Spies injured his shoulder in Malaysia last October, missing the last two races of 2012 and initial pre-season testing. He reported muscle pain at last month's race in Texas and was absent for the Spanish and French Grands Prix.

The Tennesee-born former world superbike champion took part in Friday practice at Mugello but the team said the problems had not been resolved.

"Unfortunately yesterday's free practice sessions highlighted the muscular problems still afflicting Ben Spies," they said in a statement.

"The intense rehabilitation activities which the Texan has undergone in the last four weeks have brought about a clear improvement but still not sufficient for Spies to demonstrate his true potential on the track."

The team said the rider would have further medical checks next week.

Spies was replaced on the non-works bike by Ducati's official test rider Michele Pirro in France but that option is not available at Mugello because the Italian is already entered as a wild card. (Reporting by Alan Baldwin; Editing by John O'Brien)

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The head of New Zealand's America's Cup team has sharply rejected the idea of major changes to the sailing competition's high-tech catamarans in the wake of an accident that killed a British sailor.

Grant Dalton, managing director of Emirates Team New Zealand, told Reuters on Thursday that he supported new safety rules put forward last week by event organizers. But he dismissed suggestions by some sailors, including members of the Artemis Racing team that suffered the accident, that big changes such as smaller sails or power-assisted on-board controls were necessary.

"That's not going to happen. That's a fundamental change to systems that if they couldn't get right in the first place, that's their problem," Dalton said before heading out for a practice session on San Francisco Bay.

Artemis' 72-foot (22-metre) catamaran capsized and broke apart on May 9 during a training session and killed British Olympian Andrew Simpson, who was trapped under the wreckage. The accident raised questions about the fundamental soundness of the huge, lightweight boats, which can reach speeds of close to 50 miles per hour (80 kmh).

Software mogul Larry Ellison won the cup in 2010, and the defending champion is entitled to choose the venue and set the rules for the next competition. Ellison and his sailing team hoped the big, fast boats, called AC72s, would boost interest in the event, but their cost and complexity kept some competitors away, and only four teams are competing for the trophy.

The competition is scheduled to kick off in July and culminate in a final match in September.

Dalton and his team, which arrived in San Francisco earlier in May, are prepping eagerly for the competition. Emirates Team New Zealand and Oracle Team USA were both blazing around San Francisco Bay in moderate winds on Thursday, practicing their turns, monitoring boat performance and spying on one another.

REGATTA IN FLUX

The new safety rules include lower wind limits for racing, improved personal safety gear for sailors and reducing the number of qualifying races to allow more time for boat maintenance.

Sweden's Artemis, which has a second boat that it has yet to sail in San Francisco Bay, has said it may not compete if its sailors feel the rule changes are insufficient. The fourth team in the competition, Italy's Luna Rossa, has also expressed serious concerns about safety and has declined to comment on whether it considers the new rules sufficient.

The New Zealand team designed and built its AC72 specifically to withstand the strong gusts and currents of San Francisco Bay, Dalton said. Making significant rule changes now that require altering the boats would be unfair, he said.

"Anything that increases the safety for the guys on board is a good thing. If it doesn't benefit one team over another then we're in favor of that," he said.

Still, he warned that the big catamarans, which use hard "wing" sails and are estimated to cost $8 million to build, are inherently difficult to make and sail.

"As Artemis has shown, if you get this engineered wrong - and it's not hard, we could have yet, we just haven't seen that boundary - they just disintegrate," he said.

Dalton said the carbon-fiber boats have shown themselves to be a poor choice for the cup races.

"Much of this is a folly. There's nothing more easily seen than that there are only three teams (challenging Oracle), now sort of two and a half teams," Dalton said.

(Editing by Jonathan Weber and Eric Walsh)

Researchers trying to find the key to a mysterious group of digestive ailments have located a number of biomarkers for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Their discovery could lead to earlier diagnoses and intervention for individuals still asymptomatic.

A team of scientists from the University of Cincinnati analyzed , a collection of biological information, according to ScienceDaily. Its more than 50 million specimens of serum come mainly from members of and applicants to the uniformed services.

The two primary types of IBD are Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. The Crohn's & Colitis Foundation of America reports that about , with roughly equal numbers attributed to Crohn's and ulcerative colitis.

According to WomensHealth.gov, theremains unknown. Experts suggest problems with an individual's immune system and a genetic predisposition. While ulcerative colitis affects only the first layer of the lining of the large intestine, Crohn's disease occurs in all layers of the intestines and can develop in the digestive tract anywhere between mouth and anus. Although Crohn's is incurable, surgery to remove an ulcerative colitis patient's colon cures that disorder.

The Cincinnati researchers collaborated with staff members from the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center to identify 50 DoDSR subjects with Crohn's and 50 with ulcerative colitis. They then looked at various biomarkers to discover what the subjects had in common.

Using statistical analysis, they looked at proteins from three samples for each subject. Two samples were collected before diagnosis of the respective diseases, with the third after diagnosis.

Based on a prior University of Cincinnati research project, scientists decided upon which proteins to check in the 100 subjects. They noted elevated levels of specific proteins in those patients who developed IBD. While the proteins in patients who developed Crohn's were different from those seen in individuals with ulcerative colitis, the team demonstrated that protein levels were elevated in all those who actually developed IBD.

Researcher Bruce Yacyshyn, M.D., a gastroenterologist who is a professor of medicine at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, and staff members from the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center have requested funding to extend the biomarker study to a pediatric population. Their goal is to change the way healthcare providers screen for and treat IBD, boost prevention approaches, and enhance patients' quality of life.

Both my husband and I come from families where Crohn's disease is prevalent. While I have the disorder, he doesn't. We're encouraged by the identification of IBD biomarkers. To us, it means that future generations of our families will probably receive earlier diagnoses and might even avoid Crohn's entirely. At the very least, we expect them to suffer fewer debilitating effects from the illness that our generation has.

Vonda J. Sines has published thousands of print and online health and medical articles. She specializes in diseases and other conditions that affect the quality of life.

The letter addressed to Mr. Obama has been turned over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The other two letters, which are also being investigated, have already tested positive for ricin, authorities said Wednesday.

The pair of letters that surfaced first, and that were sent anonymously, were opened in New York on Friday at the citys mail facility in Manhattan and in Washington on Sunday, according to New York Police Department spokesman Paul Browne. Mr. Browne said the writer, in the letters, threatened Mayor Bloomberg, with references to the debate on gun laws."

The letter addressed to Obama also had an anti-gun control message, along with a suspicious substance, a law-enforcement source .

The civilian personnel who initially came into contact with the first pair of letters showed no symptoms of exposure to the poison, but three police officers who later examined the New York letter experienced minor symptoms that have since abated, Browne said.

One letter was addressed to Mark Glaze, the director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a nonprofit advocacy group started by Bloomberg and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino that lobbies federal and state lawmakers for stricter gun-control laws.

Mr. Glaze opened the letter while sitting outside over the Memorial Day weekend, a colleague told the Associated Press. According to , Glaze opened the letter on a park bench and then called for help after seeing powder in the envelope.

A Joint Terrorism Task Force of the FBI and the NYPDs Intelligence Division are investigating the threats, Browne said.

Ricin can be made from castor beans and can be lethal if ingested even in small quantities.

Asked about the letters Wednesday night, Bloomberg said: Theres 12,000 people that are going to get killed this year with guns and 19,000 that are going to commit suicide with guns, and were not going to walk away from those efforts. And I know I speak for all of the close to 1,000 mayors in Mayors Against Illegal Guns, he said. This is a scourge on the country that we just have to make sure that we get under control and eliminate.

While officials would not comment on what specific threats were made or where the letters were postmarked, ABC News reports that the author wrote he or she has a "constitutional and God-given right and I will exercise that right 'til I die" saying that the government would have to kill him or her before he or she would relinquish any weapons.

The first two letters to surface were postmarked from Shreveport, La., ABC News reports. The Shreveport mayor, Cedric Glover, released a statement Thursday morning:

"The city of Shreveport in conjunction with the FBI and the Joint Terrorism Task Force is working to apprehend those responsible for mailing ricin laced letters to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg," Mr. Glover said. "We are also taking the necessary steps to protect local [Postal Service] & Government Plaza personnel as well as local citizens from any possible harm."

The letters are the latest in a string of toxin-laced missives. In Washington State, Matthew Buquet of Spokane was charged last week with threatening to kill a federal judge in a letter that contained ricin. That letter was discovered earlier this month during screening, before it was delivered to the judge, Reuters reported.

In April, letters containing the same substance were addressed to Obama, a US senator, and a Mississippi judge. J. Everett Dutschke, a former tae kwon do instructor from Tupelo, Miss., was arrested in that case on April 27, four days after federal prosecutors dropped charges against Paul Kevin Curtis, an Elvis impersonator from Corinth, Miss, whose lawyer says he may have been framed.

Browne would not say whether the latest letters were believed to be linked to the other ricin cases.

Bloombergs advocacy group, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, counts more than 700 mayors nationwide as members. It aired a spate of television ads this year urging Congress to expand background checks and pass other gun-control measures after the December school shooting in Newtown, Conn. The background-check proposal failed in a Senate vote in April, and other measures that gun-control advocates wanted including a ban on sales of military-style assault weapons have stalled.

Separately, Bloomberg also has made political donations to candidates who share his desire for tougher gun restrictions. His "super political-action committee," Independence USA, put $2.2 million into a Democratic primary this winter for a US congressional seat in Illinois, for example. Bloombergs choice, former state lawmaker Robin Kelly (D), won the primary and the seat.

Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.

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The Russell 2000, an index of small-company stocks, climbed above 1,000 points for the first time and ended higher Monday, even as the Dow Jones industrial average, the Standard & Poor's 500 index and the Nasdaq composite index all edged lower.

Small stocks are doing well because they are more focused on the U.S., which is recovering, and are less exposed to recession-plagued Europe than the large international companies that make up the Dow and the S&P 500 index.

The gains for the smaller companies are encouraging for the broader stock market because they show that investors are becoming more comfortable about the economy and investing in riskier assets, said Rob Lutts, Chief Investment Officer at Cabot Money Management.

Small-company stocks are considered riskier than the stocks of well-established, large companies like IBM or Coca-Cola. That's because small companies are often relatively young and tend to have less diversified businesses than larger ones, making them more susceptible to swings in demand from their customers. There are also fewer buyers and sellers for them, which can make the stocks harder to off-load if prices start to fall.

"Having smaller stocks hit new highs means that the rally is broad," Lutts said. "It gives us a little more confidence that it's a good, sustainable rally that can hold together for a while."

The Russell 2000 ended the day 1.70 points, or 0.2 percent, higher at 997.98. The index climbed as high as 1001.50 at midday. The index is 17.5 percent higher for the year, a better performance than better-known market barometers like the Dow and S&P.

Major indexes fluctuated between small gains and losses for most of Monday. On Friday they ended at record levels after four straight weeks of gains.

The Dow closed down 19.12 points, or 0.1 percent, at 15,335.28, paring its gain for the year to 17 percent. The S&P 500 index fell 1.18 points, or 0.1 percent, to 1,666.29. Its advance for the year now stands at 16.8 percent.

Investors are focusing on the Federal Reserve this week and looking for clues about what it plans to do next with its economic stimulus program. On Wednesday Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke will appear before Congress and the central bank will release minutes of its most recent policy meeting.

The Fed is buying $85 billion of bonds every month to keep long-term interest rates low. That has encouraged investors to put money into stocks instead of bonds. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note has been below 2 percent almost continually since April 12. That's less than many large companies pay in dividends.

Policy makers are unlikely to cut back on stimulus just yet since U.S. economic growth is likely to slow in the second quarter, said Scott Wren, a senior equity strategist at Wells Fargo Advisors. As a consequence, Wren said, stocks are likely to continue to rise.

"At some point, we will see some sort of a pullback, but it doesn't seem like it's going to be right now," said Wren. "In the near term we're probably going to trade a little bit higher."

The stock market rally is also is being underpinned by investors moving back into stocks, reversing years of outflows of funds from equity markets, said Jerry Braakman, chief investment officer at First American Trust.

Investors have invested about net $17 billion into domestic stock mutual funds since the start of the year, according to data from the Investment Company Institute. Investors have pulled money out of mutual funds every year since the beginning of the financial crisis in 2007.

"This market rally still has legs, partly because we've seen huge retail inflows back into equities," Braakman said. "It's hard to beat the money flow."

In commodities trading, the price of crude oil rose 69 cents, or 0.7 percent, to $96.71 a barrel.

The price of gold rose for the first day in eight as the dollar fell. The precious metal climbed $19.40, or 1.4 percent, to $1,384. Gold has slumped this month as its attraction as an alternative investment fades as the dollar appreciates.

The U.S. currency is strengthening because investors believe the U.S. economy is in better shape than the Japanese or European economies.

The dollar's rally paused on Monday, though, and the U.S. currency fell against the euro and the yen. The dollar index also dropped, after climbing to its highest level in close to three years Friday.

In U.S. government bond trading, the yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 1.97 percent from 1.93 percent.

The Nasdaq composite index fell 2.53 points, or 0.1 percent, to 3,496.43 points.

Among stocks in focus on Monday:

Actavis rose $1.65, or 1.3 percent, to $127.15 after the pharmaceutical company said it's buying Warner Chilcott. The all-stock deal, valued at $8.5 billion, would create the third-biggest specialty pharmaceutical company in the U.S.

Chesapeake Energy rose 53 cents, or 2.6 percent, to $20.80 after the natural gas producer named Anadarko Petroleum executive Robert Douglas Lawler as its new CEO. He takes over as Chesapeake continues selling assets to pare down an enormous debt burden.

Websense, an internet security firm, surged $5.53, or 29 percent, to $24.76 after the company agreed to be taken private for $906 million by private equity firm Vista Equity Partners.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Swiss drugmaker Roche Holding AG is exploring a sale of its blood glucose meters business, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters on Wednesday, as the industry grapples with increased competition and reimbursement pressure.

The discussions about a potential sale of the Roche unit are still in their early stages and a deal may not materialize, one of the people said.

Earlier this year, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced it was cutting the reimbursement for diabetes test supplies by up to 72 percent. That would make it more difficult for companies to be profitable in this space, said another of the sources.

The change takes effect July 1.

It could not be learned how much the Roche unit was worth. All the sources wished to remain anonymous because the matter is not public. A Roche spokesman declined to comment.

Last year, Bayer AG, Germany's biggest drugmaker, attempted to sell its blood glucose meter business for around $1.5 billion, only to pull the plug on the sale early this year after failing to find sufficient buyer interest.

There are only a handful of companies that sell blood glucose meters, including Medtronic Inc and Johnson & Johnson, that would make logical buyers, two of the people said.

(Reporting By Jessica Toonkel, Editing by Soyoung Kim)

For hours there had been conflicting reports on whether or not the al-Qaida-linked attackers had succeeded in kidnapping several soldiers inside the military base. But on Friday afternoon, Niger Defense Minister Kardijo Mahamadou confirmed their troops had broken through the attackers' defenses in the building where they had barricaded themselves. Once inside the dorm, the soldiers found and liberated the two hostages, who were unharmed, he said in an interview with The Associated Press.

"Our military forces and French special forces assaulted (the building) and the hostages a total of two people were freed," he said. "There were two kidnappers who were hiding in the military dorm, and both were killed. The operation is now finished," said Mahamadou.

Government spokesman Marou Amado confirmed that the assault was over:"There's no one left. It's over. We neutralized them," he said by telephone.

In Paris, a French Defense Ministry official confirmed that French forces had taken part in the operation and that the hostages had been freed, though he did not provide a number.

It brings to an end one of the Sahel region's most catastrophic attacks, which began on Thursday at dawn when suicide bombers simultaneously attacked the military camp in Agadez and a French-operated uranium mine 100 miles to the north. A total of 21 people and five jihadists were killed in the initial assault, after the attackers rammed their explosive-laden cars past the gates of the base and the mine, detonating them inside, according to the ministry of defense.

In Agadez, at least two jihadists survived the explosion. They ran into a nearby dormitory, from where they traded fire with government and French forces, said Amadou. It's unclear how long the standoff lasted.

In Paris, French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told BFM television on Friday that France had intervened in the standoff at the request of Niger's president.

"The situation has stabilized, particularly in Agadez, where our special forces intervened in support of Nigerien forces at the request of the president of Niger," he said. "That allowed us to achieve a stabilization of the situation."

The twin attacks were claimed by the Mali-based Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, or MUJAO, a spinoff of al-Qaida's affiliate in Africa. It was also claimed in a statement posted late Thursday on jihadist forums by notorious Algerian terrorist, Moktar Belmoktar, whose brigade known as "Those Who Sign in Blood" is also responsible for the devastating attack in January on the Ain Amenas gas plant, where 37 foreigners including American, French, Irish and British citizens were killed.

Belmoktar issued a communique in Arabic, signed with his nom de guerre Abu Khalid al-Abass, saying that the double attack was retaliation for the French-led military intervention in neighboring Mali, whose north was ruled for 10 months by jihadist groups, including Belmoktar's brigade and MUJAO.

Chadian troops who joined the intervention said they killed Belmoktar, but the death was never confirmed by French authorities. The claim of responsibility, if verified, of the Niger attack would show that the Chadians' assertion they had killed Belmoktar was false.

He dedicated the attacks to slain Mali-based commander Abou Zeid, one of the emirs of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, who was killed in February during a sweep by French and Chadian forces of the Adrar des Ifoghas mountains in far northern Mali. Until late last year, Belmoktar was an emir of the al-Qaida cell. He quit the group to create his own terror cell, launching first the attack in Algeria in January and now this week's attack in Niger.

Belmoktar goes on to say that the operation is in direct response to comments made by Niger President Mahamadou Issoufou, who claimed that the jihadists in Mali had been eliminated. "This is the first of our responses to the statement of the president of Niger from his masters in Paris that he eliminated jihad and the mujahedeen militarily. We will have more operations, by the strength and power of Allah, and not only that, but we will move the battle to inside his country," he warned.

Both Belmoktar and MUJAO have warned that they will strike not just at French interests throughout Africa, but also at the African governments that helped them reconquer northern Mali. Niger sent a battalion of 650 troops to the Malian city of Gao to help flush out the Islamists.

"We warn all the countries that are intending to participate in the Crusader campaign on our land, even if in the name of peacekeeping, that we will make you taste the heat of death and wounds in your homeland and among your soldiers," he wrote. "As you kill you will be killed. And as you bomb you will be bombed."

The U.N. Security Council on Friday condemned the terrorist attacks and urged all countries to cooperate with Nigerien authorities to bring the perpetrators to justice. The council reaffirmed the need to combat terrorism by all means, stressing that "any acts of terrorism are criminal and unjustifiable, regardless of their motivation."

___

Associated Press writers Angela Charlton and Jamey Keaten contributed to this report from Paris and Edith Lederer contributed from New York.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - EU antitrust regulators have given some of Google's rivals more time to study its proposals to settle anti-competitive complaints, which could provide more leverage to pry further concessions from the Internet search giant.

The European Commission last month told interested parties they had until May 26 to say if they are satisfied with the offer by the world's most popular search engine to mark out its services from rival products in Internet search results.

The EU antitrust authority has given some rivals until June 27 to complete their technical analysis of Google's proposals, said one person familiar with the matter.

The regulator is able to grant extensions if there are strong grounds for doing so. A Commission competition spokesman, Antoine Colombani, declined to comment on the Google case.

Several Google competitors and complainants about the company's practices have been critical of the proposed settlement, which includes providing links to at least three competing search engines, and allowing rivals to stop Google from using specific information.

According to British price comparison site Foundem, Google's offer would only reinforce its dominance. Google has more than 80 percent share of the market in Europe, according to research firm comScore.

Other critics said the proposal would force rivals to compete among themselves, raising their costs and increasing merchants' dependency on Google.

If Google clinches a deal with the Commission, it would avoid a finding of infringement of competition rules and a possible fine that could be as much as $5 billion or 10 percent of its global revenue.

(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by Luke Baker and Mark Potter)

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks fell on Wednesday with the S&P 500 posting its biggest decline in three weeks, after minutes from the latest U.S. Federal Reserve meeting showed some officials were open to tapering large-scale asset purchases as early as at the June meeting.

Trading was volatile - the Dow and the S&P indexes both rose more than 1 percent during the morning, but fell more than 1 percent in the afternoon.

The minutes followed comments from Chairman Ben Bernanke, who said the Fed could decide to scale back the pace of bond purchases at one of the "next few meetings" if the economic recovery looked set to maintain forward momentum.

The comments were a blow to a market that had accelerated after Bernanke said the central bank needed to see further signs of traction in the economy before it tapered stimulus.

"This is a very sensitive market and particularly sensitive to any notion that tapering will come too soon," said Quincy Krosby, market strategist at Prudential Financial in New York.

"No one wants to be selling if the data reaches the point when the Fed begins to specifically talk about tapering. The market doesn't wait for the Fed to move. It will move before. That's how it operates."

Krosby also added that Bernanke went off-script and in his effort to be transparent, "he confused the market."

According to the minutes of the April 30-May 1 policy meeting released on Wednesday, "a number" of officials were open to tapering large-scale asset purchases as early as the June meeting, but disagreement continued on what conditions would suffice to begin that move.

One official preferred to begin decreasing purchases immediately and another wanted to add more accommodation immediately, but ultimately most felt it was important simply to be prepared to adjust the pace up or down in response to incoming data.

Investors have increasingly turned their attention to when the Fed's current $85 billion-per-month bond purchase program might end or slow. The stimulus has been a major force behind a rally in U.S. equities that has helped the S&P 500 and Dow industrials gain about 16-17 percent so far this year.

The Dow Jones industrial averagewas down 80.41 points, or 0.52 percent, at 15,307.17. The Standard & Poor's 500 Indexwas down 13.81 points, or 0.83 percent, at 1,655.35. The Nasdaq Composite Indexwas down 38.82 points, or 1.11 percent, at 3,463.30.

The S&P 500 rose as high as 1,687.18 and fell as low as 1,648.86 during Wednesday's trading session while the Dow rose as high as 15,542.40 and fell as low as 15,265.96.

"You have more volatility than you've had for a long time," said Uri Landesman, president, Platinum Partners in New York.

"The technician in me looks at a rocket shot straight up and says you could get a pretty good correction here without that much work. There aren't really solid levels of support on the way down because we broke through all of them so quickly."

All 10 sectors on the S&P 500 closed negative, with energy and utilities leading the decline. The energy sector indexfell 1.2 percent while the utilities sectorfell 1.6 percent.

After the market close, shares of Hewlett-Packard Cojumped 10 percent after the world's largest personal computer maker raised the lower end of its full-year outlook. The stock had closed up 0.6 percent at $21.23.

Bristol-Myers Squibbshares rose 5.3 percent at $46.40 after a Citi note highlighted excitement surrounding so-called immunotherapy, in the wake of positive results from clinical trials conducted by companies such as Bristol-Myers and Roche Holding .

Target Corpcited unseasonably cold weather as it reported a 0.6 percent decline in first-quarter sales at U.S. stores open at least a year. Target cut its full-year profit forecast and shares slid 4 percent to $68.40.

Toll Brothersshares rose 2.9 percent to $37.07 after the largest U.S. luxury homebuilder posted a 46 percent rise in quarterly profit, suggesting the housing recovery is picking up pace across the industry.

Volume was roughly 8.34 billion shares on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and the NYSE MKT, exceeding the year-to-date average daily closing volume of about 6.4 billion.

Decliners outnumbered advancers on the NYSE by 2,362 to 648, while on the Nasdaq, decliners beat advancers 1,870 to 632.

(Additional reporting by Rodrigo Campos and Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

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