The 16-year-old defending champion is tied for the lead after Thursday's first round at Royal Mayfair Golf Club with American Angela Stanford and Cristel Boeljon of The Netherlands.

"It was a pretty special week last year ... so to kind of have that kind of week again this week would be like a double miracle for myself," said Ko, of Auckland, New Zealand.

Paula Creamer and Cristie Kerr carded matching four-under 66s to share fourth, while world No. 1 Park In-Bee, Choi Na-Yeon, Karine Icher and 22-year-old Canadian Jennifer Kirby, who played alongside Ko, all shot three-under 67s.

"I felt very comfortable out there and ended up making a few putts, and good round," said Kirby.

Ko was paired with 17-year old and European Solheim Cup team member Charley Hull (69) and Kirby. She said when everyone in the group is playing well like Thursday it usually translates into more birdies.

"I started off really well with a birdie, but when I have a birdie on the first hole I haven't really played that well," said Ko. "I was kind of nervous that I did make a birdie on the first. I think I played pretty solid today.

"But I think I played good because the whole group seemed to play good and make lots of birdies, so we were in a really good rhythm as a whole group."

Ko became the youngest winner in LPGA history last year at 15 years and four months when she captured the crown in Vancouver. This season, Ko has played in nine prior LPGA events, including four majors.

All but one of the players in last week's Solheim Cup will be playing this week, with Sweden's Caroline Hedwall having entered after becoming the first player to go 5-0 in a Solheim Cup in helping Europe defeat the USA women 18-10. Hedwall opened with a 68 Thursday.

Park finished second to Ko last year, even though she collected a winner's check because Ko was an amateur.

Park seeks her seventh title of the year this week, having won three major titles and leading the LPGA money list with $2.14 million.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese manufacturers' optimism improved to the highest level in three years, a Reuters poll showed, as a weak yen boosted earnings for exporters of textiles, chemicals, steel and other metals.

The index of sentiment derived from a monthly Reuters survey of manufacturers rose by 3 points to plus 16 in August, which matched the level it was at in November 2010. A positive readings shows optimists outnumbered pessimists.

The index is expected to rise again to plus 18 in November in the Reuters survey, which is strongly correlated with a closely watched quarterly Bank of Japan tankan survey.

Makers of cars and electronics, however, were less upbeat due to worries about slowing growth in emerging markets, highlighting the risk overseas economies pose to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's reflationary policies.

"Sales are doing much better than we initially anticipated," one chemicals maker said in the August 2-9 poll of 400 big and medium-sized firms, of which 276 responded.

The service sector gauge also rose 5 points in August from the previous month to plus 23. This marked the highest level since April 2007 due to a housing boom and increased corporate spending on IT services.

The index is expected to improve further to plus 29 in November.

The BOJ's tankan issued on July 1 showed manufacturers' sentiment turned positive in April-June for the first time in nearly two years and was seen rising further on the feel-good mood generated by Abe's policies, intended to end 15 years of deflation, spur hiring and improve wages.

The BOJ will release its next tankan survey on October 1.

The central bank kept monetary policy steady earlier this month and left its economic assessment unchanged as board members wanted more time to measure the strength of capital expenditure.

Comments from the Reuters Tankan survey in August suggest that a turnaround in business investment is still distant.

"Europe's economy is in the doldrums and domestically companies feel they still have excess capacity," said one machinery maker.

"Going through with new capital expenditure is much more difficult than we thought."

Japan's economic growth slowed more than expected in the second quarter, driven by an unexpected fall in capital expenditure in a worrying sign of companies' reluctance to invest.

Strong consumer spending, public works spending and a rebound in exports suggest that Japan's economic recovery can easily remain on track.

However, investor outflows from emerging markets due to worries about deteriorating growth could become a more of a concern for Japanese companies and policymakers.

(Editing by Eric Meijer)

But DirecTV might not have that contract for much longer. As reported by , NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has met with both Robert Kyncl, the head of content and business operations at YouTube, and Larry Page, Google's CEO. The Sunday Ticket package was one of the topics discussed.

Joanna Hunter, a spokesperson for the NFL, said that the league is always looking for ways to make the game better for fans, both in the stadium and at home. "Members of our office meet often with innovative leaders in Silicon Valley and around the world," she told ABC News.

However, the NFL remained quiet about what exactly Goodell's meeting with Google was about. "We are not commenting on any specifics of the meetings," said Hunter. YouTube had no comment regarding the NFL meeting, while Google has not made an official statement.

According to the NFL, DirecTV has the Sunday Ticket contract through the 2014 season at an estimated cost of $1 billion a year. If Google and its YouTube unit were thinking about putting up a bid to the NFL, they may need to revolutionize the way fans watch TV.

Streaming the games for free through YouTube doesn't seem like a viable option, according to Patrick Moorhead, founder and principal analyst for Moor Insights and Strategy. "Google would need to charge for content as web and app ad models aren't as developed as TV," he said.

But he also says that even though Google will need to charge customers, it may be able to do so for less. "DirecTV is charging for NFL too...and there are also subsidies with their basic satellite service fees," said Moorhead. "All Google would need to enable NFL on TV would be to providedevices to NFL subscribers."

Sincehasn't made a big splash, the possibility of an NFL partnership could help get Google deeper into the TV market. "The NFL serves the core, average American audience," said Moorhead, "and could endear themselves to Google if they treat them fairly."

Opportunity which touched down on in January 2004 just after its twin, Spirit, arrived on the planet is studying rocks at the foot of a location called Solander Point, whose north-facing slope will allow the robot to tilt its solar panels toward the sun during the coming southern Martian winter.

"We made it," Opportunity project scientist Matt Golombek, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement. "The drives went well, and Opportunity is right next to Solander Point. We know we could be on that north-facing slope with a one-day drive, but we don't need to go there yet. We have time to investigate the contact between the two geological units around the base of Solander Point." []

BERLIN (Reuters) - With just one point and a string of injuries to key players, Schalke 04 have their backs to the wall as they desperately try to turn their poor Bundesliga start around and appease angry fans.

Schalke, who grabbed fourth place last season after imploding midway through the campaign only to battle back in the final weeks, had hoped for a confidence-boosting start this time round but have so far failed to deliver.

They followed up a 3-3 opening draw with Hamburg SV by suffering a 4-0 demolition at the hands of VfL Wolfsburg last week.

With the club drawing 1-1 against Greece's PAOK in their Champions League qualifying first leg on Wednesday, fans are quickly running out of patience and their jeers and whistles in the European tie did not go unnoticed.

Even brief scuffles broke out among Schalke fans and police after the Greeks equalised and Schalke's misery was complete when Jefferson Farfan was taken off on a stretcher with an ankle injury.

The Peruvian midfielder will undergo medical tests later on Thursday to determine the extent of the injury.

Last week, top striker Klaas-Jan Huntelaar was ruled out for several weeks with a knee injury along with defender Sead Kolasinac, who is nursing a muscle problem.

Central defender Kyriakos Papadopoulos, who is still recovering from an injury of his own, has yet to play this season.

New signing Adam Szalai is under pressure to hit the ground running and make up for the loss of Huntelaar up front.

For coach Jens Keller, initially brought in as a temporary solution late last year but given a new deal after the team's good finish to the season, the early pressure is nothing new.

"Obviously we are not satisfied with the results but we had that kind of pressure last season as well so nothing unusual there," Keller told reporters.

"What we will have to see is whether we will have enough fit players for the weekend and for next week's (return leg at PAOK)," Keller said.

Hanover could not have hoped for better timing as they look to bounce back from a 3-0 defeat to Borussia Moenchengladbach.

"We know that Schalke will be coming to us with a lot of ambitions and they will want to shake off that 4-0 defeat from last week," said Hanover midfielder Leon Andreasen, back after a year out with a cruciate ligament rupture.

"But we know we can beat anyone at home and so we must forget about the Glabdach defeat and get a good result this week."

Treble winners Bayern Munich host Nuremberg in Saturday's traditional Bavarian derby, while fellow Champions League competitors Borussia Dortmund entertain mercurial Werder Bremen on Friday.

TOKYO (AP) -- Nintendo reported an 8.6 billion yen ($88 million) profit for the fiscal first quarter in a reversal from losses the previous year, thanks to a cheaper yen.

Nintendo Co., the Japanese maker of Super Mario games and the Wii U machine, reported a 17.2 billion yen loss in the same quarter a year earlier, partly because of an unfavorable exchange rate.

Kyoto-based Nintendo got a nearly 17 billion yen ($173 million) gain from the yen's decline against the dollar and the euro for the April-June period.

A cheap yen is a boon for Japanese exporters such as Nintendo.

Video games have been hurt by the popularity of smartphones and other devices that also deliver online entertainment. Wii U sales have fallen short of company forecasts.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - If uninsured young Americans shun the new health plans offered under President Barack Obama's healthcare reform law, it will be because the insurance costs too much and not because they don't expect to need much medical care, according to a study released on Wednesday.

What uninsured young adults do when state exchanges created under "Obamacare" open on October 1 will be one of the most important factors in determining the success of the president's signature domestic policy achievement. If too few young people, who tend to be relatively healthy, sign up for coverage, then premiums might not cover the medical costs of sicker people who do enroll.

"Contrary to commonly held beliefs, young adults do want affordable health coverage," said Dr. David Blumenthal, president of the nonpartisan Commonwealth Fund. The group's study dispels the notion that young adults don't think they need coverage because they feel invincible, said lead author Sara Collins.

Up to 82 percent of nearly 16 million uninsured young U.S. adults would qualify for federal subsidies or Medicaid under Obamacare, meaning that affordability is less likely to impede enrollment in health insurance via state exchanges, the study concludes. Those ages 19 to 29 will eventually enroll in large numbers, it predicts, without specifying how many years it could take.

That optimistic conclusion comes from what young adults do when offered an opportunity to buy health insurance through their jobs. In such cases, 67 percent took the coverage.

For those who declined, the chief reasons were that they were covered by a family member (54 percent) or couldn't afford the premiums (22 percent). Only 5 percent turned down coverage because they felt they were unlikely to need much medical care.

That price, not feeling they will never get sick, is the main barrier to young adults buying health insurance, said Aaron Smith, co-founder of Young Invincibles, a non-profit that runs education campaigns and conducts research on issues important to 18-to-34-year olds. "Price is the biggest hurdle."

The group was not involved in the Commonwealth study but has received government funding to help people enroll in Obamacare insurance.

THE MASSACHUSETTS EXAMPLE

The Commonwealth study also pointed to what happened when Massachusetts instituted healthcare reform in 2007, requiring -like Obamacare - that everyone have insurance or pay a penalty. In the first year, the uninsured rate for 19-to-26-year olds fell from 21 percent to 8 percent.

"Based on Massachusetts, there is reason to believe young adults will come to the (state insurance) marketplaces and sign up," said the Commonwealth's Blumenthal.

A greater barrier than affordability may be that very few young adults are aware that the new coverage will be an option in less than six weeks.

Confirming other surveys, a Commonwealth poll found that only 27 percent of the 19-to-29-year olds were aware of the state health insurance marketplaces. Awareness was lowest among the uninsured (19 percent knew about the marketplaces) and people with low to moderate incomes (18 percent).

Those groups are most likely to benefit from the federal subsidies available to help people with incomes less than four times the poverty level ($45,960 for an individual) buy policies on the exchanges.

The survey, with 1,885 respondents, was done in March, and young adults' awareness may be higher now since several states as well as the federal government have begun advertising and marketing campaigns to tell the uninsured about the exchanges. The survey has a margin of sampling error of 3.2 percentage points.

The report also found that 15 million adults ages 19 to 25 (half of this age group) were on a parent's health insurance policy in the prior 12 months, up from 13.7 million in 2011. Of the 15 million, an estimated 7.8 million got that coverage through the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which requires insurers allow children up to age 26 to stay on a parent's policy.

Partly as a result, the number of uninsured young adults dropped from 18.1 million in 2011 to 15.7 million in 2013.

(Reporting by Sharon Begley; Editing by Michele Gershberg and Lisa Shumaker)

Citing an unnamed source, the China Daily earlier reported that Hong Kong-listed Tencent opened an office in Singapore to deal with a listing, which it originally planned to hold in Hong Kong. The report gave no timeframe or other listing details.

"This market news is not true," said Jerry Huang, a spokesman for Tencent.

Tencent, led by CEO and Chairman Pony Ma and more than 30 percent owned by South African media group Naspers Ltd, is due to announce second-quarter earnings on Wednesday.

The company has invested heavily in WeChat as it and other Chinese Internet companies such as Alibaba Group and Baidu Inc try to broaden their revenue streams.

With more than 300 million users in China, WeChat - which is similar to WhatsApp and South Korean firm Kakao Inc's KakaoTalk - has strong potential earnings power for Tencent, which is looking to monetize the app. It last week released an updated app introducing games, paid-for emoticons and a mobile payment system.

Shares in Tencent, valued at $88 billion, rose as much as 1.5 percent in early trade, but by the midsession were trading down 0.05 percent at HK$367.20. The broader Hang Seng index was up 0.7 percent.

($1 = 7.7556 Hong Kong dollars)

(Reporting by Adam Jourdan in Shanghai and Paul Carsten in Beijing; Editing Kazunori Takada, Chris Gallagher and Ian Geoghegan)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a George W. Bush-era law requiring non-profit organizations to adopt an anti-prostitution policy in order to obtain federal funding for HIV/AIDS programs abroad.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his majority opinion that the 2003 law violated the First Amendment free speech rights of non-governmental organizations that work on HIV/AIDS prevention.

The court vote was 6-2 with Justice Elena Kagan recused, most likely due to her previous role as solicitor general in the Obama administration, when she may have been involved in the litigation.

The law barred funding for organizations that operate programs overseas but do not have a blanket policy opposing prostitution and sex trafficking.

The organizations challenging the provision did not want to take a stand on prostitution. They said the law interfered with their work providing advice and counseling to prostitutes about the risks of HIV infection.

The non-profit world was divided, with 46 groups, many of which focus on women's rights, supporting the law.

The Alliance for Open Society International and Pathfinder International - non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that receive funding for overseas HIV/AIDS prevention - sued in 2005, citing the guarantee of free speech in the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment.

The groups obtained an injunction in 2006 that has prevented the policy from being enforced. Now it never will be.

Thursday's ruling upheld the appeals court's injunction.

"Condemnation and alienation are not public health strategies," said Marine Buissonniere, director of the Open Society Public Health Program, one of the groups that challenged the policy. "The pledge ignores years of evidence that sex workers are critical partners in the fight against AIDS," she added.

FIRST AMENDMENT AT ISSUE

In his opinion, Roberts noted that under Supreme Court precedent, the government can set conditions on funding that relate to the specific way the money is spent but cannot "seek to leverage funding to regulate speech" that falls outside the limits of the program.

"The case is not about the government's ability to enlist the assistance of those with whom it already agrees," Roberts said. "It is about compelling a grant recipient to adopt a particular belief as a condition of funding."

In this instance, the condition constituted "the affirmation of a belief that by its nature cannot be confined within the scope of the government program," meaning it violates the First Amendment, he wrote.

Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented.

Scalia wrote in his dissenting opinion that the policy requirement was "nothing more than a means of selecting suitable agents to perform the government's chosen strategy."

Under the First Amendment, the government is not required to be "viewpoint neutral," he added. "Moreover, the government may enlist the assistance of those who believe in its ideas to carry them to fruition," Scalia said.

Representatives from the U.S. Agency for International Development, which overseas foreign aid, were not immediately available for comment.

The case prompted an unusual coalition of groups, some conservative and some liberal, to back the NGOs.

Eugene Volokh, a First Amendment expert at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, said if the court had endorsed the government's position, it could have led to all kinds of conditions being imposed on government funding and even other forms of government benefits, such as tax exemptions.

"The court wasn't willing to allow the government that kind of power," he said. Volokh filed a brief in the case in support of the challengers.

The American Civil Liberties Union took a similar position.

The government's ability to impose conditions on groups that receive funding does not allow it "to dictate what they believe or what they say with private funds," said attorney Steven Shapiro.

The case is Agency for International Development v. Alliance for Open Society International, U.S. Supreme Court, No. 12-19.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Howard Goller and Eric Beech)

NEWARK, New Jersey (Reuters) - "Real Housewives of New Jersey" stars Teresa Giudice and her husband Giuseppe "Joe" Giudice entered pleas of not guilty on Wednesday in a federal fraud case that could land them in prison for decades and see him deported to his native Italy.

The couple is accused of submitting fraudulent applications to obtain mortgages and other loans, concealing income from the reality show and failing to pay taxes.

Surrounded by court officers and private security, they entered the U.S. District Courthouse in Newark, New Jersey crowded with media and observers hoping to catch a glimpse of the reality television stars.

As captured on the reality show on Bravo Media, the couple and their four children live in a large, lavishly decorated mansion in Towaco, New Jersey and enjoy shopping sprees.

Teresa Giudice, 41, won renown in the reality television world when in the heat of an argument she overturned a dining table where the rest of the cast was sitting down for a meal.

Wearing a beige suit and her long dark hair pinned up in a neat bun for the court appearance, she did not speak. Neither did her husband, 43, clad in a dark suit with white polka dots.

At the brief hearing, federal prosecutors outlined the extensive 39-count indictment that accuses them of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, making false statements on loan applications and hiding income in a federal bankruptcy case.

Prosecutors say from 2001 until 2008, they submitted fraudulent applications to obtain mortgages and other loans. Following a bankruptcy filing in 2009, they are accused of concealing income that Teresa Giudice earned from the reality show, hiding rental income and concealing various businesses that they controlled.

Giuseppe Giudice also is accused of failing to file federal tax returns from 2004 to 2008, during which time he earned more than $996,000. An Italian citizen, he could face possible deportation if convicted.

Pretrial motions were set for September 9, and a trial date is tentatively scheduled for October 8 before U.S. District Judge Esther Salas.

Attorney Henry Klingeman, representing Teresa Giudice, said he would be seeking for his client to be judged fairly despite her celebrity status.

"I think it's going to make it challenging to pick a jury that hasn't formed a conclusion about her, good or bad, before trial," the attorney said.

(Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst and Cynthia Osterman)