The release of Timothy Tracy, 35, occurred just hours before the top diplomats of both countries agreed during a meeting in Guatemala to discuss restoring ambassador-level relations.

It was secured with the help of former U.S. Rep. William Delahunt, who has long worked to improve often strained U.S.-Venezuelan ties and was hired by Tracy's family as an attorney in the case.

"He's been informally advising us since pretty much the onset and we retained him last week," Tracy's sister, Tiffany Klaasen, said of Delahunt, a member of the U.S. delegation at the March funeral of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Both she and Delahunt also credited the U.S. State Department.

The U.S. government and friends had ridiculed the idea that Tracy was spying in Venezuela. His family said he had been making a documentary about the human costs of Venezuela's deeply polarized society.

Following the early morning expulsion, Secretary of State John Kerry met with Venezuelan Foreign Minister Elias Jaua on the sidelines of a regional gathering in Guatemala and agreed, said Kerry, to "begin to change the dialogue between our countries and hopefully quickly move" to appoint ambassadors, which they have lacked in each other's capitals since 2010.

Delahunt acknowledged the coincidence of Tracy's release but said "no conditions" were set by Kerry for the meeting with Jaua.

He said he had intervened on Tracy's behalf with officials in Venezuela, who he said did not include President Nicolas Maduro, but "I want to keep those discussions private."

"On both sides there is a desire to have an improvement in the relationship based upon respect, and that's what's important," Delahunt said.

He suggested it might help that Kerry, then a Massachusetts senator, met Maduro a decade ago when Delahunt took a delegation of Venezuelans including Maduro on a trip to his district in Cape Cod, Massachussetts.

The trip was part of efforts by the "Grupo de Boston" in 2002-2003 to salve internal tensions in the socialist-run South American country after a failed coup against Chavez that was initially recognized by the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush.

Tracy's expulsion was initially tweeted by Venezuela's interior minister, Miguel Rodriguez, who described Tracy as having been "captured doing espionage in our country." He had previously accused Tracy of funding opposition student groups.

Attorney General Luisa Ortega said in a statement Wednesday that she had asked for the case against Tracy on charges including conspiracy and criminal association to be shelved, even though "there were elements that could incriminate him."

Family and friends say the Hollywood producer and small-time actor had been in the country since October making a documentary about Venezuelan politics when he was arrested on April 24 at Caracas' airport as he tried to leave the country to attend his father's 80th birthday in suburban Detroit.

U.S. President Barack Obama had deemed "ridiculous" allegations by Venezuela that he was a spy. Friends said Tracy hardly spoke Spanish and had been very open about his work as he met with Venezuelans on both sides of the country's deep political divide.

Tracy's previous production work had included script consulting on "American Harmony," a documentary about barbershop quartets, and a History channel reality TV show about stock car racing called "Madhouse."

Friends said the Venezuela documentary was Tracy's first big foray into international affairs although he did produce last year a show about smuggling on the northern U.S. border.

"He literally has no political agenda. He is very sympathetic to all sides," his friend Aengus James, director of "American Harmony," said after Tracy's arrest.

Tracy's co-producer on the Venezuelan documentary, Ricardo Korda, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the two met in 2001 while students at Georgetown University and that the film's working title is "Connecting the Dots."

U.S.-Venezuelan relations have been especially tense in recent months. Maduro expelled two U.S. military attaches in March on the same day Chavez died, accusing them of trying to foment instability, and Tracy's arrest came amid domestic political turmoil over the opposition candidate's claim that Maduro, Chavez's hand-picked successor, stole the April 14 special presidential election. The state electoral council said Maduro won by a 1.5 percent margin.

The Obama administration has backed opposition candidate Henrique Capriles' call for a full recount. The Maduro government has not complied, however.

Klaasen said the family spoke frequently to Tracy while he was held.

"He was treated very well," she said. "I was never concerned for his safety."

Klaasen said that even after Tracy was transferred last week to a notoriously unruly prison, El Rodeo, the family was assured he was in no danger.

She said she understood from Tracy's lawyer in Caracas that he was isolated in El Rodeo in a cellblock for foreigners.

James said in an email late Wednesday night that Tracy had arrived, safe but exhausted, in Florida, where he planned to stay for a few days.

___

Associated Press writers Jorge Rueda in Caracas, Christopher Weber in Los Angeles and Mattew Lee in Antigua, Guatemala, contributed to this report.

___

Frank Bajak on Twitter: http://twitter.com/fbajak

TOKYO (Reuters) - Prime Minister Shinzo Abe could be about to take the biggest bet of his six-month old administration - sucking the savings of the country's notoriously risk-averse and fast ageing constituents out of the relative safe haven of government bonds.

He could announce the move as soon as Wednesday as part of a package of measures designed to kick economic growth into a higher gear. The prime minister has already pushed through $100 billion in government spending and shaken up monetary policy by prodding the Bank of Japan into a $1.4 trillion stimulus effort.

Having long prescribed "bold" economic measures to turn around 15 years of grinding deflation and sluggish economic growth, he now wants the nation's public pensions to take more risk with their $2 trillion pool of funds.

It is a policy that directly affects tens of millions of Japanese workers and pensioners in a country that is very conscious of how rapidly it is ageing. A government survey last year estimated those aged 65 or over would double by 2060.

"The government is trying to do this with pension money," said Nobusuke Tamaki, a professor at Otsuma Women's University and a former director general of the country's biggest public pensions fund, the Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF).

"But how would the public at large feel if their pensions suffer huge losses? Politicians need to talk to the public about this and debate the issue in an intensive way."

Shifting hundreds of billions of dollars from bonds into riskier assets, such as equities or infrastructure financing, also risks disrupting markets, already jittery following two weeks of volatility and some analysts questioned if the public funds had the expertise to manage greater investment risk.

The justification is that nudging GPIF and dozens of other public and semi-public funds to diversify could increase returns while supporting Abe's push to drive Japan out of its deflationary spiral.

LAGGARD

GPIF's returns have lagged some other big national pensions funds and its asset allocation is more risk averse.

It hit its own internal return targets in recent years, a payout of 1.1 percentage point over wage increases in the economy. But it has been helped in that by falling salaries.

Wages have dropped by almost a percent per year over the past nine years. GPIF's total return on investment over the same period averaged 2.4 percent a year based on a target portfolio that allocates two-thirds of the fund to domestic bonds.

But it has underperformed funds like Canada's Pension Plan Investment Board, with $183 billion in assets, and Norway's $686 billion pool of government savings from petroleum revenue known as the Government Pension Fund Global. Both these funds allocate most of their money to equities.

Norway's GPFG, for example, has a 60 percent weighting in equity markets and 40 percent in bonds and real estate. It returned almost 6 percent a year over the past decade.

Critics have long said GPIF lacks the staff, budget or investment mandate to keep pace with other large public funds.

It has more than $1 trillion under management, but only about 70 staff working from a non-descript office in Tokyo's Kasumigaseki district.

An advisory panel to the pension fund had been working on proposed changes to its investment strategy since April, before the Abe-backed reform proposals surfaced.

With its bureaucratic-payscale, the fund also lacks the ability to lure star fund managers. The highest paid employee is the chairman, Takahiro Mitani, who made the equivalent of $192,000 for the fiscal year ended March 2012.

IT WON'T BE CHEAP

Professor Tamaki said it is uncertain if Abe can convince the Japanese public to support the kinds of reforms needed to make it more like counterparts in Canada or Norway.

"We would have to budget to hire professionals and that won't be cheap," he said. "Very importantly, the government should set up a means to govern and evaluate those new professional fund managers to convince the Japanese public. That won't be easy."

Even with its conservative portfolio, GPIF took a loss of almost 8 percent in 2008 during the global financial crisis.

A higher weighting on equities would mean accepting higher risk in a crisis, a potentially unpopular choice in Japan where many chose to keep savings in almost interest-free bank deposits.

There is also the risk to the Japanese government bond (JGB) market just as it is trying to adjust to huge bond buying by the more activist Bank of Japan, a reason behind recent volatility.

Shifting to the bond-weighting of Norway or Canada would mean GPIF pulling 27 trillion yen ($272 billion) from the JGB market. That would be over half of the amount of additional JGBs that the Bank of Japan has pledged to buy this year as part of a massive round of asset purchases under its stimulus program.

At the same time, GPIF would have to invest another 45 trillion yen ($454 billion) in equities to match the portfolio of its international peers in Canada and Norway.

The scale of the shift means any changes would have to be gradual, analysts said.

"Pension funds tend to play it safe," said Toshihiko Matsuno, senior strategist at SMBC Friend Securities. "It's too early to believe that pension funds are aggressively chasing the market higher."

CREDIBILITY TEST?

Abe's also faces losing some hard-won credibility with markets. Talk of the shift in pension fund investment strategy is emerging at a time when the Nikkei average, Japan's benchmark stock index, has been in retreat and near six-week lows.

It is still up more than 50 percent since Abe started pushing his brand of economic policies, but investors are uncertain about the shape of his growth strategy for the future.

Abe is expected to announce the setting up of special economic zones, targets for domestic private-sector investment and a doubling of farm exports. But analysts say he will avoid major reforms, such as big deregulation or labor reform ahead of an upper-house election in July.

With that vote looming, some questioned whether Abe's team was resorting to the kind of tactics that previous Liberal Democratic Party administrations had tried and famously failed to make work.

In the early 1990s, the pension savings that were later organized into GPIF were a regular target for finance ministry officials who tried to support stock prices with public funds.

The policies - known as "Price Keeping Operations" in a play on the United Nations' organized Peace Keeping Operations - failed and even backfired by encouraging banks to hold riskier assets, said Junji Narita, a professor at Aoyama Gakuin, who has studied the period.

Many say the key is what Abe does on other aspects of economic reform.

"Tweaking pension funds' investment policy is a step forward but it has to be accompanied by structural changes," said Xiao Minjie, an independent economist in Tokyo. "There have to be strategies to make domestic investors feel justified in investing in home markets."

He added: "Markets are desperately looking for that kind of detail."

(Reporting by Chikafumi Hodo, Chikako Mogi, Emi Emoto, Taro Fuse, Noriyuki Hirata, Dominic Lau, Takefumi Ito; writing by Kevin Krolicki; Editing by Neil Fullick)

Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday that the rate on the 30-year loan was unchanged at 3.55 percent. In July, the rate fell to 3.49 percent, the lowest since long-term mortgages began in the 1950s.

The average on the 15-year fixed mortgage, a popular refinancing option, slipped to 2.85 percent, down from 2.86 percent last week. That's above the record low of 2.80 percent.

Cheap mortgages have helped lift the housing market. Sales of new and previously occupied homes are well above last year's levels. Low rates have also allowed people to refinance, which lowers monthly mortgage payments and helps boosts consumer spending.

Home prices are increasing more consistently this year, largely because the supply of homes has shrunk while sales have risen. And the number of Americans who owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth declined in the second quarter.

Still, the housing market has a long way back. Home sales are below healthy levels. And many people are still having difficulty qualifying for home loans or can't afford larger down payments required by banks.

Mortgage rates are low because they tend to track the yield on the 10-year Treasury note. A weaker U.S. economy and uncertainty about how Europe will resolve its debt crisis have led investors to buy more Treasury securities, which are considered safe investments. As demand for Treasurys increase, the yield falls.

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

The average does not 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 fee for 30-year loans was 0.6 point, down from 0.7 point last week. The fee for 15-year loans was changed at 0.6.

The average rate on one-year adjustable rate mortgages was steady at 2.61 percent. The fee for one-year adjustable rate loans also was unchanged, at 0.4 point.

The average rate on five-year adjustable rate mortgages fell to 2.72 percent from 2.75 percent. The fee declined to 0.6 point from 0.7.

He tried to put the thought out of his head so he could keep doing what was working.

Teheran held Pittsburgh without a hit for 7 2-3 innings before settling for a combined one-hit shutout, and the Atlanta Braves beat the Pirates 5-0 on Wednesday.

Only 22, he took another big step in his breakthrough season. Tehran (4-2) gave up one hit with two walks and set a career high with 11 strikeouts in eight innings in the Braves' fifth straight win, including a sweep of the three-game series.

"I feel like he's comfortable," said Braves right fielder Jason Heyward, who had two hits. "He's not trying to pitch his way onto the team. He's going out there competing as a part of the team."

Pinch-hitter Brandon Inge broke up Teheran's no-hit bid by hitting a fastball for a single to left field with two outs in the eighth. Teheran received an ovation from Braves fans, who also cheered after the inning ended on Starling Marte's pop-up.

"The thing is, for someone like me sitting across on the other side, sitting for eight innings, I basically get to scout him for eight innings," Inge said.

"I couldn't see exactly what he was throwing, but I could see what he was getting guys out with. It was just a great game he pitched. ... I tip my hat to him. He did an excellent job. Handled it well, too."

David Carpenter pitched a perfect ninth to complete the combined one-hitter.

Evan Gattis and Gerald Laird hit back-to-back homers in the sixth.

Pittsburgh's Wandy Rodriguez (6-4) left the game with tightness in his left forearm after recording only one out in the first inning.

Rodriguez, a left-hander, pointed to his forearm when visited by manager Clint Hurdle and a trainer. After a brief discussion on the mound, Rodriguez was removed from the game.

Instead of accompanying the team to Chicago for a series against the Cubs, Rodriguez returned to Pittsburgh to be examined.

Rodriguez gave up two hits and a run and hit Freddie Freeman with his 14th and final pitch.

The Pirates have lost three straight and five of six.

Bryan Morris replaced Rodriguez and gave up no runs on three walks in 3 2-3 innings.

Teheran was sharp from the start. Only 28 of his 107 pitches were balls, and he set a career high in strikeouts for the second straight start after fanning nine in a 3-2 loss to Washington on Friday.

Teheran said he relied on his slider.

"They maybe were looking for my two-seamer that I've been throwing a lot but I didn't use," he said. "I just keep them off-balance."

Teheran said no teammates talked to him in the dugout about the no-hit bid.

"No, nobody," he said. "It's something nobody can tell me. Just let it happen."

Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez said he would have left Teheran in the game for the ninth if he had a chance to complete the no-hitter.

"You don't want to run a young pitcher to 135 pitches just to try to get a no-hitter," he said.

Teheran didn't allow a baserunner until Russell Martin walked with two outs in the fifth. Clint Barmes then popped out to end the inning.

Teheran hit Marte with a pitch with one out in the sixth but ended the inning by catching Marte with his pickoff throw to first base.

Gattis gave Atlanta a 2-0 lead by hitting an 0-2 pitch from Vin Mazzaro about halfway up the lower section of left-field seats for his 13th homer, easily the most for any rookie in the majors. Laird followed with his first homer, also to left field.

The Braves added a run off Jared Hughes in the seventh. Jason Heyward and Chris Johnson had singles, and Heyward scored from second base when Freeman hit a fielder's choice grounder to first base. Johnson was out on Garrett Jones' throw to second, but Hughes missed Clint Barmes' throw to first for an error.

Hughes loaded the bases by walking Gattis and hitting Laird with a pitch. Dan Uggla's fly ball to shallow center fell off the glove of a charging Andrew McCutchen, allowing Freeman to score for a 5-0 lead.

Kent Mercker threw the Braves' last no-hitter against the Dodgers on April 8, 1994. No Braves pitcher has thrown a no-hitter at Turner Field.

NOTES: Laird's homer was his first since May 28, 2012, for Detroit at Boston. ... The last pitcher to no-hit the Pirates was Cincinnati's Homer Bailey on Sept. 28, 2012, also the last no-hitter in the majors. ... The Braves completed a 7-2 homestand to improve to 21-7 at home. ... The Pirates are off Thursday and open a three-game series at the Cubs on Friday when LHP Francisco Liriano faces Chicago LHP Travis Wood. ... The Braves open a four-game series at the Dodgers on Thursday night when RHP Tim Hudson faces RHP Zack Greinke.

Ann Romney this morning gave her first solo interview since the November election, weighing in on the recent scandals hitting the White House, as well as 2016 presidential politics, saying she and husband Mitt Romney are "very partial" to his former running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis.

"There are some great candidates out there and I think Mitt and I always are very, very partial to Paul Ryan, but we don't even know if he's going to run. But there are some good candidates," Romney said on CBS News' "This Morning."

Romney called the scandals hitting the Obama administration "deeply troubling," including the IRS' targeting of conservative tax-exempt organizations.

"I think it's hard what the country is going through right now," Romney said. "There is this breach of trust that all Americans feel right now with our government. We have to have trust in our government, we have to believe that they are doing right for us. When we feel like they are breaking our trust, it's deeply troubling."

She said both she and her husband have "no regrets" looking back at the campaign, but the "most frustrating" thing for her is that she thinks many Americans didn't see who her husband really is because of how "negative" the campaign became in the primary and the general elections, again comparing it to the slate of scandals.

"It's really hard and it's hard for the American people to sort through it," Romney said. "How do they know who is telling the truth and that's what I'm talking about, this breach of trust that's going on. Who do we trust? Who do we believe? Where do we turn to know what's really true?"

Despite some other Republicans' anger with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's praise of the president in the wake of Superstorm Sandy days before the November election, she said they have "no regrets, none for anybody, people have no idea what goes on behind the scenes, but things are made into bigger things than people think."

"Chris is a great guy. We love him and it's all good and we have no bitterness towards anyone," Romney said.

And when asked about Christie's recent weight-loss surgery, she said with a smile, "Good luck to him. I hope it works."

Wearing a bright-blue dress, Romney said she is "very happy" and "my life is wonderful, I am full of joy," despite the election loss.

"I really believe that Mitt and I did everything we could and that's why I feel fine about it. We just did whatever we could. We left it on the table," Romney, 64, said, adding that Romney has been the "most extraordinary husband this winter," accompanying her as she gets back to horseback riding.

She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1998 and breast cancer 10 years later.

"I've been doing what I've been dying to do for a very long time which is ride a lot and I've been competing a lot and showing a lot and Mitt's been there supporting me and coming with me and watching me and helping me," Romney said, adding that he has also been writing and "doing a lot of travel with me."

The interview did cover the campaign and Romney said that even as things started to look bad for them, there were people, including GOP political consultant Karl Rove, who told them to keep hanging on.

"He's [Rove] like, 'Don't give up, don't give up. We are going to win Ohio and it's going to turn around.' And things just didn't follow the way we thought it was going to happen."

When asked about criticism of the campaign, Romney told Charlie Rose it would have been nice to have "a crystal ball" and possibly "done things a little differently," but that "every campaign makes mistakes, both sides make mistakes."

As for whether she could see any of her five sons following in the footsteps of her husband, she paused and said, "I'd really have to think about it, I would."

"It's a very different environment right now, it's a very tough environment to be involved right now," she added, "and I think that's a sad commentary."

According to sources, the Goa-based club boss Churchill Alemao has already spoken to the former JCT coach on the issue. "Sukhwinder has agreed in principle to join Churchill but he will convey his final decision on Wednesday," said a source in the club. Considered one of India's best coaches, Sukhwinder, too, like Bhowmick, Subrata Bhattacharya and Mumbai Tigers coach Bimal Ghosh does not have an AFC coaching license. It means Churchill would continue having a licensed coach attached with Sukhwinder.

When asked about the development, Sukhwinder admitted that he was in talks with Alemao over the Churchill job. "Though I have agreed to his proposal, I will convey my final decision to him on Wednesday after talking to my family members."

The decision to approach Sukhwinder was taken after Bhowmick decided to quit citing growing differences with the club management as the reason for his departure. Bhowmick was also unhappy over the club's decision to release some of the top players in the team who played key roles in taking the club to the top.

A highly successful coach both at national and international levels, Sukhwinder had spent most of his coaching career with JCT Phagwara. Once the JCT management decided to shut down the team, Sukhwinder coached All India Football Federation's (AIFF) developmental side Pailan Arrows for a few months.

Under Sukhwinder, JCT won the inaugural National Football League (NFL) in the 1996-97 season pushing Churchill to the second place in a nail biting finish on the final day of the championship. Sukhwinder's best moment as the national coach came in 2000 when he guided India to a historic win over United Arab Emirates (UAE) in the World Cup qualifiers.

NASHVILLE, Tennessee (Reuters) - Lady Antebellum are growing up and getting sassy with their fourth studio album, "Golden," embracing a stripped-down sound to showcase their vocal strength as they prepare for an upcoming tour with a baby on board.

The country band, formed by vocalists Hillary Scott, Charles Kelley and guitarist Dave Haywood in Nashville, Tennessee, released its latest album this week, which saw band members drawing on their live tour experiences.

"When we went into the studio we wanted the new record to have that live band sound and we wanted it to be different from the last record," Haywood told Reuters.

The trio, who have picked up seven Grammy awards since their debut self-titled album in 2008 and have become a strong force in the cross-over between country music and pop music, hoped fans would hear a new side to the Lady Antebellum sound.

By keeping the production simple, Haywood said the band wanted to showcase the vocals on "Golden," due in part to the band being more secure in how their voices blend together.

Scott added that the final 12 tracks selected for the album leant themselves to the simpler production.

"It made sense to dial it back, which allowed us more time to spend on vocals and get them exactly the way we wanted them," the singer said.

While most of the band's songs feature romantic lyrics, such as "American Honey," the lead single "Downtown" from the latest album saw the band take on an edgier feel as a sassy Scott sings about demanding her boyfriend to take her out in town.

"I love the song and thought it could be a huge hit. I thought it might be a risk if the fans didn't accept it, but the boys kept saying, 'We've seen you get sassy, and everybody else needs to see that side of you too,'" Scott said.

'ROAD BABY'

Along with a new album and upcoming tour, the band is also preparing for a big change within its dynamic, as Scott and her husband, the band's drummer Chris Tyrrell, prepare for the birth of their first child.

Scott, the daughter of country singer Linda Davis, said she grew up as a "road baby" on tour with her mother and hoped her child would benefit from the same experiences.

"I adapted as a child to my surroundings and I turned out okay, I hope, and I think our little girl will do the same. I have a feeling that being home will be more of an adjustment for her than being on the road," she said.

Kelley was also excited by the prospect of raising a child on the tour bus, saying "that baby is gonna see things no baby gets to see."

After more than five years of touring, the band said they are growing more comfortable musically and as a group, as they enter a new chapter in their career.

All three members are eager to leave an imprint with their fans as they continue to grow as a band, and they hoped they would leave a legacy behind, the central theme in the final song on the album, "Generation Away."

"One of the coolest things going on in our genre right now is the undercurrent of friendship among all the artists who came along around the same time that we did. I want to be remembered as that group of artists who were best friends, almost a Rat Pack type of thing," Kelley said.

(Editing by Piya Sinha-Roy and Eric Kelsey)

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) -- Communities in southeastern Connecticut that rely on the Navy submarine base as an economic engine may be breathing easier following a U.S. House subcommittee's rejection Thursday of a new round of military base closings.

U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, a member of the House Readiness Subcommittee, said its vote was the first official rejection of a new round of Base Realignment and Closure by this Congress. The language forbidding closings was added as the subcommittee gave its approval to the administration's proposed defense budget.

Courtney said the Pentagon has failed to demonstrate how a new round of closings would make financial sense considering the up-front costs.

"It was just very sketchy as far as how much savings they projected," said Courtney, a Democrat who represents eastern Connecticut. He said he would prefer to see the Pentagon focus on closing military installations in Europe.

The base in Groton was nearly closed in 2005, and many fear it soon will be targeted again.

The Groton base pumps $4.5 billion a year into Connecticut's economy and supports at least 15,000 jobs around the southeastern section of the state. Since escaping the last round of base closings, the state of Connecticut has committed $50 million for improvements to help increase the value of the base, which is the home port for more than a dozen nuclear-powered attack submarines.

Irvin, who had eight sacks last season after being drafted 15th overall by Seattle in 2012, will be eligible to return to the Seahawks' active roster on Sept. 30, the National Football League (NFL) said in a statement.

"I want to apologize to my teammates, coaches and Seahawks fans for making a mistake when I took a substance that is prohibited in the NFL without a medical exemption," Irvin said in a statement. "I am extremely disappointed in the poor judgment I showed and take full responsibility for my actions."

Irvin, who said he would not appeal the suspension, is eligible to participate in all offseason and preseason practices and games. (Reporting by Larry Fine in New York,; Editing by Frank Pingue)