Most of the Americans had left the country. They include Sam LaHood, son of the U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. He received a five-year jail term.

Present at Tuesday's hearing was American Robert Becker, who received a two-year sentence. Becker has maintained that his refusal to flee Egypt with fellow Americans who were in the country at the time of the crackdown on nonprofit groups was to show solidarity with his Egyptian colleagues.

The verdict read out by judge Makram Awad also ordered the closure and seizure of the offices and assets in Egypt belonging to U.S. nonprofit groups as well as one German organization for which the defendants worked. These are the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute, Freedom House, a center for training journalists and Germany's Konrad Adenauer Foundation.

Of the 43 defendants, 27 received five-year jail terms. Another five received two years and 11 got one year. Defendants tried in absentia typically are convicted and receive the maximum sentence but also get an automatic retrial. All 43 were fined 1,000 Egyptian pounds ($143).

Beside the Americans, eight other foreigners of Serbian, Jordanian, Lebanese, and other nationalities were tried.

The trial began in early 2012 during the nearly 17 months of military rule that followed the ouster in the previous year of U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak. The case led to a period of tension in U.S.-Egyptian relations, with Washington warning that, unless resolved, it could lead to the loss of American aid.

There was no immediate comment from the Obama administration on the verdicts, but a senior U.S. congressman, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Ed Royce, condemned the ruling in a statement and urged Islamist President Mohammed Morsi to allow nonprofit groups to work toward a democratic Egypt.

"This is another assault on Egyptian civil society. As if these trials were not bad enough, the Egyptian government is pushing a new law targeting NGOs (non-governmental organizations) that will further suffocate civil society," said Royce, a Republican from California. "President Morsi should immediately reverse course and allow for Egyptian domestic and international NGOs to work toward a democratic and secure Egypt."

In Berlin, the German foreign minister said his country was outraged by the verdicts and will work for their overturn.

"The actions of the Egyptian judiciary are troubling. They weaken civil society, which is an important pillar of democracy in the new democratic Egypt," the minister, Guido Westerwelle, said in a statement. "The German political foundations are doing wonderful work in Egypt. They are doing exemplary work during a historical phase for Egypt, laying the foundations for democracy, rule of law, pluralism and intercultural dialogue."

The former head of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation received a five-year sentence on Tuesday and an employee was jailed for two.

Egypt and the United States have been close allies for more than three decades, with the Egyptian military receiving more than $1 billion in aid annually. The aid is linked to Egypt's adherence to an American-mediated 1979 peace treaty with Israel, Washington's closest Middle East ally. Besides the $1.3 billion in U.S. military aid, Egypt also receives about $250 million in economic aid every year.

Mubarak, the military rulers who followed him, and now Morsi's government have all been at odds with nonprofits over both their activities and their funding. Last week, the New York-based Human Rights Watch and 40 Egyptian rights groups said an Egyptian draft law regulating non-governmental organizations would restrict the funding and operation of independent groups.

The contentious bill, proposed by Morsi and shortly to be debated by the country's interim legislature, would allow the state to control nonprofits' activities as well as their domestic and international funding, HRW said. The current form of the bill is a serious regression from earlier versions, it added.

In a joint statement, the 40 Egyptian rights groups accused Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood and its political arm of seeking to curb the freedom of rights groups through legal restrictions. They said the proposed law potentially gives Egypt's security apparatus the power to suppress rights group, drawing parallels to Egypt's recent past under Mubarak's 29-year rule

They also expressed fears foreign nonprofits would be treated with hostility and that vaguely worded legislation would hinder operations or the issuance of work permits.

A spokesperson for Catherine Ashton, the EU's foreign affairs chief, said Morsi's bill contained elements that would constrain the work of nonprofit groups and hinder the European Union's own capacity as a foreign donor to support their work.

"The draft law has to be in line with international standards and obligations of Egypt," the spokesperson said in a statement issued Sunday.

Nonprofit pro-democracy groups have trained thousands of young Egyptians in political activism and organizing, an education that played a key part in the success of the 2011 uprising that toppled Mubarak.

The crackdown against the nonprofit groups began in late December 2011, when Egyptian security raided offices of 10 pro-democracy and human rights groups. Workers, including the 16 Americans, were then charged with using illegal funds and promoting protests against the then-ruling military.

The groups hotly denied the charges. They insisted their financing is transparent, and all their efforts to register had been stalled by the Egyptian government.

During the trial, the prosecution maintained that, between them, the four U.S. groups and one German organization illegally received about $50 million in funds, most of that in the months that followed Mubarak's ouster in February 2011. It claimed that the groups were engaged in illegal polling, training in political activism and other activity without the knowledge or the approval of authorities.

Their activity, prosecutor Abdullah Yassin told the court last year, amounted to an "infringement of the sovereignty of the state of Egypt.

__

Associated Press reporter Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed to this report.

BERLIN (AP) -- Porsche's ex-finance chief has been convicted of fraud after a court found he provided false information during the German sports car marker's failed 2009 attempt to take over Volkswagen AG.

Former Porsche CFO Holger Haerter was fined an unspecified amount after being found guilty Tuesday by a Stuttgart state court, the dpa news agency reported.

Haerter was convicted of providing inaccurate information when he was working on refinancing French bank BNP Paribas' part of a 10 billion euro loan.

The ex-CFO had rejected the charges and his defense had argued for an acquittal; prosecutors wanted him to serve time in jail.

Haerter has also been charged, along with ex-Porsche CEO Wendelin Wiedeking, with market manipulation over the failed Volkswagen bid. VW eventually turned the tables and took over Porsche instead.

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.

The couple is awaiting permission from penal authorities for a wedding within two weeks in Piedras Gordas prison, lawyer Maximo Altez told The Associated Press.

"He is in love, that is what motivates all men (to marry), he truthfully is in love," Altez said Friday about his client, who was convicted of the brutal 2010 murder of a young Lima woman he met in a casino.

Altez's comment followed speculation in Peruvian media that Van der Sloot wants to marry 23-year-old Leydi Figueroa Uceda to avoid possible extradition to the United States. The lawyer denied that was the case.

The 24-year-old Dutchman remains the chief suspect in the 2005 disappearance in his native Aruba of U.S. teenager Natalee Holloway.

Holloway was 18 years old when she vanished during a high school graduation trip to Aruba. She was last seen leaving a bar the morning of May 30, 2005 with Van der Sloot.

Holloway's body was never found and the ensuing searches for her would create intense media scrutiny and worldwide attention. A judge later declared Holloway dead.

Van der Sloot faces extortion and wire fraud charges in Alabama in connection with Holloway's unsolved disappearance, which occurred five years to the day before he killed 21-year-old Peruvian business student Stephany Flores after playing poker with her in a Lima casino.

U.S. prosecutors allege Van der Sloot accepted $25,000 in cash from Holloway's family in exchange for a promise to lead an attorney for the family to her body in early 2010 just before he went to Lima.

Altez said that Van der Sloot met Figueroa while she was selling goods inside the Peruvian prison. The young woman visited Van der Sloot constantly after that and several months ago he began taking the steps needed to wed.

The lawyer denied press reports that Figueroa bore Van der Sloot a son.

On Wednesday, Altez sought a sentence reduction to 20 years for Van der Sloot.

He said he should hear back from the Supreme Court in about 10 days.

"He wants to get married, change his life, make a new life," he said.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Little known biotechnology company Merrimack Pharmaceuticals Inc has quietly built a large pipeline of experimental cancer treatments that it aims to deliver at a fraction of the cost spent by larger rivals.

That could translate into lower-cost treatments for large unmet needs, such as pancreatic cancer, at precisely the time when pressure is mounting to reduce runaway healthcare spending.

Despite six drugs in clinical development - one of them in late-stage trials - and two more about to advance to human testing, Merrimack is burning only about $20 million a quarter.

"For the size and scale of what we do, that's eye poppingly low," Merrimack Chief Executive Robert Mulroy told Reuters.

"Our cost structure is orders of magnitude lower than anybody to date in this business. Our cost from starting a discovery program to getting into the clinic is less than $20 million, and the industry average is close to half a billion per molecule," he said in an interview this week.

"Hopefully, we're going to get to less expensive drugs because our capital costs to be successful with them will be so much lower."

That would be music to the ears of payers and the overtaxed U.S. Medicare system contending with new cancer treatments that can exceed $100,000 per patient.

Started by six professors from Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2000, Merrimack is nearing the finish line with what could be its first commercial product, a nanotherapeutic treatment for pancreatic cancer - a disease for which patients currently have few options.

Shares of Merrimack, which has a market value of about $500 million, are down nearly 16 percent this year, while the biotech sector overall has been on the rise.

Brean Capital analyst Gene Mack said investors have been wary about the prospects for the company's lead drug because the failure rate for pancreatic cancer drugs has been high and Merrimack is testing its drug in patients that have failed prior treatment - a population with a very poor prognosis.

"Investors don't realize how much progress has been made in the last year," Mack said. "Fundamentally, this is my favorite company (worth) under a billion dollars."

Late-stage trial data on the lead drug candidate, known as MM-398, is expected the second half of this year. If the study succeeds, the company could file for approval late this year or early in 2014.

MM-398 is designed to treat a particular type of tumor - hypoxic tumors - that tend to be resistant to standard therapies because of poor blood flow to the tumor.

"You don't have a lot of highways to the tumor so you don't get a lot of drug there," Mulroy explained.

The Merrimack technology is designed to deliver cancer-killing therapy directly into the tumor and have it work for far longer than other new medicines that directly target tumors.

"Our technology keeps the drug in the tumor for over a week as opposed to just a few hours," Mulroy said.

Hypoxic tumors are very common in pancreatic cancer, making it notoriously difficult to treat, but are also present in many other types of solid tumors.

Merrimack is developing a companion diagnostic test that uses a radioactive imaging agent to identify hypoxic tumors. If the test works as intended, MM-398 could also eventually treat lung, breast, colon and other cancers if patients are found to have the right type of tumor, giving it a huge potential market. The company plans to test MM-398 in combination with chemotherapies and targeted biotech medicines.

Merrimack also has a drug, MM-111, in Phase II testing for gastric cancer, for which there is an enormous unmet need, particularly in China and Asia.

The company has enough cash to fund its numerous clinical trials for the rest of this year and take MM-398 through to approval and commercialization, Mulroy said.

The company has full rights to seven of the eight drugs in clinical development and hopes to retain them for the U.S. and European markets while looking for partners to sell the medicines in other parts of the world, the CEO said.

French drugmaker Sanofi acquired global rights to the Merrimack drug MM-121, being tested in lung, breast and ovarian cancer. Merrimack, which will get milestone payments and royalties on future sales of the medicine, expects data from four Phase II trials of MM-121 later this year.

In another vote of confidence, Sanofi is the company's second-largest shareholder with more than a 5 percent stake, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Merrimack's share performance over the second half of the year will hinge on a steady flow of clinical data, with four Phase II studies and the pivotal Phase III on MM-398 expected to be reported in the coming months.

"There will be plenty of opportunities to show that the technology works," Mulroy said. "We're in a big transition year for us."

(Reporting by Bill Berkrot; editing by Ed Tobin and John Wallace)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Merck & Co's experimental insomnia drug moved a step closer to U.S. approval on Wednesday after a panel of medical experts said it is effective and safe at lower doses.

The advisory panel was convened to help the U.S. Food and Drug Administration decide whether to approve the drug, suvorexant, which would be the first in a new class of sedatives that block chemicals in the brain called orexins that help keep people awake. The drugs are designed to help people fall asleep and stay asleep.

On Monday, the FDA's internal reviewers published a report expressing concern about suvorexant's potential to cause next-day sleepiness and impaired driving. They asked the committee to consider whether patients should be started at a lower dose than that recommended by Merck.

Merck proposed that elderly patients start by taking 15 milligrams of the drug and increase that to 30 if necessary. The company recommended non-elderly adults start on 20 milligrams and increase to 40 milligrams if needed.

On Wednesday, the FDA reiterated its opinion that there was little evidence in Merck's data to show that the higher dose was more effective than the lower dose, and considerable evidence to show it was less safe.

The FDA's reviewers pointed to an increase in the risk - especially at the higher doses - of suicidal thoughts and behaviors, impaired driving, and severe sleep disturbances.

Speaking for the FDA, Dr. Ronald Farkas noted cases in which patients had reported sleep paralysis and terrifying hallucinations. He also expressed the agency's concern about the drug's impact on driving.

"What we are trying to prevent is criminal prosecution of patients taking their drug as prescribed," he said.

The FDA's views were echoed by those of several patient advocacy groups.

"Like its predecessors, suvorexant's marginal benefit in extending overnight sleep time by a few minutes is achieved at the expense of prolonged, next-day drowsiness, with potentially fatal consequences," said Dr. Sammy Almashat, a researcher with Public Citizen's Health Research Group who noted that suvorexant stays in the body longer than all but one other sleep drug.

Still, the panel voted 13 to 3, with one abstention, that the drug could be used safely at the 15 and 20 milligram doses. It voted 8-7, with two abstentions, that the drug is not safe at 30 and 40 milligrams.

LOWER DOSE

Merck celebrated the vote, saying in a statement that it was "excited about the potential of suvorexant as a new and different approach to treating insomnia."

The FDA is not bound to follow the advice of its advisory panels but typically does so.

The FDA had asked the panel to consider whether patients should start with a 10 milligram dose, saying data from a smaller trial showed that amount might work for some people. Merck disputed that, saying 10 milligrams would not be effective.

The FDA also asked the panel if Merck should conduct an additional trial to further evaluate a 10 milligram dose. The panel voted against that. Some agreed that 10 milligrams would not be effective. Others agreed in principal with a lower starting dose, but most said a new trial would not add meaningfully to the information already in hand.

"When you have something new you don't know everything you would like to know," said Dr. Christian Guilleminault, a professor at Stanford University School of Medicine. However, he added: "I'm not sure that doing another study is going to bring us much more."

The FDA's concerns come amid a broader review of the safety of sleeping pills following hundreds of reports of driving accidents involving people taking zolpidem, the active ingredient in Sanofi SA's Ambien.

About 60 million prescriptions for these drugs were written in the United States in 2011, according to healthcare research firm I.M.S. Of those, roughly 40 million contained zolpidem.

In January, the FDA told drugmakers they should lower the recommended dose of zolpidem in women to 5 milligrams from 10 for immediate-release products including Ambien, Edluar and Zolpimist. The agency said doses for extended-release products should also be cut in half.

Dr. Jason Todd, a panel member and staff neurologist at NorthEast Neurology in Concord, North Carolina, said patients are adjusting to the lower dosing recommendations for Ambien.

"Before the recent changes I almost never saw a patient who would take 5 milligrams and stay with it," he said. "Now that 5 milligrams is recommended people are OK with 5 milligrams."

The panel's ultimate recommendation surprised some analysts who had expected, based on the FDA's review, that the meeting would be more contentious.

"Based on the overall discussion today and the voting of the panel, we believe that the probability of FDA approval for suvorexant has gone up meaningfully," Mark Schoenebaum, an analyst at ISI Group, said in a research note.

Having said that, he said: "We admit that predicting a final FDA decision is difficult."

(Reporting by Toni Clarke in Washington; Editing by Alden Bentley, Leslie Adler and Edmund Klamann)

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Indie rock band Vampire Weekend on Wednesday grabbed the top spot on the weekly Billboard 200 album chart, besting new albums from country legend George Strait and pop singer Demi Lovato.

"Modern Vampires of the City" sold 134,000 copies in its first week, according to figures compiled by Nielsen SoundScan, and became the second album to debut at the top of the weekly Billboard 200 for the New York-based rockers.

It was also the first independently distributed album to debut at No. 1 on the chart since country singer Jason Aldean's "Night Train" in November last year.

Strait's "Love Is Everything," his 27th studio album, sold 120,000 units and entered the chart at No. 2 while Lovato's "Demi" album sold 110,000 units and landed at No. 3.

Last week's top album, "Golden" by country trio Lady Antebellum, fell to No. 5 this week while the soundtrack to the "The Great Gatsby" film dropped from No. 4 from No. 2.

On Billboard's Digital Songs chart, which measures digital single track download sales, rapper-producer duo Macklemore & Ryan Lewis's "Can't Hold Us" held steady at No. 1 with 231,000 downloads.

Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines" featuring rapper T.I. and singer Pharrell Williams came in at No. 2 and Pink's "Just Give Me a Reason" featuring FUN. frontman Nate Ruess rounded out the top 3 on the Digital Songs chart.

Total album sales this year stands at 111.4 million, a 5 percent decline over the same period last year.

Digital song downloads have totaled 531.2 million so far in 2013, off 3 percent in the same period last year.

(Editing by Piya Sinha-Roy and Cynthia Osterman)

Miller resigned after the IRS became embroiled in a controversy over the agency's targeting of conservative groups for extra scrutiny.

"It is with regret that I will be departing from the IRS as my acting assignment ends in early June," Miller said in an internal message that was released by the IRS. "This has been an incredibly difficult time for the IRS given the events of the past few days, and there is a strong and immediate need to restore public trust in the nation's tax agency."

(Reporting By Karey Van Hall; Editing by Bill Trott)

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) - Terry Crews and Kevin Nealon have joined the cast of "Blended," a romantic comedy that will star Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore, several individuals with knowledge of the production told TheWrap.

The film centers on a couple whose disastrous blind date finds them at a family resort with their children from previous marriages. Sandler and Barrymore play the couple, while Joe McHale will play Barrymore's former husband.

Nealon, who was a "Saturday Night Live" regular with Sandler, will play a man staying at the resort with his very attractive younger wife and their son. Crews will play the host of the couple's African vacation who sings and entertains them.

The film begins production later this month, shooting in both South Africa and Atlanta.

Frank Coraci, who previously oversaw Sandler's "Click," will direct the film from a script by Ivan Menchell and Clare Sera. Sandler will produce through his Happy Madison Productions, while Mike Karz will produce under his Gulfstream Pictures banner.

Nealon just wrapped the Steven Brill comedy "Walk of Shame" while Crews, comfortable doing both comedy and action, just appeared in "Scary Movie 5."

Crews has also wrapped a trio of films due out later this year - "Reach Me," "Aztec Warrior" and "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2," to which he lent his voice.

(Logo:)

"Alaska Airlines Flight Attendants have been distinguished by numerous awards for our hard work, sacrifices and dedication. Bolstered by our exemplary service, Alaska Airlines has just received the JD Power and Associates award for the sixth year in a row -- unprecedented in the industry. We have worked closely with management to create a winning strategy and have been key to the success of our airline. Despite this extraordinary performance record, our wages continue to fall below inflation and behind those of our peers in the industry. It is time for the over 3,100 Alaska Airlines Flight Attendants to reap the benefits of our airline's success and be adequately compensated," said Jeffrey Peterson, AFA president at Alaska Airlines. "We are stakeholders in this airline. We have proven our dedication."

Flight Attendants' contract negotiations began in November 2011 and have been ongoing for the past 18 months. AFA filed for mediation earlier this month after talks stalled over compensation. Mediation will begin in July.

Alaska Airlines Flight Attendants RallyTuesday, May 21, 20131 p.m. Pacific Time(Stockholders meeting at 2 p.m.)Bell Harbor International Conference Center2211 Alaskan Way, Pier 66Seattle, Washington

The Association of Flight Attendants is the world's largest Flight Attendant union. Focused 100 percent on Flight Attendant issues, AFA has been the leader in advancing the Flight Attendant profession for 67 years. Serving as the voice for Flight Attendants in the workplace, in the aviation industry, in the media and on Capitol Hill, AFA has transformed the Flight Attendant profession by raising wages, benefits and working conditions. Nearly 60,000 Flight Attendants come together to form AFA, part of the 700,000-member strong Communications Workers ofAmerica(CWA), AFL-CIO. Visit us at.

SOURCE Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA-CWA)