WASHINGTON - President Obama honored several dozen of the nation's top law enforcement officials at the White House today, saying they "embody America at its best and at its bravest."

"We know that when we need you most, you'll be ready to dash into danger, to protect our lives, even if it means putting your lives on the line," he said as the National Association of Police Organization's TOP COPS Award recipients stood behind him during an event in the East Room of the White House. "That's what these folks are all about.That's what the men and women standing behind me have proven - their heart, their courage, their dedication."

As he paid tribute to the nation's top police officers, the president also pushed for "common-sense steps" on gun control to ensure the safety of those officers in the line of duty.

"We also need to take some common-sense steps that protect our rights, protect our children, protect officers in the line of duty by making it harder for dangerous criminals to get their hands on lethal weapons,' he said.

Obama praised the work of law enforcement officials and first responders during the attacks and investigation into the Boston Marathon bombings last month.

"Just a few weeks ago obviously in Boston our entire country saw once again the strong stuff these men and women in uniform are made of. Police officers, first responders, who were running towards explosives, not knowing if there was something more on the way. Law enforcement from different agencies, from different parts of the country working together as one united team to identify suspects and bring them to justice," he said. "And in a moment that few of us will ever forget, the citizens of Watertown, Massachusetts, lining the streets to cheer on and high-five and hug the officers as they're heading home after a job well done."

The honorees came from police departments from across the country - from Oak Creek, Wis., where police officers responded to the deadly shooting at the Sikh temple last summer, to New York City.The president highlighted several officers' heroic acts, including that of Det. Ivan Marcano of the New York Police Department, who was off-duty and on a "date night" with his girlfriend when he was shot in the chest while trying to stop a burglary.

"He got out of his girlfriend's car to stop them and was shot point blank in the chest, a bullet inches from his heart.But his story doesn't end there," the president said. "As his girlfriend was driving him to the hospital, I'm sure not very happy with him, by total coincidence, they ran into the shooter's getaway car.So what does Det. Marcano do?He jumps out of the car, he's been shot, keeps pressure on his chest with his left hand, holding a service weapon with his right, he runs after the suspects.He took one of them down, which led to the capture of the others.

"He wasn't on the clock when any of this happened.This was his date night," he added.

Since 1994, NAPO has honored some of the nation's outstanding law enforcement officials who have gone beyond the call of duty with the annual TOP COPS Awards, which are to be officially presented Sunday during a ceremony in Washington.

As he praised the cops for their work, the president made a call for the country to take the time to thank those officers who risk their lives to protect them.

"When you see a police officer, you meet an officer's family, let them know how much you appreciate it.It's the least we can do for the men and women who give us so much and help keep us safe," he said.

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When Islamic fighters drove into a town in northeast Nigeria on Tuesday, they used anti-aircraft guns, mounted on the backs of trucks, to destroy nearly every landmark of the nation's federal government. Fighters also rode in on at least one bus, the military said, while in other assaults insurgents have fired rocket-propelled grenades.

The militarization of Islamic radicals in the north comes after witnesses saw Nigerian fighters mingle with the extremists who took over northern Mali in the weeks following a coup there. It also comes after fighters seized massive troves of Nigerian military equipment and have received access to arms smuggled out of the lawlessness of Libya.

Those new arms, and the willingness of extremists to use them, highlight the increasing instability in Nigeria's north and ever-growing dangers facing the nation's weak central government.

"Each year, they grow in prominence and sophistication," said David Zounmenou, an analyst at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria, South Africa. "That's what's making the fighting that much more difficult for the Nigerian security forces."

Tuesday, the sophistication of the fighters, likely from the extremist network known as Boko Haram, could be seen in their assault on Bama, a town some 65 kilometers (40 miles) southeast of Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state. The military said some 200 fighters in buses and pickup trucks lay siege to the town. In their arsenal were truck-mounted anti-aircraft guns, weapons seen during the civil war in Libya and the recent fighting in northern Mali.

That attack in Bama killed at least 42 people, as well as 13 others that authorities described as Boko Haram fighters. But the insurgents' heavy weapons helped them overrun the barracks of the Nigerian Army's 202nd Battalion, as well as a police station, a police barracks, a magistrate's court, local government offices and a federal prison. The extremist fighters freed 105 prisoners during their assault, Lt. Col. Sagir Musa said.

The use of the weapons marks a transformation of Nigeria's Islamic extremist insurgency, which grew out of a 2009 riot led by Boko Haram members in Maiduguri that ended in a military and police crackdown that killed some 700 people. The group's leader died in police custody in an apparent execution, fueling dissent that broke into the open in 2010 with the targeted killings of government officials, security agents and religious leaders who spoke out against Boko Haram.

Since then, Islamic extremists have engaged in hit-and-run shootings and suicide bombings, attacks that have killed at least 1,618 people during that time, according to an Associated Press count. That number doesn't include the killings of at least 187 people in the fishing village of Baga during fighting between extremists and security forces, as witnesses and human rights activists say Nigeria's military killed civilians and burned thousands of homes and businesses.

Extremist attack casualties are expected to rise as fighters now have access to sophisticated weaponry. While Nigeria's military has fought in the past decade with heavily armed militants and criminal gangs operating in the creeks of its oil-rich southern delta, analysts and security official say those groups never had access to anti-aircraft weapons. Nor did these groups launch attacks overrunning military barracks or leveling towns.

Where extremists gathered these sophisticated weapons also remains unclear, though they have several means available to them. A propaganda video released in March by Boko Haram, featuring its leader Abubakar Shekau, showed fighters gathered around weapons they said they stole from an attack on an army barracks. Those weapons included what appeared to be heavy machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and possibly anti-aircraft weapons, as well as ammunition and brand-new bulletproof vests.

Another source of tactics and weapons may come from northern Mali, where Nigerian extremists fought along others.

"Boko Haram will also likely recruit militants who fought and obtained new skills from warfare in Mali," wrote analyst Jacob Zenn in a recent publication by the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Army's West Point. "The Boko Haram attack on an army barracks in Monguno ... , in which the militants mounted weapons on four-wheel-drive vehicles, and the discovery of improvised fighting vehicles in a raid on a Boko Haram hideout in Maiduguri ... suggest that Boko Haram has already learned new methods of fighting from the Islamist militants in Mali."

Meanwhile, arms are likely to continue to come out of Libya from heavily armed militias there, said analyst Zounmenou. Those arms can spread quickly through the Sahara Desert and into West Africa's Sahel to Nigeria, a major shipment stop for illegal weapons, he said.

While Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan has spoken before about the need to control arms shipments throughout West Africa, the trade continues largely unstopped. And as more of those weapons end up in the hands of Islamic extremists in Nigeria's north, more violence can be expected, said Zounmenou: "They are now really going to war."

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Jon Gambrell can be reached at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP .

Singh, who won a middleweight bronze at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, was ordered by the ministry to take a test after local police accused him of using heroin on several occasions amid allegations from a fellow boxer.

"Vijender Singh...along with four others was subjected to an out-of-competition test for banned substances," the sports ministry said in a statement.

"The Ministry...is glad to announce that on the basis of these tests none of the boxers were found to have used any banned substances in the recent past."

Singh came under scrutiny when a fellow boxer told investigators after a $24-million drug haul in the northern state of Punjab last month that he and Singh had consumed heroin supplied by a drug dealer.

The 27-year-old Singh denied the allegation.

(Reporting by Sudipto Ganguly; editing by Clare Fallon)

But while places familiar to oenophiles Bordeaux, Tuscany, Napa face climatic challenges,reports, new wine-producing regions may emerge.

Chateau Montana, anyone?

Wine grapes are notoriously picky plants, sensitive to subtle shifts in rainfall, heat and humidity, thereports.

As the planet continues to warm and regional climates change in yet-to-be-determined ways, viticulture experts are striving to forecast how grapes will fare under new conditions. []

And while researchers assumed there would be some changes to the climates of wine-growing regions by 2050, even they were surprised by the drastic alterations shown by an array of climate models.

"We expected to see significant shifts, but we didn't expect to see shifts like these," Lee Hannah, a senior scientist at Conservation International and co-author of the , told the Guardian.

Vast swaths of France, Spain and Italy would become inhospitable to wine grapes by 2050 under the researchers' projections. Likewise, most of Australia's wine regions would be too hot and dry for grapes, and wines from California's famed Napa and Sonoma valleys would disappear from store shelves.

"The fact is that climate change will lead to a huge shake-up in the geographic distribution of wine production," said Hannah.

Some existing vineyards in familiar wine regions could continue to operate, but would probably need additional imports of irrigation water already a vexing issue and not likely to get any easier as the planet gets hotter, thereports.

Beyond the agricultural concerns, however, lies an even knottier issue: the development of prime wildlife habitat. Many of the areas projected to be potential wine-producing regions are also the last refuge for endangered animals.

, for example, now imports most of its wine, but it may decide to plant more of its own domestic vineyards in the future, the Atlantic reports.

However, China's prime wine regions are projected "to be in the same mountains that are habitat for giant pandas, so wine expansion in China may have repercussions for what is arguably the world's most iconic animal," Hannah said in ablog post.

The grizzlies, moose, pronghorn antelope and wolves of America's Yellowstone region could also face considerable pressure if new vineyards begin to crowd them out of their ever-shrinking habitat, thereports.

There are, however, conservation initiatives that could ease the pressure on endangered plants and animals, such as South Africas(BWI).

The BWI works in collaboration with South Africa's wineries and conservationists to protect the habitat in the Cape Floral Kingdom, a UNESCO World Heritage site and a biodiversity hotspot as well as a superb area for vineyards.

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Japan's leading maker of liquid crystal displays had a 500 billion yen ($5.1 billion) net loss for the year, worse than the 450 billion yen deficit it forecast in November, the sources said on condition that they not be identified.

Its operating profit for the second half of its business year was 20 billion yen, compared with the company's forecast for 13.8 billion yen, the sources added.

The company needed a second-half operating profit to allow its lenders to justify a bail-out that rescued it from failing last year.

The write-off of excess capacity, however, highlights softer demand from Apple, which has seen its profit growth slow dramatically from more than 60 percent over the past five years to a projected rate of less than 5 percent for the next decade.

At the start of the year, Sharp was forced to curtail production of 9.7-inch screens for Apple's iPad, sources told Reuters in January.

That has stepped up the urgency for Sharp to find new customers and uses for its leading-technology displays and may make it harder for the company to convince investors and lenders it remains a viable company.

Sharp, which will announce its results for latest business year on May 14, said in statement through the Tokyo Stock Exchange that it had not released the earnings number, without commenting directly on whether it would report a bigger loss than forecast.

In addition to the write-offs, the company is also taking a charge to put aside cash for possible fines from a display price-fixing investigation in Europe, the sources said.

The expanded net loss was first reported in the Nikkei business daily.

The news sent Sharp's shares falling as much as 5.6 percent on Wednesday to 319 yen, their lowest in nearly three weeks, compared with a 0.2 percent drop in the benchmark Nikkei average. The shares have lost more than half their value since the start of last year as the company's troubles mounted, while the benchmark has risen 63 percent.

Sharp in October received a $4.4 billion bailout from banks including Mizuho Financial Group and Mitsubishi Financial Group in return for mortgaging nearly all its factories and offices in Japan and pledging to cut 10,000 jobs.

It has since raised additional cash by selling equity stakes to Qualcomm Inc, which in December agreed to invest as much as $120 million in the Japanese company, and South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co, which in March said it would inject $103 million in return for a 3 percent stake.

It is also in talks to offload its overseas television assembly plants. But with a 200 billion yen convertible bond falling due in September, that money plus the investments from Qualcomm and Samsung will not be enough to cover its financing needs, leading analysts to speculate it will need to find fresh funding sources.

($1 = 97.4100 Japanese yen)

(Reporting by Reiji Murai; Writing by Tim Kelly; Editing by Edmund Klamann)

Ofgem said on Wednesday that, while providers had achieved 99 percent of energy efficiency targets set by the government, some companies including Centrica's British Gas, Drax, Iberdrola's Scottish Power and SSE had missed targets.

The investigation is a sign that the government and regulator are taking an increasingly tough stance against energy suppliers, after a series of fines for mis-selling and at a time when energy bills are rising and wages are flat.

The energy efficiency targets were part of a plan to help lower energy bills and reduce carbon emissions.

Under the measures, energy suppliers were obliged to provide customers, and in particular vulnerable consumers such as people on low incomes or the elderly, with insulation for their lofts and walls and replace inefficient boilers.

(Reporting by Sarah Young, editing by Rosalba O'Brien)

The decision by the Food and Drug Administration is an attempt to find middle ground just days before a court-imposed deadline to lift all age restrictions on the drug.

Today, Plan B One-Step is sold behind pharmacy counters, and buyers must prove they're 17 or older to buy it without a prescription. Tuesday's decision lowers the age limit to 15 and will allow the pill to sit on drugstore shelves next to condoms and spermicides or other women's health products. But customers must prove their age at the cash register.

Teva Women's Health, which makes Plan B, said it would begin over-the-counter sales in a few months.

The question is whether Tuesday's action settles a larger court fight. Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Edward Korman of New York blasted the Obama administration for imposing the age-17 limit, saying it had let election-year politics trump science and was making it hard for women of any age to obtain the emergency contraception in time. He ordered an end to all age restrictions by Monday, for Plan B and its generic versions.

The FDA said Tuesday's decision was independent of the court case and wasn't intended to address it. Technically, the FDA approved Teva's application to sell Plan B in this manner.

The Justice Department remained mum on whether it planned to appeal Korman's decision, and the White House had no immediate comment.

The women's group that sued over the age limits said Tuesday's action is not enough, and it will continue the court fight if necessary.

Lowering the age limit "may reduce delays for some young women but it does nothing to address the significant barriers that far too many women of all ages will still find if they arrive at the drugstore without identification," said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights.

The FDA said the Plan B One-Step will be packaged with a product code that prompts the cashier to verify a customer's age. Anyone who can't provide such proof as a driver's license, birth certificate or passport wouldn't be allowed to complete the purchase. In most states, driver's licenses, the most common form of identification, are issued at age 16.

"These are daunting and sometimes insurmountable hoops women are forced to jump through in time-sensitive circumstances, and we will continue our battle in court to remove these arbitrary restrictions on emergency contraception for all women," Northup said.

Other contraceptive contraception advocates called the move promising.

"This decision is a step in the right direction for increased access to a product that is a safe and effective method of preventing unintended pregnancies," said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. "It's also a decision that moves us closer to these critical availability decisions being based on science, not politics."

Social conservatives had opposed any efforts to loosen restrictions on sale of the morning-after pill, arguing that it was important for parents and medical professionals to be involved in such decisions involving young girls.

The group Concerned Women for America charged that health officials were putting politics and so-called progress ahead of the health of children as well as women.

"It makes no sense that kids need parental permission to take aspirin at school, but they're free to buy and administer Plan B," Penny Nance, CEO and president of CWA, said in a statement.

Half the nation's pregnancies every year are unintended, and doctors' groups say more access to morning-after pills could cut those numbers. The pills contain higher doses of regular contraceptives, and if taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex, can cut the chances of pregnancy by up to 89 percent. But it works best if taken in the first 24 hours.

The FDA had been poised to lift all age limits and let Plan B sell over-the-counter in late 2011, when Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, in an unprecedented move, overruled her own scientists. Sebelius said some girls as young as 11 are physically capable of bearing children but shouldn't be able to buy the pregnancy-preventing pill on their own.

President Barack Obama supported Sebelius' move and a spokesman said earlier this month that the president's position hadn't changed.

The Justice Department could appeal Korman's ruling and seek a stay. If granted, the appeals process would move through the courts, while Plan B is sold over the counter whenever Teva has the product repackaged to meet FDA's requirements.

Absent a stay, "we will want to go back to court as quickly as possible and ask the judge to hold them in contempt," said Janet Crepps, a senior counsel for the Center for Reproductive Rights.

The FDA said Tuesday that Teva had provided data proving that girls as young as 15 could understand how Plan B works and use it properly, without the involvement of a health care provider. Teva plans to conduct a consumer-education program, and indicated it is willing to audit whether stores are following the age requirement, the agency said.

FDA said its ruling applies only to Plan B One-Step, and not to generic versions of the pill which would remain behind pharmacy counters with the age-17 restriction.

If a woman already is pregnant, the morning-after pill has no effect. It prevents ovulation or fertilization of an egg. According to the medical definition, pregnancy doesn't begin until a fertilized egg implants itself into the wall of the uterus. Still, some critics say Plan B is the equivalent of an abortion pill because it may also be able to prevent a fertilized egg from attaching to the uterus, a contention that many scientists and Korman, in his ruling said has been discredited.

As authorities buried the bodies of 18 unidentified workers killed in the collapse, Pope Francis and European Union officials criticized working conditions in the nation's $20 billion a year garment industry, which supplies many European and American retailers.

Francis said he was shocked by a headline from the building collapse that said some of the workers were living on 38 euros a month.

"This was the payment of these people who have died ... And this is called 'slave labor,'" he said. Vatican Radio said the pope made the remarks during a private Mass Wednesday morning at the Vatican.

EU officials said they are considering action including changes to Bangladesh's duty-free and quota-free access to the giant EU market to "incentivize" responsible management of the nation's garment industry. Catherine Ashton, the EU's foreign affairs chief, and its trade commissioner, Karel De Gucht, called in a statement for Bangladesh authorities to act immediately to ensure factories comply with international labor standards.

Pressure built inside Bangladesh as well, as a raucous procession of workers on foot, pickup trucks and motorcycles wound its way through central Dhaka on Wednesday. They waved the national flag and banners, beat drums and chanted "direct action!" and "death penalty!"

From a loudspeaker on the back of a truck, a participant spoke for the group: "My brother has died. My sister has died. Their blood will not be valueless."

May Day protests, customarily an opportunity for workers in this impoverished South Asian nation to vent their grievances, have taken on a poignant significance this year following the April 24 disaster.

Five garment factories were housed in the illegally constructed, eight-story Rana Plaza that collapsed in this Dhaka suburb. Five months after a fire killed 112 people at another clothing factory, the collapse again exposed safety problems in Bangladesh's garment industry.

The death toll from the collapse passed 400 Wednesday, with 399 bodies pulled from the rubble and three of the injured dying in the hospital, police said.

Several hundred people attended a mass funeral in a Dhaka suburb for 18 unidentified workers who died in the building collapse. The bodies, rotting in the spring heat, were brought to the graveyard on the back of a flatbed truck. One woman wailed that one of the bodies was her sister's and begged to take it.

More than 80 additional graves have been prepared, with authorities expected scores of more bodies to remain unclaimed.

The owner of the building, Mohammed Sohel Rana, is being questioned by police while under arrest. He is expected to be charged with negligence, illegal construction and forcing workers to join work, which is punishable by a maximum of seven years in jail. Authorities have not said if more serious crimes will be added.

Workers protesting Wednesday demanded capital punishment for the 38-year-old Rana, a small-time political operative with the ruling Awami League party.

"I want the death penalty for the owner of the building. We want regular salaries, raises and absolutely we want better safety in our factories," said Mongidul Islam Rana, 18, who works in a garment factory that was not located in Rana Plaza.

The Bangladesh High Court has ordered the government to confiscate Rana's property and to freeze the assets of the owners of the factories in Rana Plaza so the money can be used to pay the salaries of their workers.

Rana had permission to build five stories but added three more floors illegally. When huge cracks appeared in the building a day before its collapse, police ordered an evacuation, but Rana told tenants that it was safe and they should go back in. The next day, a bank and some shops refused to occupy the premises but factory managers told their workers to go back in. A couple of hours later the building came down in a heap of concrete and bricks.

Some 2,500 people escaped with injuries. Rescue workers expect the death toll to rise, because they believe many bodies are still buried on the ground level.

There is confusion over how many people remain missing.

Zillur Rahman Chowdhury, a Dhaka district administrator, said so far 149 people have been listed missing. A police official, Aminur Rahman, said police have recorded up to 1,300 names as missing, but he cautioned that many may be duplicates. "We will now have to screen the names by computer to find the actual number," he said.

Rescuers estimate that the building turned into 600 tons of rubble, of which 350 tons has been removed.

Anxious relatives were still looking for their loved ones missing. Kulsum, who uses one name, was looking for her husband, holding his photograph among several hundred people at a nearby school ground.

"My husband was inside the building on the fifth floor," said Kulsum. "I haven't found him. Neither alive nor dead."

The garment-factory fire in November brought widespread pledges to improve worker-safety standards in Bangladesh. But since then, very little has changed.

"I think it is a wakeup call for the nation, a wakeup call for the industry and for the trade unions," said Shirin Akter, founding president of Karmojibi Nari, a Dhaka-based Bangladeshi group that lobbies for the rights of women in the workplace.

Bangladesh's garment industry was the third-largest in the world in 2011, after China and Italy.

Among the garment makers in the building were Phantom Apparels, Phantom Tac, Ether Tex, New Wave Style and New Wave Bottoms. Altogether, they produced several million shirts, pants and other garments a year.

The New Wave companies, according to their website, make clothing for several major North American and European retailers. Britain's Primark has acknowledged it was using a factory in Rana Plaza. It said in a statement Monday that it is providing emergency aid and will pay compensation to victims who worked for its supplier.

"Primark notes the fact that its supplier shared the building with those of other retailers. We are fully aware of our responsibility. We urge these other retailers to come forward and offer assistance," it said.

Canadian company Loblaw Inc., which also got its Joe Fresh clothing line made in Rana Plaza, said Monday it will ensure that victims and their families "receive benefits now and in the future."

Spokeswoman Julija Hunter said the company is still working out the details, but plans to deliver support "in the best and most meaningful way possible."

Wal-Mart said none of its clothing had been authorized to be made in the Rana Plaza facility, but it is investigating whether there was any unauthorized production.

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Associated Press writers Julhas Alam in Dhaka and Cassandra Vinograd in London contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama cautioned against a rush to judgment on whether Syria used chemical weapons against its own people on Tuesday in a sign he is going to take a deliberate approach to a problem that could lead to U.S. military action.

At a White House news conference, Obama said there is evidence chemical weapons were used inside Syria but "we don't know how they were used, when they were used, who used them" and "we don't have a chain of custody that establishes what exactly happened."

Obama said the Defense Department already has prepared options that might be available, which he declined to describe, in response to what would clearly be an "escalation" and a "threat to the security of the international community, our allies and the Untied States."

He said it will take time to conclusively render a judgment on whether a U.S. "red line" against the use of chemical weapons by Syria had been crossed, insisting that "I've got to make sure I've got the facts."

Obama is leery about launching military action against Syria without firm evidence, given that his predecessor, George W. Bush, began the Iraq war over claims of weapons of mass destruction that turned out to be untrue.

"If we end up rushing to judgment without hard, effective evidence, then we can find ourselves in the position where we can't mobilize the international community to support what we do," he said.

The government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad denies using chemical weapons in the two-year-old civil war in which more than 70,000 people have been killed.

(Reporting by Reuters White House team; Editing by Mohammad Zargham)