Corn is gaining the most in almost four months as dry weather is forecast for the Midwest.

December corn rose 22 cents, or 4.7 percent, to $4.85 a bushel Monday. That's the biggest one-day increase since April 29.

The forecast for drier weather has helped corn prices rebound from their lowest level in almost three years. Corn has slumped this year after the government said in the spring that growers intended to plant the most corn in almost 80 years.

"We're starting this week with a pretty dry forecast," said Todd Hultman, a grains analyst at DTN. "So there are increasing concerns, especially in the western and northern Corn Belt, about dry conditions."

Wheat and soybeans also rose. December wheat gained 10 cents, or 1.6 percent, to $6.54 a bushel. Soybeans rose 44 cents, or 3.5 percent, to $13.03 a bushel.

Corn has been one of the biggest decliners among agriculture products this year, dropping 31 percent since the start of the year. The price of wheat has fallen 16 percent and soybeans have dropped 8.3 percent.

U.S. corn growers are forecast to produce a record crop of 13.8 billion bushels of corn this year, an increase of 28 percent from last year's drought-hit crop, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said Aug. 12.

In metals trading, most futures contracts fell.

December gold fell $5.30, or 0.4 percent, to $1,365.70 an ounce. Silver for September delivery dropped 15.6 cents, or 0.7 percent, to $23.17 an ounce.

Copper for September dropped 3.1 cents, or $3.332 per pound. Palladium for the same month fell $10.15, or 1.3 percent, to $752.90 an ounce. Platinum for October fell $18.60, or 1.2 percent, to $1,509 an ounce.

In energy trading, the price of oil edged down 36 cents, or 0.3 percent, to $107.10 a barrel, ending a streak of six straight gains. Oil has advanced on continuing violence in Egypt and supply disruptions elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa.

Heating oil was down 1.2 cents, or 0.4 percent, to $3.07 per gallon. Wholesale gasoline fell 3.4 cents to $2.93 a gallon. Natural gas rose 9.5 cents, or 2.8 percent, to $3.463 per 1,000 cubic feet.

By Rodrigo Campos

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks rose in light trading on Friday, led by a jump in Microsoft shares, as trading took place without interruption a day after the Nasdaq stock exchange suffered an unprecedented, three-hour trading halt.

Microsoft (NSQ: - ) shares posted their largest daily percentage gain in more than four years after the head of the world's largest software company, Steve Ballmer, announced he will retire within 12 months.

The stock closed up 7.3 percent at $34.77 and was the largest contributor to the advance on the three major indexes.

"The big news today is the succession at Microsoft, but beyond that it's pretty quiet," said Dan Veru, chief investment officer at Palisade Capital Management in Fort Lee, New Jersey.

The Dow Jones industrial average (DJI: - ) rose 46.77 points or 0.31 percent, to 15,010.51, the S&P 500 (MXP: - ) gained 6.54 points or 0.39 percent, to 1,663.5 and the Nasdaq Composite (NAS: - ) added 19.085 points or 0.52 percent, to 3,657.792.

Volume was among the lowest of the year with about 4.9 billion shares changing hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT, far below the daily average so far this year of about 6.3 billion shares.

Trading volume was only slightly higher than Thursday's 4.4 billion, affected by a technological problem that shut down trading in Nasdaq securities for three hours in the afternoon.

On Friday, Robert Greifeld, chief executive officer of Nasdaq OMX (NSQ: - ) said the exchange resolved the technical problems that led to the halt but could not guarantee there would never be future glitches. Nasdaq shares gained 1.2 percent to close at $30.83.

Friday's gains helped the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite end a two-week losing streak, but the Dow posted its third consecutive weekly decline. For the week the Dow fell 0.5 percent, the S&P gained 0.5 percent and the Nasdaq added 1.5 percent.

Economic data showed sales of new single-family homes fell by 13.4 percent in July to an annual rate of 394,000 units, well below expectations of 490,000 units.

The data weighed on homebuilder stocks, with PulteGroup (NYS: - ) down 1.6 percent to $16.06 and Toll Brothers (NYS: - ) off 3.9 percent to $31.19. The PHLX housing sector index (XPH: - ) lost 1.6 percent.

Pandora Media Inc (NYS:P) slumped 12.9 percent to $18.91 after the Internet radio service said late Thursday that rising expenditures to acquire music and expand its sales force would push fiscal 2014 earnings below analyst expectations.

Aeropostale Inc (NYS: - ) tumbled 20.2 percent to $8.76 after the teen apparel retailer forecast a steep third-quarter loss.

Shares of Autodesk (NSQ: - ) rallied 7.7 percent to $38.91 after earlier hitting $41.72, its highest level since April 2012.

Roughly two issues rose for every one that fell on the NYSE and on Nasdaq 13 rose for every 11 decliners.

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos, additional reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

Researchers said birds appear to have adapted to the local speed limits as a feature of their environment, such as the risk of predators.

Strict enforcement of speed limits could therefore significantly help with conservation, especially for endangered species in populated areas, Pierre Legagneux, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Quebec in Rimouski, told AFP.

"I realized that the birds were not reacting to the actual speed of my car, but to the average speed of cars on these roads, to the posted speed limits," the lead researcher said in a telephone interview.

The birds "associate road sections with speed limits as a way to assess collision risk," he added in the study published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.

"So strictly enforcing speed limits could reduce bird collisions."

Legagneux said he was tracking ducks in western France for other research when he came across a bird on a road that forced him to stop to avoid it, and caused him to wonder how birds think about cars and avoid collisions.

Legagneux began studying bird responses during the long drive home from his laboratory in a small white Peugeot 205, a route that took him through croplands, forests and small villages between November 2006 and November 2007.

With colleague Simon Ducatez, he monitored and analyzed the responses of 21 species of birds on roads with posted speed limits of 20, 50, 90 and 110 kilometers per hour (12 to 68 miles per hour).

The process involved noting when a bird took off to avoid his approaching car and how long it took the bird to reach its final position on the ground.

In an apparent reference to the court's recent decisions on gay marriage and benefits for same-sex couples, Scalia said it is not the function of the courts to create exceptions outside the Constitution unless a majority of people agree with them.

"It's not up to the courts to invent new minorities that get special protections," Scalia told a packed hotel ballroom in southwestern Montana.

The Supreme Court earlier this year cleared the way for same-sex marriages to resume in California and struck down part of a federal law that prevents legally married gay couples from receiving benefits. Scalia voted against the majority of justices.

Changes to the Constitution were made to protect minorities and to give women the right to vote, but that's not how the court operates today, he said.

Rather, a majority of five judges decide issues that should be in the hands of Congress or made through a change to the Constitution.

Questions such as National Security Administration surveillance of phone records or the privacy questions in the Patriot Act were once answered by Congress, which knows how serious a threat is compared to the intrusiveness of the surveillance. But now the courts are doing so.

"Of all the three branches, we are the one that knows the least about the nature of the threats to the country, and we have the least ability to find out about it," Scalia said.

Scalia spoke before more than 300 people in Bozeman in a gathering sponsored by the Federalist Society, which he helped launch more than 30 years ago to fight the perception of liberal bias at the nation's law schools. The group is trying to open a chapter in Montana.

Scalia was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Ronald Reagan in 1986, and his opinions have placed him among the most conservative justices on the bench.

It's the second time in three years the 77-year-old justice has spoken in Bozeman. In 2010, he gave a speech at Montana State University's Museum of the Rockies.

Scalia answered some questions written by the audience, including a hot-button issue in Montana: the Second Amendment's right to keep and bear arms.

"What remains to be determined ... appears to be the scope of the armament that people can keep and bear," he said. "Can they bear shoulder-fired rocket launchers?"

He said the court will have to take those cases as they come, but his approach will be to apply the historical understanding of the Second Amendment, which was not just in self-defense against animals and home intruders, but for the people to protect themselves against a tyrannical leader.

Scalia dismissed the idea of term limits for Supreme Court justices, asking, "Who is drooling on the bench?"

He also called the notion of an imperial presidency "garbage," saying the presidency is weak by design and Congress holds the real power.

"Congress can do whatever it wants, if it gets its act together," he said.

He also was asked about the most wrenching decision since he's been on the bench.

"Well, is Obamacare too recent?" he asked to laughter.

Scalia dissented with the majority opinion that left President Barack Obama's health care overhaul mostly intact.

Indie film figures Joe Swanberg and Ti West play two attendees at a party where four siblings and their significant others are celebrating their parents' 35th wedding anniversary. Most tolerable among this largely annoying crew are Crispian (A.J. Bowen), a college prof, and his Australian girlfriend Erin (Sharni Vinson), but that's not paying the two very high praise. The irritation factor grows substantially after the first slaying at this remote Tudor mansion, when half the female cast seems to be competing to shriek the longest.

An unknown number of men, wearing animal masks and wielding crossbows (why not guns?), are stalking the family from without and within the house; since director Adam Wingard and screenwriter Simon Barrett have given themselves so many characters to kill, they start off with a few quick killings in which the victims are behaving so stupidly they're practically asking to die.

Most frustrating during the film's first half is that only one among the 10 characters, Erin, has anything approaching a self-preservation instinct. While others scream or stand around dumbly, she hustles off to lock windows and gather weapons. While the mask-wearing villains have a hard time delivering the kind of novel slayings horror fans demand, Vinson musters the ferocity to compensate the moment she meat-tenderizes an attacker's skull, the movie starts to turn fun.

In the absence of sympathetic characters, a little humor would have gone a long way here. But aside from a near-miss sex scene in a bed shared by a corpse, there's practically none on hand. Only when the reasons for the attack become clear does the movie find its feet, but "You're Next" ends on a high enough note that buzz on the way out of the theater should work in its favor.

"You're Next," a Lionsgate release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for "strong bloody violence, language and some sexuality/nudity." Running time: 96 minutes.

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MPAA rating definition for R: Restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

NCAA President Mark Emmert said Thursday it would stop the practice immediately after reports this week that team jerseys and other items linked to individual schools could be found on its own website by searching for specific player names.

"I think seeing the NCAA sell those kinds of goods is a mistake," Emmert said during a conference call with reporters. "It's not what the NCAA is about. So we're not going to be doing that any longer."

The NCAA is being sued by former players and a handful of current college players in federal court over the use of athlete images and likenesses. And just this past week, ESPN reported that the NCAA is investigating Heisman Trophy-winner Johnny Manziel for allegedly being paid to sign memorabilia, which if true could jeopardize eligibility as a violation of NCAA amateurism rules.

Emmert said the commercial site won't be completely removed because there is still a market for generic NCAA apparel. He said the NCAA had hired another company to run the site, ShopNCAASports.com.

Mark Lewis, the NCAA's executive vice president for championships and alliances, also released a statement, saying university merchandise would not be offered, either.

"In the coming days, the store's website will be shut down temporarily and reopen in a few weeks as a marketplace for NCAA championship merchandise only," Lewis said. "After becoming aware of issues with the site, we determined the core function of the NCAA.com fan shop should not be to offer merchandise licensed by our member schools."

The move overshadowed a news conference that was intended to update reporters about possible changes to the NCAA's governance structure. Members of the board of directors and executive had a preliminary discussion on potential changes, though no vote is expected until next August.

Instead, the hot topics became Manziel, NCAA rules and the website fiasco.

Board chairman Nathan Hatch was asked whether some of the NCAA rules regarding payments to college athletes should be modified.

"I stand by the NCAA's commitment to amateurism, and I believe the way we've done that is the correct way," the Wake Forest president said. "So I believe the rules we have, we agree with."

The NCAA's new enforcement chief, Jonathan Duncan, later told The Associated Press he does not anticipate modifications to those rules, either.

"Based on my experience before coming to the national office, I know that lots of member groups, cabinets and committees have looked over the years and that lots of changes have been proposed and have not been approved," he said. "It's up to the membership and if they change the rules, the enforcement staff will follow their lead."

And, of course, back to more memorabilia questions.

"We're exiting it as soon as we feasibly can," Emmert said. "Again, I think it was inappropriate for us to be in that business, and we won't be in the future."

OTTAWA (Reuters) - The Canadian government is watching smartphone maker BlackBerry Ltd carefully as it explores options including sale of the company but will not comment on its affairs, Industry Minister James Moore said on Wednesday.

Loss-making BlackBerry, which has bled market share to Apple's iPhone and phones using Google's Android operating system, said last week it was weighing options that could include an outright sale.

The company's new phones, introduced earlier this year, have sold less quickly than expected and BlackBerry expects more red ink for the current quarter at least.

Speaking in an interview with Reuters, Moore said it was "unfortunate" that BlackBerry's new Q10 and the Z10 smartphones had not taken off with consumers.

"I know that they're facing their challenges and they're adjusting their firm internally in the way that best suits their interests," he said. "And all I can say is, we wish them well, and we're keeping a close eye on the situation."

Moore declined to speculate about whether a foreign bid for BlackBerry could run afoul of national security regulations. Asked if the government wanted BlackBerry to stay Canadian, he replied: "We want them to do well, keep employing Canadians, keeping putting out innovative technologies and platforms, and we're paying close attention."

BlackBerry, formerly known as Research In Motion, made on-your-hip email possible with its first pagers and smartphones, coupled with strong security features.

But the company was slow to embrace the important consumer market and rivals are rapidly pushing into the corporate and government market that BlackBerry used to own.

(Writing by Janet Guttsman; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who was visiting Brasilia, sought to allay Brazil's concerns about the program, saying the U.S. would work to provide answers to Brazil and other Latin American nations rankled by the NSA surveillance revealed by systems analyst Edward Snowden.

"We're now facing a new type of challenge in our bilateral relationship," Brazil Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota said at a news conference. "The challenge is related to news about the interception of Brazilian electronic and telephone communications. And if those challenges are not resolved in a satisfactory way, we run the risk of casting a shadow of distrust over our work."

He said Brazil was seeking explanations through political, diplomatic and technical channels, but that those clarifications were not an "end to themselves."

"We need to stop practices that violate sovereignty, " he said.

The O Globo newspaper reported last month that information released by Snowden showed Brazil is the top target in Latin America for the NSA's massive intelligence-gathering effort, aimed at monitoring communications around the world.

Public opposition to the spying was on display outside the Foreign Ministry building on Tuesday as a few dozen protesters yelled "go away, spies" to some members of Kerry's traveling party as they left the building.

Kerry defended the NSA program, saying it had been approved by all three branches of the U.S. government.

"We're not surprised and we're not upset that Brazil would ask questions. Absolutely understandable," Kerry said.

"Brazil is owed answers with respect to those questions and they will get them. And we will work together very positively to make certain that this question these issues do not get in the way of all the other things that we talked about," Kerry said.

He said he could not discuss operational issues, but said the U.S. is talking to the Brazilians about the program.

"We will guarantee that Brazil and other countries will understand exactly what we are doing why and how and we will work together to make sure that whatever is done is done in a way that respects our friends and our partners. And that is what we are going to achieve."

Revelations about NSA snooping in Brazil came at a time when the U.S. has been trying to expand the relationship with Brazil, an economic powerhouse in Latin America.

During President Barack Obama's visit to Brazil in 2011, the two nations signed 10 bilateral agreements. Five more were signed when Brazil President Dilma Rousseff visited the United States earlier this year, evidence of enhanced cooperation between the two countries.

Rousseff, who met with Kerry Tuesday afternoon, has been invited again to Washington in October, when Obama hosts a state visit for Brazil.

Both Patriota and Kerry boasted that the U.S.-Brazil relationship had matured and that the two nations were working together on many issues, including trade, energy, gender equality, sustainable development, deforestation, climate change, biofuels and visa-free travel between the two countries.

Kerry said the U.S. did not want the surveillance dispute to taint relations.

"I want to emphasize, rather than focus on an area of disagreement, the United States and Brazil share a remarkable and dynamic partnership," Kerry said. "Every single day, we work together to advance economic opportunity, human rights, environment protection, regional peace and security, democracy as well as major global challenges in the Middle East and elsewhere."

He said the U.S. respected that Brazil is one of the world's largest free-market democracies. Brazil's foreign minister on Tuesday said that U.S. investment in the country had surpassed $100 billion and that tens of millions of dollars continue to flow in annually, a statistic that shows that Brazil is an attractive destination for American investors.

In February, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway and the Brazilian firm 3G announced they agreed to buy ketchup-maker H.J. Heinz. The secretary's wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, is the widow of former U.S. Senator John Heinz, and heir to the Heinz ketchup fortune. Brazil's 3G, owned by Jorge Lemann, one of Brazil's richest men, is best known for its acquisition of Burger King and its role in the deal that created Anheuser-Busch InBev, the world's biggest beer maker.

Kerry began his one-day visit to Brazil with a stop at an educational institute. Brazil's Scientific Mobility Program aims to train 101,000 Brazilian students overseas and have them return to their homeland to make use of their newly acquired knowledge in science and technology. Rousseff plans to have 47,000 of those students trained in the United States. This dovetails with Obama's 100,000 Strong Initiative to bring 100,000 Latin American students to the United States and send the same number of U.S. students to that region.

Kerry walked through a science fair where future or former students, like Pedro Mehme, showed him their inventions. The 21-year-old from Brasilia, who studied electrical engineering at the University of Brazil and also studied in the United States, showed Kerry a cylindrical device that rises into the atmosphere via a helium balloon. At 32 kilometers, the balloon bursts, a parachute is activated and the device travels back to the ground taking photos and collecting data.

Mehme recently won a contest that will allow him to take a sub-orbital space flight in 2015 and become the first Brazilian in space.

Kerry asked him what he planned to do while in orbit.

"I'm not sure," Mehme said. "It's only going to be a one-hour flight."

Sprites last less than a second as they dance on the tops of thunderstorms. Many viewers say the clusters of charged particles look like jellyfish big, red balls with tendrils that reach down into the clouds. Buttake many shapes, from crowns to carrots, and researchers still don't why. Because few sprites are seen from the ground, thanks to obscuring storms, scientists are hunting them from the air.

Graduate student Jason Ahrns capturedduring several flights over the Midwest this summer aboard the National Center for Atmospheric Research's Gulfstream V research plane. Ahrns is part of a sprite-hunting team from University of Alaska, Fairbanks, the U.S. Air Force Academy and Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colo. []

During the research flights, the scientists snapped high-speed photos and video, which will help them to better understand the chemical and physical processes behind the phenomenon.

"It's still not clear what exactly is happening in a sprite, and why there are different kinds of sprites," Ahrns told LiveScience in an email interview.

Sprites could also impact weather and climate by changing conditions in , but scientists don't yet know the scale of the effect, Ahrns said. "We can't answer that without studying them."

While many questions remain about red sprites, some details have emerged since their existence was confirmed in 1989. Sprites form above thunderstorms, when a positively charged lightning bolt leaves the air above a thundercloud that is negatively charged. (Mostresults from negatively charged bolts). The red color results from the interaction between charged particles and nitrogen, scientists believe.

"There's about one positive lightning stroke for every 10 regular negative strokes," said Ahrns, using the technical term for lightning bolt. "Most big storms probably produce a few sprites, and some produce lots of them. They're probably more common than people think, they're just very difficult to see since they're above the clouds."

Red sprites can race high toward space, up to 60 miles (96 kilometers) above the Earth. Astronauts aboard the International Space Station caught . A sprite's red tendrils also reach down into the stratosphere, about 15 to 20 miles (25 to 32 km) above Earth's surface. They look brightest between 40 to 45 miles (65 to 72 km) up.

The sprite hunters worked at night this summer, waiting for thunderstorms to lash Oklahoma and Kansas before launching into the air. The high-speed research cameras ran continuously, always storing the previous second of data so humans with slow fingers wouldn't miss the short-lived sprites. Ahrns also ran his personal camera all night to snap the spectacular images seen here.

"Beyond getting to the right storm and picking the right exposure, it was mostly a matter of luck. The sprites are way too fast for a human to react and hit the button at the right time," Ahrns said.

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WASHINGTON (AP) -- Members of Congress are split over whether the U.S. should cut off military aid to Egypt, highlighting the difficult choices facing the Obama administration amid spiraling violence on the streets of an important Middle East ally.

Democratic leaders have generally supported the president's approach. But on Sunday, Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., said he would end aid to Egypt. Ellison is the first Muslim elected to Congress and is co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

"I would cut off aid but engage in intense diplomacy in Egypt and in the region to try to say, look, we will restore aid when you stop the bloodshed in the street and set up a path towards democracy that you were on before," Ellison said. "In my mind, there's no way to say that this was not a coup. It is. We should say so. And then follow our own law, which says we cannot fund the coup leaders."

National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said funding for Egypt remains under review.

"As we've made clear, all of our assistance to Egypt is currently under review, and we will consider additional steps as we deem necessary," Hayden said. "At this point, no additional decisions have been made regarding assistance. That review process is ongoing."

Among Republicans, there were growing calls to eliminate military aid to Egypt. But others were more hesitant.

Rep. Pete King, R-N.Y., said curtailing aid could reduce U.S. influence over Egypt's interim government, which controls access to strategic resources, including the Suez Canal.

"We certainly shouldn't cut off all aid," said King, who chairs the House panel on counterterrorism and intelligence.

King said there are no good choices in Egypt. Ousted President Mohammed Morsi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, was democratically elected. But, King said, the group has not demonstrated a commitment to democracy.

"The fact is, there's no good guys there," King said. "But of the two, I think there is more opportunity to protect American interests if we work with the military and continue our relationship with the military."

The split among members of the same political party illustrates the uncertainty facing President Barack Obama as he tries to navigate volatile developments in Egypt, where crackdowns last week left more than 600 people dead and thousands more injured.

Obama has denounced the violence, canceled joint military exercises scheduled for September and delayed the delivery of four F-16 fighter jets. But the White House has refused to declare Morsi's removal a coup a step that would require Obama to suspend $1.3 billion in annual military aid. The president insists that the U.S. stands with Egyptians seeking a democratic government. But he says America cannot determine Egypt's future.

Sen. John McCain of Arizona renewed his call Sunday to stop aid as the Egyptian military continues to crack down on protesters seeking Morsi's return.

"For us to sit by and watch this happen is a violation of everything that we stood for," said the senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee. "We're not sticking with our values."

The military ousted Morsi July 3 after millions of Egyptians took to the streets to demand he step down, accusing him of giving the Brotherhood undue influence and failing to implement vital reforms or bolster the ailing economy.

But Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., said he supports the president's approach.

"These are very, very difficult choices," said Engel, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. "I'm very unhappy, obviously, with the crackdown. But we essentially have two choices in Egypt. And that's a military government, which hopefully will transition as quickly as possible to civilian government, or the Muslim Brotherhood. I don't think the Muslim Brotherhood is a choice."

Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., said Congress should give the president flexibility in dealing with Egypt.

"I do believe we have to change our aid," said Reed, a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "I think also we have to have included in the legislation a national security waiver, because we have to give the president not only the responsibility to deal with the government of Egypt but also flexibility."

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said U.S. aid to Egypt was more likely to "buy a chateau in Paris" for an Egyptian military leader than "bread in Cairo" for the poor.

"I don't think we're buying any friendship with the Egyptian people," Paul said, especially when people see tanks supplied by the U.S. to the Egyptian military on the streets of Cairo.

"We are not winning the hearts and minds of the Egyptian people," said Paul, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "The aid has to end."

Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., had resisted calls to cut off aid. But on Sunday, he switched positions.

"I think we need to look at the tiers of our aid," said Corker, top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "Let's face it, most of the aid has gone out the door this year."

Corker said he expects Congress to debate next year's aid this fall, after lawmakers return from their summer recess.

"Look, I condemn what's happened with the military, but I also condemn what in essence was a political coup by the Muslim Brotherhood," Corker said. "And we need to move this debate along and this fall, hopefully, again, focus on what is our national interests. And there still are things within Egypt that are very much in our national interest. And we need to keep the lines of communication open."

McCain spoke on CNN's "State of the Union," King and Paul made their comments on "Fox News Sunday," Reed spoke on NBC's "Meet the Press" and Engel, Ellison and Corker appeared on ABC's "This Week."

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