LAS VEGAS (AP) -- Nevada Supreme Court justices sought common ground Tuesday but found sharp differences remaining between lawyers arguing the fate of a flawed hotel at the CityCenter development on the Las Vegas Strip.

An attorney for property owner MGM Resorts International used his last moments arguing before the justices to point to an April 25 letter in which a consultant for general contractor Tutor Perini Corp. told Clark County building code enforcers that recent testing on structural elements has made the Harmon Hotel tower unsafe to repair.

"Now there is no dispute between experts," Mark Ferrario, the lawyer representing MGM Resorts, said as time expired.

Attorney George Ogilvie, representing Tutor Perini, didn't have a chance to answer Ferrario before the five justices who heard the case adjourned the hearing with a promise to rule in the weeks ahead.

But Ogilvie later told The Associated Press that he didn't agree with what Ferrario said. He declined additional comment.

MGM Resorts and subsidiary CitiCenter Land LLC want the structure torn down even before a jury hears a nearly $500 million construction defect lawsuit next January. The company points to a consultant's April 2011 report that the building could collapse in a strong earthquake.

Tutor Perini argues that demolition would destroy evidence of good work and leave the impression in jurors' minds that the builder was at fault.

The ending punctuated oral arguments that began with Perini lawyers arguing that MGM Resorts has improperly shielded from public disclosure documents showing the use of public relations firms to shape discussion about the fate of the 26-story curved blue glass Harmon tower.

"They're massaging the media to get the public opinion against Perini," attorney Jeffrey Silvestri said. "CityCenter is trying to taint the jury pool."

Attorney Alexander Robertson IV, representing MGM Mirage Design Group and CityCenter Land LLC, said competent attorneys sometimes rely on advice, impressions and strategies offered by non-lawyer media relations experts. He said the result can properly remain confidential.

The Harmon was to have been the 48-story centerpiece of the glittery $8.5 billion CityCenter project that opened in December 2009. The complex features several hotels, condominiums, a casino and an upscale shopping and restaurant complex. It is owned by MGM Resorts and Dubai World.

The Harmon stands instead empty at the entrance of the 67-acre master-planned development. It has found use as a giant building-wrap advertisement.

The justices who heard the Harmon demolition case in Las Vegas are being asked to decide a narrow legal question: Whether Clark County District Court Judge Elizabeth Gonzalez properly determined that tests that tore into parts of the 26-story Harmon Hotel tower to gauge structural integrity met the state's legal standards to let experts extrapolate conclusions about the rest of the building.

The high court is also being asked whether Gonzalez improperly sanctioned MGM Resorts for failing to randomly choose test sites.

Gonzalez last summer approved demolition, then withdrew permission in December pending another round of destructive testing.

Justice James Hardesty took the unusual step of trying several times to elicit agreements from Ferrario and Ogilvie to narrow the scope of the dispute to issues best handled with routine disclosures before trial.

At one point, it appeared that the two sides agreed on most points, with fees and costs yet to be determined.

But Ferrario stepped back to the podium at the end to say MGM Resorts still seeks a ruling on whether Gonzalez abused judicial authority by rejecting testimony from a CityCenter structural engineering consultant and refusing to allow the extrapolation question to be raised at trial.

"This is a classic battle of experts that should have been heard in front of a jury," Ferrario said.

Gonzalez has a status conference in the case scheduled for Friday in Las Vegas.

DETROIT (Reuters) - General Motors Cowill rejoin the S&P 500 index this week, marking a key milestone in the recovery of a company that needed billions of dollars to stay afloat during the financial crisis.

GM will return to the S&P 500 after the stock market closes on Thursday, the S&P Dow Jones Indices said on Monday. At the same time, American International Group Incwill join the S&P 100 index.

The move represents a symbolic victory for GM, which has taken steps to overhaul its operations and return to viability since its near-collapse in 2009.

Companies in this index are considered leaders in their industry, the S&P said on its website. Returning to the index will help boost shares, particularly important in the case of GM, which is still partially owned by the U.S. government.

AIG received $182 billion in U.S. funds, while GM took $50 billion during the economic recession in 2008 and 2009. The bailouts were highly controversial, but government officials said they were necessary to stabilize the weak U.S. economy.

In December, the U.S. Treasury Department announced it was selling its remaining stake in AIG. Taxpayers made a profit on the AIG bailout, a once unthinkable outcome.

Later that month, the U.S. Treasury said it would exit GM by early 2014. But unlike AIG's case, the U.S. government is likely to lose billions of dollars on GM.

GM will replace H. J. Heinz Co in the S&P 500 and 100 indexes, while AIG will replace Baker Hughes Incin the S&P 100 index, S&P said.

(Reporting by Deepa Seetharaman; Editing by Stephen Coates)

Vance passed away at his Oakland, California, home on Sunday, according to the statement at www.jackvance.com, a site maintained by his friends and family.

He won the Hugo award for his science fiction book "The Dragon Masters" in 1963 and again in 1967 for "The Last Castle." The Hugo is given for excellence in the fields of science fiction and fantasy.

"The Dragon Masters" features medieval-style combat and describes humans who war with aliens, even as they rely on certain lizard-like aliens they took captive.

"The Last Castle" takes place on a fictional planet Earth where humans live like aristocrats in high-tech redoubts while aliens attend their needs, until a race of those aliens stages a violent revolt.

Vance, who wrote over 60 books, also authored mystery novels under his full name, John Holbrook Vance, and three titles under the pseudonym Ellery Queen, according to his website.

In 1974, the movie "Bad Ronald," which was based on a story by Vance about a teenager who accidentally kills a girl and conspires with his mother to hide in their house, was broadcast on television.

Pulitzer-prize winning author Michael Chabon in a 2009 New York Times magazine article about Vance called him "the most painful case of all the writers I love who I feel don't get the credit they deserve."

Vance was born in San Francisco and was raised on his maternal grandparents ranch in Northern California after his parents separated. After college, he worked at a naval shipyard in Hawaii but left shortly before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, according to his website.

He later served in the U.S. Merchant Marine and saw some of his earliest work published in pulp magazines.

A lifelong lover of music, Vance played the cornet, ukulele and harmonica and had an affection for jazz music.

He was legally blind since the 1980s but continued to write with the help of special computer software.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Paul Simao)

LILLESTROEM, Norway (Reuters) - West African heads of state will meet, maybe as soon as this month, to adopt a code to fight growing piracy in their coastal waters that would include use of arrests, prosecutions and seizures of ships, the U.N. shipping agency said.

Piracy is on the increase in the Gulf of Guinea region, which includes Africa's No. 1 oil producer Nigeria and is a significant source of commodities including cocoa for world markets.

In that region, commercial ships do not enjoy the protection of naval security that has dramatically reduced Somali piracy on the other side of Africa.

"Quite soon, probably before the end of this month, heads of states of West African nations will be meeting in Cameroon ... to try to adopt a new code of conduct for anti-piracy activities," Koji Sekimizu, secretary-general of the United Nations International Maritime Organisation (IMO), said on Tuesday.

The code of conduct, modeled on one adopted by East African and Arab Peninsula nations in 2009 to fight piracy in the Indian Ocean, would ask governments to arrest and prosecute suspected pirates, seize any vessels believed to have been used in acts of piracy and increase regional cooperation.

The U.N. was seeking to get rich countries to fund this work, said Sekimizu, declining to say how much money was required.

"This (piracy in the region) is a recent phenomenon we are very concerned about," he said on the margins of a shipping conference.

On the other side of Africa, the protection of ships by multinational navy taskforces has dramatically reduced the number of pirate attacks on ships.

It was too early to say whether a similar effort would be needed in the Gulf of Guinea, said Sekimizu.

The latest reported piracy attack off West Africa took place in May, when armed pirates attacked an oil products tanker off the coast of Nigeria and abducted an unknown number of crew, according to security sources.

(Editing by Anthony Barker)

The openly gay state representative led the fight to legalize same-sex marriage in what may be the most Catholic state in the nation's most Catholic region. And, in early May, Rhode Island became the sixth and final New England state to allow gay couples to marry when its Democratic-dominated Legislature, led by an openly gay House speaker, reversed course after years of the Catholic Church successfully lobbying lawmakers to resist legalization.

"They put the fear of God into people," Ferri said, claiming that "the influence of the church" had been the primary stumbling block as every other neighboring state and many people across the country started embracing gay marriage.

Ferri's victory marked the Catholic Church's most significant political defeat in an area where more than 40 percent of the population is Catholic. Perhaps more problematic for the church: Its state-by-state setbacks on gay marriage illustrate a widening divide between the church hierarchy and its members, which may be undermining Catholic influence in American politics.

The disconnect plays out in polling.

In March, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found that a majority of Catholics, 60 percent, felt the church was out of touch with the views of Catholics in America today. And a CBS News/New York Times poll in February found that 78 percent of Catholics said they were more likely to follow their own conscience than the church's teachings on difficult moral questions. That poll highlighted several areas where most Catholics break with church teachings: 62 percent of American Catholics think same-sex marriages should be legal, 74 percent think abortion ought to be available in at least some instances and 61 percent favor the death penalty.

All this comes amid a leadership shift in the Vatican, where the newly selected Pope Francis has traditionally taken a more pragmatic approach than his predecessor on divisive social issues. While a bishop in Argentina, Francis angered other church leaders by supporting civil unions for gay couples ahead of that country's vote to legalize gay marriage.

He has taken no such position as pope.

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, a member of one of the most storied Catholic families in American politics, says she's encouraged by Francis' early leadership but warns that the church's political influence will continue to wane unless it adapts.

"Gay marriage is part of a larger refusal on the part of the church to listen to, and to understand, the people in the pews," said Townsend, who still regularly attends church and wrote the book, "Failing America's Faithful: How Today's Churches Are Mixing God With Politics and Losing Their Way."

Church officials in Washington, Boston and Providence declined to be interviewed for this report.

The church for decades has employed aggressive lobbying efforts across the country on a host of political issues, with Catholic leaders having used the power of the pulpit and substantial financial resources to maintain clout. At times they've gone so far as to tell leading Catholic lawmakers they were not welcome to receive communion if they opposed church teachings on issues like abortion and gay marriage.

These days, the church remains active in political battles over abortion, President Barack Obama's health care law, poverty and immigration even though they've had little success influencing the gay marriage debate here and elsewhere.

In many statehouses, the church relies on lobbying consortiums made up of lay people, known as Catholic conferences, to influence state policy, fueled by donations from dioceses across the country. In Washington, the church's primary voice is the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, which had an annual budget last year of $26.6 million, according to the Pew Forum of Religion and Public Life.

"They've certainly been players at the national level," said Mark Silk, the director of Trinity College's Leonard Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life.

He noted that the church has been most successful in recent years by building alliances with other religious lobbies, including evangelicals, to help shape public policy such as the contraception provision in the president's health care law. Religious leaders also have successfully pushed to tighten abortion laws in some states.

Thirty states have adopted constitutional provisions limiting marriage to a man and a woman, although most are in Southern and Western states where there are fewer Catholics.

Silk suggested that some Catholic leaders in the United States may be eroding their influence by "jumping up and down" to fight gay marriage despite strong public support.

As American attitudes rapidly shifted in favor of legalized same-sex marriage in recent months, the archbishop of San Francisco, Salvatore Cordileone, likened gay marriage to male breastfeeding and denounced Rhode Island's vote as violating "the very design of nature."

In Minnesota, Catholic leaders spent nearly $1 million last year to support a ballot measure banning gay marriage. The year before, the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis produced and distributed 400,000 copies of a DVD in which Archbishop John C. Nienstedt called same-sex marriage, at best, "an untested social experiment."

Thousands of Minnesota Catholics returned the DVDs in protest. Last month, the state Legislature voted to legalize gay marriage, making Minnesota the 12th state to do so.

In Providence, the Rev. Bernard Healey led the statehouse lobbying effort to counter legalization attempts. The Catholic priest is well-known in the Rhode Island Capitol's marble hallways, long patrolling them in his black shirt and clerical collar.

In late April, before the final gay marriage vote, Providence Bishop Thomas J. Tobin weighed in by warning Rhode Island lawmakers: "It is only with grave risk to our spiritual well-being and the common good of our society that we dare to redefine what God himself has created."

The Rhode Island Legislature overwhelmingly voted days later to support same-sex marriage.

That prompted Tobin to condemn "immoral or destructive behavior" and say that Catholics should "examine their consciences very carefully" before deciding whether to attend gay marriage ceremonies, "realizing that to do so might harm their relationship with God and cause significant scandal to others."

As for Ferri, he said he's at peace with God, regardless of the warnings of the church. A faithful member of his Catholic church choir for decades, he recalled sitting alone at the church altar while struggling with his homosexuality years ago.

"I got a message from God: 'You're going to be OK. Be who you are,'" he said during a recent interview in his small statehouse office.

Noting that a church lobbyist would be pushing abortion-related legislation later that day, Ferri said the Catholic Church will always have some political influence in Rhode Island.

"They just picked the wrong battle this time. And I think it hurt them," he said.

___

Associated Press writer Brian Bakst in Minnesota and AP Director of Polling Jennifer Agiesta in Washington contributed to this report.

His sons were treated and have since recovered but the rest of the family remains under medical observation, the ministry said in a statement Monday. The World Health Organization confirmed the cases of the children, but said one of them was a daughter who was with her father for part of the trip to Saudi Arabia and Qatar. There was no immediate way to reconcile the differing reports.

The cases are the first for Tunisia and indicate that the virus is slowly trickling out of Saudi Arabia, where more than 30 coronavirus cases have been reported. There have been at least 20 deaths worldwide out of 40 cases.

"These Tunisia cases haven't changed our risk assessment, but they do show the virus is still infecting people," said Gregory Hartl, a spokesman for WHO in Geneva.

The Tunisian fatality, a diabetic, had been complaining of breathing problems since his return from the trip and died in a hospital in the coastal Tunisian city of Monastir. Many previous coronavirus patients have had underlying medical problems, which WHO said might have made them more susceptible to getting infected. There is no specific treatment for the disease, but the agency has issued guidelines for how doctors might treat patients, like providing oxygen therapy and avoiding strong steroids.

The new virus has been compared to SARS, an unusual pneumonia that surfaced in China then erupted into a deadly international outbreak in early 2003. Ultimately, more than 8,000 SARS cases were reported in about 30 countries and over 770 people died from it.

The new coronavirus is most closely related to a bat virus and is part of a family of viruses that cause the common cold and SARS. Experts suspect it may be jumping directly from animals like camels or goats into people, but there isn't enough proof to narrow down a species yet. The virus can cause acute respiratory disease, kidney failure and heart problems.

"We still do not have a good idea of how people are getting infected and that is a major concern," said Hartl.

Last week, WHO said it was worried about "cases that are not part of larger clusters and who do not have a history of animal contact." WHO said those cases suggest the virus may already be spreading in the community.

The Saudi Arabian cities of Mecca and Medina will receive millions of pilgrims from around the world during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which falls in July and August this year.

___

AP Medical Writer Maria Cheng contributed to this report from London.

By Ed Osmond

LONDON, May 19 (Reuters) - Stuart Broad took seven wickets to rip through the New Zealand batting order and bowl England to an emphatic 170-run victory on the fourth day of the first test at Lord's on Sunday.

The touring side were skittled for 68 in just 22.3 overs, putting England 1-0 up in the two-match series and giving them the perfect start to a summer in which they also host Australia in five Ashes tests.

New Zealand, chasing 239 for victory after bowling England out for 213 in their second innings, collapsed to 29 for six at lunch and Broad and James Anderson finished them off 45 minutes into the afternoon session.

"It was a really good hour before lunch," Broad told a news conference. "I was delighted with the way we stuck at it as a unit.

"It's all about rhythm as a bowler. My stride pattern was pretty good. I knew if I got the ball up there there was enough in the pitch."

Broad removed Peter Fulton (1), Hamish Rutherford (9), Ross Taylor (0), Kane Williamson (6) and Brendon McCullum (8) in the space of 32 balls in the morning session.

Fulton was caught by wicketkeeper Matt Prior in Broad's first over and he then sent Rutherford's off-stump cart-wheeling with a fine swinging delivery.

Taylor edged his second ball low to England captain Alastair Cook at first slip and Williamson, who survived 24 balls for his six runs, inexplicably drove Broad straight to Steven Finn at extra cover.

Anderson, who took five wickets in the first innings, found the edge of Brownlie's bat and Cook took another easy catch.

Broad trapped McCullum lbw, the New Zealand captain trudging dejectedly back to the pavilion after he failed to get the decision overturned on review.

Tim Southee was dropped by Anderson at second slip off Broad but he heaved the next ball into the leg side and Joe Root ran round from deep square leg to take a good catch just inside the boundary.

BJ Watling edged Anderson low to Jonathan Trott at third slip for 13 to leave New Zealand on 54 for eight.

MIDDLE STUMP

Neil Wagner pulled Broad over mid-wicket for the first six of the match but the tall fast bowler soon took out Bruce Martin's middle stump to complete test-best figures of seven for 44.

Anderson looked like claiming the last wicket when Wagner skied the ball towards long-leg but, after the difficult catch was dropped, the batsmen got in a mix-up and Wagner was run out for 17.

McCullum put New Zealand's collapse down to quality bowling and a poor start.

"Within an hour the game turned on its head," he said. "Stuart Broad's spell of bowling was high class, impeccable length and he swung the ball.

"We were confident that 230 was achievable but we needed a good start and 29-6 was not it. You need to find a way to stem the flow of wickets and we couldn't do that today."

The day started well for New Zealand when Southee removed Finn (6), Ian Bell (6) and Graeme Swann (1) in quick succession.

After England had resumed on 180 for six, Southee dismissed nightwatchman Finn in his first over, caught by substitute fielder Martin Guptill at second slip.

Broad hit a few lusty blows to lift England past 200 but Bell, who spent most of Saturday in bed with the flu, became Southee's fifth victim when he played a loose drive and Brownlie pouched a sharp catch at third slip.

Southee struck again when Swann flashed wildly at a wide delivery and gave wicketkeeper McCullum, deputising for the injured Watling, a simple catch and the fast bowler completed figures of six for 50.

Off-spinner Williamson had Anderson caught by Southee at cover after the ball cannoned up off short leg, leaving Broad stranded on 26 not out.

The second and final test starts at Headingley in Leeds on Friday.

(Editing by John Mehaffey)

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Mothers who are mildly iodine deficient are more likely to have children who perform poorly in spelling, grammar and literacy, according to a new study from Australia.

Severe iodine deficiency during pregnancy is known to cause serious mental disabilities in children, but researchers examined the test scores of nine year olds whose mothers were only slightly iodine deficient during pregnancy and found the kids performed between 6 percent and 10 percent worse than peers born to mothers with sufficient iodine.

"This is to show in areas where there is even mild deficiency it can have long-term impacts on children," said Kristen Hynes, the study's lead author from the University of Tasmania in Sandy Bay.

Throughout life, everyone needs iodine to make thyroid hormones, but it's also crucial that pregnant women get enough of the element to support their children's brain development.

Past research has found that women who are severely iodine deficient give birth to children with motor, cognitive and auditory defects, Hynes' team writes in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

Little is known, however, about what impact a mother's mild iodine deficiency might have on her child.

The U.S. Institute of Medicine recommends the average adult get 150 micrograms (mcg) of iodine every day. Pregnant women are told to get 220 mcg every day and women who are breastfeeding are told to get 290 mcg.

The main source of iodine in the American diet is milk, but it can also be found in some fish and vegetables as well as in "iodized" table salt.

One cup of reduced-fat milk contains about 56 mcg of iodine and one serving of baked cod has about 99 mcg, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

For the new study, Hynes and her colleagues used data on about 228 pregnant women who were patients at The Royal Hobart Hospital in Tasmania between 1999 and 2001 and the children they delivered at the time.

The researchers compared the standardized test scores of the nine-year-old children born to women whose urinary iodine levels fell below 150 mcg (mildly deficient) during pregnancy to the children of women whose iodine levels exceeded 150 mcg (sufficient).

The children of women who were iodine deficient scored about 371 points on the national student test for spelling and about 377 points for grammar. That compared to about 412 points for spelling and 408 points for grammar among children of women who had sufficient levels of iodine while pregnant.

The average score for all of Tasmania at that time was about 390 for spelling and about 410 for grammar in that age group.

The researchers also found that children born to mothers who were mildly iodine deficient scored about 6 percent lower on English literacy scores, compared to those whose mothers had sufficient iodine levels.

Hynes told Reuters Health her group suspects that iodine deficiency may have some impact on a child's auditory pathways to the brain, which may hurt their ability to quickly process the information they hear.

"It's really only a theory at this stage," she cautioned.

The researchers can't say for certain whether the mothers' iodine deficiency led to their children's poor scores, but she said there is an association.

"I think people working in education will realize this is important, but there are a lot of other things going on as well," Hynes said.

Dr. Elizabeth Pearce, who researches iodine but was not involved in the study, said the findings support recommendations that soon-to-be pregnant, pregnant and breastfeeding women take an iodine supplement, but added that it's important to not get too much of the mineral.

"Very excessive intake in susceptible people can lead to thyroid dysfunction and goiter," said Pearce, an associate professor of medicine at Boston University.

The NIH says the upper safe limit of iodine is 1,100 mcg a day.

"People should not read this and think more iodine is better," she said.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/ZCksYH The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, online April 30, 2013.

The 26-year-old Warner criticised News Limited journalists Robert Craddock and Malcolm Conn in an expletive-filled tirade, which has created headlines in Australia.

"Cricket Australia is aware of comments made on David Warner's Twitter account overnight," Cricket Australia said in a statement on Saturday.

"Cricket Australia is attempting to contact Warner and will continue to investigate the matter.

"Cricket Australia will make further comment once it has conducted a thorough investigation."

It was unclear whether Warner's Twitter account had been hacked.

Several other high-profile Twitter accounts have been hacked in recent weeks, including some run by media organisations the Financial Times, the Guardian and the BBC.

News Limited, however, reported that Cricket Australia had contacted Conn to apologise for the tweets.

"I know that Cricket Australia aren't very happy with the language he's used to express himself this morning," Conn was reported on News Limited's website (www.news.com.au) as telling a Melbourne radio station.

"Cricket Australia have touched base with me and apologised and said that it was inappropriate and they'll be taking action."

Several Australian media organisations' websites published Warner's tweets in which he took issue with a story by Craddock before he embarked on a running battle with Conn, who had come to the defence of his colleague. (Reporting by Greg Stutchbury in Wellington; Editing by Patrick Johnston)

With two regular season games remaining, the New York Giants, defending Super Bowl champions, share a three-way tie at the top of the division with the resurgent Washington Redskins and an increasingly impressive Dallas Cowboys.

The Philadelphia Eagles, the only team in the division not to have won a Super Bowl (although they have three NFL titles from the pre-Super Bowl era), have had a season to forget (4-10) but their trio of rivals are producing a truly grand finale.

As it stands the Redskins, a franchise transformed by the drafting of rookie quarterback Robert Griffin III, lead the division by owning the tie-breaks.

A run of five straight wins for the 'Skins continued in unlikely fashion on Sunday with a 38-21 win at Cleveland despite the absence of the injured Griffin.

Without 'RG3', Washington had to hand another rookie, Kirk Cousins, his very first start in the professional game but he responded in sterling fashion.

The numbers tell an impressive enough story - Cousins, picked 100 places below Griffin in the 2012 draft, threw for 329 yards and two scores in his debut start.

But Cousins showed his character too, recovering from a very shaky start to lead his time to victory.

He completed just one of his first six passes for four yards, while throwing his third interception in 14 career passes and taking a sack.

"He has got a lot of confidence and you can see that in practice," Redskins head coach Mike Shanahan said.

"He knew it was a challenge and I thought he stepped up and just got more comfortable as the game went on."

Griffin's knee injury is expected to have healed enough for him to return against the Eagles next week as the Redskins seek the first of two victories that would secure them a place in the playoffs for the first time since 2007.

Thanks to a superior division record compared to the Giants and a head-to-head victory over the Cowboys, Washington holds the tie breakers over both teams for the division title that they last won in 1999.

Washington is also tied with the Chicago Bears and the Minnesota Vikings for an NFC Wild Card spot but that will be irrelevant if they take care of divisional business - against the Eagles next week and then, a potential de facto 'play in' with the Cowboys.

"Scenarios aside, if we win, we're in the playoffs," said veteran safety Reed Doughty.

"It's a great place to be. There's a lot of teams looking at, 'OK, if they lose, and then we win...' No, if we win, we're in the playoffs. To get the chance at a home playoff game? D.C. needs that, and it's exciting," he said.

OVERTIME DRAMA

The Cowboys are firmly in the chase, second in the tie-breakers, thanks to a third win in a row - this one with a little overtime drama.

Brandon Carr intercepted a pass from Pittsburgh Steelers' quarterback Ben Roethlisberger and returned it 36 yards, a yard short of the end-zone, to set up a game-winning 21-yard field goal from Dan Bailey as they triumphed 27-24.

The Cowboys have found consistency and the ability to grind out wins at just the right stage in the season although they have a tricky game at home to the New Orleans Saints next week.

While the Saints are out of the playoff picture, their quarterback Drew Brees showed his class with four touchdown passes in a 41-0 crushing of Tampa on Sunday.

Cowboys head coach Jason Garrett does not want his players even thinking about scenarios.

"A tie in the division after 14 games means nothing," he said.

"We have the New Orleans Saints coming here next week. What we have to do is get better and learn from this ballgame."

But the team with the most learning to do from Sunday is the Giants - their offense was shutout for the first time since 1996 and their defense was ripped open by a rampant Atlanta in a 34-0 loss.

The result was the worst shutout defeat ever suffered by a defending Super Bowl champion and the fourth worst loss in Tom Coughlin's 17-year, NFL head-coaching career which spans 270 regular season games.

The Giants are at Baltimore next, who have already booked a playoff place, before hosting the Eagles.

"We have two games to play. There is a lot of fire and a lot of character in that locker room," said Coughlin.

"We have to come back from a devastating loss and shake it off somehow, someway."

(Reporting By Simon Evans)