesman Mark Adams said. "In the view of the executive board, this was the best program for the Olympic Games in 2020. It's not a case of what's wrong with wrestling, it is what's right with the 25 core sports."

Adams said the decision was made by secret ballot over several rounds, with members voting each time on which sport should not be included in the core group. IOC President Jacques Rogge did not vote.

Wrestling was voted out from a final group that also included modern pentathlon, taekwondo and field hockey, officials familiar with the vote told The Associated Press. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the voting details were not made public.

The board voted after reviewing a report by the IOC program commission report that analyzed 39 criteria, including television ratings, ticket sales, anti-doping policy and global participation and popularity. With no official rankings or recommendations contained in the report, the final decision by the 15-member board was also subject to political, emotional and sentimental factors.

The international wrestling federation, known by the French acronym FILA, is headed by Raphael Martinetti and is based in Corsier-sur-Vevey, Switzerland. Calls to the federation for comment were not immediately returned.

Wrestling featured 344 athletes competing in 11 medal events in freestyle and seven in Greco-Roman at last year's London Olympics. Women's wrestling was added to the Olympics at the 2004 Athens Games.

Wrestling will now join seven other sports in applying for inclusion in 2020. The others are a combined bid from baseball and softball, karate, squash, roller sports, sport climbing, wakeboarding and wushu. They will be vying for a single opening in 2020.

The IOC executive board will meet in May in St. Petersburg, Russia, to decide which sport or sports to propose for 2020 inclusion. The final vote will be made at the IOC session, or general assembly, in September in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

It is extremely unlikely that wrestling would be voted back in so soon after being removed by the executive board.

"Today's decision is not final," Adams said. "The session is sovereign and the session will make the final decision."

The last sports removed from the Olympics were baseball and softball, voted out by the IOC in 2005 and off the program since the 2008 Beijing Games. Golf and rugby will be joining the program at the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro.

Previously considered under the closest scrutiny was modern pentathlon, which has been on the Olympic program since the 1912 Stockholm Games. It was created by French baron Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympic movement, and combines fencing, horse riding, swimming, running and shooting.

Klaus Schormann, president of governing body UIPM, lobbied hard to protect his sport's Olympic status and it paid off in the end.

"We have promised things and we have delivered," he said after Tuesday's decision. "That gives me a great feeling. It also gives me new energy to develop our sport further and never give up."

Modern pentathlon also benefited from the work of Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr., the son of the former IOC president who is a UIPM vice president and member of the IOC board.

"We were considered weak in some of the scores in the program commission report but strong in others," Samaranch told the AP. "We played our cards to the best of our ability and stressed the positives. Tradition is one of our strongest assets, but we are also a multi-sport discipline that produces very complete people."

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Pope shows lifetime jobs aren't always for life

The world seems surprised that an 85-year-old globe-trotting pope who just started tweeting wants to resign, but should it be? Maybe what should be surprising is that more leaders his age do not, considering the toll aging takes on bodies and minds amid a culture of constant communication and change.

There may be more behind the story of why Pope Benedict XVI decided to leave a job normally held for life. But the pontiff made it about age. He said the job called for "both strength of mind and body" and said his was deteriorating. He spoke of "today's world, subject to so many rapid changes," implying a difficulty keeping up despite his recent debut on Twitter.

"This seemed to me a very brave, courageous decision," especially because older people often don't recognize their own decline, said Dr. Seth Landefeld, an expert on aging and chairman of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Age has driven many leaders from jobs that used to be for life — Supreme Court justices, monarchs and other heads of state. As lifetimes expand, the woes of old age are catching up with more in seats of power. Some are choosing to step down rather than suffer long declines and disabilities as the pope's last predecessor did.

Since 1955, only one U.S. Supreme Court justice — Chief Justice William Rehnquist — has died in office. Twenty-one others chose to retire, the most recent being John Paul Stevens, who stepped down in 2010 at age 90.

When Thurgood Marshall stepped down in 1991 at the age of 82, citing health reasons, the Supreme Court justice's answer was blunt: "What's wrong with me? I'm old. I'm getting old and falling apart."

One in 5 U.S. senators is 70 or older, and some have retired rather than seek new terms, such as Hawaii's Daniel Akaka, who left office in January at age 88.

The Netherlands' Queen Beatrix, who just turned 75, recently said she will pass the crown to a son and put the country "in the hands of a new generation."

In Germany, where the pope was born, Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is 58, said the pope's decision that he was no longer fit for the job "earns my very highest respect."

"In our time of ever-lengthening life, many people will be able to understand how the pope as well has to deal with the burdens of aging," she told reporters in Berlin.

Experts on aging agreed.

"People's mental capacities in their 80s and 90s aren't what they were in their 40s and 50s. Their short-term memory is often not as good, their ability to think quickly on their feet, to execute decisions is often not as good," Landefeld said. Change is tougher to handle with age, and leaders like popes and presidents face "extraordinary demands that would tax anybody's physical and mental stamina."

Dr. Barbara Messinger-Rapport, geriatrics chief at the Cleveland Clinic, noted that half of people 85 and older in developed countries have some dementia, usually Alzheimer's. Even without such a disease, "it takes longer to make decisions, it takes longer to learn new things," she said.

But that's far from universal, said Dr. Thomas Perls, an expert on aging at Boston University and director of the New England Centenarians Study.

"Usually a man who is entirely healthy in his early 80s has demonstrated his survival prowess" and can live much longer, he said. People of privilege have better odds because they have access to good food and health care, and tend to lead clean lives.

"Even in the 1500s and 1600s there were popes in their 80s. It's remarkable. That would be today's centenarians," Perls said.

Arizona Sen. John McCain turned 71 while running for president in 2007. Had he won, he would have been the oldest person elected to a first term as president. Ronald Reagan was days away from turning 70 when he started his first term as president in 1981; he won re-election in 1984. Vice President Joe Biden just turned 70.

In the U.S. Senate, where seniority is rewarded and revered, South Carolina's Strom Thurmond didn't retire until age 100 in 2002. Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia was the longest-serving senator when he died in office at 92 in 2010.

Now the oldest U.S. senator is 89-year-old Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey. The oldest congressman is Ralph Hall of Texas who turns 90 in May.

The legendary Alan Greenspan was about to turn 80 when he retired as chairman of the Federal Reserve in 2006; he still works as a consultant.

Elsewhere around the world, Cuba's Fidel Castro — one of the world's longest serving heads of state — stepped down in 2006 at age 79 due to an intestinal illness that nearly killed him, handing power to his younger brother Raul. But the island is an example of aged leaders pushing on well into their dotage. Raul Castro now is 81 and his two top lieutenants are also octogenarians. Later this month, he is expected to be named to a new, five-year term as president.

Other leaders who are still working:

—England's Queen Elizabeth, 86.

—Abdullah bin Abd al-Aziz al-Saud, king of Saudi Arabia, 88.

—Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah, emir of Kuwait, 83.

—Ruth Bader Ginsburg, U.S. Supreme Court associate justice, 79.

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Associated Press writers Paul Haven in Havana, Cuba; David Rising in Berlin; Seth Borenstein, Mark Sherman and Matt Yancey in Washington, and researcher Judy Ausuebel in New York contributed to this report.

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Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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Back to New Orleans: Beyonce to perform at Essence

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Beyonce is coming back to New Orleans and back to the Superdome.

After entertaining a huge television audience in a packed dome during the Super Bowl halftime show, Beyonce is now scheduled to perform at the Essence Festival.

Festival officials said Monday that she will return to the dome to headline one of three night concerts during the festival, which is set for the Fourth of July weekend.

Beyonce joins an Essence musical line-up that also includes Jill Scott, Maxwell, New Edition, Charlie Wilson, Keyshia Cole, LL Cool J, Brandy and others.

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