Gov. Mark Dayton is expected to sign the bill into law on Tuesday.

Just last week, Delaware lawmakers voted to allow gay marriage in the state. In April, Rhode Island also passed a same-sex marriage law. Gay rights advocates point to California, Illinois, Oregon and New Jersey as the next states that might join the wave of gay marriage legalization.

More than 35 states ban same-sex marriage either through laws or voter-passed amendments to their constitutions. Public opinion has rapidly shifted on the issue, with a slight majority of Americans now saying they support it in polls.

Correction: An earlier version of this article referenced a fabricated story about Rep. Michele Bachmann.

Washington, 1 may (EFE).- La secretaria de Salud, Kathleen Sebelius, pidi hoy la cooperacin de los pequeos y medianos empresarios hispanos para dar a conocer las ventajas que la reforma sanitaria tiene sobre la comunidad, y superar as las barreras lingsticas.

En su intervencin en la cumbre de pequeos negocios latinos 2013, celebrada en las dependencias de la Cmara de Comercio de EE.UU., Sebelius apel al "liderazgo" de los empresarios para explicar la medida a sus potenciales beneficiarios, quienes, en muchos casos, "no escuchan lo que se dice en Washington".

"Sabemos que hay millones de personas para quienes el idioma supone una barrera. Por ello, necesitamos lderes comunitarios que transmitan, en su lengua, las mejoras que estarn disponibles a partir de este otoo", emplaz la secretaria de Salud a los presentes, en relacin a la nueva etapa del despliegue de la reforma sanitaria el prximo 1 de octubre.

A partir de entonces, los individuos y pequeos negocios tendrn la opcin de acceder a los llamados "intercambios" en el sector privado que, segn ha explicado en varias ocasiones el ejecutivo del presidente, Barack Obama, ofrecern flexibilidad en el tipo y costo de las coberturas mdicas.

"Cuanto ms sanos estn vuestros trabajadores, ms exitosa ser vuestra empresa", asegur Sebelius al auditorio, para recordar despus que "dos quintas partes de los estadounidenses sin seguro mdico tienen entre 18 y 35 aos, y ms de un cuarto de ellos son latinos".

La reforma sanitaria fue promulgada por Obama en 2010 y avalada por el Tribunal Supremo el ao pasado, y, entre otras cosas, pretende que a partir de 2014 la mayora de ciudadanos tenga cobertura mdica.

Se trata de una reforma que ha suscitado polmica desde el principio, especialmente a causa de la disposicin que obliga a los estadounidenses a contratar un seguro mdico so pena de multa, lo que supone, para los crticos -fundamentalmente la oposicin republicana- una intromisin "intolerable" del Estado en las relaciones entre mdico y paciente.

La reforma sanitaria supone el mayor cambio en el sistema de salud en Estados Unidos desde 1965, cuando se cre el Seguro Social y los programas pblicos Medicaid, para personas sin recursos, y Medicare, para la tercera edad y jvenes minusvlidos.

Desde su promulgacin en 2010, la ley se ha aplicado de forma paulatina y la parte ms controvertida entrar en vigor en enero prximo, cuando se exija que casi todos los estadounidenses tengan un plan mdico y que las grandes empresas lo ofrezcan como beneficio, o afronten fuertes multas. EFE

(Reuters) - Exxon Mobil Corp's near 70-year-old Pegasus oil pipeline spilled a small amount of crude on Tuesday into a residential yard in Ripley County, Missouri, a month after the same pipe spewed thousands of barrels of crude in Arkansas.

A resident notified the company of the spill after spotting a patch of oil and dead vegetation seven miles south of Doniphan in the southeast of the state, Exxon and state officials said on Wednesday.

About one barrel of crude leaked and the cleanup is "close to completion", an Exxon spokeswoman said.

Tuesday's spill occurred 200 miles north of Mayflower, Arkansas, where about 5,000 barrels of crude spilled from the Pegasus pipe into a residential area on March 29, prompting a giant clean-up operation that is still ongoing.

The Mayflower spill stoked a fractious national debate about the effect of shipping increasing amounts of tarry Canadian crude across the United States, including through residential areas and in aging pipelines.

The Pegasus line, which can carry more than 90,000 barrels a day of crude from Illinois to Texas, was built in the late 1940s. It was shut after the Arkansas spill and was not in operation when the Missouri spill occurred.

Exxon has not offered a timeline for when Pegasus will restart.

"The release occurred from the installation of a guide wire for a power line pipe that was installed approximately 30 years ago," a spokeswoman for the Missouri Department of Natural Resources said on Wednesday. "The guide wire was located almost directly on top of the pipeline and has worn down over the years."

The Exxon spokeswoman said the cause was under investigation.

(Reporting by Edward McAllister and Robert Gibbons in New York; Additional reporting by Arpan Varghese in Bangalore; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick and Dale Hudson)

By Dominic Lau

TOKYO, May 2 (Reuters) - Japan's Nikkei average fell for a fourth straight session on Thursday, its worst losing streak since November, just before Prime Minister Shinzo Abe began promising to revive growth, dubbed as "Abenomics" that has spurred a massive stock rally.

The Nikkei lost 0.8 percent to end at 13,694.04 points, a one-week low, after weak U.S. data heightened worries about the recovery in the world's largest economy.

Japanese financial markets will be closed on Friday and Monday for public holidays, and reopen on Tuesday.

"The global economy is quite weak," said Hisao Matsuura, an equity strategist at Nomura Securities. "I would not be surprised to see the Nikkei go down to 13,000."

He added the latest quarterly earnings remained weak as sharp depreciation in the yen since late last year had not yet led to a bigger benefit for export-driven companies.

A number of Japanese firms, including industrial robot maker Fanuc Corp , semiconductor equipment maker Tokyo Electron Ltdand Honda Motor Co , have disappointed investors with their earnings forecasts for the current fiscal year ending March 2014, despite a 21 percent slide in the yen since mid-November.

During the same period, the benchmark Nikkei has rallied 58 percent on expectations that the yen weakness would spark sharp earnings growth for exporters. Japanese equities now carry a 12-month forward return on equity of 8.3 percent, a level not seen since September 2008, data from Thomson Reuters Datastream showed.

Of the 61 Nikkei companies that have reported quarterly results as of Wednesday, 52 percent of them either beat or met market expectations, according to Thomson Reuters StarMine. That compared with 62 percent which missed in the previous quarter.

Toyota Motor Corplost 1.1 percent on Thursday and was the sixth-most traded stock on the main board by turnover after data showed its U.S. light vehicle sales fell 1.1 percent year-on-year last month. Toyota shares are still up nearly 80 percent since mid-November.

"We are seeing some selling out of the yen-name automotives on the back of U.S. auto sales, which were weaker than expected," a senior dealer at a foreign brokerage said.

Nissan Motor Codropped 2 percent and Suzuki Motor Corpshed 3.4 percent.

SOFT PATCH

The latest U.S. data showed that companies had hired the fewest employees in seven months in April, boding ill for the key nonfarm payrolls data due out on Friday, and that manufacturing growth had slowed to a crawl.

Investors have also been pocketing gains after the Nikkei -- which rose to a near five-year high last week - failed to breach technical resistance at 13,988, the 61.8 percent retracement of its slide from February 2007 to October 2008.

BNP Paribas' proprietary model showed it picked Japan as one of the equity indexes to short with a one-month horizon, it said in a note. The other countries on which the model had a negative view were Austria, Mexico and South Korea, while it suggested going long France, Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium.

The broader Topix index eased 0.4 percent to 1,153.28, with trading volume hitting a one-month low of 2.74 billion shares.

Daiwa Securities Group , Japan's second-largest brokerage, shed 2.3 percent even after the firm posted its highest quarterly profit in seven years on Wednesday. The stock had rallied 31.6 percent in April, its best monthly performance since November 1998.

Index heavyweight Fast Retailing Co Ltdfell 1.8 percent ahead of the release of its casual clothing chain Uniqlo's Japan same-store sales data in April. After the closing bell, it said Uniqlo's same store sales fell 3 percent year-on-year last month.

Sharp Corpand Takeda Pharmaceutical Co Ltd , however, bucked the market fall.

Sharp climbed 5 percent after the Nikkei newspaper said Mizuho Corporate bank and Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ were considering a roughly 100 billion yen credit facility to help the struggling consumer electronics maker meet an upcoming bond redemption.

Takeda advanced 2.3 percent after the drugmaker said a U.S. court had nullified a $6.5 million jury verdict over its Actos diabetes drug.

(Editing by Kim Coghill)

Haye, who lost his WBA belt in July 2011 to Ukrainian Vladimir Klitschko before beating Dereck Chisora 12 months later, faces Charr who has won all but one of his 24 professional bouts.

His only defeat came against Klitschko's older brother Vitaly last September when the Ukrainian retained his WBC title when the referee stopped the contest in the fourth round after Charr sustained a deep cut above his right eye.

Haye, who wants one of the Klitschko brothers to give him a world title shot, has a professional record of 26 wins and two defeats.

"(Haye) is determined to add another world title to his collection and sees his June 29 opponent as the next step towards doing just that," Haye's promoters said in a statement.

(Reporting by Sonia Oxley; Editing by Mark Meadows)

Organizing for Action, athat advocates for President Obamas policies,on April 25. It is a compilation, for the most part, of Republicans talking dismissively about climate change. One clip shows Rep. John Boehner, who was minority leader at the time, downplaying the environmental harm caused by carbon dioxide noting that it is emitted by humans exhaling and cows doing what they do. We corrected some of the misstatements Boehner made in that 2009 TV interview in a piece titled .

But the Democratic video goes too far in its text and images when it says, Number of House members who voted in 2011 that climate change was a hoax: 240. That is immediately followed by a video clip of GOP Rep. Paul Broun calling climate change a hoax in a floor speech which implies that Broun was speaking on the 2011 legislation mentioned in the video.

We asked OFA about that 2011 vote. We were referred to an April 6, 2011, vote on a Democratic amendment to a GOP-backed bill that would have prohibited the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases. The amendment, which was defeated , did not use the word hoax. Broun did not speak on the amendmentduring the debate, and, in fact, none of the Republicans who spoke againstitcalled climate change a hoax.

Also, not all of the240 who votedagainst it were Republicans; three were Democrats.

Theof the amendment, which was sponsored by Rep. Henry Waxman of California, reads: Congress accepts the scientific findings of the Environmental Protection Agency that climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for public health and welfare.

The underlying bill H.R. 910, was the Republican response to anthat greenhousegases are a public health threat, which cleared the way for the agency for the first time toregulate carbon dioxide and other gases that contribute to global climate change. The official House Republican position on the bill was that climate change should be addressed by Congress, not the EPA. In , the Republican leadership said: H.R. 910 would prevent the ever expanding EPA regulations of stationary sources and return climate change policymaking responsibility to Congress.

In other words, the Republicans did not want to approve an amendment accepting the EPA findings on climate change, because they did not want to give the EPA congressional approval to regulate greenhouse gases. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner expressed that concern in his , when he said the amendment gives theproxy to the EPA to make determinations that will have vast impact onour economy without going through the usual legislative process. Hesaid this is not a debate on the underlying science of climate change.

Sensenbrenner was one of two Republicans who spoke against the amendment during a brief debate. The other, then-Rep. Robert Dold, said: I believe in science. I also know that the Earth has been warming for some time. I believe that human activity is also playing a role. But Dold said he was not willing to only accept the scientific findings of the EPA.

Broun did not speak on the amendment. The clip in the video of him calling climate change a hoax came from a floor speech .

Lets be clear: Broun is off base. when GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum called climate change a hoax, climate scientists overwhelmingly agree that global warming is real and human activities are making it worse. A paper published byin 2010 found that 97 percent to 98 percent of climate researchers most actively publishing in the field agreed with thefinding in 2007 that human activity is very likely the cause of most of theobserved increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20thcentury.

But OFA, too, is off base in saying that every House member who opposed the Waxman amendment in 2011 voted that climate change was a hoax.

In fact, four of the Republicans who voted against the Waxman amendment in2011 voted for Waxmans climate change legislation in 2009 that wouldhave created a cap-and-trade system to reduce greenhouse gases thatcontribute to global warming. (Waxmans bill , and it would not have passed without eight Republican votes, since 44 Democrats voted against it.)

In supporting Waxmans cap-and-trade bill in 2009,of climate change and the need to address it.

While not a unanimous outlook, the concerns and warnings about the impacts of global climate disruption are the predominant views of the scientific community, Smith said.

Smith quoted from athat concluded the scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to begin taking steps to prepare for climate change and to slow it. Smith then added, With this in mind, I will continue to gather as much data as I can in order to fully assess the best and most accurate scientific opinion and identify the most reasonable, balanced government response to address environmental issues and concerns.

As Smiths comments suggest, there is a range of opinion on global warming and how to address it. There are those, such as Broun, who say climate change is a hoax. There are others, including Dold, who say climate change is occurring and humans do play a role, but question how much human activities contribute to it. There are still others who believe climate change is happening and that humans are mostly to blame, but who are concerned that unilateral actions by the U.S. will not do enough good to outweigh the impact on the economy.

In Smiths case, he thought the Waxman cap-and-trade bill in 2009 was a balanced government response, but two years later, he voted against the Waxman amendment. Does that make Smith a climate denier, as OFA puts it? We dont think so.

Organizing for Action would have been correct to say that 237Republicans opposed an amendment accepting thescientificfindings of the Environmental Protection Agency that climatechange isoccurring and caused largely by humans. But thats not thesamething as calling climate change a hoax.

Eugene Kiely

By Alonso Duralde

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - As Criticwire recently pointed out, the years after 1988 were littered with "Die Hard" knock-offs, set in or on buses ("Speed"), aircraft carriers ("Under Siege"), hockey arenas ("Sudden Death") and Air Force One ("Air Force One").

A quarter-century later, "Die Hard" finally comes to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. with "Olympus Has Fallen," a thrilling but dopey action flick that keeps things moving even while it defies logic and slavishly follows the barefoot-Bruce-Willis formula.

This time around, the Lone Renegade Who's Our Only Hope is Mike Banning (Gerard Butler), a high-ranking Secret Service agent who got bounced to Treasury a year and a half earlier after he made the tough choice to save the life of President Asher (Aaron Eckhart) in a car accident even though it meant losing the First Lady (Ashley Judd).

During a White House visit by the South Korean premier, a well-orchestrated attack on Washington, D.C., sees a plane fly into the Washington Monument while terrorists take the president and his advisors hostage in the bunker beneath the White House. Banning sneaks in during a firefight and winds up being the only link with the outside world, communicating via the president's satellite phone with the head of the Secret Service (Angela Bassett), a blustery general (Robert Forster) at the Pentagon and the Speaker of the House (Morgan Freeman).

The latter is acting chief executive while the prez and VPOTUS are being held hostage but relax everyone, it's Morgan Freeman. (The cool-headed Freeman and Bassett essentially play Reginald VelJohnson to Butler's Bruce Willis, while Forster is the Paul Gleason.)

The villainous plot leads, inevitably, to the bright red countdown clock that features in so many action movies, and the terrorists' scheme has so many holes that it's best not to ask questions. Subsequently, director Antoine Fuqua ("Training Day") provides explosions and gun battles (R-rated, blood-splattery gun battles, it's worth noting) with enough frequency to paper over the gaps in the script by first-timers Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt.

With all this rushing about and blowing things up, however, the movie skirts past some potentially interesting subplots; for example, it's established early on that the president's young son (Finley Jacobsen) knows all the secret ins and outs of the White House after hanging out with Mike and the rest of the security detail.

He's set up as a character akin to Eric Shea's in "The Poseidon Adventure," and we figure he'll outfox the bad guys and maybe even help save the day, but no - he's found by Mike and rescued in fairly short order.

Of course, this is a movie where national monuments are blown up and soldiers and innocent civilians get killed by bullets and debris as though 9/11 never happened, so it's no surprise that so much of the movie feels like it was chucked onto the screen without much forethought.

"Olympus Has Fallen" ranks among the best movies that Butler has ever made, but that's damning with faint praise.

He occasionally slips into his native Scottish brogue, and no one apparently felt like ADR-ing over it. (Another minor mistake that no one bothered to fix was the TV news lower-third that reads, "Terrorist Attack The Whitehouse.")

There are tons of talented actors slumming here, including Melissa Leo, Radha Mitchell, Cole Hauser and Dylan McDermott, but they're not called upon to do much. (Many of them spend the film literally phoning it in, or at least shouting into a walkie-talkie.)

Yes, you'll guess who the secret turncoat is within the first five minutes of the movie, and you'll roll your eyes over some of the script's lazier ideas and moments of "America, Fk Yeah!" jingoism. But you won't be bored by "Olympus Has Fallen," and if you're in the mood for some trashy adventure, the movie makes up in adrenaline what it lacks in brains.

Among the cases to collapse or suffer setbacks are those of a former drug czar and a former No. 2 in the Defense Department, both accused of links to drug cartels, as well as corruption proceedings related to a former governor of Coahuila state who saw $3 billion in public funds go missing during his tenure.

Experts say the faulty prosecutions are the product of questionable police work, organizational problems and a justice system dominated by political interests. All three cases began during the government of President Felipe Calderon and were thrown out or quietly shelved during the administration of President Enrique Pena Nieto.

"There is a deficiency in the organization, in the presentation of investigations. There are serious technical flaws," said Javier Oliva, a researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico who studies defense and security. "If the question is, 'Why did these cases fail?', it is because they have no legal support."

The first to be freed was former anti-drug czar Noe Ramirez, who was arrested in 2008 in an internal sweep known as "Operation Clean House" on charges that he took $450,000 a month from the Beltran Leyva drug cartel.

Last week, a federal judge in western Nayarit state, where Ramirez had been held at a maximum security prison, ordered his release after determining that the main witness in the case lied and prosecutors might have fabricated evidence.

The case against Ramirez was launched following the arrest of Gerardo Garay, then the country's acting federal police chief, for stealing money from a Mexico City mansion during a drug raid, according to Samuel Gonzalez, who occupied Ramirez's anti-drug post a decade earlier.

Gonzalez said Garay's boss and ally, federal Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna, was reportedly incensed by the arrest and demanded that Calderon prosecute someone at the Attorney General's Office in revenge.

"Garcia Luna was the one who demanded that Calderon go after Noe Ramirez, because charges had been brought against Garay, he wanted someone of the same level charged," Gonzalez said.

Two days after Ramirez was freed, retired army Gen. Tomas Angeles Dauahare was also ordered released after the Attorney General's Office dropped the drug corruption case against him because of a lack of evidence.

Angeles Dauahare, a former assistant defense secretary, told The Associated Press that he believes the case against him was also political.

He had openly criticized Calderon's strategy of cracking down on the drug cartels and appeared at a May campaign event for then-candidate Pena Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party. Days after the campaign appearance, he and other senior military leaders were arrested on accusations of helping the Beltran Leyva cartel.

"They tried to destroy everybody who didn't share their opinions," Angeles Dauahare said of the Calerdon government. "The Attorney General's Office was used to carry out this reprisal."

Calderon's conservative National Action Party government had touted the arrests as proof of Mexico's fortitude in fighting internal corruption.

Both men were freed by officials in Pena Nieto's administration after he took office Dec. 1, returning his party returned to power after a 12-year hiatus.

Eduardo Medina Mora, who was attorney general under Calderon and is now its ambassador to the United States, did not respond to requests for comment.

Some say prosecutors erred in largely resting their accusations on the testimony of protected witnesses, without verifying independently if additional evidence existed.

Both Ramirez and Angeles Dauahare were arrested on the testimony of a protected witness known as "Jennifer," a former associate of the Beltran Leyva cartel who is now in the U.S., according to trial documents.

In announcing his decision to absolve Ramirez, the judge said that accounts from people in Mexico's witness-protection program were unreliable.

As the case unfolded, prosecutors scrambled to gather whatever evidence they could against Ramirez, even reportedly calling U.S. agents to see if they had anything on him.

One former U.S. law enforcement official, who couldn't speak on the record for security reasons, said such requests were not uncommon.

Mexican officials "would detain someone and then call us up and say, 'Do you have anything on him?" the former official said. "It was arrest first and ask questions later. This isn't against their law, not out of the ordinary. That's the system."

He agreed with Oliva, the university researcher, that prosecutors lack investigative skills and have difficulty building a case.

Current Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam told local media that his office will launch an investigation into "Jennifer" and the cases involving the witness' false testimony.

A third case that arose during Calderon's term involved former Coahuila governor and ex-PRI national party chief Humberto Moreira, who resigned as party president in December 2011 because of the $3 billion in state debt racked up during his time as governor.

The corruption case, which could potentially prove embarrassing for the ruling PRI, was aimed at two of Moreira's close associates who were discovered with unexplained wealth, including his state treasurer at the time who is now wanted in the U.S. on money-laundering charges.

The case was quietly dropped by federal prosecutors who turned it over to local prosecutors in Coahuila state, where Moreira's brother is now governor, leading to fears the case will end in impunity.

Authorities didn't announce the decision at the time and it only recently became public that the decision was taken in early December during the first weeks of Pena Nieto's administration.

An Attorney General's Office official, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said he didn't know why federal prosecutors decided they had no jurisdiction in the case.

This week, the Senate committee on justice asked for Mexico's attorney general to answer questions on what his office was investigating in the Coahuila debt scandal if the case against the treasurer had been dropped.

Another case from the Calderon era that concluded with embarrassment was that of an alleged plot to smuggle the son of late Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi into Mexico as his regime crumbled.

Calderon's office had bragged about the "careful intelligence work" that dismantled the complex scheme in the months leading up to Mexico's 2012 presidential election.

Suspects Cynthia Vanier of Canada and Gabriela Davila Huerta of Mexico were released from custody last week after three judges determined that much of the evidence against them was collected illegally and that their basic rights were violated.

Murillo, the current attorney general, has said that he inherited a justice department in disarray and is reviewing previous cases as part of a reorganization.

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Adriana Gomez Licon on Twitter: http://twitter.com/agomezlicon

A posting on the Lilly Pulitzer Facebook page said she "passed away peacefully in Palm Beach, [Fla.] surrounded by family and loved ones."

"Lilly has been a true inspiration to us and we will miss her," the post said. "In the days and weeks ahead we will celebrate all that Lilly meant to us. Lilly was a true original who has brought together generations through her bright and happy mark on the world."

Born Lillian McKim, she attended the tony Miss Porter's school in Farmington, Conn., where the future first lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, was among her classmates.

Lilly married Peter Pulitzer, grandson of newspaper mogul Joseph Pulitzer.

The couple moved to Palm Beach, Fla., where they had three children: Peter, Minnie and Liza.

Despite having money and being well-known on the society circuit, Pulitzer toldshe was so miserable that she landed in a Westchester, N.Y., mental hospital for six months.

"I went crazy," Pulitzer told the magazine in 1982. "I was a namby-pamby; people always made decisions for me. The doctor said I should find something to do."

Pulitzer began juicing citrus grown at her family's groves, but was always covered in juice at the end of the work day.

She designed herself a shift dress to match the juice stains. It received so many compliments that she launched her first fashion line in 1959 -- just a few dresses -- at her juice stand.

The dresses were a hit, and Pulitzer entered the fashion business full-time.

"It was a total change of life for me," she toldin 2008. "I entered it with no business sense. ... It was just something that I all of a sudden took over."

The brand reached new heights when Pulizter's former classmate, Jackie Kennedy, was photographed wearing one of her dresses while on vacation, according to the Lily Pulitzer website.

"Jackie wore one of my dresses -- it was made from kitchen curtain material -- and people went crazy. They took off like zingo. Everybody loved them, and I went into the dress business," Pulitzer said.

She divorced Peter Pulitzer in 1969 and that year married Cuban lawyer Enrique Rousseau, who died in 1993.

Through the years, Pulitzer's brand expanded to include country club attire, swimsuits, children's clothing, home goods and a limited selection of menswear.

Despite grossing millions of dollars each year, Pulitzer shut down her closing line in 1984 when sales began to slump.

The Lilly Pulitzer revival came a decade later when she sold the license in 1993, stepping away from the daily business grind but remaining as a consultant.

The free-spirited socialite known for going barefoot whenever possible, continued to host parties at her Florida home and published two guides to entertaining, reveling in her belief that "it's always summer somewhere."

Veteran filmmaker Steven Spielberg, who is 2013's jury president, will make this an Oscar-winning quartet a rare event for a festival that prides itself on celebrating less mainstream, independent cinema.

"The Oscars (connection) is a coincidence as all this people are friends of Cannes. And don't forget that these stars are also involved and engaged in independent cinema," Cannes Artistic Director Thierry Fremaux told The Associated Press.

"It has to be legitimate and glamorous... They all have their (unique) place in the jury," he added.

Kidman, who trod the Riviera festival's red carpet last year for the nominated "Paperboy," will certainly add a glamour factor, but will join a host of lesser known, but equally important, industry names including Romanian director Cristian Mungiu who won the festival's prize for best screenplay in 2012 for "Beyond The Hills."

Other jurors include French actor Daniel Auteuil, Indian actress Vidya Balan, Scottish director Lynne Ramsay, and Japanese filmmaker Naomi Kawase.

They will all vote on the 19 nominated films, which include a sprinkling of works by old Cannes favorites like Roman Polanski, the Coen Brothers and Steven Soderbergh, to decide the winner of the coveted Palme d'Or. The festival's top accolade will be awarded on May 26.

In what will please those who have accused Cannes of sexism in the past, again this year the jury is balanced between genders.

"It's tradition: a male or female president, then four women and four men. It's important that at a time when women's in cinema is under scrutiny, to stick to this tradition," said Fremaux.

Last year, Cannes was accused of sexism for a compiling a Palme d'Or shortlist of films that included no women directors. This year, there is only one female Palme d'Or contender, from the sister of former French first lady Carla Bruni, Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi with her feature "A Chateau in Italy."

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Thomas Adamson can be followed at Twitter.com/ThomasAdamsonAP