The sun's magnetic field caused the tail of to wiggle in strange ways during the icy wanderer's suicidal plunge through the solar atmosphere in December 2011, researchers have found, suggesting that the close approaches of such "sungrazer comets" can help astronomers better understand Earth's star.

"I liken Lovejoy and these other comets to sort of naturally occurring celestial explorers, in that they're going there for us and, in a way, returning data that we can use in a complementary way," said study lead author Cooper Downs of Predictive Science Inc. in San Diego. []

Judith A. Salerno will replace Nancy Brinker as CEO of the Dallas-based organization. Brinker, whose promise to her dying sister begat a fundraising powerhouse that has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in cancer research, announced last summer she would step down following an onslaught of criticism over Komen's decision quickly reversed to stop giving grants to Planned Parenthood for breast cancer screenings.

Salerno, 61, is executive director and chief operating officer of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, a prestigious independent group that advises the government and private sector about health and science.

"Komen's commitment has helped countless numbers of low-income and medically underserved women and men get care they might otherwise have gone without, and Komen's research program is one of the most highly respected in the nation," Salerno said in a statement.

The appointment of Salerno, with her deep medical background, comes after the embattled Komen foundation saw several executives leave and numbers fall at their fundraising Races for the Cure across the country in the months after the Planned Parenthood controversy. Earlier this month, Komen announced it was canceling half of its three-day charity walks due to a drop in participation levels.

When asked about Salerno's views on Planned Parenthood or the funding controversy, Komen spokeswoman Andrea Rader said the charity was focusing on moving forward.

"That's an issue that was settled a long time ago," Rader said, also describing Salerno as a good fit due to her experience in a range of areas, from public policy to community health.

Leaders of Komen affiliates met Monday's announcement with enthusiasm.

"It looks to me like they did a very, very thorough job and found an ideal candidate," said Dana Curish, executive director for the group's central Indiana affiliate in Indianapolis. "From her background and experience, she sounds like she'll be the perfect person to lead us going forward."

Curish said that a CEO can accomplish a lot just by telling Komen's story.

"What we're doing is unrelated to the Planned Parenthood controversies but those controversies are impacting the dollars that we have available to fund research and to fund services for low-income individuals," Curish said. "We just need to continue to tell that story as best we can.

"If the dollars dry up, so will the breakthroughs," she said.

Brinker founded the charity in honor of her sister, who died of breast cancer in 1980. Its signature color of pink has become synonymous with breast cancer awareness. The 67-year-old announced in August that she would move from the CEO role, which she'd held since 2009, into a new one focused on fundraising and strategic planning.

News broke in late January 2012 about the charity's decision to halt grants to Planned Parenthood, causing a torrent of questions and calls for its reversal. The decision was reversed within days, but ended up angering Komen supporters on both sides of the abortion debate.

Karen Handel, who was hired by Komen as vice president for public policy in April 2011, had been given the task of figuring out how to disengage the charity from Planned Parenthood. She resigned about a week after the decision became public and later wrote a blistering account of the episode in a book titled "Planned Bullyhood."

Komen also recently canceled its 3-day races in which participants raise at least $2,300 to walk 60 miles over three days in seven of its 14 cities for next year.

Planned Parenthood spokesman Eric Ferrero said in a statement Monday it wished Salerno well in her new role, adding, "we're proud of our continued partnerships with Komen and others to ensure that all women, regardless of income, have access to information and high-quality health care to prevent, detect and treat breast cancer."

Salerno is board-certified in internal medicine, earned her M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1985 and a master of science in health policy from Harvard School of Public Health in 1976.

___

Associated Press writer Nomaan Merchant contributed to this report.

Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday that the rate on the 30-year low stayed at 3.53 percent. That's near the 3.31 percent reached in November, which was the lowest on record going back to 1971.

The rate on the 15-year fixed mortgage stayed at 2.77 percent for a second week. The record low is 2.63 percent.

The one-year adjustable mortgage was the only rate to change this week. It averaged 2.61 percent, up from 2.53 percent last week.

Cheap mortgages are giving a boost to the slowly improving housing market.

Increased sales have helped to push home prices up, which makes consumers feel wealthier and helps to boost consumer spending. In addition, the increased housing demand is boosting new home construction.

Still, housing has a long way to go to achieve a full recovery. And many people are unable to take advantage of the low rates, either because they can't qualify under stricter lending rules or they lack the money to meet larger down payment requirements.

To calculate average mortgage rates, Freddie Mac surveys lenders across the country on Monday through Wednesday of each week. The average doesn't include extra fees, known as points, which most borrowers must pay to get the lowest rates. One point equals 1 percent of the loan amount.

The average fee for 30-year loans was 0.8 point, the same as last week. The fee for 15-year mortgages was 0.8 point, up from 0.7 point last week. The fee for one-year adjustable rate mortgages was 0.3 point, down from 0.4 point last week.

Freddie Mac said that the average rate on five-year adjustable-rate mortgages edged up to 2.64 percent this week from 2.63 percent last week. The fee stayed the same at 0.6 point.

ATHENS (Reuters) - Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras on Sunday dismissed talk of an early election over the abrupt closure of the state broadcaster, which brought protests from viewers, workers, the opposition and his coalition partners.

Samaras defended his decision to close ERT and relaunch what he said would be a smaller, more efficient version as a way for Greece to show it was serious about implementing reforms and saving money under the terms of its international bailout.

But a clash between the prime minister and his two left-wing coalition partners over when and how to resume public broadcasts has raised the prospect of political turmoil, just a year after Greeks went to the polls, and the derailing of the bailout.

"If some people naively believe that they can trap us into an election dilemma, let them not tire themselves," Samaras told a gathering of his conservative New Democracy party in the seaside town of Nafplio in the Peloponnese. "Nobody wants it."

The opposition Syriza party said Samaras's decision to close ERT was "the climax of his authoritarian policy" and urged Greeks to rally in Syntagma square in Athens on Monday at 8 p.m. (1700 GMT), where party leader Alexis Tsipras was to deliver a speech.

The Communist-affiliated trade union PAME also called a rally near ERT's headquarters, where workers had been gathering since its closure.

The decision to take the 75-year-old ERT off air at midnight last Tuesday has split the fragile coalition. Both junior partners have said they want to avoid a new vote, although PASOK leader Evangelos Venizelos told a Sunday newspaper he "was not afraid" of an election.

Opinion polls indicate that support for all three ruling parties has suffered since last year's election. No party has enough support to govern alone.

RULE BY DECREE

"Moves aimed to impress, in violation of basic principles of parliamentary majority, are not reforms," Venizelos said. The decision to close ERT was made by ministerial decree, meaning that it could be implemented without reference to parliament.

Greece has won praise from its 'troika' of international lenders - the International Monetary Fund, the European Union and the European Central Bank - for its efforts to get its bailout programme on track and German Chancellor Angela Merkel telephoned Samaras on Sunday to "pledge her support", her office said.

"Now it is of clear importance to push through all troika agreements, including those with regard to the reform of the public service," it said in a statement.

Samaras has invited his allies, who want the immediate reopening of ERT's television and radio stations, to a meeting on Monday. They have so far turned down a compromise involving rehiring a smaller number of staff to resume news broadcasts.

The government says ERT's three domestic television channels and regional, national and external radio stations cost Greece 300 million euros a year.

Many Greeks have long viewed the broadcaster as a wasteful source of patronage jobs for political parties, but the abruptness with which ERT was taken off air took many by surprise. Opinion polls suggest a majority oppose the move.

Samaras argues that shutting down ERT is the only way to restructure the broadcaster, after previous attempts at reform failed. "This is what we are changing because it's right, because it's fair and because it should have been done years ago," he said.

(Additional reporting by Alexandra Hudson in Berlin; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

NEW YORK (Reuters) - This time, the Fed is serious.

That's the judgment of U.S. government bond investors who believe the Federal Reserve is close to paring back its $2.5 trillion, 4-1/2-year bond purchase program, and it's causing turmoil in the U.S. Treasury market.

Trading in Treasuries has turned notably more volatile in recent days and volatility may continue as traders try to adjust to a marketplace in flux.

In the last six weeks, benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note yields have surged to 2.19 percent, from 1.60 percent at the beginning of May.

As a result the market has seen a sharp outflow from bond funds and notable lack of demand in Treasury bond auctions. The fund outflows and the rise in volatility offer a worrying glimpse of how markets are likely to behave as the Fed works to scale back its enormous monetary stimulus of the U.S. economy.

"When you see the volumes and the movements developing in different markets, then it shows you that the transition from accommodation to tapering to eventual sideline and then subsequent tightening is going to have a lot of bumps in the road," said Steve Rodosky, head of Treasuries and derivatives trading at Pimco, which runs the world's largest bond fund.

Expectations for future volatility in the government bond market have also jumped. The Merrill Lynch MOVE index , which estimates future volatility of long-term bond yields, jumped to 84.7 on Monday, its highest level in almost a year, from a multi-year low of around 50 at the beginning of May, to 79 on Thursday.

Fighting the Fed has long been seen as a losing strategy. After four years of record monetary stimulus, however, many investors are unsure of what to do when the Fed is not the primary driver of market moves.

Investors have fled from bond funds as rates rise, pulling $10.93 billion from bond funds in the week ended June 5, according to the Investment Company Institute, the biggest weekly outflow since October 15, 2008. Bond flows had previously seen inflows for 21 straight months, according to ICI.

"There is no difference in voice in the market any more. There are a few very large players and every single one of them pretty much follows the Fed, so when the Fed withdraws everyone tried to withdraw at the same time and there's no other side of the market," said Gang Hu, head of U.S. linear rates trading at Credit Suisse in New York.

At the same time, large dealer banks are less able to absorb large debt sales as new rules meant to reduce risks taken by institutions result in smaller bank balance sheets, potentially adding to price volatility. This week's quarterly auctions by the U.S. Treasury of three, ten and thirty year debt have all been notably weak.

"The ability of dealers to warehouse the shedding of risk is much more limited due to the regulatory environment, which argues for an exaggerated price move to these flows," Merrill Lynch analysts said on Wednesday in a report.

INFLECTION POINT

Not everyone sees a Fed pullback from its bond buying program in the near-term, especially with inflation below the Fed's target of 2.0 percent and unemployment above the target of 6.5 percent.

"The markets seems to have gotten an idea that it could be very soon; we think that's a complete misread and is very unlikely," said Michael Schumacher, head of global rates strategy at UBS in Stamford, Connecticut.

But many see the market as nearing an inflection point at which it will either become clear that the Fed's easing has put economic growth on a solid enough track to stop expanding the Fed's balance sheet, or that the benefit of further easing is outweighed by the risk of asset bubbles and market distortions.

"You've got another maybe 12-18 months of (QE) and at that point you should expect rates to go higher," said Tad Rivelle, chief investment officer of fixed income at TCW, where he helps manage $135 billion in assets.

"QE does have enormous power, but that power is not under the precise direction and guidance of the Fed. Lacking the ability to specify exactly where the excess of liquidity ultimately ends up suggests that it can leak out into emerging markets, it can run into the housing market, it can run into the equity market," Rivelle said.

The negative effects of the Fed stepping out of the market have been felt before, between the central bank's earlier quantitative easing or "QE" programs, but they were temporary as the economy sputtered anew and the Fed stepped back in. Many investors believe, however, that this time the economy is better placed to absorb the shock as the Fed stops expanding its balance sheet.

A return to a more normal level of interest rates will result in a zero total return over the next five years for investors benchmarked to the popular Barclays U.S. Aggregate Bond Index, said Zane Brown, fixed income strategist at asset manager Lord Abbett & Co LLC in Jersey City, New Jersey.

"May is a microcosm of what we might expect over the next several years because finally people did lose money in fixed income in May," Brown said.

The longer the Fed's purchases continue, meanwhile, the more difficult it may be for traders to adapt to a market without its regular presence.

"The Fed has to somehow manage to take its hand off the market and let the market function again, let the natural supply and demand function again," said Credit Suisse's Hu.

(Additional reporting by Herb Lash; Editing by David Gaffen and Clive McKeef)

The chairman of that committee, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., also released excerpts of congressional investigators' interviews with employees of the IRS office in Cincinnati. Issa said the interviews indicated the employees were directed by Washington to subject tea party and other conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status to tough scrutiny.

The closest the excerpts came to direct evidence that Washington had ordered the screening was one employee saying that "all my direction" came from an official who the excerpt said was in Washington. The top Democrat on that panel, Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, contested Issa's claim, saying none of the employees interviewed have so far identified any IRS officials in Washington as ordering that targeting.

The conference spending included $4 million for an August 2010 gathering in Anaheim, Calif., for which the agency did not negotiate lower room rates, even though that is standard government practice, according to a statement by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Instead, some of the 2,600 attendees received benefits, including baseball tickets and stays in presidential suites that normally cost $1,500 to $3,500 per night. In addition, 15 outside speakers were paid a total of $135,000 in fees, with one paid $17,000 to talk about "leadership through art," the House committee said.

The report by the Treasury Department's inspector general, set to be released Tuesday, comes as the IRS already is facing bipartisan criticism after agency officials disclosed they had targeted tea party and other conservative groups.

Agency officials and the Obama administration have said that treatment was inappropriate, but the political tempest is showing no signs of ebbing and has put the White House on the defensive.

Three congressional committees are investigating, a Justice Department criminal investigation is under way, President Barack Obama has replaced the IRS' acting commissioner and two other top officials have stepped aside.

The Treasury Department released a statement Sunday saying the administration "has already taken aggressive and dramatic action to reduce conference spending."

IRS spokeswoman Michelle Eldridge said Sunday that spending on large agency conferences with 50 or more participants fell from $37.6 million in the 2010 budget year to $4.9 million in 2012. The government's fiscal year begins Oct. 1 the previous calendar year.

On Friday, the new acting commissioner, Danny Werfel, released a statement on the forthcoming report criticizing the Anaheim meeting.

"This conference is an unfortunate vestige from a prior era," Werfel said. "While there were legitimate reasons for holding the meeting, many of the expenses associated with it were inappropriate and should not have occurred."

Issa's committee also released excerpts from interviews congressional investigators conducted last week with two IRS employees from the agency's Cincinnati office. The excerpts omitted the names of those interviewed and provided no specifics about individuals in Washington who may have been involved.

One of the IRS employees said in an excerpt that they were told by a supervisor that the need to collect the reports came from Washington, and said that in early 2010 the Cincinnati office had sent copies of seven of the cases to Washington.

One of the workers also expressed skepticism that the Cincinnati office originated the screening without direction from Washington, according to the excerpts.

Appearing Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union," Issa said this conflicted with White House comments that have referred to misconduct by IRS workers in Cincinnati. Without naming White House spokesman Jay Carney, Issa said the administration's "paid liar, their spokesperson" is "still making up things about what happens in calling this local rogue."

He added, "This is a problem that was coordinated in all likelihood right out of Washington headquarters and we're getting to proving it."

In briefings with reporters, Carney has not referred to the Cincinnati IRS office as "rogue."

"He's good at throwing out outlandish charges but it's unclear what he's saying he lied about," White House spokesman Eric Schultz said of Issa's remark.

Cummings said Issa's comments conflicted with a Treasury inspector general's report that provided no evidence that the Cincinnati office received orders on targeting from anyone else.

"Rather than lobbing unsubstantiated conclusions on national television for political reasons, we need to work in a bipartisan way to follow the facts where they lead," Cummings said.

The interviews with IRS employees were conducted by Republican and Democratic aides on Issa's committee and also involved aides from both parties from the House Ways and Means Committee.

One of the employees was a lower-level worker while the other was higher-ranked, said one congressional aide, but the committee did not release their names or titles.

The IRS Cincinnati office handles applications from around the country for tax-exempt status. A Treasury inspector general's report in May said employees there began searching for applications from tea party and conservative groups in their hunt for organizations that primarily do work related to election campaigns.

That May report blamed "ineffective management" for letting that screening occur for more than 18 months between 2010 and 2012. But that report and three hearings by congressional committees have produced no specific evidence that the Cincinnati workers were ordered by anyone in Washington to target conservatives.

The latest report on IRS conferences will be the subject of a hearing Thursday by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Karen Kraushaar, spokeswoman for the inspector general's office, said public discussion of a report before it is released "serves no purpose and should generally be avoided."

Werfel is scheduled to make his first congressional appearance as acting commissioner Monday when he appears before a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee.

According to congressional aides briefed by the inspector general's office, the IRS did not formally seek competitive bids for the city where the agency's 2010 conference was held, for the event planner who assisted the agency, or for the speakers.

The aides, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe a confidential congressional briefing, said other benefits given to some attendees at the Anaheim IRS conference included vouchers for free drinks and some tickets to attend Angels baseball games.

Two videos produced by the IRS were shown at the Anaheim conference. In one, agency employees did a parody of "Star Trek" while dressed like the TV show's characters; the second shows more than a dozen IRS workers dancing on a stage. The two videos cost the agency more than $50,000 to make, aides said.

The lecturer who spoke about leadership through art produced six paintings of subjects that included Abraham Lincoln, Michael Jordan, the rock singer Bono and the Statue of Liberty, the aides said.

___

Eds: AP White House Correspondent Julie Pace contributed to this report.

* Warner was fined last month for Twitter outburst (Adds Bailey comment)

June 12 (Reuters) - Australia batsman David Warner was dropped from the team's Champions Trophy match against New Zealand on Wednesday for an alleged physical altercation with an England player.

The flamboyant left-hander, who was primed to open the batting for Australia in back-to-back Ashes series against England starting in July, has been reported for breaching the code of behaviour.

"Warner...was allegedly involved in (an incident) with an England player in the early hours of Sunday morning following the ICC Champions Trophy match between the teams in Birmingham," Cricket Australia said in a statement.

"Team management have stood down Warner pending the outcome of the hearing, meaning he will miss Australia's match against New Zealand in Birmingham tonight (Wednesday)."

CA said it would make no further comment until the hearing, the time and date for which has yet to be confirmed.

After rain ruined the match against New Zealand, Australia's stand-in captain George Bailey told a news conference: "It was a very minor incident. It's been dealt with in-house."

British media reports said the England player involved in the incident with Warner was young batsman Joe Root.

"The England and Wales Cricket Board confirms that David Warner initiated an unprovoked physical attack on a member of the England team in a Birmingham bar following England's 48-run victory over Australia," the ECB said in a statement.

"Warner has admitted behaving inappropriately and has since apologised to the player involved who has accepted the apology.

Following a full investigation the England team management has concluded that the England player was in no way responsible for nor retaliated to the attack."

The 26-year-old Warner was fined A$5,750 ($5,400) last month by CA for a Twitter outburst against two journalists.

Australia, who have been without injured regular captain Michael Clarke, play Sri Lanka in their final Group A match at The Oval in London on Monday but could already be out of contention for the semi-finals if other results go against them.

They lost their opener to England.

($1 = 1.0637 Australian dollars) (Reporting by Sudipto Ganguly in Mumbai and Ed Osmond in London; Editing by John O'Brien and Clare Fallon)

The list is compiled using data from independent and chain bookstores, book wholesalers and independent distributors nationwide.

Hardcover Fiction Last Week

1. "Inferno" by Dan Brown (Doubleday,

$29.95) 1

2. "And the Mountains Echoed" by Khaled Hosseini (Riverhead, $28.95) 2

3. "Zero Hour" by Clive Cussler/Graham Brown(Putnam, $28.95) -

4. "Deeply Odd" by Dean Koontz (Bantam, $28.00) -

5. "The 12th of Never" by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro (Little, Brown,

$27.99) 3

6. "Dead Ever After" by Charlaine Harris (Ace, $27.95) 4

7. "The Hit" by David Baldacci (Grand Central, $27.99) 6

8. "Silken Prey" by John Sandford (Putnam, $27.95) 5

9. "Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn (Crown, $25.00) 9

10. "Whiskey Beach" by Nora Roberts (Putnam, $27.95) 8

Hardcover Non-fiction

1. "Happy, Happy, Happy" by Phil Robertson (Howard Books, $24.99) 1

2. "Lean In" bySheryl Sandberg (Knopf, $24.95) 3

3. "Eleven Rings" by Phil Jackson (Penguin, $27.95) 2

4. "Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls" by David Sedaris (Little, Brown, $27.00) 5

5. "The Duck Commander Family" by Willie & Korie Robertson (Howard Books, $23.99) 4

6. "Keep It Pithy" by Bill O'Reilly (Crown Archetype, $21.99) 6

7. "The Guns at Last Light" by Rick Atkinson (Henry Holt, $40) 7

8. "The 100" byJorge Cruise (William Morrow, $25.99) 8

9. "Life Code" by Dr. Phil McGraw (Bird Street Books, $26.00) 10

10. "My Greek Drama" by Gianna Angelopoulos (Greenleaf, $26.95) 9

Week that ended June 2, 2013, powered by Nielsen BookScan (c) 2013 The Nielsen Company.

(Editing by Patricia Reaney and Doina Chiacu)

ATHENS, Greece (AP) -- Greece's two largest labor unions called a 24-hour general strike for Thursday to protest the government's move to close state-run TV and radio, a decision that has shocked the public and triggered a political crisis.

State TV and radio signals went dead early Wednesday, hours after the government closed the Hellenic Broadcasting Corp., or ERT, and fired its 2,500 workers, citing the need to cut "incredible waste."

But thousands of protesters remained outside the company's headquarters north of Athens as journalists defied the order and continued a live Internet broadcast.

The civil servants' union ADEDY told the Associated Press it had called a strike and a series of protests to be held outside the ERT headquarters. The larger GSEE union was also meeting to ratify the decision and join the nationwide strike, officials from that union said.

Journalist unions also launched rolling 24-hour strikes, halting private television news programs, while the government's center-left coalition partners demanded that ERT's closure be reversed.

Government spokesman Simos Kedikoglou said a new public broadcaster would be launched before the end of the summer.

"When you restructure something from the foundations, you have to close it, temporarily," he said Wednesday.

But conservative Prime Minister Antonis Samaras faces stern opposition from his own coalition partners the Socialist Pasok and Democratic Left party for the decision. The executive order to close ERT must be ratified by parliament within three months but cannot be approved without backing from the minority coalition lawmakers.

The surprise closure of ERT is now one of the biggest crises to afflict the three-party coalition government since it was formed nearly a year ago.

Despite tensions over a number of issues, notably related to the austerity measures demanded by Greece's international creditors, the coalition government has surprised many by surviving. It has also been credited with stabilizing the bailed out Greek economy and easing the threat of an exit from the euro.

Left-wing opposition leader Alexis Tsipras slammed the closure as "illegal" during an interview on ERT's online broadcast.

"Many times the word 'coup' is used as an exaggeration," he said. "In this case, it is not an exaggeration."

Tsipras said he would meet the country's president later Wednesday and ask him to cancel an executive order he signed allowing the government to close ERT.

ERT started radio programming in the 1930s and television in the mid-1096s. Though it was widely regarded as reflecting government positions it had a channel run by the military during the 1967-74 dictatorship the broadcaster was also valued for showcasing regional and cultural content and for covering major sporting events such as the football World Cup and the Olympics.

The decision to close ERT was announced during an inspection in Athens by officials from Greece's bailout creditors. The so-called "troika" of the European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund has been pressing the government to start a long-delayed program to fire civil servants.

Kedikoglou insisted the government had "no need" to inform the troika officials of its decision.

The European Commission said it had not sought the closure of ERT but "nor does the Commission question the Greek government's mandate to manage the public sector."

The European Broadcasting Union, based in Geneva, Switzerland, expressed its "profound dismay" in a letter to Samaras, urging him to reverse course.

Greeks watched ERT's online program on laptops in corner shops and homes, many expressing disbelief at the decision to close it.

"I feel very bad. I'm very upset... This is a big loss for TV," Athens resident Eytixia Kaziani said. "I feel bad for the channel; it was one of the best in Greece .... I'm making a plea to the government to reopen the channel and rehire ERT employees."

___

AP Television's Eftehia Katsareas, Rafael Kominis and Srdjan Nedeljkovic contributed.

___

Online:

Hellenic Broadcasting Corp. http://www.ert.gr/

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Ontario Teachers Pension Plan, the fifteenth biggest shareholder in Sprint Nextel Corp , said on Friday it intends to vote for SoftBank Corp'splan to buy 70 percent of Sprint for $20.1 billion.

The pension plan owned 40.2 million shares, or 1.33 percent, of Sprint, according to the latest publicly available information.

It did not provide details on its website on how it came to its decision ahead of a June 12 special meeting where shareholders are due to vote on the deal.

Several other shareholders have said, however, that they were not happy with the SoftBank deal after Dish Networkmade a rival $25.5 billion offer for Sprint on April 15.

Dish has been taking a closer look at Sprint's books for the last few weeks as it had said that its offer was subject to the completion of a due diligence process.

Hedge fund titan John Paulson, whose fund is the second biggest shareholder with 7.7 percent of Sprint according to public data, said in April that Dish's offer was compelling and offers more value to Sprint shareholders.

Omega Advisors, the ninth biggest Sprint shareholder with more than 2 percent of Sprint shares, has also said that Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen's offer was in the lead.

(Reporting by Sinead Carew; Editing by Richard Chang)