The approval allows all Department of Defense customers to use the BlackBerry Z10 and Q10 smartphones, and BlackBerry PlayBook tablets on DoD networks.

This comes after a Pentagon spokesperson said on Wednesday that the Pentagon is expected to clear Apple Inc, Samsung and BlackBerry mobile devices for use on Defense Department networks in the next few weeks.

The Pentagon unveiled a plan in February aimed at giving the military services a much broader range of choices among mobile devices. The department has 470,000 BlackBerry users, 41,000 Apple users and 8,700 people with Android devices.

(Reporting by Ankur Banerjee in Bangalore; Editing by Richard Chang)

NEW YORK/LONDON (Reuters) - Some shareholders of Verizon Communications Inc say they could be happy for the company to pay up to $130 billion for Vodafone Group Plc's stake in their U.S. wireless venture.

Reuters reported last week that Verizon had hired advisers to prepare a $100 billion cash-and-stock bid for Vodafone's 45 percent stake in Verizon Wireless, though several major Vodafone investors have said that figure is inadequate.

Two large shareholders in Verizon told Reuters they could be comfortable with paying 20 percent to 30 percent more to secure the No.1 U.S. mobile service provider, which generates 66 percent of Verizon's revenue and almost all of its profit.

"No way do I dream that $100 billion is going to get this deal done. It's just not going to happen," said Craig Leopold, portfolio manager at Columbia Management Investment advisors.

His firm, with $341 billion assets under management, is Verizon's 10th-largest shareholder with 22 million shares, according to the latest publicly available records.

"I think shareholders would be willing to accept a price as high as $130 billion because it would still be accretive to Verizon. But the preference would be a lower price like $120 billion," Leopold said.

Verizon declined to comment on what it might be willing to pay for full ownership of Verizon Wireless, and it is not clear if the company would be willing to go beyond $100 billion, which would already be the third-largest deal on record.

Spending so much on the business is not without risk for Verizon: there are few cost-savings to be had, and the mature U.S. mobile market is expected to become a much tougher place to compete in due to strengthening rivals and slowing growth, analysts said.

Not all Verizon shareholders are happy about the company shelling out big bucks. Bill Jones, president of the Association of BellTel Retirees, said he sees strategic benefits from such a deal, but worries that Verizon will overpay. About 72 percent of his group's 128,000 members own Verizon shares.

"If they can't afford $8.5 billion to put the pension fund on a good footing, how are they going to come up with $130 billion to pay Vodafone?" said Jones, who is currently surveying the BellTel members to estimate their collective holdings.

Verizon Chief Executive Lowell McAdam told analysts this week that he did not believe a premium would be needed to buy the stake, and warned Vodafone of a "lean" year for dividend payments from their wireless venture.

On the plus side, there are no obvious integration costs from such a transaction as the wireless venture is already run by Verizon. The deal would immediately boost earnings per share as Verizon would keep 100 percent of profits.

Leopold estimated Verizon could lift its 2014 earnings per share by more than 20 percent if it bought the Vodafone stake for $120 billion, or by about 15 percent if it paid $130 billion.

Analyst estimates for a likely price tag range from $108 billion to $139 billion. Vodafone shareholders have suggested a $120 billion price.

"$125 billion to $130 billion is a number I would be comfortable with," said Mike Wetherington, an analyst at Barrow, Hanley, Mewhinney & Strauss, who makes the official recommendation to the firm on how his firm should vote on telecom issues.

Barrow Hanley has $77 billion assets under management and is Verizon's 16th-biggest shareholder with 16.82 million shares. The firm also holds 9.88 million of Vodafone's shares, according to Reuters data.

CREDIT RATING IMPACT

According to people familiar with the matter, Verizon would likely have to line up at least $50 billion of debt to put in a 50-50 cash-and-stock bid for Vodafone's stake.

Paying a high cash price could weigh on Verizon's future dividend or its credit rating. Research firm Gimme Credit said raising debt for a deal could cut Verizon's rating two notches.

And the more shares it uses for a deal, the more dilution existing shareholders face. Morgan Stanley analyst Simon Flannery said a stock award could also cause problems for Vodafone shareholders, as some cannot keep Verizon shares.

Working in Vodafone's favor, however, is Verizon's public stance that it is keen to buy the asset. Market conditions are also good, with funding costs low, preferable foreign exchange rates and Verizon share at levels not seen since October 2000.

The discussion of price for Vodafone's stake in the venture, formed in 2000, follows years of speculation that the British firm could sell out of its most important asset. Growing expectations for a deal have boosted shares in both companies over 20 percent his year.

Smaller investor Reaves Asset Management would prefer a deal as close to $100 billion as possible but could support more depending on the structure, portfolio manager Louis Cimino said.

"At $125 billion we'd look at it very carefully. Under the right mix of cash and stock that could work. It obviously gets riskier," said Cimino, whose fund manages under $3 billion in assets including a little over 2 million Verizon shares.

Investor and analyst estimates all assume Verizon will pay with a mixture of shares and cash, which it could raise through a debt offering. With this in mind analysts estimate that Verizon could pay a valuation of between seven and nine times Verizon Wireless' estimated operating earnings.

In comparison, Verizon in 2009 paid about 8 times earnings estimates for rural wireless operator Alltel.

(Reporting by Sinead Carew and Kate Holton; Additional reporting by Soyoung Kim; Editing by Ben Berkowitz and Tiffany Wu)

Yet the most likely first-time homeowners, especially young professionals and couples starting families, won't buy these days. Or they can't. Or they already did, during the housing boom. And their absence helps explain why the housing industry is still depressed.

The obstacles range from higher down payments to heavy debt from credit cards and student loans. But even many of those who could afford to buy no longer see it as a wise investment. Prices have sunk 15 percent in three years.

"I've looked for a home, but the places we can afford with the money we have are not that great," says Seth Herter, 23, a store manager in suburban St. Louis. "It also doesn't seem smart anymore to buy with prices falling. Buying a home just doesn't make sense to us."

The proportion of U.S. households that own homes is at 65.1 percent, its lowest point since 1996, the Census Bureau says. That marks a shift after nearly two decades in which homeownership grew before peaking at 70 percent during the housing boom.

The housing bubble lured so many young buyers that it reduced the pool of potential first-timers to below-normal levels. That's contributed to the decline in new buyers in recent years.

In 2005, at the height of the boom, about 2.8 million first-timers bought homes, according to the National Association of Realtors. By contrast, for each of the four years preceding the boom, the number of first-timers averaged fewer than 2 million.

Still, the bigger factors are the struggling economy, shaky job security, tougher credit rules and lack of cash to put down, said Dan McCue, research manager at Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies. The unemployment rate among typical first-timers, those ages 25 to 34, is 9.8 percent, compared with 9 percent for all adults.

"The obstacles facing first-time buyers are big, and it's changing the way they look at home ownership," McCue says. "It's no longer the American Dream for the younger generation."

First-timers usually account for up to half of all sales. Over the past year, they've accounted for only about a third.

A big reason is tougher lending standards.

Lenders are demanding more money up front. In 2002, the median down payment for a single-family home in nine major U.S. cities was 4 percent, according to real estate website Zillow.com. Today, it's 22 percent.

And one-third of households have credit scores too low to qualify for a mortgage. The median required credit score from FICO Inc., the industry leader in credit ratings, has risen from 720 in 2007, when the market went bust, to 760 today.

Homes in many places are the most affordable in a generation. In the past year, the national median sale price has sunk 3.5 percent. Half the homes listed in the Tampa Bay area are priced below $100,000.

The average mortgage rate for a 30-year fixed loan is 4 percent, barely above an all-time low. Five years ago, it was near 6.5 percent. In 2000, it exceeded 8 percent.

When the economy eventually strengthens, the housing market will, too. More people will be hired. Confidence will rise. Down payments won't be so hard to produce.

The question is whether first-time buyers will then start flowing into the housing market. That will depend mainly on whether they think prices will rise, said Mark Vitner, senior U.S. economist at Wells Fargo.

"It's a guessing game as to when things will turn around," Vitner said. "But until they do, you won't see young people buying homes."

BOSTON (Reuters) - Former Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords received the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award on Sunday, asking the U.S. Congress to act more courageously on the issue of gun control.

"We all have courage inside," Giffords, who herself survived being shot in 2011, said at the Kennedy Library in Boston. "I wish there was more courage in Congress. Sometimes it's hard to express it."

The remarks come just a few weeks after the U.S. Senate voted down a measure to expand background checks for gun buyers, a step favored by U.S. President Barack Obama and most Americans.

An online Reuters/Ipsos poll released in January showed that 86 percent of those surveyed favored expanded background checks of all gun buyers.

Giffords, a Democrat, was shot in the head when a gunman opened fire on a congressional outreach event in Tucson in January 2011, killing six people and wounding a dozen others. She resigned from Congress a year after the shooting to focus on her recovery.

Following the attack in Newtown, Connecticut, that killed 26 people at an elementary school in December, Giffords and her husband, former astronaut Mark Kelly, founded a lobby group aimed at curbing gun violence and challenging the political clout of the well-funded gun lobby.

Before the awards ceremony on Sunday, Giffords and Kelly visited victims of the April 15 Boston Marathon bombing who are recovering at the Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital.

The award, named for President Kennedy's 1957 Pulitzer Prize-winning book "Profiles in Courage," was presented to Giffords by foundation president Caroline Kennedy.

(Reporting by Aaron Pressman; Editing by Chris Reese)

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder was in attendance on Monday as the Detroit Public Schools (DPS) announced that three of its schools will be the beneficiaries of a $1.5 million grant by JPMorgan Chase. The grant will be given specifically to the nonprofit organization Southwest Solutions, to be used for different projects aimed at jump-starting the "community hubs" initiative that the DPS launched earlier this month,

The initiative looks to use existing Detroit public schools as the foundation to rebuild the city as a set of communities. As such, the new grants will be used in conjunction with the state Department of Human Services' Pathways to Potential programs to provide "success coaches" in the three schools, so as to give families better access to both state and federal resources.

Here is some of the key information that emerged from the grant announcement by DPS on Monday.

* The three schools that have been chosen to benefit from the grant money are: Western International High School, Harms Elementary, and Maybury Elementary.

* Under the DPS' five-year plan, schools will offer in-house social services. Some eventually will do so for as many as 12 hours a day.

* John Van Camp, who is the president of Southwest Solutions, spoke of his organization's enthusiasm for the community hub projects, telling the Detroit Free Press that the agency is "so pleased to be a part of that movement."

* According to athe grant money is slated for use in providing foreclosure protection, job training programs, and financial literacy programs, among other services.

* The DPS' five-year plan is expected to be funded largely through partnerships with community groups and private interests such as Southwest Solutions, rather than through the school district itself.

* The emergency financial manager in charge of the Detroit Public Schools, Roy Roberts, told MLive on Monday that he and other officials have identified up to 30 additional schools that could function as community hubs, providing educational opportunities for Detroit children as well as social services for their families.

* For his part, Snyder expressed his enthusiasm for the project as well, telling MLive that he was "excited to see the private sector diving into projects like this."

* State Department of Human Services Director Maura Corrigan was also on hand for Monday's announcement. During her remarks she referred to the community hub program as"the model we need to reinvent Michigan,"

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Vera Wang, the queen of bridal couture, is abolishing the nearly $500 fee she charged Chinese brides-to-be to try on a garment at her new Shanghai bridal boutique after the move, meant to deter counterfeiters, set off a global outcry.

Local and global media had criticized the surcharge as being discriminatory because it was applied only in China, at the company's Shanghai store, which staged a "soft opening" in January as the company's first bridal salon in the country, a vast potential market as the numbers of wealthy grow.

A Vera Wang spokeswoman told Reuters that the 3,000 yuan ($480) charge was being scrapped as of Wednesday.

"Please kindly be informed that Vera Wang has abolished appointment fees at her bridal salons worldwide starting from March 27, 2013," the spokeswoman said in an email, without elaborating.

A company spokeswoman told local media earlier this year that the charge was imposed to fend off copying of the elaborate dresses, which fetch thousands of dollars in the original.

Despite the move, though, Vera Wang's ivory tulle trains and pinched bodice gowns had already found fans in the world of pirates, with knockoffs widely available on Chinese e-commerce sites for a fraction of the price.

Li, one seller of "Vera Wang style" dresses on Taobao Marketplace, China's largest e-commerce site, says he can achieve up to 90 percent similarity to the namesake garments without even seeing the originals.

A Vera Wang original can range anywhere from $2,000 to over $10,000, but on Taobao some imitations go for as little as $100.

"For the experts you don't need to try on the dress to figure out how to copy it, you just need to see it or feel it at the shop," said Li, who declined to give his full name.

Li's factory, based in Suzhou, a city near Shanghai, makes Vera Wang knockoffs from photos of her creations, then sells them online for between 600 yuan ($97) to 1,700 yuan ($270).

The Taobao sellers who hawk the look-alikes use organza, satin and lace to recreate the ethereal bridal trains and three-dimensional floral whorls on Wang's dresses.

Most of the sellers online said they could achieve near 100 percent similarity to Vera Wang dresses but the complicated hand stitching and high quality materials that go into an original dress is something they can't replicate.

"There will be slight changes... If you want 100 percent you should buy the original," said one seller of mid-range copies.

In 2012, China was the top source country for counterfeit goods entering the United States and the European Union (EU) with more than 70 percent originating from China, according to the latest customs seizure reports from the U.S. and the EU.

Alibaba Group, which owns Taobao Marketplace, said in a statement to Reuters the company works with intellectual property rights holders to take down counterfeit listings and will penalize stores caught.

($1 = 6.2107 Chinese yuan)

(Editing by Kazunori Takada, Elaine Lies and Michael Perry)

The fire 50 miles northwest of Los Angeles mushroomed to 43 square miles Friday as 900 firefighters used engines, aircraft, bulldozers and other equipment to battle the flames.

Forecasters said a weekend of increased humidity should help teams fighting the early-season blaze.

"It's a total turnaround from what we had," said Kurt Kaplan, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Oxnard. "It should be a much better day for firefighters tomorrow."

Capt. Mike Lindbery of the Ventura County Fire Department said early Saturday that crews intended to take advantage of lower temps and higher humidity.

"That will give us a chance because it's going to really bring that fire activity down quite a bit. I think we will make some significant progress," Lindbery said.

Despite its size and speed of growth, the fire that broke out Thursday and quickly moved through the Camarillo Springs area has caused damage to just 15 structures, though it's threatening thousands.

Residents were grateful so many homes were spared.

"''It came pretty close. All of these houses these firemen did a tremendous job. Very, very thankful for them," Shayne Poindexter said. Flames came within 30 feet of the house he was building.

Ventura County Fire Department spokesman Bill Nash said parts of the Newbury Park community of Thousand Oaks were under mandatory and voluntary evacuations. Overnight, he said firefighters planned to stockpile resources along a road that lies between the fire and Malibu, protecting homes on the fire's eastern front. Its cause of the fire is under investigation.

The good fortune of the Camarillo Springs area wasn't the result of luck or clairvoyance by firefighters. It came after years of planning and knowing that sooner or later just such a conflagration was going to strike.

Camarillo Springs, which was nothing more than rugged backcountry when homes began to go up there 30 years ago, was well prepared.

Its homes were built with sprinkler systems and fireproof exteriors from the roofs to the foundations. Residents are required to clear brush and other combustible materials to within 100 feet of the dwellings, and developers had to make sure the cul-de-sacs that fill the area's canyons were built wide enough to accommodate the emergency vehicles seen on TV racing in to battle the flames.

Residents in the area are also particularly vigilant about clearing brush from the hillsides next to their yards, Kruschke said. Normally, firefighters remind people in such areas to do that every June, but in Camarillo Springs people do it every few months. The work paid off this week.

The type of blaze that hit the area usually doesn't strike Southern California wild-land until September or October, after the summer has dried out hillside vegetation. But the state has seen a severe drought during the past year, with the water content of California's snowpack only 17 percent of normal.

That created late-summer conditions by May, and when hot Santa Ana winds and high temperatures arrived this week, the spring flames that firefighters routinely knock down once or twice a year quickly roared up a hillside out of control.

On Friday, the wildfire stormed back through canyons toward inland neighborhoods when winds reversed direction.

After jumping Pacific Coast Highway 20 miles north of Malibu, the fire burned for a time on a beach shooting range at the Point Mugu Naval Air Station.

The blaze is one of more than 680 wildfires in the state so far this year about 200 more than average.

In Riverside County, a 4 1/2-square-mile fire that destroyed a home burned for a third day in mountains north of Banning. It was 75 percent contained.

Fifty-five miles away from Camarillo, in the hills above Glendale, a blaze broke out Friday afternoon, prompting evacuations and closure of a freeway as it quickly charred 75 acres.

In Tehama County in Northern California, the size of a wildfire north of Butte Meadows was revised down from more than 15 square miles to 10 square miles, state fire spokesman Daniel Berlant said.

The fire, which was 20 percent contained, was burning in a remote area and wasn't posing an imminent threat to any structures.

___

Associated Press writers Shaya Tayefe Mohajer and Robert Jablon in Los Angeles contributed to this story.

The report says Assad inaugurated on Saturday a statue dedicated to "martyrs" from Syrian universities who died in the country's two-year-old uprising and civil war.

A photograph posted on Assad's Facebook page showed him surrounded by bodyguards as young men, who appeared to be students, waved at him.

Assad normally appears rarely in public. But on Wednesday, Assad visited a Damascus power station to mark May Day, according to the media.

Assad's visit came as Israeli officials confirmed the country's air force carried out a strike against Syria, saying it targeted a shipment of advanced missiles bound for the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Corn futures surged on concern that wet, cold weather in the Plains region will delay planting and reduce harvests.

July corn rose 40 cents, or 6.5 percent, to $6.5975 a bushel. That's the biggest one-day gain since June 25, when last year's drought was pushing up prices.

The price of corn plunged at the end of March after the government said that it expected farmers to plant the biggest crop in almost 80 years. Corn also rose after the government said inventories were higher than analysts had expected. The grain is now regaining some of those losses.

"The very cold, damp and wet spring is certainly interfering with planting," said Sterling Smith, a commodities strategist at Citigroup. "That is making the market more than a little nervous."

Wheat and soybean futures also rose.

July wheat rose 24 cents, or 3.5 percent, to $7.1650 and soybeans for the same month climbed 27.75 cents, or 2 percent, to $14.0875.

Metals prices rose, led by palladium and platinum.

Palladium for June delivery gained $17.25, or 2.5 percent, to $699.20 an ounce. Platinum for July rose $30.90, or 2.1 percent, to $1,507.40.

Copper for July delivery rose 4.05 cents, or 1.3 percent, to $3.2265 a pound. Gold for June delivery rose $13.80, or 0.9 percent, to $1,467.40 an ounce. July silver climbed 37.80 cents to $24.166 an ounce.

Metals are recovering some of the losses they sustained after slowing Chinese economic growth prompted prices to plunge April 15. Gold was among the biggest decliners that day, losing $140 an ounce.

In energy trading, the price of oil rose above $94 a barrel Monday after positive U.S. economic data boosted the outlook for demand. The U.S. government said Americans spent more in March as their incomes went up. Also, pending home sales hit a three-year high.

Benchmark crude for June delivery rose $1.50 to $94.50 a barrel in New York.

Wholesale gasoline was little changed at $2.8220 a gallon. Heating oil was unchanged at $2.8668 a gallon. Natural gas rose 16.90 cents to $4.3920 per 1,000 cubic feet.

SAN ANTONIO (Reuters) - Using voice to send text messages while driving is just as dangerous as texting with fingers, with driver response times significantly delayed no matter which method was used, a study released on Tuesday showed.

The study by the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M University was the first to compare voice-to-text and traditional texting on a handheld device in an actual driving environment.

"In each case, drivers took about twice as long to react as they did when they weren't texting," Christine Yager, who headed the study, told Reuters. "Eye contact to the roadway also decreased, no matter which texting method was used."

The research involved 43 participants driving along a test track without any electronic devices present. The same participants then drove while texting and again while using a speech-to-text device.

Yager said speech-to-text actually took longer than traditional texting, due to the need to correct errors in the electronic transcription.

"You're still using your mind to try to think of what you're trying to say, and that by proxy causes some driving impairment, and that decreases your response time," Yager said.

The biggest concern is that the driver felt safer while using voice-to-text applications instead of traditional texting, even though driving performance was equally affected, she said.

This may lead to a false belief that texting while driving using spoken commands is safe when in reality it is not, Yager said.

The Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association says 6.1 billion text messages per day were sent in the United States in 2012. Some 35 percent of drivers admit to reading a text or email while driving in any given month, while 26 percent admitted to typing one, according to data from AAA, a national drivers' organization.

"Every day, new technologies come out, and it is important to educate the public that even these seemingly new distractions are still distractions, and it will help people be safer when they get into the vehicle," Yager said.

(Reporting by Jim Forsyth; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Eric Walsh)