Curiosity's handlers sent no commands to the rover for most of April, because Mars was on the opposite side of the sun from Earth at the time. But this planetary alignment, known as a , is now over, and the mission team is planning to drill into a Red Planet rock soon and then send Curiosity off on an epic, miles-long trek to the base of a huge and mysterious mountain.

"A couple of weeks to move to the site and drill, and then the experiments themselves can take also a couple of weeks that's about the time scale we're looking at," said Curiosity deputy project scientist Ashwin Vasavada, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "And then we'd hopefully get going." []

He stressed, however, that this timeframe could shift depending on how the drilling operation goes, and what Curiosity discovers.

Curiosity healthy after 'spring break'

Thewasn't idle during conjunction. It continued monitoring Martian weather and radiation and perfomed some relatively simple science work using commands sent up in advance, Vasavada said.

"That all went fine it kind of executed flawlessly a long set of preplanned activities," he told SPACE.com. "We had never planned 30 days at once [before], so that was a relief."

But things have picked up since mission controllers got back in touch with Curiosity late last week. They've already uploaded a minor software update to the rover, which emerged from conjunction in fine health, Vasavada said.

Curiosity continues to operate on its backup, or B-side, computer, which it switched to after a (or A-side) in late February.

The rover team has still not fully figured out what happened to the A-side, but engineers have made significant troubleshooting progress. For example, Curiosity would have been OK if an issue during conjunction had forced the rover to swap back over to the A-side computer, Vasavada said.

Drilling another hole

Curiosity touched down inside Mars' huge Gale Crater last August, kicking off a two-year surface mission to determine if the Red Planet could ever have .

The rover team has already checked off this primary goal, announcing in March that a spot dubbed Yellowknife Bay was indeed habitable billions of years ago. Scientists reached this conclusion after studying Curiosity's analyses of material pulled from a 2.5-inch-deep (6.4 centimeters) hole the rover drilled into a Red Planet outcrop. []

Now that conjunction's over, the mission team wants to drill another hole in a nearby rock, to confirm and perhaps extend the exciting results gleaned from the .

"Probably in the next week or two, we will slightly move the rover to a new location, which the science team is actively choosing right now," Vasavada said. "Primarily, it will be to duplicate the results from the first hole, because they were so exciting and, in some cases, unexpected that the people who run the experiments just want to make sure it's really correct before writing all the papers up."

"Slightly move" likely means a few meters or so, he said, adding that the second drilling activity might target intriguing mineral veins or concretions that the team avoided the first time around, not wanting to complicate the drill's maiden operation.

Off to Mount Sharp

Once the drilling and subsequent analyses are complete, the team plans to start the long trek to , the mysterious 3.4-mile-high (5.5 kilometers) mountain that rises from Gale Crater's center.

Mount Sharp's foothills, which lie about 5 miles (8 km) away from Yellowknife Bay, were identified as Curiosity's main destination before the rover's November 2011 launch.

Mars-orbiting spacecraft have spotted signs that the mountain's base was exposed to liquid water long ago, and the team wants Curiosity to read the Red Planet's environmental history like a book as it climbs up Mount Sharp's lower reaches.

Curiosity has taken plenty of time to check out interesting rocks and riverbeds near its landing site thus far, putting just 2,300 feet (700 meters) on its odometer to date. But the long trip to Mount Sharp will force a shift in the rover team's mindset, requiring them to ignore some intriguing features in the interest of making tracks.

Mission scientists are already starting to plan Curiosity's route to Mount Sharp, a process that involves identifying high-priority science targets along the way. Still, there's no way the team will be able to look at everything that draws their interest.

"One of our engineers said it's like putting your family in the car to go to Disneyland," Vasavada said. "Along the way, there's the biggest ball of twine, and a little dinosaur museum and all this stuff. But you have to tell your kids, 'We can't do everything, or we'll never get to Disneyland.'"

Follow Mike Wall on Twitterand.Follow us , or . Originally published on

Even so, the payments processing company's latest results trumped Wall Street's estimates. It also raised its fiscal 2013 earnings-growth forecast from high-teens to around 20 percent, citing a more certain revenue outlook and earlier-than-planned share buybacks.

Investors responded favorably, lifting Visa's shares 2 percent in after-hours trading.

Visa doesn't issue cards. It makes money from processing charge card transactions, so it benefits from heightened consumer spending.

Steady job growth, a sustained stock market rally and rising home values have helped boost consumers' confidence this year, even though Americans' paychecks got smaller due to an increase in Social Security payroll taxes that went into effect in January.

Sales at U.S. retailers a key indicator of consumer spending declined a seasonally adjusted 0.4 percent in March. That followed a 1 percent gain in February and a 0.1 percent decline in January.

Still, more consumers turned to Visa-branded debit and credit cards in the quarter.

The company, based in Forest City, Calif., said Americans rang up $255 billion using Visa-branded credit cards, an increase of 9 percent from a year earlier. But debit card use was essentially flat.

Transactions processed over Visa's network totaled $13.9 billion, an increase of 6 percent from a year earlier. The U.S. accounted for a 3 percent gain, while international transactions climbed 21 percent.

"Economic uncertainty does remain, but our business model continues to prove itself through all environments, and growth rates," Visa CEO Charlie Scharf said in a conference call with Wall Street analysts.

Scharf noted that the growth trend continued through April.

The growth in spending by cardholders echoed the results reported earlier in the day by rival MasterCard Inc.

To distance itself from MasterCard, Visa has been taking steps to make its payment-processing business more accessible to mobile device users, who increasingly shop online on tablets and smartphones, rather than PCs.

In February, the company reached a deal with mobile commerce provider ROAM aimed at enabling merchants to accept electronic payments via mobile devices. Visa also launched a mobile money platform meant to streamline how financial institutions can offer financial services to consumers via mobile devices.

Also during the quarter, Visa disclosed it had agreed to partner with JPMorgan Chase & Co. in a deal that calls for Chase to launch a payments processing platform powered by Visa. Through that platform, Chase will offer discounts to its cardholders when they go to ring up a purchase from merchants who have signed up to join the Chase Merchant Network.

Scharf noted that the companies finalized the deal last month, and said it was a 10-year renewable partnership.

For the fiscal second-quarter, Visa reported net income of $1.27 billion, or $1.92 per share. That compares with net income of $1.29 billion, or $1.91 per share, in the same period last year.

The prior-year results included a one-time non-cash adjustment of $208 million related to the company's income tax provision.

Revenue in the latest quarter rose nearly 15 percent to $2.96 billion from $2.58 billion a year earlier.

Analysts, on average, forecast earnings of $1.81 per share, on revenue of $2.85 billion, according to FactSet.

Visa noted that its service revenue increased 10 percent to $1.4 billion, while data processing revenue climbed 25 percent to $1.2 billion.

International transaction revenues grew 13 percent to $831 million.

Visa's client incentives declined to $567 million.

Shares ended regular trading down $2.44 at $166.02. The stock added $3.48 to $169.50 in after-market trading.

Net income was C$37.8 million ($37.7 million), or 70 Canadian cents per share, compared with a loss of C$4.4 million, or C$10.85 per share, a year earlier.

But on an adjusted basis, earnings were 78 Canadian cents per share, beating the average analyst forecast of 73 Canadian cents, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Revenue of C$172.2 million for the quarter included results for TMX Group Ltd for Jan 1. to March 31, 2013, TMX said in a statement on Friday.

However, the company said revenue fell 5 percent in the latest quarter compared with the fourth quarter, due mainly to a drop in fees from share listings.

TMX has come under pressure as equity financings and trading volumes have waned along with the prices of gold, copper and other metals.

Equity trading volumes fell by nearly 20 percent compared with the first quarter of 2012.

The number of follow-on offerings fell nearly 20 percent from the fourth quarter, while the value of those offerings fell by almost 30 percent.

TMX, controlled by a group of 13 Canadian banks and financial institutions, also operates the TSX Venture Exchange, where listings are even more heavily weighted toward mining and oil companies, and the Montreal Exchange, which trades derivatives.

($1 = 1.0024 Canadian dollars)

(Reporting by Bhaswati Mukhopadhyay in Bangalore and Alastair Sharp in Toronto; Editing by Ted Kerr)

The new funds would help about 1,200 health centers hire and train staff, conduct community outreach efforts and assist consumers in applying for benefits under the law, which provides coverage through subsidized insurance markets and an expansion of the Medicaid program for the poor, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said.

The announcement comes at a time when reform advocates including Democrats in Congress are expressing concern about the success of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, including whether enough people will sign up for coverage.

The health centers operate nearly 9,000 service delivery sites nationwide and serve approximately 21 million patients each year.

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said the initiative provides a new avenue of outreach, on top of a recently announced program to hire and train counselors known as "navigators" to help enroll the uninsured. There are about 49 million uninsured Americans.

(Reporting by David Morgan; editing by Matthew Lewis)

"My mother passed away this morning just a short time ago, peaceful with my sister by her side, in her sleep," Bernsen said in a post on Facebook.

Bernsen had been updating the status of Cooper's health on Facebook and Twitter over the past few weeks. Neither the cause of Cooper's death nor what she had been suffering from has been disclosed.

Cooper joined the cast of CBS network's "The Young and the Restless," in its first season in 1973, and portrayed the boozy and wealthy Katherine Chancellor. She was still a cast member at the time of her death although her character recently underwent surgery for a brain tumor.

Known as the "The Duchess" and the "Grand Dame of Genoa City," the Chancellor character is credited with giving the series a dash of controversy during its beginnings and becoming an iconic figure in U.S. television soap opera genre.

Cooper's cast mates took to Twitter to remember an enduring star of U.S. daytime television.

"A very sad day for all of us," co-star Jessica Collins posted on Twitter.

"Heaven just gained one feisty angel," said Melissa Claire Egan, another actress on the series.

Cooper, a daytime Emmy winner, also brought her personal life onto the show in 1984 when footage of her real-life facelift was used to depict her character undergoing the same procedure.

Cooper was born in Taft, California, in 1928 and began her professional screen acting career in the 1953 film "The Redhead from Wyoming."

She also appeared on several television shows in the 1950s and 1960s, including "The Twilight Zone" and "Perry Mason," before joining "The Young and the Restless."

Cooper had three children, Caren, Collin and Corbin, who currently stars on the comedy-drama series "Psych" on the USA Network.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey; editing by Jill Serjeant and Jackie Frank)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top U.S. derivatives regulator is considering whether the Bitcoin virtual currency should be subject to its rules, a top official at the agency said.

Bart Chilton, one of five commissioners at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, said he had asked staff to explore whether consumers needed more protection from any mishaps with Bitcoin, whose value collapsed last month.

"Here's what I know for sure: we could regulate it if we wanted. That is very clear," Chilton told Reuters in an interview on Monday. The Financial Times was first to report on Chilton's plans.

Bitcoin, a digital currency that can be moved via computer or smartphone without a financial intermediary, has gained in prominence as people start to question the safety of holding their cash in the bank. It shot up in value in March, when investors took fright at the next turn of the euro zone debt crisis.

But the price of one "coin" plunged to $130 from a record high of $260 on April 10.

The CFTC's remit has been vastly expanded after the 2007-09 financial crisis when it was tasked with writing rules for the $650 trillion swaps market.

"There is potentially a federal role here, and we have to make sure that we're on guard that whatever is traded is appropriately regulated," Chilton said.

Chilton is an often outspoken Democrat on the CFTC's board, and the adoption of any regulation he is pushing for depends on the support of the others on the board, as well as what the CFTC's lawyers and other experts say.

A spokesman for the CFTC declined to comment.

The absence of physical Bitcoins meant people investing in the currency to speculate on a rise in its value could not be said to participate in cash markets, Chilton said, bringing them within the remit of the CFTC's mandate.

"If you're buying Bitcoin and you are hoping that their value increases ... and you could purchase something with them in a day or a week or a month or a year, that is clearly a derivative of the actual Bitcoin," Chilton said.

The U.S. Treasury Department in March said that Bitcoin exchanges would be subject to the same money laundering rules that govern money services business like Western Union.

(Reporting by Douwe Miedema; Editing by Eric Walsh)

AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) -- The average retail cost of a gallon of gas in Maine has dropped nearly 3 cents in the past week to an average of $3.50.

Price-monitoring website MaineGasPrices.com reports Monday that the in-state price is now just a penny above the national average.

Prices in Maine are now almost 40 cents lower than on the same day last year and more than 21 cents per gallon lower than a month ago.

The Maine prices are based on a survey of more than 1,200 gas stations in the state.

A company analyst is warning consumers not to get too comfortable with the prices, as they are expected to start rising again soon.

Six alternate jurors were chosen on Tuesday following the selection a day earlier of a jury of six men and six women for what is expected to be an emotional three-month trial.

The conclusion of the month-long search for a jury set the stage for opening statements to begin in Los Angeles Superior Court on Monday.

Jackson's 82-year-old mother, Katherine, is suing AEG Live, the promoters of his never-realized series of 2009 London comeback concerts, for the wrongful death of her son.

The lawsuit alleges AEG Live was negligent in hiring Dr. Conrad Murray to care for the singer while he rehearsed for a series of 50 shows.

AEG Live contends that it did not hire or supervise Murray and that Jackson was addicted to prescription drugs for years before he agreed to do the "This Is It" London concerts.

The concert promoters also argue that they could not have foreseen that Murray, who was convicted in 2011 of involuntary manslaughter in Jackson's death, posed a danger to the singer.

Jackson, 50, died in Los Angeles on June 25, 2009, from a lethal dose of the surgical anesthetic propofol that Murray was administering for sleep problems. Murray, who is not being sued, formally appealed against his criminal conviction on Monday.

Potential witnesses in the civil trial include Jackson's mother, his two oldest children, Prince, 16, and Paris, 15, as well as Murray, singers Prince and Diana Ross, and Jackson's ex-wives, Lisa Marie Presley and Debbie Rowe.

Katherine Jackson and her son's three children are seeking some $40 billion in damages from privately held AEG Live for loss of the singer's earnings and other damages. The final amount will be determined by the jury should it hold AEG Live negligent.

(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Eric Beech)

A new study, led by astronomers at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom and the Ecole Normale Suprieure de Lyon in France, discovered physical instability inside the planet creates layers of gas that keep the heat in, the researchers said. This explains whyis not cooling at the rate scientists expect for a planet of its age.

"Scientists have been wondering for years if Saturn was using an additional source of energy to look so bright, but instead our calculations show that Saturn appears young because it can't cool down," Gilles Chabrier, a professor in the department of physics and astronomy at the University of Exeter, said in a statement.

Heat moves across Saturn's various layers of gas, but rather than dissipating into space, the layers act as a warm blanket for the ringed planet.

"Instead of heat being transported throughout the planet by large scale (convective) motions, as previously thought, it must be partly transferred by diffusion across different ," Chabrier said. "These separate layers effectively insulate the planet and prevent heat from radiating out efficiently."

Similar thermal processes can be found in , in which warm, salty water sits beneath cooler waters with less salinity, the researchers said. In this type of layered convection, the denser, salty water stops vertical currents from forming, which stops heat from traveling upwards, penetrating the different layers.

The findings of the new study suggest that giant planets may have more complex thermal histories than scientists previously thought.

Saturn is the sixth planet from the sun, and the second largest planet in the solar system. The gas giant is primarily made up of hydrogen and helium.

The results of the new study were published online April 21 in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Follow Denise Chow on Twitter . Follow us,or. Originally published on .

AMMAN (Reuters) - The Syrian army captured a strategic southern town from rebel fighters on Wednesday after a ferocious two-month bombardment, in an advance likely to result in President Bashar al-Assad's forces regaining control of an international transit route, opposition sources said.

The fall of Khirbet Ghazaleh, situated in the Hauran Plain on the highway to Jordan, came after a Jordanian-backed Syrian opposition military council failed to supply weapons to the town's defenders.

This raised resentment among opposition fighters over what they saw as a lack of Jordanian support for their efforts to defeat Assad's forces in the region, according to rebel commanders and activists in the area.

The Hauran Plain, which extends to the Israeli occupied Golan Heights, is the birthplace of the revolt against four decades of family rule by Assad and his late father, which erupted in the city of Deraa in March 2011.

Rebel fighters, operating under the umbrella of the Free Syrian Army, cut off the highway to Jordan two months ago. But keeping the road off-limits to Assad's forces depended on retaining Khirbet Ghazaleh, which is at a crossroads leading west to the contested city of Deraa, the sources said.

Before the uprising in Syria, billions of dollars in goods traded between Gulf countries, Turkey and Europe were transported along the highway, which passes Khirbet Ghazaleh before ending at the Nassib border crossing to Jordan.

About 1,000 rebel fighters withdrew from Khirbet Ghazaleh on Wednesday after losing hope that reinforcements would come from Jordan, which has been cautious about provoking a military response from Assad, activists and opposition fighters said.

"Assad's forces started advancing from the north and west and I can still go back to Khirbet Ghazaleh but I cannot do anything," Abu Yacoub, commander of the Martyrs of Khirbet Ghazaleh brigade, told Reuters by telephone from Hauran.

"I can get a thousand fighters back but it is useless because I don't have ammunition in my hands."

Abu Yacoub said he had contacted Ahmad Nemaah, head of the Jordanian backed military council, before ordering the rebel fighters to withdraw, but Nemaah told him he could not do anything.

"If we lost a battle it does not mean we lost for good. But everyone has turned against Nemaah," Abu Yacoub said.

Nemaah could not be reached for comment.

'BIG TRAGEDY'

"Tomorrow, the big tragedy will happen, the regime's supply route to Deraa will reopen and the officers will go back and ammunition will be resupplied and the bombardment will resume," said Abu Yacoub. "For 61 days we had choked them by controlling Khirbet Ghazaleh."

Abu Yacoub said he had lost 35 fighters in two months.

Al Mutasem Billah, an activist with the Sham News Network opposition monitoring group, said most of the rebel brigades in the south blame Jordan and the military council for the defeat.

"The council follows Jordanian Intelligence, which is more concerned about setting up a proxy unit than an effective force on the ground to take on Assad," he said.

Abu Bakr an activist in the nearby Ghweireh village said most civilians had fled Khirbet Ghazaleh but fear was growing that the remaining residents would face summary executions, similar to massacres in other towns overrun by Assad's forces.

"The people of the area are now fleeing because they fear the army will sweep across the region," he said. "The Free Syrian Army will continue to withdraw and won't face the army along the highway because they no longer have ammunition."

Hauran, which borders Jordan and the Golan Heights, has become a significant battleground as the capital of Damascus comes under pressure, with Assad's forces and loyalist militias hitting back.

The intensified fighting has also led to an influx this year of hundreds of thousands of refugees through Jordan's 370 km (230 mile) border with Syria.

The rebels say they have captured large quantities of weapons, ammunition and vehicles, which has helped them to maintain an offensive after a long period in which the southern border area was relatively quiet compared to the northern and eastern parts of Syria.

Jordan has stepped up security and deployed more troops to the border.

Diplomatic and regional intelligence sources also said Amman was allowing limited supplies of light arms to the military council, which is opposed to the Nusra front, an Islamist militant group suspected of links to al Qaeda and blacklisted by the United States as a "terrorist group."

Al-Nusra members, however, have been largely uninvolved in the Khirbet Ghazaleh fighting, activists and opposition military sources said.

(Additional reporting and writing by Khaled Yacoub Oweis. Editing by Christopher Wilson)