SunEdison will sell the power generated at these plants, the paper said.

Toshiba expects 270 billion yen ($2.75 billion) in orders for construction of power-plant-related facilities by fiscal year end, the business daily said, adding the Japanese company is in talks to build four or five megasolar plants.

Renewable energy sources have found more favor in Japan after the introduction of a new energy law that took effect on July 1, 2012 as the country phases out nuclear power in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in 2011.

The new law requires utilities to buy all electricity output from solar, wind, biomass, geothermal and small-sized hydro power plants at preset rates for up to 20 years.

(Reporting by Mridhula Raghavan in Bangalore; Editing by Maju Samuel)

The region is uniquely defined by its compact geography, its culture and its "sense of place," as Harvard history professor Laurel Thatcher Ulrich put it.

"The mystique that has grown up over the centuries, perpetuated by the invention of celebrations like the 'First Thanksgiving' and all the images associated with the Revolution," she said, "convinced people that there really was something called New England and that it mattered."

Now, in just a four-month span, a harsh new chapter has been added to that long, distinctive history.

New England scenes have been the backdrop for two body blows of malevolent mass carnage the Dec. 14 shootings in Newtown, Conn., that killed 20 children and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School and the Boston Marathon bombings on April 15 that killed three people and injured more than 260.

Yet even amid the horror, the nation and world again glimpsed the old New England spirit and solidarity.

The bombings were a reminder of Boston's role as de facto capital of New England. Its sports teams, most notably the Red Sox, are avidly followed in all six states. Its marathon draws competitors from across the region (and of course far beyond) and attracts thousands of regional spectators, too. Among the injured visitors was a Rhode Island woman who lost her left foot.

An eight-member group from Newtown competed in the marathon, seeking support for a scholarship fund to benefit siblings of the shooting victims. Before the start, there were 26 seconds of silence in honor of the Connecticut victims, and each mile of the race was dedicated to one of them.

So the pain has been shared and so has the post-bombing effort to respond resiliently. Members of the Newtown group said they would expand their efforts to also support the bombing victims.

"We're looking for things to pull us together, and the tragedy gave us a focal point the more so that it happened at one of our defining regional events," said Boston University Professor William Moore, a cultural history specialist affiliated with BU's Program in American and New England Studies.

At least in living memory, New England has not experienced a gun rampage as deadly as the Newtown shootings nor a terrorist attack on par with the marathon bombings.

Yet the region has by no means been immune from calamities.

Ten years ago, in one of the deadliest fires ever in the U.S., 100 people were killed after a pyrotechnics display ignited a blaze during a rock concert at The Station, an overcrowded nightclub in West Warwick, R.I. Its owners had tried to stem noise complaints by lining the walls with what turned out to be flammable packing foam.

In 2011, Tropical Storm Irene wreaked havoc on Vermont, New England's only landlocked state. Up to 11 inches of rain fell in some areas on Aug. 27-28, displacing thousands from their homes, killing six people, damaging or destroying 500 miles of roads and 200 bridges, including several of the state's iconic covered bridges. About a dozen communities were cut off for days.

But soon afterward, Vermonters began to rally around the phrase, "I am Vermont Strong," which is still found on many license plates that were sold to help finance recovery projects.

Gov. Peter Shumlin, in office just eight months when Irene hit, was in Boston on April 21 six days after the marathon bombing to attend the Red Sox' annual Vermont Day.

"You feel exactly the same spirit in the streets of Boston right now. We were Vermont Strong; they are Boston Strong," Shumlin said. "The American people are the best people in the world and they care about neighbors, they care about strangers and we're not going to let storms or senseless terrorists take us down."

Maine and New Hampshire have been spared large-scale calamities in recent decades, though they've had their share of jarring incidents.

In 1997, a New Hampshire man fatally shot two state troopers, a judge and a newspaper editor in the far-north town of Colebrook before being killed by police in Vermont. In Maine, 14 migrant workers died in 2002 when a van plunged off a bridge the worst traffic accident in state history.

In Massachusetts, seven employees of a technology firm in Wakefield were shot dead in 2000 by a co-worker. Connecticut has suffered two workplace-related mass shootings since 1998 one claiming nine lives at a Manchester beer distributor, the other leaving five dead at the state lottery headquarters in Newington.

Further back, all of New England particularly Rhode Island was battered by the great hurricane of 1938, which killed more than 600 people and wrecked tens of thousands of homes.

Given that it encompasses six states, New England's compactness is striking, with 14.5 million people living in an area about the size of Washington state. In good traffic, a driver heading out of Boston could reach each of the other five states in two hours or less.

New England's initial colonization was undertaken by the Puritans and others from Britain. Many of the region's cultural archetypes reflect this heritage the quintessential imagery of white steepled churches overlooking village greens, the town meetings still held annually in many communities, the flinty Yankee farmers and stone walls evoked in Robert Frost's poetry.

In his writing and speeches, Frost often captured the mix of individualism and community spirit that New Englanders like to think of as inherent traits.

"I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way," he said in an address in 1935.

Yet he also wrote in one of his poems, "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in."

By the time of Frost's death in 1963, New England's demography had been transformed. After waves of immigration from Italy, Ireland, Portugal and Quebec, it's now one of the most heavily Roman Catholic parts of the country. Accents have evolved in Maine, in Boston, and elsewhere that are unmistakable if not always euphonious.Lobstermen and maple-syrup makers still ply their trades, but so do hedge-fund managers, nuclear-submarine engineers and some of world's trendsetters in medical technology.

The region's myriad colleges and universities attract students from across the U.S.; some return home with new loyalty to the Red Sox and new ways to employ regional vocabulary, like the perversely positive adjective "wicked."

On average, New Englanders are healthier, wealthier and better educated than other Americans, with a low divorce rate and high ranking in child well-being. Yet the prosperity is uneven: Several of Connecticut's cities have been plagued by financial crises even as its New York suburbs prosper, while Rhode Island has had one of the nation's highest jobless rates in recent years. Most of coastal and southern Maine is faring well, but the economy is bleak in many inland towns.

For many decades, northern New England was reliably Republican. Now all 21 of the region's U.S. representatives are Democrats, and all six states voted for Barack Obama in 2012. Five of them are among the nine states that have legalized same-sex marriage, and the sixth Rhode Island is on the verge of following suit.

Regional solidarity exists in many other parts of the United States, but so do cross-border rivalries often based on sports competition between state universities. Georgia and Alabama have much in common, so do Ohio and Michigan. Yet football games between their flagship state universities rouse fiercely partisan passions.

That phenomenon scarcely exists in New England. Instead of interstate rivalry, there's common loyalty to the Boston-area major league teams. Indeed, the NFL's New England Patriots and the New England Revolution of Major League Soccer are the only American big league franchises with names evoking a group of states.

As for baseball, Red Sox Nation encompasses all of New England, save for a swath of southwestern Connecticut where the hated Yankees have followers. Each season, the Red Sox designate one of their home games as a special event honoring each of Massachusetts' fellow New England states. And three of the team's minor league affiliates are based nearby in Pawtucket, R.I., Portland, Maine, and Lowell, Mass.

When Carlton Fisk played catcher for the Sox in the 1970s, he was beloved not only for his on-field skills but because, as a Vermont native raised in New Hampshire, he was the Boston equivalent of a hometown product.

William Moore, the BU professor, said New England defies simplistic definitions.

"We don't necessarily share a cuisine, except for Dunkin' Donuts. We don't share a religion," he said. "We're looking for something to bind us together, which is why the whole Red Sox Nation idea is so powerful."

In the aftermath of the Newtown shootings, the neighboring town of Monroe, Conn., began renovating a vacant school building to take in the children from Sandy Hook.

At a news conference three days after the shooting, a Monroe police officer sought the right words to describe the efforts.

"Monroe is a small New England community," said Lt. Brian McCauley, "and we are helping our family."

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Associated Press writers Wilson Ring in Montpelier, Vt., Mike Melia in Hartford, Conn.,Michelle Smith in Providence, R.I., Kathy McCormack in Concord, N.H., and David Sharp in Portland, Maine, contributed to this report.

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Follow David Crary on Twitter: http://twitter.com/CraryAP

MTV said it has ordered a one-hour pilot episode and that producer Dimension Films is in negotiations with the franchise's director, Wes Craven, to direct the pilot.

The series is expected to air in summer 2014, said MTV, a unit of Viacom.

The film series, about a masked serial killer who stalks his victims, began in 1996, and it had follow-up instalments in 1997, 2000 and 2011.

Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox and David Arquette were the main stars of the cast over the course of the four films.

The franchise, which was praised for its satirical take on the slasher subgenre of horror films, has grossed more than $600 million worldwide, according to box office tracker Boxofficemojo.com.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey; Editing by Jill Serjeant and Mohammad Zargham)

"I don't get the drama around having an 'always online' console," Microsoft Studios creative director on Twitter. "Every device now is 'always on'. That's the world we live in. #dealwithit" In doing so, Orth dismissed what he saw as "drama" about the rumor that the next-generation Microsoft Xbox console would not be able to play games at all unless it were connected to the Internet, and also insulted the people concerned about it.

Polygon's Samit Sarkar, however,with Manveer Heir, a BioWare game designer, in which Heir brought up people who'd be left out by always-on DRM. Orth was dismissive, but here's a look anyway at a few people who will find an always-on Xbox hard to "deal with."

People with unreliable Internet connections

"Why on earth would I want to live there?" Orth asked, supposedly as a joke, when Heir brought up people living in small towns with unreliable Internet access. In the United States, however, a lot of people have connection issues because of where they live, not to mention competing wi-fi signals in apartment complexes. Some gamers are disconnected multiple times per day, which complicates online gaming for them. Always-on Xbox DRM would add nothing to their console experience, and bring the frustrations of online gaming to all of their single-player offline games as well.

People who buy games with unreliable Internet servers

Thanks to always-online requirements, launch day (or week, or month) server issues are no longer exclusive to MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games) like World of Warcraft. Diablo 3's servers buckled under the weight of thousands of gamers playing it right after launch, all of them required to sign in online with their Battle.net account even though many of them were playing the game offline. Andcaused thousands of gamers to leave one-star product reviews on Amazon.com, as its mandatory online component (placing cities in regions with other players') rendered the game unplayable --

People who get banned for whimsical reasons

When you can't play your games at all unless your account with a third-party service (like Xbox Live) is in good standing, a ban means you lose your whole library. EA's Origin service (a Steam competitor) probably takes the cake for arbitrary abuses of power here, as according to John Walker of Rock Paper Shotgun one player was permanently banned becausewith his username in it.

Could this actually happen?

No laws currently regulate what console makers can and can't do with this regard. Depending solely on what Microsoft decides to do, an always-online requirement could allow Microsoft to "flip the kill switch" on a gamer's entire collection -- including retail DVDs -- if it should decide to do so. (In contrast, getting banned from Sony's PlayStation Network

Microsoft's official reply

Microsoft rep Larry Hyrb said Orthbut the apology on his site only says that "his personal views do not reflect" how Microsoft would have phrased that if it'd wanted to say it.

Officially, Microsoft has not yet announced whether the rumors of always-online DRM are true.

Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.

Saunders, who has also been head coach with the National Basketball Association's Detroit Pistons and Washington Wizards, was appointed on a five-year deal in place of David Kahn, who was fired on Thursday.

"I've made a lot of great decisions in my life, and a lot of things in business that have worked well," Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor told reporters before introducing Saunders, who has been given a minority ownership stake in the franchise.

"Occasionally I've made a wrong decision and perhaps supporting Flip leaving our organization as coach is one of those things I've done wrong.

"But in the meantime, Flip has gone out and stayed in the NBA, coached for some other teams ... I just think that he can bring that as part of his overall philosophy back to our organization and make it a better organization."

Minnesota finished the 2012-13 season fourth-last in the 15-team Western Conference after posting a 31-51 record.

They have not reached the playoffs since the 2003-04 season when they lost to the Los Angeles Lakers in the Western Conference Finals.

"There's no question that there's a lot of work ahead with this team," said Saunders, 58. "And what I mean by that is that when a team has been to the lottery for eight straight years and won 31 games, you have work to do.

"So we've got to roll up our sleeves and do that, but that's what Minnesota people do. Now we have talent, we have some good young talent but they by far have not reached their potential."

Saunders will inherit a developing team that possesses an All-Star power forward in Kevin Love, a talented point guard in Spaniard Ricky Rubio and an experienced coach in Rick Adelman.

(Reporting by Mark Lamport-Stokes in Los Angeles; Editing by Frank Pingue)

(This story clarifies that Saunders was appointed head of basketball operations)

It's a term Philip Glass never liked as a term for his musical style, and the rich complexity of "The Lost," his newest opera, proves those who insist on using it just plain wrong.

Written for the new Linz opera house, where it world-premiered Friday, "The Lost" "Spuren der Verirrten" in the original German is a strangely reassuring confirmation that although mankind has gone astray we are all in the same boat; that while all we do has no sense, that rule applies to all of us.

Life; death; fame; fortune; joy; tears. All human striving in vain. It's a story that has been told many times, in word, music, song and dance."The Lost" combines all those threads and then some with magnificent result in what in some ways combines Samuel Becket's"Waiting for Godot," and Fritz Lang's "Metropolis."

Don't look for named characters. That would be too personal. Instead we have singer "A'' interacting with "B'' and so on. The fact that "A'' and "B'' are lost is clear from the very start, even as they mark the way they came.

Hansel and Gretel did that too. In vain.

Two hours later, pause included, more than a hundred people crowd the cavernously deep stage and spill into the pit where they make a show of playing imaginary instruments. The orchestra has moved onto stage. They wear funny hats and conductor Dennis Russell Davies sports a paper crown.

The music soars to a crescendo. Drums pound. All of humanity is lost, and all around is chaos. "Where are we?" they sing on the sinister, red-lit stage, knowing there will be no answer.

But a lot happens before that sonorous end, as one tableau follows the other depicting vignettes of the banality of being.

An old couple sit, both soaking their feet. "Whatever happens I will never desert you," sings one. "We've come through tougher times than these," intones the other; "Even when you sweated in fear, it smelled good" exchanges that make clear in their triteness that it is the audience all of us who are on stage.

Another couple are fighting, "Die, die," screams one before changing tack in mid-breath to suddenly sing "Let's get along again, neighbor. Peace."

Bizarre shapes populate the action.An armless man moves wormlike across the stage as his partner berates him for failing life's tests. They both die.

Another character "The Third" takes on the role of the Greek chorus loudly proclaiming the futility of it all, while "The Spectator" wonders where all the exertion is leading.

Adding to the on-stage edginess is nervous ballet choreography. The dancers jerk and move rapidly but without a sense of the purpose that a life lived well should have. The motions are mechanical. Life is mechanical.

A visual feast, compliments of director David Pountney, choreographer Amir Hosseinpour, and Anne Marie Legenstein, who created the bewildering array of delightfully bizarre costumes. Fabrice Kebour's lighting cold and dreary blues, alternating with jarring brightness were also effective.

But none of it would work without Glass's music.

Menacingly buzzing strings, roaring brass instruments and a crashing synthesizer alternate with poignantly melodic lines. Glass is boldly symphonic in one moment, softly insistent the next, weaving a harmonic tapestry that becomes part of the visual fabric on stage.

One of the world's greatest living composers, Glass shows in "The Lost" that he truly is a man for all musical seasons and his wonderful sounds are brought alive by Davis, the conductor, who leads Bruckner Orchestra with the authority and vigor that this music demands.

The soloists from "A'' to "K'' also did well, in roles that were less challenging vocally and more dramatically.

Ahead of the performance, Austrian dramatist Peter Handke, on whose play the opera is based, praised Glass'swork as "faithful" to his own while Glass described his effort as an attempt at "Gesamtkunst" the term coined by Richard Wagner meaning "Total Art."

"I call it earth, air, fire and water," he said in comments to The Associated Press of the totality of art forms that went into "The Lost." ''Movement, text, image and music those are the elements we worked with."

While not speaking German, Glass said working to Rainer Mennicken's libretto in that language was no problem because "I knew the grammar and I just plugged in the words. Beyond that, he also is drawn to Austria "because the musicians are so good."

"I used to think that the American orchestras would be my true home," he said. "But I found out that there is another element, another layer of music that you get in a Central European orchestra a depth of sound" that most American ensembles do not have.

The video is made up of photos captured by NASA's(SDO) two images a day for three years. The eye-catching images offer an unprecedented glimpse of the daily commotion waxing and waning on the surface of the sun.

SDO's Atmospheric Imaging Assembly records an image of the sun every 12 seconds in 10 different wavelengths, according to NASA officials. The images seen in the video are in the extreme ultraviolet range.

"In this wavelength it is easy to see the sun's 25-day rotation as well as howhas increased over three years," agency officials said in a statement.

In the video, the size of the sun appears to subtly fluctuate. These changes are caused by the variation over time in the distance between SDO and the sun. Despite these tiny variations, the shots are fairly stable and consistent.

With SDO maintaining this steady and unbroken gaze, heliophysicists regularly observe the sun's active regions, and have been able to watch solar storms as they occur. By closely monitoring changes in the sun's activity, researchers can catch solar flares and other majorin the act.

"SDO's glimpses into the violent dance on the sun help scientists understand what causes these giant explosions with the hopes of some day improving our ability to predict this space weather," NASA officials said.

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory was launched in February 2010 and is equipped with a suite of instruments to stare at the sun for 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This type of uninterrupted coverage allowed scientists to monitor the star as it ramps up toward a period of solar maximum this year in its regular 11-year cycle of activity.

Follow Denise Chow on Twitter. Follow us,or. Originally published on .

The 17th Annual PRISM Awards, held this evening at The Beverly Hills Hotel, hosted a crowd-pleasing Married…With Children reunion. Sixteen years after the series finale, Ed O’Neill (Modern Family) presented former co-star Katey Sagal (Sons of Anarchy) with the PRISM Award for Female Performance in a Drama Multi-Episode Storyline.

Exclusive images and video clips from the ceremony, including Married…With Children reunion and special performance of “Way Back Home” from PRISM Award nominated “Least Among Saints,” will be made available following the ceremony here:

In the film categories, Flight (Paramount) received the award for Feature Film - Substance Use, while Silver Linings Playbook (The Weinstein Company) took home the PRISM for Feature Film - Mental Health. Linda Cardellini (Return) received the top honor in the Feature Film Performance category.

For Comedy Series, Nurse Jackie (Showtime) earned the award for Comedy Series Episode or Multi-Episode Storyline - Substance Use, and Go On (NBC) received the award in the Comedy Series Episode or Multi-Episode Storyline - Mental Health category.

In the Drama Series Episode categories, Chicago Fire (NBC) and Parenthood (NBC) earned awards in the Substance Use and Mental Health categories, respectively. Performance in a Drama Series Episode award went to Michael Cudlitz (Southland). The award was presented by his co-star Ben McKenzie.

Elementary (CBS) received the EIC President’s Award for its continuing, in-depth integration of substance use and recovery into its storyline and characters. This honor recognizes specific productions that incorporate these accurate health and social issues messages above and beyond single episodes or multi-episode story arcs.

In the area of Drama Multi-Episode Storylines, awards went to American Horror Story: Asylum (FX) and Homeland (Showtime) for Substance Use and Mental Health, respectively. Katey Sagal (Sons of Anarchy) received the award for Female Performance in a Drama Multi-Episode Storyline, and the award for Male Performance in a Drama Series Multi-Episode Storyline went to Mark Harmon (NCIS).

Of Two Minds (Lifetime) earned an award for TV Movie or Miniseries, and documentary by the same name was awarded for Feature Film Documentary. Days of Our Lives (NBC) received the award for Daytime Drama Storyline. The Teen or Children’s Program award went to Degrassi: The Next Generation (TeenNick).

For Unscripted Non-Fiction, Rehab with Dr. Drew: Season 6 (VH1) received the top honors.The Talk Show Episode award went to Dr, Drew on Call (HLN). In the Documentary, News Magazine, or Biographical Program, Court McGee: Dead Man Fighting (ESPN) and Demi Lovato: Stay Strong (MTV) won awards in the substance use and mental health categories respectively. Macklemore’s “Starting Over” won the Music Recording award.

Addition presenters at the PRISM Awards included Emmy nominees Jean Smart (Hawaii Five-0), Mariette Hartley (Law & Order: SVU) and Sharon Lawrence (Drop Dead Diva), Tony Nominee Michele Lee, George Eads (CSI), Caterina Scorsone (Private Practice), Katie Cassidy (Arrow), Silas Weir Mitchell (Grimm), Dee Wallace, Reno Wilson (Mike and Molly), Brett Gelman and Julie White (Go On), Alison Haislip (Battleground), Lisa Guerrero (Inside Edition), Kate Linder (The Young and the Restless), Carly Steel (TV Guide Network), Danielle Nicolette (Family Tools), Sam Witwer (Being Human), Anna Belknap (CSI: NY), Mackenzie Phillips, Dr. Drew Pinsky (Dr. Drew On Call), SAG-AFTRA Co-President Ken Howard, Mark Valley and Windell Middlebrooks (Body of Proof), Tamala Jones (Castle), Tim Kang (The Mentalist), Max Burkholder (Parenthood), Ernie Hudson (Last Resort), Nolan Gould (Modern Family), and the voice of the PRISM Awards, Shadoe Stevens.

PRISM Awards honor accurate depictions of mental health issues as well as substance use, addiction, prevention, treatment and recovery in movies, television, music, DVD, and comic book entertainment. Winners for the PRISM Awards are selected by an 80‐person Nomination Review Committee of entertainment industry professionals and technical experts from the fields of medicine, mental health, and addiction.

The 17th Annual PRISM Showcase will debut on September 14, 2013, on flagship airing partner FX Network. A complete airing schedule for additional cable networks, local broadcast stations, video on demand, and online will be announced at PRISMawards.com.

About Entertainment Industries Council

EIC is a non‐profit organization founded in 1983 by leaders within the entertainment industry to bring their power and influence to bear on communication about health and social issues. The organization is considered to be the chief pioneer of entertainment and journalism outreach and a premiere success story in the field of entertainment education. This mission relies on providing resource information to the creative community and culminates in recognition of the industry through the national television special PRISM Awards Showcase which addresses accurate portrayals of substance use issues and mental health concerns. The organization also produces the S.E.T Awards, honoring positive and non-stereotypical portrayals of science, engineering and technology.

For a complete list of health and social issues addressed by EIC and local projects, please visit First Draft and EIC’s website. EIC’s web site is . The PRISM Awards web site is .

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Skylar JacksonEntertainment Industries Council941-544-7559

Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday that the rate on the 30-year loan was unchanged at 3.55 percent. In July, the rate fell to 3.49 percent, the lowest since long-term mortgages began in the 1950s.

The average on the 15-year fixed mortgage, a popular refinancing option, slipped to 2.85 percent, down from 2.86 percent last week. That's above the record low of 2.80 percent.

Cheap mortgages have helped lift the housing market. Sales of new and previously occupied homes are well above last year's levels. Low rates have also allowed people to refinance, which lowers monthly mortgage payments and helps boosts consumer spending.

Home prices are increasing more consistently this year, largely because the supply of homes has shrunk while sales have risen. And the number of Americans who owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth declined in the second quarter.

Still, the housing market has a long way back. Home sales are below healthy levels. And many people are still having difficulty qualifying for home loans or can't afford larger down payments required by banks.

Mortgage rates are low because they tend to track the yield on the 10-year Treasury note. A weaker U.S. economy and uncertainty about how Europe will resolve its debt crisis have led investors to buy more Treasury securities, which are considered safe investments. As demand for Treasurys increase, the yield falls.

To calculate average rates, Freddie Mac surveys lenders across the country on Monday through Wednesday of each week.

The average does not include extra fees, known as points, which most borrowers must pay to get the lowest rates. One point equals 1 percent of the loan amount.

The average fee for 30-year loans was 0.6 point, down from 0.7 point last week. The fee for 15-year loans was changed at 0.6.

The average rate on one-year adjustable rate mortgages was steady at 2.61 percent. The fee for one-year adjustable rate loans also was unchanged, at 0.4 point.

The average rate on five-year adjustable rate mortgages fell to 2.72 percent from 2.75 percent. The fee declined to 0.6 point from 0.7.