Mei Xiang was put under general anesthesia and inseminated with a combination of fresh semen and frozen semen collected from the zoo's male giant panda, Tian Tian.

The Washington zoo said scientists performed a second and final insemination later on Saturday evening.

"It will be several months before we know if she is pregnant," the National Zoo said in a tweet.

Veterinarians detected a rise in hormone levels on Tuesday, indicating Mei Xiang was ready to breed but said "no competent breeding" between the panda pair had occurred.

"We are hopeful that our breeding efforts will be successful this year, and we're encouraged by all the behaviors and hormonal data we've seen so far," said Dave Wildt, head of the Center for Species Survival at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute.

Scientists will continue to monitor Mei Xiang's hormone levels in the coming months and conduct ultrasounds to determine whether she is pregnant. A pregnancy lasts between 95 and 160 days, they said.

Mei Xiang has given birth to two cubs. One died a week after its birth last year. The other, Tai Shan, was born in 2005 and is now at the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda in Wolong.

(Reporting by Jane Sutton; editing by Jackie Frank and Sandra Maler)

Yet in this age of social media saturation and in-your-face journalistic ego, Ricardo Calderon continues to shun the limelight. To the public, this old-fashioned gumshoe reporter's face is unknown.

Now, the prize-winning reporter fears, his cover has been blown.

Gunmen surprised Calderon last week when he stopped to relieve himself by the side of a rural road, pumping five bullets into his car as he dove into a ditch, escaping unscathed.

When his legs stopped shaking uncontrollably and the immediate danger passed, the 42-year-old investigative editor of Colombia's leading newsmagazine was gripped by a different fear: Could he be doomed professionally?

Suddenly, he was saddled with security detail of eight police bodyguards. He's since got it down to three.

"The object is to go back to moving alone, like before," he told The Associated Press. Sensitive sources tend to clam up when an investigative reporter arrives with an entourage.

At least his picture isn't circulating. And as for Twitter and Facebook, you won't find Calderon there.

"I have a phobia of photos," Calderon said. "I've taken it to a ridiculous extreme, really, for years so that there is no photograph of me anywhere."

Calderon's most recent investigative series for Semana magazine exposed the scandalously luxurious life of military officers jailed for crimes including murder and crimes against humanity at Tolemaida army base, a story he was working on last week when at least two gunmen opened fire after pulling up alongside his car just after dark and calling out his name.

It was the first attempt on the life of a Semana journalist in the magazine's 30 years and it sent shock waves through the news media and human rights communities because of Calderon's stature.

Until recently, provincial Colombian journalists were regularly hunted down and killed for exposing corruption, denouncing drug traffickers or reporting on other aspects of country's half-century-old civil conflict.

Colombia's independent Free Press Foundation counts 140 journalists murdered since 1977.

Calderon joined Semana 17 years later. He spent much of the late 1990s covering the conflict, then peace talks with the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces. When arch-conservative Alvaro Uribe won the presidency in 2002, and launched a peace dialogue with far-right militias known as paramilitaries, Calderon began to shine.

He had taken aim at provincial politicians' ties with the paramilitaries, who were formed in the 1980s to counteract leftist rebels but evolved into drug-trafficking, land-thieving criminal gangs who killed more civilians than guerrillas.

That June, Calderon published the contents of a phone conversation in which then-Sen. Alvaro Garcia and rancher Joaquin Garcia discussed their participation the massacre of 15 peasants two years earlier in a place called Macayepo.

It would be the first of a series of cases to expose what would become known as "parapolitics" and that led to the jailing of at least 70 lawmakers for collusion with the militias.The ex-senator was later convicted of ordering the Macayepo massacre and sentenced to 40 years in prison. The rancher is a fugitive.

Calderon, who is married without children and is the eldest of three siblings, says he's not the most skilled of writers. But his colleagues say no one has matched him for cover stories.

"He is a very timid man, a man whose timidity turns out to be an enormous virtue because he listens a lot and doesn't talk much," said Daniel Coronell, news director at Univision and a longtime Semana columnist.

Calderon is nothing if not informal. He says he only remembers wearing a tie twice. He works in an office that looks more like an archive store room, its steel shelves neatly stacked with binders.

Calderon in many ways is heedless of his own well-being: He eschews exercise, smokes at least a pack and a half of cigarettes a day, eats at odd hours, drinks coffee all day.

"He's a journalist out of a novel," said co-worker Claudia Garcia.

It was Calderon's work, in large part, that landed Uribe's first DAS domestic intelligence agency chief, Jorge Noguera, in prison.

He wrote in 2003 that Noguera was working with the paramilitaries. Seven years later, Noguera was convicted of murder and sentenced to 25 years in prison for giving them information that helped them kill leftist university professor Alfredo Correa de Andreis.

Calderon's biggest scoop would follow.

In February 2009, he revealed that the DAS had been illegally spying on Supreme Court judges, prominent journalists, human rights activists and political foes of Uribe.

More than 20 DAS agents would end up in prison and a former DAS director, Maria del Pilar Hurtado, in exile in Panama after an investigation that grew out of the Noguera case and become, at one point, quite dangerous.

In 2009, two of Calderon's sources were killed, he said. "That really takes its toll on you. And one source, someone threw grenades into his house. It was a miracle he survived."

Calderon also got repeated phone death threats and three funeral wreaths, a popular Colombian way of saying 'shut up or I'll kill you.'

The people Calderon worries have tried to keep tabs. In November, a tiny listening device was found hidden in the overhead lamp in his office.

Calderon's latest big journalistic adventure began last year.

He managed to get into the prison at the Tolemaida base in the central Magdalena River valley near Bogota, where he discovered that officers convicted of heinous crimes were coming and going as they pleased.

"Officers sentenced to more than 30 years were heading out on shopping trips to Bogota, going out partying and continued to run businesses," Calderon wrote in April. He managed to film one convicted murderer in a Bogota department store.

On May 1, still reporting the story, a scheduled appointment near Tolemaida fell through. A source didn't show. Calderon thinks it could have been a trap.

He was ambushed as he returned. Informed of the attack, President Santos, Human Rights Watch and the Inter-American Press Association all demanded a quick and thorough investigation.

Colombia's chief prosecutor, Eduardo Montealegre, immediately pulled together a team of investigators.

"It was an attempt to silence him, Semana and journalism in general," said Marta Ruiz, a leading Colombian investigative journalist. "I think it comes from sectors whose corrupt business interests have been and continue to be exposed by Ricardo. But knowing Ricardo, they won't shut him up."

Calderon also believes the attempt was related to his work. He said he doesn't yet know whom to blame and, far from being cowed by the attack, is launching his own investigation.

"The only thing they did was to get me riled up."

__

Associated Press writer Vivian Sequera in Bogota and Frank Bajak in Lima, Peru, contributed to this report.

[More from BGR: ]

This article was

The biggest change: a five-page short form that single people can fill out. That total includes a cover page with instructions, and an extra page to fill out if you want to designate someone to help you through the process.

But the application form for families still runs to 12 pages, although most households will not have to fill out each and every page.

The paperwork takes on added importance because Americans remain confused about what President Barack Obama's health care overhaul will mean for them. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll released Tuesday found that 4 in 10 are unaware it's the law of the land. Some think it's been repealed by Congress, but in fact, it's still on track.

At his news conference Tuesday, Obama hailed the simplified forms as an example of how his team listened to criticism from consumer groups and made a fix. The law's benefits will be available to all Americans, he emphasized, even if Republicans in Congress still insist on repeal, and many GOP governors won't help put it into place.

When the first draft of the application turned out to be a clunker, "immediately, everybody sat around the table and said, 'Well, this is too long, especially...in this age of the Internet,'" Obama recounted. "'People aren't going to have the patience to sit there for hours on end. Let's streamline this thing.'"

His administration is open to making improvements, Obama added: "Those kinds of refinements, we're going to be working on."

Consumers will start getting familiar with the new applications less than six months from now, on Oct. 1, when new insurance markets open for enrollment in every state. Most people with job-based benefits will not have to bother with the applications, only the uninsured.

Under the law, middle-class people who don't get coverage through their jobs will be able to purchase private insurance. Most will be able to get tax credits, based on their incomes, to make their premiums more affordable. Low-income uninsured people will be steered to government programs like Medicaid.

Benefits begin Jan. 1, and nearly 30 million uninsured Americans are eventually expected to get coverage.

While the first drafts of the applications were widely panned, the new forms were seen as an improvement. Still, consumers must provide a snapshot of their finances to see if they qualify for help. That potentially includes multiple sources of income, from alimony, to tips, to regular paychecks.

"Given the amount of information necessary to determine eligibility, it's hard to see how the forms could be any shorter," said Robert Laszewski, a former insurance executive turned industry consultant.

Activist Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, is an administration ally who had openly criticized the first draft of the forms, worrying that consumers would get discouraged just trying to fill them out. He called the changes "very positive."

"There has got to be a balance to between getting adequate (financial) information to make sure everybody gets the help they're entitled to under the law, while at the same time trying to keep the process consumer-friendly," saidPollack.

Although the new forms are shorter, the administration wasn't able to get rid of all the complexity. Individuals will have to gather tax returns, pay stubs and other financial records before filling out the application.

Administration officials expect most consumers to apply online through the new insurance marketplaces in each state. A single application process will serve to route consumers to either private plans or the Medicaid program. Identification, citizenship and immigration status, as well as income details, are supposed to be verified in close to real time through a federal "data hub" that will involve pinging Social Security, Homeland Security and the Internal Revenue Service.

Currently, applying for health insurance individually entails filling out a lengthy questionnaire about your health. Under Obama's overhaul, insurers will no longer be able to turn away the sick, or charge them more. The health care questions will disappear, but they'll be replaced by questions about your income. Consumers who underestimate their incomes could be in for an unwelcome surprise later on in the form of smaller tax refunds.

"Consumers will have a simple-easy to understand way to apply for health coverage later this year," said Medicare chief Marilyn Tavenner, also overseeing the rollout of the health care law. She said the application is "significantly shorter than industry standards."

Among the sections eliminated in the new form was one that asked applicants if they also wanted to register to vote. Some congressional Republicans had criticized that, calling it politically motivated.

ROME (Reuters) - Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta won a final confidence vote on Tuesday and left for Berlin to push his agenda of easing austerity to revive the economy with Chancellor Angela Merkel, champion of Europe's increasingly unpopular belt-tightening.

The 46-year-old Letta was sworn in on Sunday at the head of an uneasy right-left coalition government and won a confidence vote in the Senate after a similar victory in the lower house on Monday.

He immediately came under pressure from coalition partners to negotiate budget leeway for Rome with its European Union partners, an uphill task in Germany at least.

Before the Berlin visit, conservative German lawmakers warned Letta was unlikely to find Merkel a willing ally for easing debt rules only months before she faces an election herself, with voters strongly in favor of making heavily indebted eurozone states like Italy cut spending.

"It is certainly not the moment for debt-financed growth programs," Norbert Barthle, a member of the lower-house budget committee, told Reuters.

Letta took the helm of the euro zone's third biggest economy in the middle of a severe crisis, with unemployment at 20-year highs and the recession, already matching the longest since World War Two, seen dragging on all year.

In a sign of intense pressure he already faces, four-times Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi threatened to pull his center-right People of Freedom party out of the coalition if it does not abolish an unpopular housing tax.

Berlusconi, who is not in cabinet but is playing a decisive role behind the scenes, added that the government must re-negotiate EU deficit commitments, echoing similar comments made earlier by two of Letta's own ministers.

But Foreign Minister Emma Bonino, a former European commissioner, responded that Italy could not alter its targets, a view repeated by a spokesman for the European Commission.

"The targets, the objectives remain those that have been agreed," commission spokesman Simon O'Connor said.

COMMON EUROPEAN DESTINY

Speaking in the Senate before the confidence vote, Letta argued that Italy's need to ease austerity during the economic slump was shared by many European countries.

"What is happening in Italy is happening all over Europe," he said. "Either there is a common European destiny or each country will eventually decline on its own."

On Wednesday, he travels to Paris where he is likely to find a more sympathetic hearing from French President Francois Hollande, who is also pushing for a switch of emphasis towards growth rather than austerity.

He will then go to Brussels, where he plans talks with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.

On Tuesday Industry Minister Flavio Zanonato and Regional Affairs Minister Graziano Delrio said Italy would seek to exempt public investments from budget calculations, which would in effect allow increased spending.

Italy's 2013 deficit target now stands at 2.9 percent of gross domestic product, just a notch below the EU ceiling of three percent.

The country's biggest labor unions on Tuesday said they would hold a joint protest on June 22 to push for more job creating policies. The danger from rising social tensions was highlighted on Sunday in a dramatic gun attack in Rome.

An unemployed man shot two police officers in front of the prime minister's office as Letta's government was being sworn in at the presidential palace. He told investigators he wanted to strike at politicians before being stopped at a police cordon.

To ease the pain of austerity, Letta has proposed freezing a planned increase in sales tax and suspending the housing levy opposed by Berlusconi, although he has not said he would scrap it altogether as the center-right is demanding.

Those two measures alone will cost about 4 billion euros ($5.24 billion) in lost revenue this year, and labor unions are asking that the government set aside another billion euros to fund benefits for idled factory workers. Letta has not given details of how he would raise revenue to fund tax reductions.

($1 = 0.7634 euros)

(With additional reporting by Giuseppe Fonte, Stephen Brown in Berlin, and Adrian Croft in Brussels; writing by Steve Scherer; editing by Barry Moody and Mike Collett-White)

Refunds may be delayed four to six weeks from mid-February, likely not showing up until late March, the IRS said.

The agency is working with tax-preparation businesses to deliver the refunds, said IRS spokeswoman Michelle Eldridge.

An H&R Block spokesman said the software problem had been fixed and the company was working with the IRS.

Two companies that provide online tax preparation software, Intuit Inc and Jackson Hewitt Tax Service Inc, said their programs were not affected and their education credit customers are not experiencing delays.

Various delays have hampered the tax season this year, slowing the arrival of refunds.

In February, some taxpayers who claimed earned income tax credits were hit by refund delays, the IRS said.

On Tuesday, a Wal-Mart Stores Inc executive said shoppers had cashed about $2.7 billion in tax refund checks at its U.S. stores so far this year. At this point last year, that amount was about $4 billion.

The IRS delayed the start of the tax filing season by eight days, to January 30, due to the enactment of tax law changes made to resolve the "fiscal cliff.

(Reporting by Patrick Temple-West; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and John Wallace)

"Tiny Commando," created by the "The Office" star, was unveiled Monday night in a presentation by Yahoo to advertisers in New York. It stars Helms, along with Zachary Levi, of "Chuck," and Gillian Jacobs, of "Community."

Following in Netflix's footsteps, Yahoo will simultaneously release all episodes of "Tiny Commando" and other comedy series this fall.

Yahoo, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., also will debut a series titled "Losing Your Virginity With John Stamos," in which the former "Full House" actor interviews celebrities about their first sexual experiences. Documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock executive produces.

Along with YouTube, Netflix and Hulu, Yahoo has sought in recent years to expand into original programming mainly short-form Web series that draws users to its platform. Erin McPherson, Yahoo vice president and head of video, said the company has more than doubled its original video programming in the last year.

Yahoo's presentation Monday was part of this week's Digital Content NewFronts, at which digital media companies lay out their programming plans much like TV broadcasters do every spring. Last year, Yahoo touted its most high-profile series: Tom Hanks' sci-fi, animated "Electric City." While "Electric City" was widely judged a dud, Yahoo has found a modest hit in "Burning Love," a parody of "The Bachelor" now beginning its third season.

Also part of this year's slate is Cheryl Hines, a star of "Curb Your Enthusiasm." Hines and Rachael Harris will star in "We Need Help," a comedy in which the two actresses exploit a shared personal assistant.

Yahoo announced that beginning this summer it's partnering with the WWE to make the Web portal an online hub for professional wrestling videos. Yahoo will produce a 30-minute pre-show to the WWE's "Monday Night Raw" and distribute two weekly wresting series.

Last week, Yahoo announced a deal to stream "Saturday Night Live" archival clips.

___

Follow AP Entertainment Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jake_coyle

Critics are charging PETA renowned for its aggressive anti-cruelty campaigns with hypocrisy after the group's euthanasia statistics were posted onof the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

PETA, however, insists the allegations are financially motivated by an industry group whose "goal is to damage PETA by misrepresenting the situation," said Jane Dollinger, spokeswoman for PETA, in a statement.

According to the published records, PETA euthanized 1,675 of the 1,877 animals in its care in 2012, including 602 dogs and 1,045 cats. []

"It seems PETA is more dedicated to publicity stunts than to keeping the animals in its own care alive," Justin Wilson of the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) told the .

"It's the height of hypocrisy for PETA to demonstrate for the 'rights' of rats and pigs, while killing tens of thousands of pets. It's time that the Commonwealth of Virginia finally reclassifies PETA's pet shelter for what it is a slaughterhouse," Wilson said.

The CCF is a nonprofit organization "devoted to promoting personal responsibility and protecting consumer choices" from "animal-rights misanthropes and meddling bureaucrats," according to its website.

And the CCF, which receives financial support from the restaurant, food and beverage industries, has locked horns with PETA in the past.

"This is old information regurgitated with a slant by a front group for Philip Morris, Outback Steakhouse, KFC, cattle ranchers, and other animal exploiters that kill millions of animals every year and do so not out of compassion but out of greed," PETA's Dollinger wrote in an email to LiveScience.

"Most of the animals we take in are society's rejects: aggressive, on death's door or somehow unadoptable."

Each year, between 3 million and 4 millionare euthanized in the United States, according to estimates from the Humane Society of the United States.

"Anyone who is shocked to learn how many animals have to be euthanized annually should ask themselves if they're spaying and neutering their companion animals, adopting from shelters instead of buying from breeders and pet stores, and demanding higher animal care standards in their own communities," Dollinger said.

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York City took the first step on Monday in outlawing sales of cigarettes to anyone under age 21, in an effort to reduce smoking among the age group in which most smokers take up the habit.

The bill, which was introduced by the City Council and has the backing of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, would make New York City, which already has the highest cigarette taxes in the nation, the first big city or state to set the smoking age at 21. Currently, individuals must be 18 to buy cigarettes.

Eight in 10 adult smokers in the city started smoking regularly when they were below the age of 21, and most smokers who are under age 18 obtain cigarettes from individuals who are just a few years older than them, city officials said.

While an increase in cigarette taxes contributed to a 15-point drop among youth smokers from 1999 to 2007, the number of high-school-aged smokers has held steady at about 8.5 percent over the last six years.

Cigarette packs sold in New York City currently carry a state tax of $4.35 and a city tax of $1.50 - making it the most expensive city in the nation to be a smoker.

"Too many adult smokers begin this deadly habit before age 21," City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said. "By delaying our city's children and young adults access to lethal tobacco products, we're decreasing the likelihood they ever start smoking, and thus, creating a healthier city."

The bill marks the latest effort in the city's decade-long fight to discourage smoking, which the city's health commissioner, Thomas Farley, said was the most significant cause of preventable death in the city. In 2003, Bloomberg outlawed smoking in bars and restaurants, and smoking has since been banned in other public places, including parks.

Quinn, who is running to become the city's next mayor, made clear that she would continue Bloomberg's aggressive public health agenda - which has led his detractors to dub him the "nanny mayor."

MOST TOBACCO USE STARTS IN ADOLESCENCE

While most of the city's anti-smoking initiatives have originated with Bloomberg, the mayor did not join Quinn in making the announcement on Monday, instead sending Farley to say that the mayor looks forward to signing the bill into law.

Every U.S. state prohibits retailers from selling tobacco products to minors and in most states the smoking age is set at 18. Four states - Alabama, Alaska, New Jersey and Utah - require that a cigarette purchaser be at least 19 years old.

In New York, Nassau and Suffolk counties on Long Island have already boosted their legal age for buying cigarettes and other tobacco products to 19.

Nearly all tobacco use starts in childhood and adolescence, according to the 2012 report by the U.S. Surgeon General, which declared smoking a "pediatric epidemic" both in the United States and globally.

According to the report, 99 percent of all first use of tobacco occurs by age 26. The report also found that if youth and young adults manage to avoid smoking or other tobacco products, very few will begin smoking after that age.

Evidence suggests that once youth start smoking, many find it hard to quit. Of all adult cigarette smokers in the United States who smoke daily, 88 percent started smoking by age 18, according to the report.

Currently, about one out of four seniors in high school - youth aged 17 or 18 - smoke on a regular basis. Among those who continue smoking, half will die 13 years earlier than non-smoking peers.

It was not immediately clear how the tobacco industry would respond to the proposed legislation, which Quinn said she hoped would become a model for the rest of the country.

"Our companies follow the law whatever it is in any jurisdiction," said Jane Seccombe, spokeswoman for Reynolds American Inc, the parent company of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co, American Snuff Co and Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Co. "We believe no minors, however they're classified in those jurisdictions, should be able to access tobacco products."

She declined to comment on any potential sales impact from changes in the minimum age.

(Reporting by Edith Honan; Additional reporting by Julie Steenhuysen, Barbara Goldberg and Martinne Geller; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe, Cynthia Johnston and Marguerita Choy)

If confirmed by the Senate, Foxx would replace outgoing Secretary Ray LaHood.

Foxx is Obama's first black nominee among the new Cabinet members appointed for the second term. The president faced criticism early in his second term for a lack of diversity among his nominees.

The official insisted on anonymity to avoid public discussion of the pick before the official announcement.

The official noted that Foxx has led efforts to improve his city's transit infrastructure to expand economic opportunity for businesses and workers. During Foxx's term as mayor, Charlotte has broken ground on several important transportation projects, including the Charlotte Streetcar Project to bring modern electric tram service to the city as well as a third parallel runway at Charlotte/Douglas International Airport. The city has also moved to extend the LYNX light rail system to the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, the official said.

If confirmed by the Senate, Foxx would take over a department that has been at the center of Washington's debate over the impact of the so-called sequester cuts. The automatic cuts resulted in furloughs for air traffic controllers that helped cause delays at many airports.

Congress reached a deal last week to provide the Transportation Department flexibility that allowed it to end the air traffic controller furloughs.

Foxx, an attorney who has worked in several positions with the federal government, was first elected mayor in 2009. He raised his national profile last year when Charlotte played host to the Democratic Party's convention.

He also served as a member of the Charlotte City Council.