At the Defensores del Chaco, Asuncion

Scorers: Paraguay - Roque Santa Cruz 88 Chile - Eduardo Vargas 41, Arturo Vidal 56

Halftime: 0-1

Teams:

Paraguay: 1-Justo Villar; 4-Marcos Caceres, 14-Paulo Da Silva, 3-Salustiano Candia, 13-Miguel Samudio; 19-Julio Dos Santos (20-Luis Neri Caballero 80), 6-Fidencio Oviedo, 16-Cristian Riveros (Richard Ortiz 57), 18-Dante Lopez (9-Roque Santa Cruz 59); 7-Oscar Cardozo, 11-Edgar Benitez

Chile: 1-Claudio Bravo; 17-Gary Medel, 3-Marcos Gonzalez, 13-Jose Rojas; 4-Mauricio Isla, 8-Arturo Vidal, 21-Marcelo Diaz, 2-Eugenio Mena; 10-Alexis Sanchez (16-Sebastian Pinto 90+3), 22-Esteban Paredes (14-Matias Fernandez 59), 9-Eduardo Vargas (20-Felipe Gutierrez 87)

Referee: Leandro Vuaden (Brazil) (Compiled by Daniela Desantis/Rex Gowar)

The so-called "" has generated a lot of Internet interest lately, with some UFO buffs claiming that it may be an indigenous Red Planet lifeform or an Earth rodent Curiosity carried to Mars as part of a secret experiment.

But Curiosity scientists are pretty sure that the Mars rat which was spotted in a zoomed-in portion of a photo taken by the rover in September 2012 is just a rock. []

The hawkish Abe has pursued the formation of Japan's version of the White House's National Security Council to centralize information gathering and speed up decision-making, a move welcomed by U.S. security experts.

"We have put in place a structure that allows Japan to comprehensively monitor the country's security," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters at a news conference.

The bills are now to be submitted to the current session of parliament, which ends on June 26, for possible enactment in an extraordinary diet session in the fall.

The need for a centralized national security body has been highlighted by North Korea's recent saber-rattling and a deadly January raid by jihadists on a natural gas plant in Algeria.

Japan struggled to obtain information on the Algeria hostage crisis, where 10 Japanese nationals were among three dozen foreign workers killed during the four-day siege of the desert gas plant.

In the East China Sea, a maritime territory dispute has escalated to the point where Beijing and Tokyo scramble fighter jets and patrol ships shadow each other, raising fear that miscalculation could lead to a broader clash.

Similar legislation was presented to parliament six years ago when Abe served his first term as prime minister, but it was dropped after his resignation in the wake of a one-year stint troubled by cabinet-level scandals and his Liberal Democratic Party's rout in an upper-house poll.

Referring to the Sino-Japanese island spat, former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told a seminar last month that several Japanese ministries were involved but there was "no process which can get all the information ... to the prime minister in a timely fashion so he can make a decision."

"This formation of an NSC will be very key to Japan's decision-making as we move forward," he said.

Under the security council framework, the prime minister, chief cabinet secretary, foreign and defense ministers would meet regularly to hammer out strategy, while relevant ministers would be called together to respond to emergency situations.

Ministries would be required to quickly provide key information to help the council play a commanding role in setting security policies and handling national emergencies.

The current security council of nine ministers has been criticized as being too cumbersome, while relevant offices such as the defense and foreign ministries are said to take too long to share critical information.

In a move to boost Japan's defensive capabilities, Abe has also proposed amending the pacifist, U.S.-drafted constitution to loosen restraints on the military.

Koichi Oizumi, professor at Aomori Chuo Gakuin University, said the creation of the national security council would be a step in the right direction but Japan would still face a tough task of training intelligence specialists.

"What's important is training people, which is time-consuming and money-consuming. They can set up a system, but without the right people, how can the system function?" Oizumi said.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said late in May that the government recognized the importance of nurturing experts in the field, but that no specific measures had been decided.

(Reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka and Linda Sieg; Editing by Stephen Coates)

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LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Rest easy, Wendy Williams fans; your favorite TV host will be on hand to liven up your days for a while.

Fox Television Stations have made a multi-season commitment to "The Wendy Williams Show," renewing the daytime gab-fest through the 2016-17 season.

The renewal will bring "The Wendy Williams Show" into its eighth season, and comes after a strong May sweep performance. During May sweep, "The Wendy Williams Show" doubled its rating in the key women 25-54 demographic on Fox's WNYW in New York, jumping from a 1.2 rating/9 share during the same period last year to a 2.4/16 this year. It also posted strong gains on Fox's Los Angeles station and, in particular, WFLD in Chicago, where it surged 139 percent year-to-year.

Overall, the show has climbed 43 percent year-to-year in the demo - the only talk show in syndication to post a gain - to a 1.2/8.

"'The Wendy Williams Show' has as much momentum as any show on our air right now, both qualitatively and quantitatively," Fox Television Stations senior vice president of programming Frank Cicha said. "Over the last few years, it's evolved into the ideal lead-out to our morning news blocks. Like our news, the show delivers a day/date immediacy that serves as a blueprint for where we want to be the rest of the day."

In a victory for the protesters, an Istanbul court later ordered the temporary suspension of the project to uproot the trees. But demonstrators around the country kept up protests denouncing what they called a heavy-handed crackdown and a government seen as displaying increasingly authoritarian tendencies.

Police took action on the fourth day of the sit-in against a government plan to revamp Istanbul's main square, Taksim. Officers clashed with angry demonstrators in surrounding areas, firing tear gas canisters and pushing people back with water cannon. A cloud of smoke from the gas filled the square.

Several protesters were injured when a wall they climbed on collapsed during a police chase, and at least two people including a journalist were hit in the head by tear gas canisters. Two opposition legislators were among several hospitalized after being affected by the gas, the private Dogan news agency reported.

In solidarity with protesters in Istanbul, some 5,000 people gathered at a park in the capital, Ankara, swelling into a busy street nearby. They chanted anti-government slogans and called on Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to resign. Police used tear gas to push back a group that tried to march toward the Parliament building.

Thousands marched in Izmir, Turkey's third largest city, where clashes broke out between police and a small group of stone-throwing protesters. Smaller protests were also held in a dozen other cities, reports said.

The Istanbul protesters were demanding the square's Gezi Park be protected from plans that include the construction of a shopping mall. Many also aired grievances against Erdogan, whose style has become increasingly uncompromising during his government's third successive term.

Last week, the government enacted a law restricting the sale and advertising of alcohol, a move that has alarmed secular Turks.

Earlier this week, the government went ahead with a ground-breaking ceremony for the construction of a disputed third bridge across the Bosporus Strait that some say will destroy the few remaining green areas of the sprawling city. It also named the bridge after a controversial Ottoman sultan believed to have ordered a massacre of a minority Shiite Muslim group, instead of choosing a more unifying figure.

Protesters in Gezi Park held up a large poster Friday with a caricature depicting Erdogan as an Ottoman sultan with a caption that read: "The people won't yield to you."

Protester Serdar Sanman accused Erdogan of "trying to install his dictatorship."

Erdogan this week dismissed the protesters' demands, saying the government would go ahead with the renovation plans "no matter what they do." The forestry minister said more trees would be planted than those uprooted at Gezi.

The dawn raid was the latest in a series of aggressive crackdown on protests. Human rights activists frequently accuse Turkish police of using inordinate force to break up protests and of excessively using tear gas and pepper spray against protesters.

Interior Minister Muammer Guler said that authorities would investigate the reports of disproportionate use of force. Still, he defended the crackdown, saying officers were carrying out their duties against an illegal occupation of the park.

Istanbul Gov. Huseyin Avni Mutlu said 12 people were treated in hospitals for injuries and least 13 people were detained.

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the U.S. was concerned about the number of people injured as police dispersed protesters.

"We believe that Turkey's long-term stability, security and prosperity is best guaranteed by upholding the fundamental freedoms of expression, assembly and association, which is what it seems these individuals were doing," she told reporters. "These freedoms are crucial to any healthy democracy."

Psaki said the U.S. was still gathering information about the incident.

There was very little coverage of the protests on television channels in Turkey, reflecting the environment of self-censorship by the media, which has, among other things, been pressured into dismissing staff too critical of the government.

The media rights group Reporters without Borders said the injured journalist, Ahmet Sik, and others were deliberately targeted by police and urged Turkish authorities to halt the "excessive" use of force. A Reuters photographer was also injured.

Amnesty International also deplored what it called Turkish police brutality and said some officers should be brought to justice.

Demonstrators affected by tear gas sought shelter at a luxury hotel at Taksim and were tended by guests.

Police removed tents and the demonstrators' belongings and mounted barricades around the park.

In Ankara, demonstrators held up posters reading: "Don't Interfere in my Lifestyle" and "Resist the Dictator."

"The people are demonstrating against the government's intolerance toward demonstrations," said Metin Feyzioglu, who heads Turkey's lawyers' association, during the protest in Ankara. "The government must display understanding and immediately stop the violence against the demonstrators."

_____

Fraser reported from Ankara.

Arias' lawyers filed the mid-trial appeal with the state high court three months ago after Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Sherry Stephens denied a mistrial motion and a mid-level state court then refused to consider an appeal.

Arias' lawyers say Stephens wrongly allowed a potential death sentence to be based on trial testimony that contradicted a police detective's testimony during a 2009 hearing about how Travis Alexander was killed.

A jury in Phoenix convicted Arias on May 8 of first-degree murder, but jurors deadlocked May 23 on whether to impose a death sentence.

A new jury is to be impaneled in July to begin considering Arias' sentence, a process that will require a mini-trial of sorts in the case that became a national spectacle because of its prurient aspects.

Arias, 32, testified she killed Alexander in self-defense at his home in the Phoenix suburb of Mesa.

The appeal centered on prosecutor's contention during the trial that Alexander, 30, was killed in a cruel manner because he suffered mentally and physically by being stabbed and slashed before being shot.

Under Arizona law, committing a murder in a cruel manner is one of the grounds that can subject a convicted person to a death sentence.

Arias' lawyers argued in January that the lead Mesa police detective on the case perjured himself during a 2009 pretrial hearing aimed at determining whether the death penalty should be considered an option for jurors.

Detective Esteban Flores testified at the 2009 hearing that based on his own review of the scene, and a discussion with the medical examiner, it was apparent that Alexander had been shot in the forehead first. Arias then repeatedly stabbed and slashed him 27 times and slit his throat, he said.

Contrary to Flores' testimony at the 2009 hearing, the medical examiner told jurors the gunshot probably would have incapacitated Alexander. So given his extensive defense wounds, including stab marks and slashes to his hands, arms and legs, it wasn't likely the shot came first.

Defense lawyers argued that the detective's 2009 testimony was perjury, but Flores denied that and said during his trial testimony that he just misunderstood what the medical examiner told him.

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Neuropsychologists should consider studying "Fast & Furious 6" (and its equally thrilling predecessor, "Fast Five") for its unique ability to completely bypass the brain's logic center and go right to pushing our pleasure buttons over and over again.

Countless action directors aspire to the big, dumb fun that these last few franchise entries have provided, but whereas most of them only get "dumb" and maybe "big" right, director Justin Lin and his crew deliver fun, fun, fun. (And nobody takes anybody's T-Bird away.)

"Furious 6" (as the film is called in the opening credits) opens with criminal and street racer Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel), his girlfriend Elena (Elsa Pataky), Dom's sister Mia (Jordana Brewster) and Mia's husband (and Dom's former nemesis turned best bro) Brian O'Conner (Paul Walker) living the good life in the Canary Islands, enjoying the spoils of the big Brazilian bank job from "Fast Five" and avoiding extradition.

Thankfully, their bliss comes to an end when federal agent Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) shows up with an offer that Dom and Brian can't refuse; Hobbs needs their help in taking down international no-goodnik Owen Shaw (Luke Evans), and the fact that one of Shaw's henchmen appears to be Dom's girlfriend Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) - thought to have been killed two movies ago in "Fast & Furious" - compels the hot-rodders out of retirement to rescue her.

Nabbing Shaw means putting the band back together, so Tej (Ludacris), Han (Sung Kang), Gisele (Gal Gadot) and Roman (Tyrese Gibson) are all called in from their respective exiles to pitch in. Shaw has his own Benetton-ad-ready group of multi-ethnic henchmen, while Hobbs has his own backup, the hard-kicking Riley (Gina Carano of "Haywire").

There's a lot of running around regarding the McGuffin device that Shaw wants to steal so he can do very bad things, but that's not what "Fast & Furious 6" is really about; it's really about driving really fast through Picadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square and zipping along Spanish expressways while being shot at by a tank. And Lin and his team do an extraordinary job of staging the ever-escalating action sequences, up to a jaw-on-the-floor finale involving various four-wheel vehicles in and around a cargo plane that's trying to take off.

Not that all of the film's thrills are tied in to combustible engines. Getting to see Carano and Rodriguez (two of the screen's reigning bad-asses of any gender) go mano-a-mano twice counts as some kind of action movie landmark, and we also get Joe Taslim of the exhilarating "The Raid: Redemption" using his not-inconsiderable martial arts skills as one of Shaw's men. (The non-action casting is fairly creative as well, with Thure Lindhart, an Independent Spirit Award nominee for last year's powerful "Keep the Lights On," popping up in a supporting role.)

When the craziness slows down and people actually talk, the theme of family is constantly underlined, to the extent that my seatmate suggested a drinking game for every time the word "family" is mentioned. Nonetheless, while Diesel and Walker have a fairly limited skill set as actors, they are put to good use here, and six movies in, they've definitely established themselves and their co-stars as a cohesive unit.

The crazy gender politics of the "Fast and Furious" movies remain on display, and not just through the macho posturing and the bikini-clad car models writhing in slow motion. Every joke, insult or threat in the movie seems to revolve around the feminization if not outright emasculation of men. It's the sort of overcompensating we've come to expect from a series that critic Jennifer Smith once called "tender and homoerotic" and that spawned the "SNL" parody "The Fast and the Bi-Curious."

"Fast & Furious 6" serves up a big plate of entertainment. Its makers never pretend it's a steak, but they're happy to offer up a big fat juicy hamburger with extra cheese.

The fourth-seeded Wolverines (31-7) are back in the final for the first time in 20 years, when a brash group better known as the Fab Five was the talk of college basketball.

Top-seeded Louisville (34-5) is trying to bring its first title back to the state of Kentucky's "other" school since 1986. Sitting on the bench with the Cardinals is sophomore guard Kevin Ware, the team's inspiration since snapping his tibia in the regional final last weekend.

Cardinals coach Rick Pitino is working the sideline hours after being named to the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame.

Pitino is trying to become the first coach to lead two programs to national championships. He took Kentucky to the title in 1996.

Smith, the Louisville team leader who Pitino has nicknamed "Russdiculous" for some of his wild and wildly effective antics on the court, scores 18.9 points a game for the Cardinals during the season but has picked up the scoring in the tournament, averaging 25 in the five Louisville wins.

The Cardinals are playing without their main reserve, Ware, who broke his leg in the regional final against Duke. Needing a pickup without Ware, reserve swingman Luke Hancock scored 20 points in the 72-68 win over Wichita State. And rarely used walk-on Tim Henderson made two key 3-pointers during the comeback.

"The other night, we were not going to play in the championship game unless a walk-on steps up and makes a play to give us momentum," Pitino said in a pregame interview.

Chris Webber, who infamously called a timeout the Wolverines didn't have at the end of Michigan's 77-71 loss to North Carolina in the 1993 final, has had very little to do with his alma mater in recent years, but was on hand at the Georgia Dome to watch Monday's game.

In the program's first Final Four game since then, Michigan topped Syracuse 61-56 on Saturday despite an off night from Burke, who finished with only seven points on 1-for-8 shooting.

Burke, a sophomore, seriously considered leaving for the NBA after last season but decided he had unfinished business left in Ann Arbor. He picked up the AP Player of the Year award, among others, and is now one victory away from the ultimate prize in college hoops.

Before leaving the locker room, Michigan coach John Beilein gave his team a pep talk: "You play with poise, play with confidence, you do all those things today and we're going to have one heck of a celebration," he said.

Monday night's game is the final act in what has been an ugly season overall in college hoops, with scoring at its lowest (67.49 points per team) since 1951-52 and shooting at its worst (43.3 percent) since 1964-65. The 131.2-points-per-game average during March Madness is the lowest since the 3-point line was brought to the game in 1987.

The ruling late Monday threw into disarray a process that had been hailed as historic for delivering the first guilty verdict for genocide against a former Latin American leader.

Constitutional Court secretary Martin Guzman said the trial needs to go back to where it stood on April 19 to solve several appeal issues.

The ruling came 10 days after a three-judge panel convicted the 86-year-old Rios Montt of genocide and crimes against humanity for his role in massacres of Mayans during Guatemala's bloody, 36-year civil war. The panel found after two months of testimony that Rios Montt knew about the slaughter of at least 1,771 Ixil Mayans in the western highlands and didn't stop it.

The tribunal sentenced the 86-year-old former general to 80 years in prison, drawing cheers from many Guatemalans. It was the first time a former Latin American leader was convicted of such crimes in his home country and the first official acknowledgment that genocide occurred during the war something the current president, retired Gen. Otto Perez Molina, has denied.

Rios Montt's lawyers immediately filed an appeal, and he spent three days in prison before he was moved to a military hospital, where he remains.

The top court on Monday said it threw out his conviction because the trial should have been stopped while appeals filed by the defense were resolved.

Defense lawyer Francisco Garcia Gudiel told The Associated Press by telephone that he would seek the former dictator's freedom on Tuesday.

"There is no alternative," Garcia said. "The court has made a legal resolution after many flaws in the process. Tomorrow we will ask that they liberate the general, who is being imprisoned unjustly."

Representatives of the victims who testified against Rios Montt couldn't be immediately reached for comment.

The proceedings, which started in March, had been whipped back and forth ever since April 18, when a Guatemalan judge ordered that the trial should be restarted just as it was nearing closing arguments.

Judge Carol Patricia Flores had been recently reinstated by the Constitutional Court after being recused in February 2012. She ruled that all actions taken in the case since she was first asked to step down were null, sending the trial back to square one.

The next day, April 19, the tribunal hearing the oral part of the trial asked the Constitutional Court to decide if the proceedings should continue.

The trial was suspended for 12 days amid appeals and at times appeared headed for annulment. But it resumed April 30, and on May 10 the three-judge tribunal found Rios Montt guilty after more than 100 witnesses and experts testified about mass rapes and the killings of women and children and other atrocities committed by government troops. Rios Montt ruled Guatemala in 1982-83 following a military coup.

Survivors and relatives of victims had sought for 30 years to bring punishment for Rios Montt. For international observers and Guatemalans on both sides of the war, the trial was seen as a turning point in a nation still wrestling with the trauma of a conflict that killed some 200,000 people.

The defense constantly claimed flaws and miscarriages of justice.

Courts solved more than 100 complaints and injunctions filed by the defense before the trial even started.

Rios Montt's defense team walked out on April 18, arguing that they couldn't continue to be part of such a bad proceeding. When the three-judge tribunal resumed the trial, it ordered two public defenders to represent Rios Montt and his co-defendant, Jose Rodriguez Sanchez.

Rios Montt rejected his public defender and instead brought in Garcia, who was expelled earlier by the tribunal but reinstated by an appeals court.

Garcia had earlier been ordered off the case after he called for the three judges on the tribunal to be removed from the proceedings. He kept trying to have the judges dismissed. And the Constitutional Court ruled Monday that the trial should have been suspended while his appeal was heard.

The trial "was unlawfully reopened," Garcia said at the time.