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The loans are available in the following counties: Bledsoe, Cumberland, DeKalb, Fentress, Jackson, Overton, Putnam, Sequatchie, Smith, Van Buren, Warren and White in Tennessee.

Under this declaration, the SBA's Economic Injury Disaster Loan program is available to eligible farm-related and nonfarm-related entities that suffered financial losses as a direct result of this disaster. With the exception of aquaculture enterprises, SBA cannot provide disaster loans to agricultural producers, farmers, or ranchers. Nurseries are eligible to apply for economic injury disaster loans for losses caused by drought conditions.

The loans are for working capital and can be up to $2 million with interest rates of 4 percent for eligible small businesses and 3 percent for non-profit organizations, and terms up to 30 years.

Applicants may apply online using the Electronic Loan Application (ELA) via SBA's secure website at .

Disaster loan information and application forms may also be obtained by calling the SBA's Customer Service Center at 800-659-2955 (800-877-8339 for the deaf and hard-of-hearing) or by sending an email to . Loan applications can be downloaded from the SBA's website at . Completed applications should be mailed to: U.S. Small Business Administration, Processing and Disbursement Center, 14925 Kingsport Road, Fort Worth, TX 76155.

For more information about the SBA's Disaster Loan Program, visit our website at .

Contact: Michael LamptonEmail:Phone: (404) 331-0333

Release Number: 13-632, TN 13430

SOURCE U.S. Small Business Administration

SEOUL (Reuters) - Smartphone leader Samsung Electronics Co Ltd is set to report a record $8.9 billion quarterly profit on Friday, even as growth in sales of its blockbuster Galaxy series begins to wane and new rivals emerge to eat away at its market share.

The Galaxy S, powered by Google's free Android platform, propelled the South Korean firm into the top rank of smartphone makers in 2012, overtaking Apple Inc whose iPhone had set an industry standard five years earlier.

But the South Korean firm, which posted five consecutive record quarterly profits until the first quarter of 2013, now faces questions about how it will deal with narrowing margins as rivals flood the market with cheaper, simpler smartphones.

"Earnings could improve further from here as Samsung could cut prices of the S4 to boost overall shipments to a level that offsets any decrease in selling prices," said Brian Park, an analyst at Tong Yang Securities.

"But the bigger issue is that there's not much clarity about its future product lineups, and smartphones are increasingly commoditized ... It's inevitable that Samsung's stellar profit growth will come to an end and stagnate starting from next year."

Shares in the $185 billion company have dropped 15 percent since early June, hit by a series of brokerages downgrades. The share price reflects concerns about handset margins, with its mobile business generating 70 percent of the tech giant's total profit.

Its share price woes equate to a fall in market value of 33 trillion won ($29 billion), almost equal to the combined market capitalisation of Sony Corp and LG Electronics Inc.

To be sure, Samsung is by far the world's top smartphone maker with 33.1 percent of the market compared with Apple's 17.9 percent in the first quarter, according to research firm Strategy Analytics. Its rich product portfolio spans both the high and cheap-and-cheerful end of the market.

But competition is getting intense with Chinese manufacturers such as Huawei Technologies Co Ltd and ZTE Corp making ground in the popular mid- to low-end market, especially in China, the world's biggest mobile market.

Underscoring the growing focus on cheaper devices, Nokia Oyj, once the handset king, unveiled two stripped-down 3G phones this week. They allow access to popular applications such as Facebook and Twitter, and sell for just $68.

Mozilla also said this week that first smartphones running on open-source software Firefox will be available through Deutsche Telekom and Telefonica. Priced at less than $100, the models are manufactured by TCL Communication and ZTE and allow developers to easily create apps, as the software is based on HTML-5.

Samsung, due to release its April-June earnings guidance on Friday, likely increased quarterly operating profit to a record 10.16 trillion won ($8.9 billion), according to a survey of 43 analysts by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

That would be up 57 percent from a year ago and 15 percent higher than the previous quarter, reflecting the launch of its flagship Galaxy S4 in late April.

But its earnings estimates have been cut by 3 percent over the past 30 days, and analysts are warning that the days of thumping record profits may be coming to an end.

Citi analyst Henry Kim estimates Samsung's telecom profit margin would decline by 4 percent next year and 3 percent the following year on high-end market saturation and increasing sales of cheaper phones.

Samsung is widely expected to have sold between 72 million and 75 million smartphones in the second quarter, including some 20 million Galaxy S4. That's only marginally better than first-quarter smartphone sales of 69.4 million.

Solid recovery in memory chip prices is likely to offset the easing pace of growth in telecoms business, analysts said.

Prices of dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips, used mainly in computers, have jumped nearly 90 percent so far this year. NAND chips, which are used in mobile devices to store data, are also widely expected to be in short supply.

Samsung is the world's top maker of televisions, handsets and memory chips, competing with Sony and LG in televisions and with Toshiba Corp and SK Hynix in memory chips.

(Reporting by Miyoung Kim; Editing by Stephen Coates)

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - "Man of Steel," the latest iteration of the Superman series, lands on the big screen on Friday with the hopes that the dark, action-heavy film can revive the classic comic book superhero as a Hollywood franchise.

But director Zack Snyder, who is best known for 2007 action film "300" and 2009 superhero flick "Watchmen," told Reuters that it was a delicate balance staying faithful to Superman's story without retreading earlier film and television versions.

"I think a mistake would be to consciously ask, 'What mistakes have they done in the past?' That type of reactive approach - that's going to end in disaster," Snyder, 47, said.

"The way we looked at it was like, 'Let's say we just found these comic books under our bed and this character, Superman, seems pretty cool to make a movie about,'" he added.

The Superman comic, which artist Joe Shuster and writer Jerry Siegel debuted in 1938, has been brought to the big and small screen about a dozen times, most notably in the four-film series starring Christopher Reeve from 1978 to 1987.

"Man of Steel" tells the origin story of the DC Comics superhero, played by British actor Henry Cavill, setting up the film as a springboard to reboot a franchise that failed to take off in 2006 with director Bryan Singer's "Superman Returns.

Studio Warner Bros. enlisted director Christopher Nolan - whose three Batman films grossed more than $2 billion worldwide between 2005 and 2012, according to box-office tracker Boxofficemojo.com - as a producer and story writer to help shepherd the film along.

"He treated me probably how he would want to be treated," Snyder said of Nolan. "If I had a problem he was there to say, 'What's going on? What about this?' offering advice and counsel whenever I needed it."

ALL-AMERICAN ALIEN

"Man of Steel" begins with Superman's birth as Kal-El on the planet Krypton. As the last hope for his society's survival amid an insurrection, his parents send him to Earth where he is raised as Clark Kent in Smallville, Kansas.

By framing "Man of Steel" as a coming-of-age story, Snyder is also able to tap the science-fiction unique to Superman that other superhero stories, like Batman, do not have.

"He's able to look at humanity objectively because he's not human, and that element combined with the sci-fi school made me really go after that aspect of it as hard as I could," he sal elaid.

The film documents the young life of Clark Kent from bullied and sensitive schoolboy to itinerant loner endowed with otherworldly strength, laying the groundwork for a consistent, relatable Superman that Snyder said he wanted in the character.

"We didn't have to have this crazy transformation go on when he became Clark Kent," he said. "He's not even aware of it ... I feel like in a weird way, he's also easier to hook onto because he's coming from the same point of view all the time."

Snyder also said he leaned on Clark Kent's all-American values and farm-boy upbringing by Jonathan (Kevin Costner) and Martha Kent (Diane Lane) when it came time for Superman to emerge to save the planet from Kryptonian warlord General Zod.

"He's like a first-responder. ... He's a volunteer in a lot of ways, and I think that because he's that ultimate, selfless character, you end up (with) a personality type that goes along with that," Snyder said.

"I think as soon as you start to work on him it's going to be muddy and weird," Snyder said about his reluctance to modify Superman from his comic book origins. "There's a pure thing inside of the Superman character."

"Man of Steel" also stars Amy Adams as Lois Lane and Michael Shannon as General Zod.

Warner Bros. is part of Time Warner Inc.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey, editing by Paul Casciato)

King County Judge Arthur R. Chapman said he set such a high bail for Justin Jasper because he considered the 22-year-old a flight risk and a threat to the community.

Montana authorities said Jasper stole a pickup truck and guns from a truck driver in Butte, Mont., who had let Jasper stay at his home.

At the bail hearing in Seattle, a prosecutor said authorities found six firebombs in the vehicle, along with a bolt-action rifle, a double-barrel shotgun, a machete and several knives. They also found a recording of a podcast that appears to have Jasper expressing support for protesters in Brazil.

More than 1 million demonstrators have taken to the streets in Brazil over the past month to denounce everything from poor public services to the billions of dollars spent preparing for next year's World Cup soccer tournament and the 2016 Olympics in Brazil.

Police found evidence that Jasper was planning some kind of action in support of those protesters, Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Andrew Hamilton said. Hamilton said that on the podcast, Jasper said he was going to back the "Brazilian revolution" by doing something "somewhere in the Western United States."

"I'm going to make sure people understand and notice it," he allegedly said on the podcast.

Authorities also found maps in the truck to the University of Washington, Seattle University and South Seattle Community College. Court documents identified Jasper's occupation as a self-employed journalist. He has not yet been appointed a public defender.

The truck driver from Butte reported to authorities Wednesday that he returned from a trip to find his pickup truck missing and guns stolen from his home, said Butte-Silver Bow Undersheriff George Skuletich.

Jasper had been staying at the truck driver's home for about a month.

The Seattle Times identified the truck driver Friday night as Erik Henderson (http://is.gd/YavETd ).

The trucker said Jasper described himself as an "anarchist," The Times reported.

Jasper had concerns about topics ranging from the chemical industry to genetically altered foods to voting rights, Henderson said.

Henderson discovered his pickup, guns and body armor missing Tuesday after returning home from 11 days on the road. He said he had body armor from his days as a contract convoy trucker in Iraq.

Jasper was arrested Wednesday after University of Washington police were told to watch for a truck that had been stolen in Montana.

University police saw Jasper sleeping in a truck near campus Tuesday night, the day before they received the stolen-vehicle notice. University of Washington Police Chief John Vinson said nothing came up in their system when they checked the plates Tuesday.

Butte authorities are looking into possible charges, but none have been filed, Skuletich said.

Vinson said the man had with him a scoped rifle, shotgun and fewer than 10 Molotov cocktails.

"We have no idea what his intentions are," he said. "This is a very active investigation. We're trying to rule out everything at this point."

Vinson said Thursday there did not appear to be any threat to the university campus.

___

Information from The Seattle Times is contained in this report.

___

Associated Press writer Matt Volz in Helena, Mont., and AP Photographer Ted Warren in Seattle contributed to report.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - A preliminary inquiry by the Vatican bank after the arrest of a Vatican prelate on suspicion of trying to smuggle huge sums of money into Italy from Switzerland found "clear failings" at the institution, a source close to the bank said on Thursday.

The board of the bank, formally known as the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR), held a meeting on Thursday that also addressed the shock resignation of its two top managers on Monday. The meeting had not been made public.

At the meeting Ernst von Freyberg, the bank's German president, told the other four board members of the preliminary results of an internal investigation.

It discovered "clear failings that should serve as stark reminder of the urgency of improving the IOR's processes," Freyberg told the board, the senior source told Reuters.

The Vatican was rocked last Friday by the arrest of Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, who is accused of plotting with two other people to smuggle 20 million euros ($25.8 million) into Italy from Switzerland for rich friends in southern Italy.

Scarano, 61, who worked as a senior accountant in the Vatican's financial administration and had close and regular contacts with the Vatican bank, was arrested along with an Italian secret service agent and a financial intermediary.

Scarano is accused of money laundering in a separate investigation in the southern city of Salerno, his hometown.

According to the source, Freyberg told the board that the bank would continue to improve internal procedures and review every account. "We will systematically identify and eradicate wrongdoing by clients of our institute," Freyberg said.

Apart from Freyberg, the board is made up of another German, an Italian, an American and a Spaniard. All are non-clerics and are either businessmen or bankers.

Three days after the arrest of Scarano, IOR director Paolo Cipriani and deputy-director Massimo Tulli resigned. Both are under investigation by Rome magistrates, the third inquiry in Rome regarding suspected money laundering at the IOR.

Freyberg, who became president of the bank this year, has also assumed the role of bank director until a permanent replacement is appointed.

The bank has also established a new position of chief risk officer who will be charged with improving compliance with financial regulations at a bank which has long been a byword for secrecy and lack of transparency.

Last week, two days before the arrests, Pope Francis set up a commission of inquiry into the Vatican bank, which has been hit by a number of scandals in past decades.

The European anti-money laundering committee, Moneyval, said in a July report that the IOR still had to enact more reforms in order to meet international standards against money laundering.

(Editing by Mark Heinrich)

SEOUL (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics Co Ltd missed already modest expectations for its quarterly earnings guidance on Friday, deepening worries that its smartphone business may have peaked, as growth in sales of its blockbuster Galaxy phones begins to wane and new rivals emerge to eat away at its market share.

The Galaxy S, powered by Google's free Android platform, propelled the South Korean firm into the top rank of smartphone makers in 2012, overtaking Apple Inc whose iPhone had set an industry standard five years earlier.

Now investors fear Samsung may also follow in the footsteps of Apple and other once-mighty players that are struggling with shrinking margins, in an industry where companies live and die by their ability to stay ahead of the innovation curve.

"Is Samsung's smartphone story now over? Not quite yet. It's growth is indeed slowing due largely to disappointing sales of the S4," said Jung Sang-jin, a fund manager at Dongbu Asset Management, which owns Samsung shares.

"Yet I think Samsung has some exciting stuff up its sleeves. The problem is no one is sure whether these products can really wow investors and consumers."

The disappointing earnings estimate by Samsung, which has had a track record of beating even the most bullish forecasts, sent its shares down more than 3 percent on Friday.

They have dropped 17 percent since early June, hit by a series of brokerage downgrades. The share price reflects concerns about Samsung's handset margins, with its mobile business generating 70 percent of the tech giant's total profit.

The fall in the share price equates to a drop in market value of 39 trillion won ($34.2 billion), or worth the combined market capitalisation of Sony Corp and LG Electronics Inc.

"One of the biggest risks for Samsung Electronics going forward is that 70 percent of total operating profit comes from mobile business. Diversification is key. Samsung needs to engage in active business transition until end-2014," said Jeff Kim, an analyst at Hyundai Securities.

ALL TIME HIGH AGAIN IN H2?

To be sure, Samsung's 9.5 trillion won ($8.3 billion) operating profit forecast, up 47 percent from a year ago, is a record and it is expected to report higher earnings in the current and fourth quarters as sales of its latest Galaxy S4 phone pick up and new products hit the stores. Prices of memory chips, another industry which Samsung holds the lead, are also expected to remain strong.

"Samsung's got diversified businesses. When one business lags, it's got others outperforming and propping up the overall profit," Jung at Dongbu said.

"The component business is widely expected to pick up the slack in the second half when smartphones slow, but now worries are also mounting that the component business' recovery could be short-lived."

The guidance, released ahead of full quarterly results due on July 26, was worse than an average forecast of 10.16 trillion won in a poll of 43 analysts by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

"I think Samsung spent more on marketing expenses than expected because of the launch of Galaxy S4 smartphone, which led the company's results to miss the market consensus," HMC Investment Securities analyst Nho Geun-Chang said.

Samsung spent more on marketing than R&D in 2012 for the first time in at least three years, and the S4 was launched in March with a Broadway-style show in New York.

The company also invested heavily in distribution channels including opening brand shops in 1,400 Best Buy stores in the United States.

But the glitz and glamour has failed to arrest a slide in handset sales growth, and shipments are seen rising only 4 percent to 8 percent in the second quarter from the previous quarter.

Handset margins are also being squeezed, as consumers in countries like China - the world's biggest smartphone market - opt for stripped-down cheaper devices.

NEXT BIG THING

Competition is getting intense with Chinese manufacturers such as Huawei Technologies Co Ltd and ZTE Corp making ground in the popular mid- to low-end market.

Nokia Oyj, once the handset king, unveiled two back-to-basics 3G phones this week. They allow access to popular applications such as Facebook and Twitter, and sell for just $68.

"There's still a big uncertainty about how Samsung will respond to the low-end market," said Brian Park, an analyst at Tong Yang Securities, referring to its plans to launch a device based on the open-source Tizen operating system.

Wearable gadgets will also be crucial to the company's hopes of riding a new wave of extraordinary profit growth.

Apple has applied for a trademark for "iWatch" in Japan, signaling the iPhone-maker may be moving ahead with plans for a watch-like device as the industry turn its attention to wearable computers.

Samsung has also filed a trademark for "Samsung Gear" in the Untied States for its range of wearable devices.

"The (expected launch of) wearable devices won't be able to replace Samsung's smartphone business, but it's more likely to complement its earnings at best," said Byun Han-joon, an analyst at KB Investment & Securities. ($1 = 1139.2000 Korean won)

(Additional reporting by Joyce Lee and Hyunjoo Jin; Editing by Stephen Coates)

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) - "Iron Man 3" has made more money in China than any other U.S. production this year, grossing more than $125 million at the box office to-date. That's almost double what "Man of Steel," which opened to $117 million in the U.S., is on track to make.

So what was the secret?

Chris Fenton, president of the movie's co-financier and co-producer DMG Entertainment, credited pressing the right levers with the Chinese film commission.

"'Iron Man 3' was as much an act of diplomacy as a movie or a piece of business," Fenton said Friday during a keynote speech at TheWrap's TheGrill @Locations Conference.

DMG is one the top companies producing movies in China, partnering with Hollywood studios and production companies to secure release for its movies in the world's second-biggest market.

That means consulting with Chinese officials in advance, casting Chinese actors and, in the case of "Iron Man 3," releasing a different version of the movie in that country.

"As a conglomerate of partners, we decided let's do what's for the best of the movie around world, but put in extra bonus footage for the Chinese to say, Hey look, this stuff was great but didn't perfectly fit into what we were trying to get in there - but it was too good not to use,'" Fenton said.

Yet Fenton emphasized there is no universal solution. Every film requires a different approach, which is where DMG's background in advertising and marketing proved vital.

Selling the Chinese on "Twilight" required looking at the success of movies like "Titanic" and playing up the Romeo and Juliet nature of the love story. With "Resident Evil 4," DMG pointed to the volume of pirated DVDs sold from earlier movies in the franchise.

When it came to "Looper," Rian Johnson's time travel thriller, DMG suggested a much bigger alteration, pushing Johnson and his producers to change a major part of the movie. The future was going to take place in France. DMG suggested changing that to China.

While the producers were initially wary, the suggestion paid off when they began to show tests of the movie.

One of the crowds' favorite lines came when Jeff Daniels advised Joseph Gordon-Levitt not to move to France.

"He says, I'm from the future, you don't wanna go to France you wanna go to China.' It was great to see that test well," Fenton said.

While most in the United States view the Chinese as being repressive and restrictive in limiting what movies can play -- and what they say - Fenton argued there was nothing unique about China's behavior.

"If the roles were reversed, the U.S. would be using the leverage they have," Fenton said. "You see it every day with different trade issues - tires, chicken meat, auto parts - all kinds of little trade imbalances. They do like western movies, but they also give an edge to its own industry so it can get on solid footing."

Yet, as with everything, there are limits.

"We're not telling Marvel to call Captain China."

LONDON (Reuters) - Doctors could save three million more lives worldwide by 2025 if they offer AIDS drugs to people with HIV much sooner after they test positive for the virus, the World Health Organization said on Sunday.

While better access to cheap generic AIDS drugs means many more people are now getting treatment, health workers, particularly in poor countries with limited health budgets, currently tend to wait until the infection has progressed.

But in new guidelines aimed at controlling and eventually reducing the global AIDS epidemic, the U.N. health agency said some 26 million HIV-positive people - or around 80 percent of all those with the virus - should be getting drug treatment.

The guidelines, which set a global standard for when people with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) should start antiretroviral treatment, were drawn up after numerous studies found that treating HIV patients earlier can keep them healthy for many years and also lowers the amount of virus in the blood, significantly cutting their risk of infecting someone else.

"We are raising the bar to 26 million people," said Gottfried Hirnschall, the WHO's HIV/AIDS department director.

"And this is not only about keeping people healthy and alive but also about blocking further transmission of HIV."

Some 34 million people worldwide have the HIV virus that causes AIDS and the vast majority of them live in poor and developing countries. Sub-Saharan Africa is by far the worst affected region.

But the epidemic - which has killed 25 million people in the 30 years since HIV was first discovered - is showing some signs of being turned around. The United Nations AIDS program UNAIDS says deaths from the disease fell to 1.7 million in 2011, down from a peak of 2.3 million in 2005 and from 1.8 million in 2010.

Swift progress has also been made in getting more HIV patients into treatment, with 9.7 million people getting life-saving AIDS drugs in 2012, up from just 300,000 people a decade earlier, according to latest WHO data also published on Sunday.

Indian generics companies are leading suppliers of HIV drugs to Africa and to many other poor countries. Major Western HIV drugmakers include Gilead Sciences, Johnson & Johnson and ViiV Healthcare, which is majority-owned by GlaxoSmithKline.

"IRREVERSIBLE DECLINE"?

Margaret Chan, the WHO's director general, said the dramatic improvement in access to HIV treatment raised the prospect of the world one day being able to beat the disease.

"With nearly 10 million people now on antiretroviral therapy, we see that such prospects - unthinkable just a few years ago - can now fuel the momentum needed to push the HIV epidemic into irreversible decline," she said in a statement.

The WHO's guidelines encourage health authorities worldwide to start treatment in adults with HIV as soon as a key test known as a CD4 cell count falls to a measure of 500 cells per cubic millimeter or less.

The previous WHO standard was to offer treatment at a CD4 count of 350 or less, in other words when the virus has already started to damage the patient's immune system.

The guidelines also say all pregnant or breastfeeding women and all children under five with HIV should start treatment immediately, whatever their CD4 count, and that all HIV patients should be regularly monitored to assess their "viral load".

This allows health workers to check whether the medicines are reducing the amount of virus in the blood. It also encourages patients to keep taking their medicine because they can see it having positive results.

"There's no greater motivating factor for people to stick to their HIV treatment than knowing the virus is undetectable' in their blood," said Gilles van Cutsem, the medical coordinator in South Africa for the international medical humanitarian organisation Mdecins Sans Frontires (MSF).

MSF welcomed the new guidelines but cautioned that the money and the political will to implement them was also needed.

"Now is not the time to be daunted but to push forward," MSF president Unni Karunakara said in a statement. "So it's critical to mobilize international support... including funding for HIV treatment programs from donor governments."

The WHO's Hirnschall said getting AIDS drugs to the extra patients brought in by the new guidelines would require another 10 percent on top of the $22-$24 billion a year currently needed to fund the global fight against HIV and AIDS.

(Editing by Gareth Jones)

The announcement comes just nine days after the European Union took Hungary off the list of member states which must take measures to cut their budget deficits, removing the threat of cuts in development funds from Brussels.

Hungary had postponed the decision on the wage hikes, which are part of a new career model for teachers, to secure a favorable decision from the EU.

It also unveiled surprise measures this month to generate more than 100 billion forints ($441.32 million) in additional tax revenues, mainly from the telecoms and financial sectors, to help convince Brussels it can keep the budget deficit below the EU threshold of 3 percent of economic output.

Political analysts have said government-imposed energy utility price cuts have helped Prime Minister Viktor Orban's Fidesz keep its ratings well ahead of rivals in the opinion polls and wage increases could also support its popularity.

Zoltan Balog, minister for human resources, was quoted by the national news agency MTI as saying the rise would probably cover half of the planned total increase in teachers' wages.

The rest could come on January 1 or September 1 next year, or in two steps, but a decision will be taken later, he said.

The total monthly wage increase for a teacher with 30 years' experience would amount to about 110,000 forints ($490), Balog said, without disclosing the cost of the measure to the state budget.

According to media reports, the country of 10 million employed about 140,000 school and kindergarten teachers in 2012.

An opinion poll by Tarki carried out on June 12-21 showed that Fidesz had 26 percent support among all voters, twice as much as the main opposition party, the Socialists.

($1 = 226.5916 Hungarian forints)

(Reporting by Sandor Peto, editing by Gareth Jones)