Freddie Mac said Thursday that the rate on the 30-year loan ticked up to 4 percent from 3.99 percent. Six weeks ago, it dropped to a record low of 3.94 percent, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research.

The average rate on the 15-year fixed mortgage rose to 3.31 percent from 3.30 percent. Six weeks ago, it hit a record low of 3.26 percent.

Rates have been below 5 percent for all but two weeks this year. Yet this year could be the worst for home sales in 14 years.

Mortgage applications fell 10 percent this week from the previous week, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

High unemployment and scant wage gains have made it harder for many people to qualify for loans. Many Americans don't want to sink money into a home that could lose value over the next three to four years. And most homeowners who can afford to refinance already have.

The low rates have caused a modest boom in refinancing, but that benefit might be wearing off. Most people who can afford to refinance have already locked in rates below 5 percent. Refinancing fell 12.2 percent last week, according to the mortgage bankers group.

The average rates don't include extra fees, known as points, which most borrowers must pay to get the lowest rates. One point equals 1 percent of the loan amount.

The average fees for the 30-year and 15-year fixed mortgages were unchanged at 0.7.

The average rate on the five-year adjustable loan fell to 2.97 percent from 2.98 percent. The average rate on the one-year adjustable loan increased to 2.98 percent from 2.95 percent.

The average fees on the five-year and one-year adjustable loans were both unchanged at 0.6.

To calculate average mortgage rates, Freddie Mac surveys lenders across the country Monday through Wednesday of each week.

IBL, involved in seafood, commerce, financial services and logistics, said profits reached 612 million rupees, boosted by its seafood and marine sector.

However, it said that earnings dropped in the engineering and retail sectors as they continued to face severe competition.

"With trading conditions in these sectors likely to remain difficult, results will continue to sustain pressure," the company said in a statement.

IBL said earnings per share rose to 5.86 rupees from 4.84 rupees a year earlier.

Last February IBL signed an agreement with Gabon and local investment fund Fonds Gabonais d'Investissements Strategiques that will see an investment of 25 million euros in the country's seafood and marine industry.

Shares in IBL rose 1.8 percent to 86.50 rupees at 0900 GMT.

SERRA SAN BRUNO (Reuters) - Enrico Battaglin led an Italian 1-2-3 to win the fourth stage of the Giro d'Italia on Tuesday as Britain's Bradley Wiggins lost time in a testing finale.

The Tour de France champion lost 17 seconds as the peloton split in the final kilometers that included a quick descent followed by a flat section, which riders tackled in heavy rain with a cobbled section in the home straight.

Wiggins dropped from second to sixth overall, 34 seconds adrift of Italian Luca Paolini who retained the pink jersey after finishing safe in the bunch.

The Briton was one of several riders held up behind a crash involving Juan Manuel Garate, Cristiano Salerno and Laurent Pichon, which happened with less than two kilometers left in the stage.

International Cycling Union (UCI) regulations state that a rider who is held up in this way in the final three kilometers - with the exception of uphill finishes - is credited with the same time as the main bunch.

Herve Broecke, president of UCI commissaires on the Giro, explained, however, that the "three-kilometre" rule could not be applied to Wiggins as he had already dropped back.

"Wiggins was already behind the bunch when the crash took place because there was a split in the peloton, which was very strung out," he told reporters.

"The crash took place with less than three kilometers to go, we watched to see who had been affected by this crash and they were given the time of the riders they were with."

Team Sky principal Dave Brailsford played down the impact of Wiggins's time loss.

"It's like anything, you'd prefer it not to happen, but I don't think it's race changing," he told reporters.

"It puts him back on a par with everyone else. I think the big gaps will appear in the time trials and the big mountain stages, that's where this race is won and lost.

"On these early stages, you win some seconds here, and you lose seconds there."

Other pre-race favorites Cadel Evans of Australia, Italian Vincenzo Nibali and defending champion Ryder Hesjedal of Canada came home safe after a 246-km undulating trek from Policastro Bussentino.

Paolini leads Colombian Rigoberto Uran of Team Sky by 17 seconds with Spain's Benat Inxausti in third 26 seconds off the pace for Movistar.

PERFECTLY TIMED

Nibali and Hesjedal leapfrogged Wiggins and are now fourth and fifth, 31 and 34 seconds off the pace respectively.

Nibali, however, survived a scare with 35 kilometers remaining when he suffered a mechanical problem but managed to get back into the bunch after team mate Valerio Agnoli gave him his wheel.

With the second-category Croce Ferrata climb looming, several riders, among them Frenchman Sylvain Georges, tried their luck, jumping away from the main pack.

Team Sky moved to the front of the peloton, set a decent pace and toyed with the Frenchman.

Danilo Di Luca, the 2007 Giro winner, and Robinson Chalapud of Colombia also attacked and whizzed past Georges but the Italian was reined inthe final straight as Battaglin launched a perfectly-timed sprint.

Fabio Felline (Androni Giocattoli) and Giovanni Visconti (Movistar) finished second and third respectively.

"I knew that this finale was tailor-made for me," Battaglin told TV channel BeIn Sport.

"I knew it was now or never for me to win a stage."

Wednesday's fifth stage takes the peloton over 203 kilometers from Cosenza to Matera.

(Reporting by Alasdair Fotheringham; Writing by Julien Pretot; Editing by Toby Davis)

Among the patchwork changes to state law taking effect from Maryland to Oregon are provisions that lower tuition rates, advance employment opportunities and repeal hard-line regulations approved within the last decade.

Crowds at May Day rallies across the nation cheered the developments and urged federal progress. Legislative action in several states, meanwhile, coincided with speeches and marches.

"I have a message for Congress and the president," said Jeff Stone, representing Oregon's nursery industry at a rally of about 2,000 in Salem.

"Stop talking, and start acting," he said.

Stone spoke shortly after Oregon's Democratic governor, John Kitzhaber, signed a bill that will grant immigrants the ability to drive legally in the state.

Many such state-level proposals go beyond what is being discussed on Capitol Hill, and the significant, if piecemeal, shift shows lawmakers reacting to a pendulum swing in public opinion that helped usher many of them into office. But experts also say state legislators have been spurred ahead by halting progress in Washington, D.C.

"The vacuum created by inactivity at the federal level is certainly a major factor, if not the major factor, in states' action on this issue," said Muzaffar Chishti, director of the New York division of the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.

At least 15 states are in various stages of considering bills that would further integrate immigrants, and several others already have passed such legislation this year. This group is larger than the handful of states moving the other direction, though there are exceptions.

Matt Mayer, a visiting fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said he doesn't think this year has been significantly different at the state-level than previous years because such immigration proposals have been around for more than a decade.

"It's just states trying to deal with what they perceive to be the problem," Mayer said.

Georgia lawmakers, for example, expanded a law passed in 2011 to crack down on illegal immigration. And Arizona and Nebraska officials have refused to grant driver's licenses to young immigrants who are authorized to be in the country under the Obama administration's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals directive.

But this is nothing compared with the political climate of recent years where anti-illegal immigration attitudes dominated the national debate.

"This is an interesting evolution," Chishti said.

As recently as few years ago, lawmakers around the nation were passing strict regulations that made immigrants in the U.S. without legal permission the subject of police crackdowns and raids.

"The last few years were so harsh at the state level," said Wendy Feliz, a spokeswoman for the American Immigration Council.

Colorado legislators have been on both sides. In 2006, Democrats and Republicans came together and passed a law requiring local police to notify federal authorities when they arrested someone suspected of living illegally in the U.S. Last month, behind a push from newly elected Democrats, the law was repealed. Activists praised the move as especially symbolic, saying the law was precursor to more high-profile, hard-line regulations in Arizona and Alabama.

Feliz and other immigrants' rights activists are content to support the state-by-state changes, since they can have a more immediate effect on the 11 million people living in the U.S. illegally.

Federal legislation moves at a far slower pace in both approval and implementation. Also, proposals in the nation's capital affect policy, such as how a person becomes a citizen. The state-level changes deal more in daily concerns, such as the cost of education.

Under laws approved recently in Colorado and Oregon, immigrant students will qualify for resident tuition rates, reducing how much they pay for school by more than two-thirds in some cases. Such DREAM Act proposals have failed repeatedly in both states in recent years.

In Minnesota, such a tuition plan easily passed the state Senate on Wednesday, hours ahead of an immigrants' rights rally that attracted hundreds to the Capitol. The measure faces several legislative hurdles, and it has been rejected twice since 2007. But for the first time the proposal has support from the state's governor, a Democrat who took office in 2011 following a two-term Republican who opposed the plan.

Another immigrants' rights provision advancing in at least a dozen states allows people in the U.S. without legal permission to obtain a driver's card. Besides Oregon, lawmakers in Illinois and Maryland passed such legislation this year, and experts predict that other states also will pass plans.

In Colorado, lawmakers on Wednesday advanced such a proposal. The legislation is likely to become law, and the House committee vote came as a May Day immigration rally drew hundreds of people to its Capitol in support of such measures despite a spring snow storm.

Notably, Texas lawmakers introduced a version of the policy just two years after passing a slate of bills tightening immigration regulations.

"This driver's license stuff is remarkable because it was such a political issue just a few years ago," said Jonathan Blazer of the national American Civil Liberties Union.

The business community including Stone's Oregon Association of Nurseries has been a strong force behind the state's new driving law. They say it's an economic issue and that the proposal creates job opportunities that will boost the state.

But the changes are also politically motivated, Blazer said. To his point, voters in Colorado, Oregon and Minnesota all supported President Barack Obama in November and handed control of their statehouses to Democrats.

"If Republicans would change their stance on immigration, we would probably vote Republican," said Victor Mena, an Oregon resident. Mena supports immigrants' rights in part because he has family members who live in the U.S. without legal permission.

His attitude is indicative of a national trend, as more than 7 in 10 Hispanic voters supported Obama for re-election.

"Every level and stripe of every party has gotten the memo that Latinos are an important voting bloc," said Feliz, of the American Immigration Council.

The GOP has softened its stance on the issue, evidenced by the federal immigration overhaul negotiations and the bipartisan support some state-level proposals are receiving.

Still, there are those who disagree.

"We seem to be reaching out and inviting them to stay through policies like this, rather than discouraging illegal behavior," said Oregon Republican Rep. Kim Thatcher.

She says her state, and to a degree, her party, is moving the wrong direction on immigration.

"It's not about appealing to voters," Thatcher said. "I believe it's about doing the right thing."

___

AP Writers Pat Condon in St. Paul, Minn., Ivan Moreno in Denver and Will Weissert in Austin, Texas, contributed to this report.

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Follow Lauren Gambino on Twitter at http://twitter.com/lgamgam

In the distance, massive tankers pull up to a half-century-old refinery that processes much of the oil that earns Venezuela more than $100 billion a year.

"It doesn't help us at all," Boet, 58, says as a blackout snuffs the lights in his shop in this Caribbean coastal town. He closes before dusk. Too many robbers.

The oil flowing from the El Palito refinery sells for more than five times what it cost when President Hugo Chavez took office in 1999. Yet when Chavez died in March he left Venezuela's cash cow, its state-run oil company, in such dire straits that analysts say $100-a-barrel oil may no longer be enough to keep the country afloat barring a complete overhaul of a deteriorating petroleum industry.

The situation is more urgent than ever, analysts say. The price of crude has slumped in recent weeks and Chavez's heir, Nicolas Maduro, appears to have done little to address declining production, billions in debt and infrastructure deficiencies that have caused major accidents including a blaze that killed at least 42 people at Venezuela's largest refinery last year.

Maduro has retained Chavez's oil minister and the head of state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela S.A., Rafael Ramirez. And he appears intent on continuing to send cut-rate oil to members of the 18-nation Petrocaribe alliance, for which Venezuela is hosting a summit on Saturday.

Ramirez said Friday that Maduro would use the meeting to propose creating a special economic zone for group members.

PDVSA, which accounts for 96 percent of the country's export earnings, no longer "generates enough income to cover all its costs and finance its commitments," said Pedro Luis Rodriguez Sosa, an energy expert at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Administration in Caracas.

He said that "you can see PDVSA is in trouble" at the $100-a-barrel level because of the many millions lost to gasoline subsidies and spending on domestic social spending and PDVSA's use as a "geopolitical tool" to maintain regional alliances.

Venezuela has the world's largest oil reserves but PDVSA's production, earnings and income all appear to be on a downward slide and its debts to suppliers rose 35 percent. Its debt to the Central Bank of Venezuela reached $26.19 billion last year, a nearly eight-fold increase in two years.

The government makes no apologies. It says it is employing the country's most important natural resource for the good of the people and promises increased production and revenues in the immediate future.

Ramirez said that PDVSA's efforts remained focused on developing the remote Orinoco belt, site of the world's biggest oil reserves, with the aid of oil firms from China, Russia, the U.S., Italy, Vietnam, Malaysia, Japan and Spain. Venezuela hopes to lift overall production to some 3.32 million barrels a day, 200,000 more than last year.

"We're in a process of trying to attract investment in dollars other than ours," Ramirez said, assuring reporters that PDVSA would work with private investors to not take on more debt to make new investment.

Outside experts, however, are deeply skeptical. They say PDVSA is badly mismanaged and that even a radical overhaul would take years to show results.

Rather than reinvesting enough profits in exploration and maintenance, Chavez dedicated oil revenues to social spending such as building hundreds of thousands of homes and free medical clinics for the poor, they say. Last year PDVSA said it spent $28.83 billion, nearly a quarter of its income, on various state programs.

PDVSA also loses billions subsidizing gasoline for Venezuelan drivers, who pay less to fill up their tanks than people anywhere else in the world.

"The government of Venezuela today uses PDVSA as its petty cash box to lead populist social programs," said Jorge R. Pinon, associate director of the Latin America and Caribbean Program at the University of Texas, Austin. "Whatever capital is left in PDVSA is being mismanaged, mismanaged because they're just not focused on running the company. ... They're focused on building hospitals and schools."

On top of that, state oil company PDVSA dedicates 42 percent of its production to favored partners in the Caribbean and to consumption inside Venezuela, where gasoline is almost free, which means it can sell less than 60 percent at market price.

Ramirez said that a rise in daily domestic oil consumption to 650,000 barrels this year is expected to drive down exports by 7.8 percent to 2.36 million barrels a day, inevitably damaging revenues for PDSVA and the broader Venezuelan budget.

The alliance's Caribbean and Central American member nations receive hundreds of millions of dollars annually in deeply discounted oil, part of Chavez's bid to project Venezuela's influence in the region. Socialist ally Cuba is the largest recipient.

Maduro made his first major foreign trip as president to Cuba last weekend, recommitting to sending it some 130,000 barrels of oil a day.

Now, Maduro must wrestle with the consequences of Chavez's energy and economic policies, which included a campaign spending spree last year ahead of Chavez's re-election.

In order to control capital flight, Chavez imposed controls that require any business that wants to import goods to purchase dollars directly from the government, which rations them out in relatively small amounts at an artificially set official exchange rate.

Even with gasoline at roughly $100 a barrel over the last six months, the government hasn't been meeting the demand for dollars. That's created frequent and worsening shortages of staple goods such as flour, sugar and cooking oil.

And despite promises to increase the flow of dollars it pumps into the economy, independent economists don't see how it can be pulled off. Crude prices fell about 10 percent over the last three weeks and analysts say they could stabilize at $90 a barrel.

At the same time, official figures show Venezuela produced 3 million barrels a day last year, a 95,000 barrel-a-day decline from 2011. Independent organizations such as OPEC estimate Venezuela's production could actually be around 2.7 million barrels a day.

Ramirez has played down questions about the company's performance, and PDVSA says it invested billions in exploration last year, drilled 2,010 wells, more than double the previous year, and projects increased production to reach 4 million barrels a day in 2014 and to 6 million by 2019.

Venezuelans such as Zaida Eleonora Mejicano are skeptical of such talk and are impatient to see the benefits.

Mejicano used to travel around Venezuela buying gold jewelry that she resold in Moron, her hometown. Now, she says, she's amazed by the deterioration of the quality of life. She can't travel anymore for fear of being robbed.

"You can't get anything here. Here women have to wait in line four, five even six hours for a stick of butter," she said. "I've always worked hard but now one's afraid to even travel. Things are really ugly here."

___

AP writer Michael Weissenstein contributed to this report.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - For the Los Angeles Kings, it all came down to resilience and winning the final period as they faced the daunting prospect of trailing the St. Louis Blues 3-1 in their best-of-seven Western Conference first-round series.

In front of a packed house at Staples Center, the Stanley Cup champions were stunned by two early Blues goals in Monday's Game Four and despite clawing their way back to 2-2, they again fell behind by the second intermission.

"Just win one period" was the team's mantra as they huddled in their locker room before coming out for the final period and they delivered in style, Anze Kopitar and Justin Williams scoring 76 seconds apart to seal a 4-3 win for Los Angeles.

"There's a lot of resilience in this room," Kings left wing Dustin Penner told reporters after the fifth seeds leveled the playoff series at 2-2 with Game Five set for St. Louis on Wednesday and Game Six back in Los Angeles on Friday.

"The game has a funny way of making you question it, but we have a lot of resolve and obviously we draw on experiences from last year."

Penner described how the Kings had set themselves small building blocks going into the final period in a bid to erase a 3-2 deficit after T.J. Oshie had scored his second goal of the night with a wrist shot to put the Blues in control.

"Just win one period," Penner said. "We had tied one, lost one. If we could just win this period - small goals for ourselves - then that would lead into a big one.

"And get pucks to the net, get inside their D and create havoc for (St. Louis goaltender Brian) Elliott. The game tests you in different ways. We definitely earned this one."

Game Four was surprisingly electrifying for the fans as it followed three low-scoring affairs highlighted by two of the best defenses in the league and a pair of outstanding goalies.

NEAR-IMPREGNABLE QUICK

Jonathan Quick, who won the Conn Smythe Trophy last season as the most valuable player in the playoffs, had looked near-impregnable for the Kings as he stopped 93 of 97 shots in the first three games. Elliott had impressively stopped 76 of 79.

On Monday, however, Quick was beaten twice in the first five minutes of play, a wide open David Backes scoring with a wrist shot after just 72 seconds and Oshie making it 2-0 for the fourth seeds with a tip-in during a power play after 4:32.

Panic was never likely to set in, though, for a Kings team that became the first eighth seed to win a Stanley Cup last year after upsetting the Western Conference's top three seeds along the way.

"It's not about morale on our team," Kings head coach Darryl Sutter said. "It sounds repetitive, but this team has resilience. There was no faction, when it was 0-2, that it was 'Throw it in' or 'What's going on?'

"That's not the way it works. And there was really nothing to build back. They scored a weak goal, then they scored a power-play goal. We got a big goal from Jeff (Carter) which makes it 2-1 and that's pretty how much how the series has gone.

"Score was 4-3 coming in tonight in 10 periods and after three periods tonight it was 4-3 again ... so you play 13 periods and it's 7-7. That's how close it is."

The Kings have now won nine straight games at home for a 21-4-1 overall record at Staples Center this season, but they have lost eight in a row on the road, including the first two games of this series.

"We are going back home," smiled St. Louis defenseman Jay Bouwmeester. "We are in a good position still. You just have to approach it like it's a three-game series now.

"We just have to get back to doing the things that made us successful. We have to get back to skating and getting on the fore-check. This time of the year it's real close. You don't have to change a lot but sometimes it makes a big difference."

(Reporting by Mark Lamport-Stokes; Editing by Frank Pingue)

I was in Chile's Atacama Desert this March for the(Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array), a collection of 66 radio antennas mounted at an altitude of 16,500 feet (5,000 meters) on the Chajnantor Plateau.

I don't know what was more thrilling seeing the spectacular observatory, or experiencing its otherworldly surroundings.

Theis so dry that some parts of it haven't received rain for hundreds of years. Certain spots are orange and red, evoking the terrain of Mars more than Earth. Yet other areas experience enough rainfall to support a surprising amount of scrub vegetation and even cacti.

And on the horizon, pointed volcanoes and snowcapped Andes mountains tower over the scene. Many of the volcanoes are active, with smoke seeping ominously from the tops of some. A byproduct of this volcanism is the salt that's littered throughout the desert, coating many ground surfaces with a white sheen.

All these factors combine to create a landscape unlike any place I've ever seen.

Clara Moskowitz visited Chile on a trip paid for by the U.S. National Radio Astronomy Observatory.Follow Clara on and . Follow us,or.Original article on .

(Reuters) - Chinese e-commerce firm Alibaba Group acquired an 18 percent stake in web portal Sina Corp's microblogging service Weibo in its first big move into selling advertising on China's highly competitive social networks.

Sina's U.S.-listed shares surged 21 percent to $60.81 in early trading, before easing back to $56.90.

The $586 million deal, which values Weibo at over $3 billion, will provide more advertising revenue to Weibo as Sina tries to monetize the service and increase its lead over rival Tencent Holdings' social messaging product, WeChat.

The deal, seen by analysts as generously priced, should drive more web traffic to Alibaba's Taobao Marketplace, China's largest e-commerce website with a consumer focus.

Alibaba is tipped to go public within the next year.

Weibo, China's version of Twitter, has grown at a fast clip since its launch in 2009 and has gained from the blockage of Twitter by the Chinese government.

More than 500 million Chinese use Weibo to opine on everything from Korean soap operas to China's latest political intrigue.

"(The stake purchase) is as an endorsement from Alibaba ... of the value of Sina's Weibo platform," Morningstar analyst Dan Su said.

"This indicates the tremendous value of the data that is present on the Weibo platform that can be mined for a lot of activities, such as ecommerce."

Unlisted Alibaba, controlled by charismatic Chinese internet entrepreneur Jack Ma, also runs Alibaba.com, the country's largest business-to-business commerce platform, and Alipay, a PayPal-like online payment platform.

Ma, one of China's best known corporate leaders, reckoned to be worth $3.4 billion by Forbes late last year, built his e-commerce empire from scratch.

He plans to step down as CEO on May 10 and become executive chairman. Alibaba is likely to go public in a listing in Hong Kong that could value the company at about $100 billion, according to industry sources.

Alibaba has kept mum about its IPO plans, but its listing will likely be a windfall for Yahoo Inc, which owns nearly a quarter of the company.

GENEROUS FOR SINA

Some analysts, who had valued Weibo between $600 million and $2.5 billion, said the deal offered by Alibaba was generous.

"We believe this deal is very positive for Sina. It instantly gives pricing to Sina Weibo with a valuation of $3.26 billion; the per share base could be $48," T.H. Capital Research analyst Tian Hou said.

"Sina's resource consolidation with Alibaba Group, which has a huge dominant position in China's e-commerce, can escalate Weibo's development," she said.

Sina, which makes most of its revenue from online advertising both on its website and Weibo, has had investors worried as the growth rate of Chinese online advertising slows. Its shares have slipped 15 percent in the last 12 months.

Maxim Group analyst Echo He said the Alibaba deal would help Sina in the longer term, but giving Sina cash would not solve its problems and its valuation would still depend on its own profitability.

This is not the first time Sina has tied up with a major Chinese company to seek new streams of revenue.

Sina allied with Baidu Inc last year, integrating Baidu search in its mobile website, while Baidu said its cloud initiative would come with the Weibo app preinstalled.

The analysts said Sina could potentially team up with many other companies, while Morningstar's Su said the deal ruled out any near-term plans for another such major alliance.

Sina has also granted Alibaba the option to increase its stake in Weibo to 30 percent within a stipulated time, which it did not specify.

The alliance is expected to generate about $380 million in advertising and social commerce services revenue for Weibo over the next three years, Sina said in a statement.

(Additional reporting by Supantha Mukherjee; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - After enduring a roller-coaster season described by Hall of Famer Earvin 'Magic' Johnson as "one of the worst" in franchise history, Los Angeles Lakers fans are scratching their heads over what may happen next.

Widely tipped as National Basketball Association (NBA) championship contenders after assembling a star-studded lineup for their 2012-13 campaign, the injury-hit Lakers were swept out of the playoffs in the opening round by the San Antonio Spurs.

It was the first time in 46 years they had been knocked out of the post-season in four games, a humiliating exit for a team many had predicted would challenge the record 72 games won by the Chicago Bulls during their landmark 1995-96 regular season.

Despite boasting a potent starting five including All-Stars Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol, Dwight Howard and Steve Nash, Los Angeles limped to an underwhelming 45-37 record as their ageing lineup succumbed to a spate of injuries.

Though they ended the regular season on a 28-12 run to book their place in the playoffs as the seventh-seeded team, that achievement came at a price with the inspirational Bryant ruled out of the post-season due to an Achilles tendon injury.

The Lakers were totally outplayed by the second-seeded Spurs in their first-round series, routed 103-82 in Game Four after center Howard was ejected following a second technical foul early in the third quarter.

"Dwight Howard that was a big No, No. Your teammates and the fans were counting on you," Johnson tweeted, before adding: "Dwight, I've been swept before but I never let my team down by getting kicked out of the game."

Johnson, who with fellow Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar spearheaded the Lakers in the fabled "Showtime" era from 1979-1989, was not finished.

"I'm sooooooooooo happy the season is over. With the talent on this team this could go down as one of the worst seasons in Lakers' history!"

Johnson, along with many others, had expected much of the men in purple-and-gold after the off-season acquisitions of Howard and Nash beefed up a roster already bristling with quality and experience in Bryant and Gasol.

However Nash ended up missing 24 games because of a fracture in his left leg while Howard never appeared to recover fully from back surgery in mid 2012 while battling a shoulder injury and perceived tension between himself and team leader Bryant.

Forwards Gasol and Metta World Peace, along with backup guards Steve Blake and Jodie Meeks, were sidelined because of assorted ailments during a tumultuous season as the team failed to gel until the pressure was on to make the playoffs.

SHIFTED ROLES

Head coach Mike D'Antoni was widely criticized for an apparent inability to adjust his offense-minded style to fit a mainly old and slow roster, gifted Spaniard Gasol suffering the most as he was repeatedly shifted between multiple roles.

"It was a bit of a roller-coaster, obviously," D'Antoni said of his first season in charge of the Lakers.

"A lot of disappointment at the end. Due to a lot of circumstances, we started off slow and got us in a hole.

"The last 40 games, we played well. Disappointed we couldn't do anything in the playoffs - a lot of it due to injuries. We had ourselves set up to make a run, but we didn't do it."

The biggest question mark facing the Lakers ahead of next season is whether they can retain both big men, Howard and Gasol, as the team's luxury taxes will soar from $30 million to $85 million if they again have a $100-million payroll.

Howard, 27, will test free agency and is noncommittal about his plans. He can either re-sign with Los Angeles for five years and $118 million or opt for a four-year, $88-million deal with another team.

Gasol, 32, has been a frequent subject of trade rumors and, with a guarantee on his contract of $19.3 million for next season, said earlier this week that he understood the "business side" of the Lakers.

"There's a possibility I could be gone," he told reporters. There's a possibility I could stay. I'm prepared either way.

"I understand the challenges the franchise is facing and the decision they have to make in order to keep the team in the direction they want looking at the present and the future."

Bryant, a five-time NBA champion, fervently hopes the Lakers can go into next season with both Howard and Gasol.

"I want him here," Bryant said of Gasol. "He gives us the best chance to win titles. You bring Dwight back, then we're off and running. You saw how well they played together (at the end of the season). That puzzle finally got solved."

Bryant, who averaged 27.3 points and 6.0 assists during the regular season before he tore his Achilles tendon on April 12, felt the Lakers never had the chance to gel because of their alarming injury rate.

"It was crazy," he said.

"It was a constant process for us, but we finally figured it out. It will be great to bring the group back because we know what to do, and we know how lethal we can be."

(Editing by Greg Stutchbury)