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Employees at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Internal Revenue Service and the Office of Management and Budget stayed home on Friday.

The furlough affects about 5 percent of the federal workforce, according to Cory Bythrow, communications director at the National Federation of Federal Employees, a union representing government workers. Bythrow tracks workplace fallout from the budget cuts, known as sequestration.

Eighty-five percent of the workers who were furloughed on Friday are based outside Washington, Bythrow said by telephone. They include union and non-union employees, depending largely on where they are, he said.

The furloughs come as the United States heads into a holiday weekend, with Memorial Day celebrated on Monday, when government offices will be closed.

An ABC News/Washington Post poll released on Friday found 37 percent of Americans feel sequestration has hurt them personally, up from 25 percent in March. About half of those affected say the harm to them has been "major."

(Reporting by Deborah Zabarenko; Editing by Eric Beech)

HOUSTON (AP) -- InterOil and Pacific LNG Group are in exclusive talks with Exxon Mobil about the development of natural gas fields in Papua New Guinea.

Shares of InterOil jumped almost 11 percent before the opening bell and appear to be headed for an all-time high when the market opens Friday. Pacific LNG is not publicly traded.

InterOil has petroleum licenses, an oil refinery and retail and commercial distribution facilities on the island nation just north of Australia. It's also a shareholder in a joint venture created to build a liquefied natural gas plant there.

InterOil Corp. and Pacific LNG potentially may sell a stake in Petroleum Retention License 15 to Exxon Mobil Corp. subsidiary, Exxon Mobil Papua New Guinea Ltd. InterOil and Pacific LNG may also be paid to drill more delineation wells in the Elk and Antelope fields, the companies said Friday.

If a deal is struck, it will need approval from the Papua New Guinea government.

In the next five years, a partnership between the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW ), The School for Field Studies (SFS ) and Kenya Wildlife Services (KWS), will see scientists, researchers, and veterinarians tracking elephant populations around the park to determine their needs for space and resources, and ultimately help prevent human-elephant conflict.

"It is a fact that Amboseli's 1,400 elephants spend up to 80 percent of their time outside the national park. They roam in the surrounding Maasai group ranches, and are known to cross over into Tsavo West National Park in Kenya, and wander south over the border into Tanzania as far as Kilimanjaro National Park. But how far do they go? Where exactly do they go? Why do they go there? What are the threats and challenges they face? These are all questions that this important research will be able to answer," said James Isiche, Director of IFAW East Africa, at a ceremony held in Amboseli last Thursday to mark the IFAW-SFS partnership.

Entitled "African elephant space needs and associated relationships in southern Kenya; a landscape study approach to secure range for wildlife," the project is being led by Dr. Moses Makonjio Okello, Senior Director of The SFS Center for Wildlife Management Studies in Kenya and Tanzania.

"Elephants need space and resources in order to be free, viable and to fulfill the flagship role they play in East Africa," said Dr. Okello."The IFAW-SFS partnership brings together our organizations' shared passion, vision, research, and management resources to help enhance the population, range and viability of the charismatic Amboseli elephant."

The first step of the project began two months ago with the radio collaring of six elephants (four male and two female), to be monitored for at least the next two years to provide critical information on elephant movement patterns within and outside of Amboseli.

With this information scientists will be able to establish the elephants' preferred habitats and why certain areas are chosen above others, and the threats that the elephants face. This information will enable the team to make clear recommendations that will be used to safeguard elephant herds for the long term.

"Seen in human terms, the information we gather will give us an elephant's eye view of optimum lifestyle standards for these giant creatures," said Isiche. "We will be able to make a case for the connection of their favoured habitats by securing critical corridors and securing the areas Amboseli that are essential for sustaining Amboseli's rich wildlife heritage, especially the elephants."

The IFAW-SFS study is part of IFAW's Amboseli Project, which includes enhancing KWS' law enforcement capabilities, leasing critical corridors and dispersal areas in community land, creating conservation awareness and local capacity for ecotourism ventures, and mitigating human-elephant conflict. The study is also a component of the SFS Center for Wildlife Management Studies Five Year Research Plan, or roadmap, which examines how land use and resource availability in the Amboseli ecosystem can be managed to foster the well-being of local communities as well as safeguarding biodiversity conservation.

IFAW North America Regional Director, Jeff Flocken, is an alum of the SFS program. He saw his first wild elephant while doing research on giraffes as a student on an SFS program in Kenya, and since then has devoted his professional life to conserving wildlife globally.

About IFAW (the International Fund for Animal Welfare) Founded in 1969, IFAW saves animals in crisis around the world. With projects in more than 40 countries, IFAW rescues individual animals, works to prevent cruelty to animals, and advocates for the protection of wildlife and habitats. For more information, visit . Follow us onand .

About The School for Field Studies: For more than 30 years, The School for Field Studies, the United States' largest environmental study abroad program for college undergraduates, has combined hands-on, multi-disciplinary environmental studies with scientific research to propose sustainable solutions to critical environmental problems. SFS students work with local communities to discover practical ways to manage their natural resources, and in the process undergo a transformational experience that helps them to advance their careers as skilled professionals and to become globally aware citizens. Visit . Follow us onand .

SOURCE International Fund for Animal Welfare

The symposium also included discussions about , the sun and past, present and future space missions.

John Grunsfeld, Associate Administrator for NASAs Science Mission Directorate, said that the upcomingwill be able to make important observations of the atmospheres of exoplanets. []

He said JWST wont be able to locate the exoplanets, only study them, but the recently selectedcould act as a  planet scout for JWST targets. It is estimated that TESS will discover around 300 "super-Earth" alien planets, many of them in the habitable zone.

But the number one challenge, Grunsfeld noted, is figuring out the .

I've flown to , planet Earth's first commercial space tourism outpost, for a press junket for the new science fiction film "After Earth." The spaceport, located nearly a mile above sea level in the desolate New Mexico desert, may not be open for suborbital spaceflight yet, but is hosting private events.

For the junket, the massive hangar has been arranged with tables and a rock climbing wall images and props from the movie. Still, there is lots of open space where five shuttles will sit once the building is operational. For the junket, they've emblazoned the runway and the curved walkway to the building with the "" spelled out in giant letters. []

Stylists, producers, Studio reps and the movie's screenwriters mill about as members of the press nibble on food and wait to speak with "After Earth" stars, Will and Jaden Smith. Despite the army of movie people in the building, it looks empty, like hosting a small barbecue on a football field.

Ready to go

The spaceport itself is nearly complete and is waiting for its anchor partner, the space tourism company Virgin Galactic, to complete flight tests of the private SpaceShipTwo spaceliner, said Aaron Prescott, the business operations manager for the facility.

"We are ready," Prescott told Space.com

In late April, the debutduring its first rocket-powered test flight. Virgin Galactic plans to build a fleet of SpaceShipTwo vehicles, each capable of carrying six passengers and two pilots, to launch customers on thrilling rocket rides to the edge of space and back. In a recent press interview, Sir Richard Branson, the head of Virgin Galactic, said he plans to be on an inaugural flight this Christmas, Prescott said.

The Spaceport is located in the isolated desert because the region sees 340 days of clear skies each year and is in close proximity to the White Sands Missile Range, which has restricted airspace. That means spaceflights launched from here wouldn't have to share the skies with Earth-bound commercial planes.

As a result, the Spaceport has built massive amounts of infrastructure, from roads to electricity to sewer lines, to a 1.3 million-gallon tank of water to douse potential fires.

"We built a small city in the desert," Prescott said.

Space for everyone

NASA astronauts train for years to get the chance to enter space, but once the facility is open,with money to burn ($250,000 to be precise) would be able to fly to space after completing three days of training to prevent them from blacking out or "throwing up on everybody," Prescott said.

Depending on demand, passengers may leave for space every month to every day. And while costs may start high, Prescott thinks Spaceport will help bring the cost of sub-orbital travel way down.

"What we want is the democratization of space," Prescott said.

Follow us,and.

The 70-year-old manager still looked closer to 80 after the Nationals beat the Philadelphia Phillies 5-2 Friday night, sporting the scraggly beginnings of facial hair he had vowed to keep until his team started hitting.

Five runs weren't enough, even though it was the most the Nationals had scored in a week. There was also a four-run fifth, the first time Washington had put up four or more in an inning in almost a month.

Johnson said he told a couple of his players: "It's getting close to coming off."

Their response: "They said it can't come off yet,"

"My wife, she probably wants me to take it off, I'm sure she does," Johnson said. "But I might leave it on, see if this is not something strange happening here."

The outburst of hitting provided the rare gift of a cushion for Jordan Zimmermann, who became the National League's first eight-game winner as Washington followed a calamitous road trip with a winning start to a homestand.

Zimmermann (8-2), pitching with a stiff neck that limited his control of his fastball, allowed two runs and six hits with no walks over seven innings actually raising his ERA to 1.71 on an unseasonably chilly and windy night in the nation's capital.

"I kind of cut him a little shorter than I normally would," Johnson said. "He still threw a heck of a ball game."

There was at least a bit of heat from the Nationals' lineup, which entered the game hitting .225, second worst in the majors. Washington had just completed a 10-game West Coast road trip that included a four-game losing streak, the team's sixth shutout loss of the season, Bryce Harper's head-first collision with a wall and a broken hand for Ryan Mattheus after he punched his locker following a rough outing.

Then Johnson arrived at the ballpark Friday saying: "I decided I wouldn't shave until we started hitting."

If Johnson does pull out the razor, Steve Lombardozzi should get due credit. Playing second while Danny Espinosa recovers from a broken wrist, Lombardozzi had three hits, including a two-out, two-run double that capped the rally in the four-run fifth.

"We score on pass balls, groundballs or short fly balls," Johnson said. "We haven't been getting base hits. To score five runs, we've been kind of stuck on none or one or two, so that was a big shot in the arm."

Phillies starter Kyle Kendrick (4-3) had his shortest outing of the season, allowing five runs and eight hits over five innings. He walked four for the second consecutive start, including three consecutive bases on balls that allowed the Nationals to score a run in the second with a sacrifice fly and no hits.

"Command was bad, threw a lot of balls, didn't get ahead in the count," Kendrick said. "Another one of those nights where it was 2-0, just behind the count, and I threw a lot of pitches."

The Phillies missed a chance to pull even in two ways. A win would have put them at .500 for the first time since April 14, and it also would have tied them with the Nationals, who had lost four of five and have been mired in mediocrity while dealing with the expectations of Johnson's preseason proclamation of "World Series or bust."

"Obviously, we've kind of been up and down all year," Kendrick said. "We had a chance to get it back tonight. Had a couple runs there and I couldn't hold it."

Notes: Rafael Soriano picked up his 14th save. ... Washington's last four-run inning came April 25 against the Cincinnati Reds. ... Headgear on both players when flying when Tyler Moore crashed into Kratz while trying to score on Lombardozzi's single in the fourth inning. Kratz held on to the ball, and Moore was out. ... Both teams are missing star power. The Phillies don't have Roy Halladay (shoulder surgery) and Chase Utley (oblique strain), while the Nationals are making do without Jayson Werth (hamstring) and Espinosa, who learned Friday that he's been playing with a slight fracture in his right wrist and will need a few days of rest, if not more. ... The Nationals plan to bring up INF-OF Jeff Kobernus from Triple-A Syracuse on Saturday and will likely designate RHP Yunesky Maya for assignment. ... Philadelphia recalled INF-OF Michael Martinez and RHP Michael Stutes to replace Utley (disabled list) and RHP Phillippe Aumont (optioned to Triple-A Lehigh Valley). ... Phillies RHP Mike Adams (right back strain) felt fine after a second rehab bullpen session Friday and is expected to be reactivated Sunday. ... Washington LHP Ross Detwiler will throw a full bullpen session Saturday and remains on pace to return to the rotation Tuesday after skipping one start because of back spasms.

___

Follow Joseph White on Twitter: http://twitter.com/JGWhiteAP

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Twitter's custom ad plan works like this: Companies will share the email address you gave to them — either at check-out or via online shopping — with Twitter, which then plans to share your address with advertisers, who will then use it to send the right ads to the right people back on Twitter. Don't be surprised if you start seeing promoted trends and tweets for your favorite stores around the end of the year, when sources tell Bloomberg the program would start rolling out. 

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It's not exactly as all-knowing as Facebook's current setup — the social network knows where we shop  — but there are still some privacy concerns. First of all, the premise alone is unsettling. This kind of targeted advertising can get specific in a way that might make tweeters uncomfortable. Why does Twitter know that Spencer's is my favorite retailer? Do I want Twitter knowing that? Maybe not.

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More worrying, at this point, is that it's unclear how Twitter will deliver this trove email addresses to advertisers. In order to ensure a certain level of anonymity between you and the marketer, for example, Facebook randomizes the letters and numbers in email addresses so that companies don't have direct access to your Facebook profile; in theory, the advertiser doesn't know who is getting the ad — just that the right person got it. If Twitter doesn't want a headache from users and privacy advocates, it will likely do some version of that process, known as hashing.

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But even that won't placate all the skeptics. "Hashing an email address in general is not very privacy protective," the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Dan Auerbach told The Atlantic Wire. Because most people use only letters in their e-mail addresses, turns out it's pretty easy to do what's called a "dictionary attack" to recreate the original address. "From a protective point of view, it might sound appealing, but it doesn't actually provide protection," Auerbach added.

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As much of a privacy overstep as Twitter's "custom audiences" strategy might present, knowing things about us fits with Twitter's advertising plan, as it . Just today, the platforma television advertising program that tracks people who tweet about certain shows to serve them Twitter ads that match those of the ads they saw during a commercial break. This type of marketing still relies on information we put into Twitter — a more standard form of web advertising. But, again, it takes our offline, off-Twitter habits — in this case television watching — and advertises directly toward that behavior, which is different than standard web advertising, which might follow us around the Internet but tends to leave our real lives alone. So much for that idea.

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Sure, it sounds a bit creepy to have an app always recording your entertained life, but it's also way more convenient. "The one lingering concern from our partners was, maybe a 30-second TV ad is not long enough for someone to pull out their device and Shazam a commercial," David Jones, Shazam's marketing chief, . Before the new upgrade, Shazam took approximately 12 seconds to boot up and tag, but auto-tagging speeds up the process to one to three seconds. In practice, Shazam will only tell a user about some bit of entertainment (or advertising) if they inquire, by physically tapping the tag. You'll then get all the extra information Shazam provides, without having to pull out your iPhone or iPad to hit the Shazam button. That information — and that information only — will also inform the app's , in which Shazam present users with "custom experiences" during commercial breaks of television shows they're watching. When a user Shazams a compatible program or television advertisement, not only does it pull up information about the program, but the branding kicks in on top. See? Convenience! But at what privacy cost?

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As one of the most successful apps of all time, the London-based Shazam recognizes the frightening implications of turning its music-ID software into a kind of always-on household eavesdropper, insisting that the company doesn't plan on using all the data it will inevitably collect for evil. "We're not trying to do anything like audience measurement on a grand scale across our user base. We're only interested in what our consumers actually engage in, not what auto-tagging may pick up around you," Shazam's executive vice president of marketing, David Jones, . Although the app tags everything it hears, it will only consider a sound "meaningful" if a user "engages" with said tag. "If the device just auto-tags it and it stays unopened, we'll treat it as something that wasn't of interest to you," he further explained. But what does that really mean? And can, like, the Justice Department come calling one day?

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Well, probably, yeah, they could call. But you should probably actually worry more about your newfound willful overengagement than your illicit conversations with friends while the TV is on: "We're already sitting on a goldmine of data, and we're being respectful and thoughtful about how we monetise that," Shazam's Jones added. And, of course, auto-tagging gives Shazam even more data than that "goldmine" by recording and tagging everything around us. Shazam says it will use all this information responsibly — but that's now, during expansion. As we've seen with lots of other data collection websites (ahem, Facebook) tunes change when investors and founders get agitated by the lack of profits generated by their free services. 

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There remains one very encouraging option for those with privacy fears: The new Shazam recording option is opt-in. And, hey, sometimes it might make sense to have the auto-tagging feature turned on, when the benefits outweigh the idea that Shazam is always listening. Like, during a commute, as Jones used as . "My entire commute's music was sitting there," he said.

Orders for durable goods, items expected to last at least three years, rose 3.3 percent last month from March, the Commerce Department said Friday. That followed a 5.9 decline in March.

A measure of business investment plans increased 1.2 percent. And the government revised the March figure to show a 0.9 percent gain, instead of a slight decrease.

Companies ordered more machinery and electronic products last month, typically signs of confidence. More spending by businesses could ease fears that manufacturing could drag on the economy later this year.

Factories had been seeing fewer orders at the start of the year, in part because slower global growth had reduced demand for U.S. exports. Economists had also worried that across-the-board federal spending cuts and higher taxes might prompt businesses to cut back on orders.

Paul Ashworth, an economist with Capital Economics, said the April report suggests economic growth is holding up. He predicts growth in the April-June quarter will be at a rate of 2 percent to 2.5 percent. That's not much lower than the 2.5 percent rate reported for the January-March quarter.

Still, the payoff from the pickup in business investment may not come until the end of the quarter. That's because the government looks at shipments when it measures the gross domestic product, not orders. And shipments of goods that signal investment plans fell in April, reflecting weaker demand at the start of the year.

"Business investment appears to have started the second quarter on a weak note but should rebound over the final two months of the quarter," he said.

The April increase pushed total orders to $222.6 billion on a seasonally adjusted basis. That is 6.5 percent above the level of a year ago.

Orders for transportation goods gained 8.1 percent, reflecting a 16.1 percent jump in demand for commercial aircraft and a 53.3 percent increase in orders for military aircraft. Orders for motor vehicles increased 1.9 percent.

Excluding the volatile transportation category, orders rose 1.3 percent in April. That followed a 1.7 percent decline in March.

Still, other reports showed that factories continued to struggle in April.

The Institute for Supply Management reported factory activity barely expanded in April, held back by weaker hiring and less company stockpiling.

And manufacturing output dropped 0.4 percent last month, the Federal Reserve reported earlier this month. Auto companies cranked out fewer cars, factories made fewer consumer goods and most other industries reduced output.

One bright spot for the economy has been the American consumer, who has shown surprising resilience this year despite paying higher Social Security taxes.

Consumer spending rose from January through March at the fastest pace in more than two years. Auto sales have been rising over the past year. And Americans boosted their spending at retailers in April, from cars and clothes to electronics and appliances.

A better job market and a sustained recovery in housing have helped soften some of the impact of the tax increase. Since November, employers have added an average 208,000 jobs a month. That's up from just 138,000 jobs a month during the previous six months.

The overall economy grew at an annual rate of 2.5 percent in the January-March quarter, buoyed by the fastest rise in consumer spending in more than two years. Many economists believe growth is slowing to around 2 percent in the current April-June quarter and could stay near or slightly above that level for the rest of the year.