BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) -- Wet weather across much of North Dakota has continued to prevent farmers and ranchers from making progress planting crops.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture says in its weekly crop report that there were 2.3 days suitable for fieldwork on average last week.

Spring wheat seeding was rated 64 percent complete. This is well behind last year at 100 percent and the 89 percent average.

Spring wheat was 42 percent emerged, behind last year at 99 percent and the average of 73 percent.

Oats seeding was 72 percent complete, behind 100 percent last year and 90 percent on average.

Pasture and range conditions were rated 1 percent very poor, 4 percent poor, 21 percent fair, 57 percent good and 17 excellent.

CANBERRA/WELLINGTON (Reuters) - Unease over a clandestine U.S. data collection program has rippled across the Pacific to two of Washington's major allies, Australia and New Zealand, raising concerns about whether they have cooperated with secret electronic data mining.

Both Canberra and Wellington share intelligence with the United States, as well as Britain and Canada. But both Pacific neighbors now face awkward questions about a U.S. digital surveillance program that Washington says is aimed primarily at foreigners.

In Australia, the conservative opposition said it was "very troubled" by America's so-called PRISM program, which newspaper reports say is a top-secret authorization for the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) to extract personal data from the computers of major Internet firms.

The opposition, poised to win September elections, said it was concerned that data stored by Australians in the computer servers of U.S. Internet giants like Facebook and Google could be accessed by the NSA, echoing fears voiced in Europe last week over the reach of U.S. digital surveillance in the age of cloud computing.

Australia's influential Greens party called on the government to clarify whether Canberra's own intelligence agencies had access to the NSA-gathered data, which according to Britain's Guardian newspaper included search history, emails, file transfers and live chats.

"We'll examine carefully any implications in what has emerged for the security and privacy of Australians," Australia's Foreign Minister Bob Carr said in a television interview on Sunday, when asked whether Canberra had cooperated with Washington's secret initiative.

Both countries are members of the so-called five eyes' collective of major Western powers collecting and sharing signals intelligence, set up in the post-war 1940s.

DOTCOM ACCUSATION

In New Zealand, Internet file-sharing tycoon Kim Dotcom, who is fighting extradition to the United States on charges of online piracy, took to Twitter on Sunday to highlight what he alleged was the role of NSA surveillance in his own case, and the cooperation of New Zealand's spy agency.

"The New Zealand GCSB spy agency was used to spy on my family because all surveillance was available to American agencies in real time," he tweeted, referring to the Government Communications and Security Bureau.

"My case against the spy agency in New Zealand will show the degree of cooperation with the NSA."

A New Zealand government spokeswoman declined to comment on Sunday when asked if the GCSB cooperated with the NSA program.

"We do not comment on security and intelligence matters. New Zealand's intelligence agencies are subject to an oversight regime, which we are looking to strengthen ..."

A New Zealand watchdog in September last year found that the GCSB had illegally spied on Dotcom, founder of file-sharing site Megaupload, intercepting his personal communications ahead of a raid on his home in early 2012 by New Zealand police, who acted on a request from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation. That raid was also ruled to have been invalid.

Australia's spy and law-enforcement agencies want telecoms firms and Internet service providers to continuously collect and store personal data to boost anti-terrorism and crime-fighting capabilities - a controversial initiative that one government source said would be even more difficult to push through now, after news of the secret U.S. surveillance of Internet firms.

The underpinning legislation has been the subject of almost three years of heated closed-door negotiations with companies most affected and last year was referred to a parliamentary intelligence oversight committee after drawing "big brother"-styled criticism from lawmakers and rights libertarians.

Australia's government, in developing the legislation, has drawn on similar laws used in Europe since 2006, but where it has also run into legal difficulties in some EU member countries like Germany, where it was judged unconstitutional.

"I'm not sure what the legislative backing for events in the U.S. has been. We have tried here to do ours as transparently as possible, with all the headaches that brings. This will make that worse," a government source told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity because of political sensitivities.

(Writing by Mark Bendeich in Sydney; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)

On June 9, 2008, at least 60 dolphins stranded along the coast of Cornwall, England, in what was by far the largest common dolphin mortality ever seen in British waters. For hours, rescuers tried to lead them back to sea often unsuccessfully, as some of the animals were panicked and others just milled about in tight circles, resistant to saving. The forensic investigation that followed involved 24 experts from five countries and multiple government agencies.

Now , and the most probable cause was naval exercises.

For several days before the strandings, the British Royal Navy ran a large, multinational event (which included the U.S. Navy and involved active sonar and other disruptive activities) off the Cornish coast. That event, the investigators concluded, was closely correlated in space and time with the dolphins entering Falmouth Bay and eventually coming ashore. All other possible causes disease, algal blooms, malnourishment were eliminated. []

The implication of naval exercises in a mass stranding will come as no surprise to those who have followed this issue in the United States. Nor will the Royal Navy's perfunctory denials in media accounts, which seem awfully similar to what we have heard over the years from the U.S. Navy.

In the case of mass strandings, what Navy officials always seem to demand after the fact is some definitive, minute-by-minute record of the victims' movements before beaching, as though it were possible toand dolphin in the sea. Until biologists can provide that infeasible level of proof, the U.S. Navy refuses responsibility. But really, the Cornwall case is simple: a gun was fired, there were bodies, and no one else was in the room.

It's long past time for navies on both sides of the Atlantic to stop denying the obvious and do something meaningful to reduce harm, like putting especially vulnerable habitat off-limits to dangerous training. Unfortunately, in the United States, that may be something we have to fight for.

The reason is thatwould permit the U.S. Navy to harm marine mammals more than 30 million times over the next five years. This gargantuan number encompasses more than 5 million instances of temporary hearing loss a significant impact for species like whales and dolphins that depend on hearing for their survival. And, it includes more than 10,000 cases of permanent injury and nearly 350 deaths from underwater explosions, vessel collisions and sonar exercises. Of course these are the U.S. Navy's estimates; the reality could be even worse.

In Southern California, which sees the lion's share of U.S. Navy training on the West Coast, biologists are concerned that the U.S. Navy's range has becomefor deep-diving beaked whales, a family of marine mammal species that is acutely vulnerable to high-powered naval sonar. And, new research on the same range shows that U.S. Navy sonarover vast distances. That's a big problem since Southern California represents a globally important foraging area for that endangered species.

The U.S. Navy, still in denial mode, likes to claim that it has safely operated off California and other places for decades, but just like in Cornwall, that argument is wearing very thin.

Denial has its consequences, however. Neither the latest science nor its own dramatic estimates of harm has moved the U.S. Navy to identify better means of protecting whales and other marine life. Instead, it is proposing the same meager protective measures visually monitoring a narrow strip around its vessels that the scientific community and the courts have repeatedly found inadequate. By contrast, avoiding important habitat is universally acknowledged to be the most effective available measure.

More than 550,000 people have signedcalling for an end to the killing and harassment of marine mammals by U.S. Navy sonar. With the new investigative findings in Britain adding to the pile of evidence of harm, perhaps now the U.S. authorities will do the right thing. Denial is no longer an option.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This article was originally published on .

The decision came at a meeting of the bank's 23-member governing council at its headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany.

In May, the ECB cut its main rate by a quarter-point in an attempt to kick-start the economy of the 17 European Union countries that use the euro. Analysts predicted it would pause this month to assess the region's economy.

The eurozone's annual gross domestic product shrank 0.2 percent in the first quarter, the sixth quarter in a row. The central bank for the currency shared by 331 million people has predicted that the economy will start growing again gradually in the second half of this year.

But conflicting economic indicators have left doubt about whether a recovery will come through by then or not. The unemployment rate of 12.2 percent is the highest since the currency union was formed in 1999, adding pressure to find some kind of stimulus.

ECB President Mario Draghi has said the bank is talking to other European Union institutions about ways to encourage banks to lend more to small companies the backbone of the eurzone's economy. But it is not clear when a proposal might be ready.

Markets are waiting to hear Draghi's comments about the bank's plans at a news conference after the rate decision. Analysts say the bank could also lower its growth forecast for this year it recently predicted a contraction of 0.5 percent for the year.

The ECB's governing council meets once a month to decide on the bank's refinancing rate. That is the rate at which it loans money to private-sector banks. Through them, the refinancing rate influences how much it costs businesses and consumers to borrow.

Lower rates in theory make it easier to for companies to invest in new production or for people to buy things, and that should stimulate the economy. But that's not how it has been working out in Europe. Lending to businesses remains weak.

The low ECB benchmark rate is not being passed on by the banks in the countries hardest hit by the eurozone's debt crisis, such as Spain and Italy. Banks remain risk-averse in the aftermath of the financial crisis and new rules limit how much they can lend relative to how much capital they have. Some banks are having trouble borrowing themselves. So credit is hard to come by and the worst-hit are small businesses.

The ECB has talked about encouraging banks to bundle small business loans and have them sold off in the form of bonds. The process would reap more money, which could then be loaned out. The practice already exists, but loan guarantees from another European government institution such as the European Investment Bank could encourage more of it.

However, it could be sometime next year before something like that can be set up, and ECB officials have recently downplayed how big an impact it would have.

BERLIN (Reuters) - A new novel about a neo-Nazi plot to assassinate Germany's first Jewish candidate for Chancellor has shed a timely light on the right-wing extremist violence that has plagued the country since 1990 and was swept under the carpet for years.

Political thriller "The Jewish Candidate" by British journalist David Crossland has been published just as Germany's September election campaign is heating up and at the start of a trial of a neo-Nazi cell blamed for a spate of racist murders that went undetected for more than a decade.

Built upon the intriguing notion of a Jewish politician named Rudolf Gutman running for Chancellor as the candidate for the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), the fast-paced thriller is told through the eyes of a reporter for a fictional London newspaper who stumbles upon a neo-Nazi plot to kill Gutman.

Set in modern Germany, "The Jewish Candidate" focuses on the surge in far-right violence since reunification in 1990 and on the country's failure to contain it.

Some estimates say almost 200 people have been killed in acts of far-right violence since 1990 that have often been directed at dark-skinned foreigners. Those killings were often downplayed by authorities and German society as isolated acts of random violence mainly in formerly communist eastern Germany.

That complacency was shattered in late 2011 when police accidentally stumbled upon a neo-Nazi cell, the National Socialist Underground (NSU), whose members killed eight Turks, a Greek and a German policewoman execution-style between 2000-2007 and carried out two bombings in immigrant quarters in Cologne.

"I started writing it back in 2007 before anyone had heard about the NSU," said Crossland, a freelance writer and former Reuters correspondent.

"I was reporting about neo-Nazi violence and was surprised at how lightly the authorities and the general public were taking it despite warnings that parts of the east were 'no-go' areas for anyone who doesn't look German."

The trial of a surviving member of the NSU, Beate Zschaepe, began in Munich on May 6 after two men who founded the NSU in the late 1990s committed suicide following a botched bank robbery in November 2011.

Germans have been closely following the trial and parliament is conducting its own investigation into the failure of police and security services, who neglected the far-right threat and suspected other immigrants were responsible for the killings.

The parallels between the real-life NSU and the fictional neo-Nazi assassins in "The Jewish Candidate" are striking but coincidental. The novel, set in the run-up to an election, includes descriptions of clandestine torchlit neo-Nazi meetings and of their links with the security services.

The novel also raises the interesting question of whether Germany might one day have a Jewish chancellor. It had a Jewish population of 670,000 before the Nazi regime and Holocaust. There was a vestigial community of 29,000 in 1990. Germany prides itself on its growing Jewish population of over 200,000.

Crossland, 46, who has lived in Germany since 1992, said Germany may be ready to elect a Jewish leader.

"But it's an unlikely prospect for now due to a lack of Jewish politicians," he said. "It's clear, though, that neo-Nazis are better armed and better organised than the authorities believed until the NSU came to light."

(Reporting by Erik Kirschbaum, editing by Paul Casciato)

DUBLIN, Ohio, May 31 (Reuters) - Bill Haas readily admits that changing diapers is more difficult than facing a tricky putt on a slick green but the American's game has clearly benefited from the recent birth of his first child.

A four-times winner on the PGA Tour, Haas had missed the cut on his previous two starts on the U.S. circuit this month before returning home to spend welcome time with his young family.

Despite a few sleepless nights there because of his baby son, William Harlan Haas, Jr., the 31-year-old father felt rejuvenated and it showed at the Memorial Tournament on Friday as he charged into an early two-shot lead in the second round.

"I've missed my last two cuts before this week, so certainly my expectations were a little lower than they were earlier this year," Haas told reporters after firing a five-under-par 67 in tough, windy conditions at Muirfield Village Golf Club.

"But I had a great two weeks off. I had a son and I've been having great fun with that at home with my wife. I think I'm just in a better frame of mind than I was three weeks ago after missing my second cut in a row."

BETTER MINDSET

Haas, who missed the cut at the Wells Fargo Championship and then the PGA Tour's flagship Players Championship, knew his mindset was in better shape when he did not react badly to his first bogey of the day on Friday, at the par-three 12th.

"I caught myself angry, but quickly I realized things are going good in my life right now," Haas smiled.

"I don't really say that to myself, but I think that there's a lot more things important going on, so maybe I'm just a little quicker to rebound from being mad."

Haas conceded he had found it extremely painful to leave home for this week's PGA Tour event after being with his wife Julie and their young son for the first two weeks of his life.

"It was very difficult," Haas said. "This is a tough week to skip. Only way I would have skipped it if he (William) was born maybe last week and I felt like I really needed to help my wife at home.

"But she's getting a bunch of help. My parents and her parents both live in town and she's getting a lot of help. And I'm getting tons of pictures and videos. I feel very informed with what's going on."

Haas bogeyed his final hole, the par-four 18th, on Friday after hitting his approach over the back of the green before failing to sink a tricky 12-footer for par.

Asked what was more difficult, that par putt or trying to change a diaper, Haas grinned: "Easiest is the putt on 18 but both are very rewarding. Changing a diaper is very rewarding.

"It's been beyond expectations, you know, raising a child for only two weeks. It's been fantastic and I look forward to the rest of the challenge." (Reporting by Mark Lamport-Stokes; Editing by Frank Pingue)

Before March Madness and the Super Bowl ever existed, the big-time sports that mattered to most Americans included boxing, horse racing and, yes, collegiate rowing. Tens of thousands of spectators would line the Hudson River at Poughkeepsie, N.Y., for the national championships, which drew coverage that matched the Kentucky Derby, the Rose Bowl or the World Series.

The greatest eight-oar crew may well have been the scrappy underdogs from the University of Washington who won the 1936 championship and went on to take the gold medal in the 1936 Olympics in a thrilling competition in Adolph Hitler's Berlin.

Daniel James Brown's account of how blue-collar oarsmen with roots in lumber mills, dairy farms, shipyards and mining camps prevailed over teams from elite Eastern colleges and went on to the Olympics is set against the grim realities of the Great Depression and the rise of Nazi Germany. This riveting and inspiring saga evokes that of Seabiscuit, another upstart that came out of the West.

The central figure in the book is Joe Rantz, who endured a Dickensian childhood before being abandoned by his impoverished family and left to fend for himself. Rowing provided an antidote to life's hardships and imbued Rantz with a sense of purpose and the opportunity for a college education.

"The brutal afternoon workouts left him exhausted and sore but feeling cleansed, as if someone had scrubbed out his soul with a wire brush," wrote Brown, who met and interviewed Rantz as he was dying of heart disease at the home of his daughter, a neighbor of the author.

Other characters who come to life in the book include Al Ulbrickson, the Huskies coach whose quiet demeanor didn't mask his determination to win Olympic gold, a feat that archrival University of California had accomplished twice. There is also the team's mentor, British-born George Yeoman Pocock, the renowned designer of racing shells who offers valuable lessons about rowing and life to Rantz and other team members.

Brown identifies crew as the toughest of all sports, one that tests the limits of human endurance. His fast-paced book skillfully lays out the mechanics of rowing, the secrets of boat design and the blend of power, stamina, will and intellect required to produce a champion. Above all is the need for teamwork, the ability of the crew to work in unison and achieve that degree of perfection known as "swing," where everyone on the boat is in sync.

Readers need neither background nor interest in competitive rowing to be captivated by this remarkable and beautifully crafted history. Written with the drama of a compelling novel, it's a quintessentially American story that burnishes the esteem in which we embrace what has come to be known as the Greatest Generation.

___

Online:

http://www.danieljamesbrown.com/

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Free Speech: Like so many online platforms (ahem, Reddit), Facebook's previous policy allowed its users to bend free speech into an excuse for sexism. The social network doesn't explicitly ban "offensive" or "controversial" content because that would violate its users rights, in a way. "We work hard to remove hate speech quickly, however there are instances of offensive content, including distasteful humor, that are not hate speech according to our definition," explains Facebook's company message, in the form of a Facebook Note. But this is the same Internet that resulted in a photo of Rihanna's bloodied face with the caption "Chris Brown's Greatest Hits" — and a picture of a man holding a rag over a woman's mouth that read: "Does this smell like chloroform to you?"

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Facebook now realizes — unlike, say, the leaders of 4chan, or Reddit, which was also— that free speech only goes so far. "That being said, we realize that our defense of freedom of expression should never be interpreted as license to bully, harass, abuse or threaten violence," continues the company note, posted last night by Facebook Global Policy VP Marne Levine.

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Technology: Even with Facebook's generous leeway for "offensive" or "controversial" posts, that stuff shouldn't really have gotten through the system. Some of the sexist postings could have fallen under the "hate" speech umbrella, which has a notably vague definition, according to Facebook. "There is no universally accepted definition of hate speech," reads the note. But: "As a platform we define the term to mean direct and serious attacks on any protected category of people based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, disability or disease." By that definition, Facebook rape groups should have been axed in the first place.

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But Facebook's backend wasn't catching the creeps, the company admitted: "In recent days, it has become clear that our systems to identify and remove hate speech have failed to work as effectively as we would like, particularly around issues of gender-based hate. In other cases, content that should be removed has not been or has been evaluated using outdated criteria." In other words, Facebook's technology wasn't working the way it should have. 

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Accountability: The social network suggests that the creators of these hate-filled and violent postings didn't face enough accountability for their actions. So, much like Facebook's already strict real-name policy, for murkier content that might fall on the free speech side of things, the social network will add in requirements for posters of these "humorous" rape jokes. Such as: "A few months ago we began testing a new requirement that the creator of any content containing cruel and insensitive humor include his or her authentic identity for the content to remain on Facebook." 

Even though the new policy doesn't ban rape jokes, per se,  have taken the company release as a good sign. They do say acceptance is the first step. 

"It's signed. The transfer will bring us two million euros, ($2.59 million)," a source at the French club who declined to be identified told Reuters on Thursday.

Nancy were relegated to Ligue 2 last weekend after finishing third from bottom.

Hanover ended up ninth in the Bundesliga last season.

($1 = 0.7712 euros) (Reporting by Dimitri Rahmelow, writing by Julien Pretot, editing by Tony Jimenez)

"Furlough Friday" is a disgrace to our nation. Let no one believe for a moment that this is some kind of four-day weekend or holiday for federal employees forced out of work without pay.

For anyone making light of furloughs, taunting us with the claim that no one will notice, or saying that America is better off when whole agencies of the federal government are closed, consider this: No group of Americans does more to protect public health by enforcing clean air and water standards. No group of Americans does more to obtain housing for low-income or homeless veterans and others in need. No group of Americans does more to equip our troops and facilitate the success of our military. And no group of Americans comes close to having sacrificed as much toward deficit reduction as federal employees, even before sequester.

Furloughing federal employees has never been justifiable for budget reasons; everybody knows that the savings from furloughs are more than offset by the costs they entail.

Memorial Day is a solemn occasion to recall the heroic sacrifice of our military in defense of freedom, but the Friday before is a day of shame for the lawmakers and administration officials who allowed sequester and furloughs to occur.

The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) is the largest federal employee union, representing 670,000 workers in the federal government and the government of the District of Columbia.

For the latest AFGE news and information, follow us onand.

SOURCE American Federation of Government Employees