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.

* Tahiti's Tehau makes history by scoring for both teams

* Nigeria's Nnamdi grabs hat-trick in late goal flurry (Adds quotes)

By Mike Collett

BELO HORIZONTE, June 17 (Reuters) - Tahiti suffered a 6-1 thrashing by Nigeria in the Confederations Cup on Monday although the amateurs did find the net as Jonathan Tehau scored at both ends when they made their debut in a major tournament.

Tehau, a delivery driver back home, became the first player to score for both teams in a Confederations Cup match having headed in for the Oceania champions after 54 minutes before finding his own net 15 minutes later in the Group B match.

Error-prone amateurs Tahiti, with only one professional player in their squad, suffered a terrible start when the ball hit the referee and ran to Nigeria's Uwa Echiejile who scored in the fifth minute with a twice deflected shot.

Nigeria seemed set for a big scoreline when Nnamdi Oduamadi strolled through Tahiti's defence to make it 2-0 five minutes later after the South Pacific islanders gave the ball away and he added a third for the African champions before the half-hour.

Tahiti brought the crowd to life, though, when Tehau headed a goal back before a previously wasteful Nigeria produced a late flurry when the unfortunate Tehau put through his own goal, Nnamdi completed a hat-trick and Echiejile scored his second.

"To lose 6-1 is hard but you have to put it in context," Tahiti coach Eddy Etaeta told reporters. "We are an amateur side playing against professionals and of course that showed.

"But when the draw was made in December I said if we scored one goal here it would be a great achievement and we have accomplished that."

Nigeria coach Stephen Keshi added: "They (Tahiti) said they were going to fight like lions and they did.

"But, with all respect to Tahiti, you think it's going to be easy playing against a team like that but they showed us they can play football and I congratulate them.

"We wasted a lot of chances in the first half but I am pleased we got the goals in the end."

NOISY CROWD

The 20,000 crowd vociferously backed Tahiti, who took the field wearing shell necklaces, and jeered the Nigerians, creating a surprisingly raucous atmosphere at the Mineirao, especially considering FIFA's ban on musical instruments.

Nigeria could easily have been five goals ahead at halftime as they wasted further chances in a rather nonchalant fashion.

Tahiti strung some neat moves together and had the one-third full stadium in raptures when they scored in the 54th minute when Tehau headed in at the far post from a corner.

They were growing in confidence and Nigeria became visibly frustrated until the islanders ran out of steam in the last 20 minutes.

Nigeria arrived in Brazil on Sunday after a dispute with their national federation over bonuses sparked a players' boycott which briefly threatened their participation.

It was Tahiti's first match against opponents from outside the Oceania Confederation, according to official records, and one they will never forget, especially Tehau.

"Well I am so proud to score," he told reporters. "I saw the gap and went for it. We showed we could play some football, and yes we lost, but we deserved at least a goal and we got it.

"If I could chose one team to play for it would be Barcelona but I wont tell the Spain players that when we play them on Thursday," he joked. Asked about his own goal at the other end, he laughed and said, "Well that's just football." (Writing by Brian Homewood; editing by Ken Ferris)

Hollins' contract was scheduled to expire on June 30, but his departure from the organization was effective immediately, the team said in a statement.

Hollins had been coach of the franchise at various times over the past seven seasons, serving as interim coach for 60 games in 1999-2000 when the club were in Vancouver, and had a four-game stint during the 2004-05 season in Memphis.

He became the head coach during the 2008-09 season and has been in Memphis since.

Hollins had a 214-201 record, including a franchise best 56-26 this past season.

Speculation about Hollins' job swirled after the Grizzlies were swept in four games by the San Antonio Spurs for the Western Conference championship.

After finishing second to San Antonio in the Southwest Division, the Grizzlies had beaten the higher seeded Los Angeles Clippers in six games and shocked the top-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder in five to reach the conference finals.

"After a thorough internal process, which included conversations with Lionel and his representatives, we decided as an organization to move in a different direction," said Jason Levien, Grizzlies CEO & managing partner in a statement.

(Reporting by Gene Cherry in Raleigh, North Carolina; Editing by Peter Rutherford)

Israel Museum spokeswoman Dena Scher said Wednesday the museum repurchased the "Garden in Wannsee" painting by German-Jewish artist Max Liebermann from the owner's heir at an undisclosed price.

The Israel Museum holds some 1,200 pieces of art identified as having been seized from Jews by the Nazis and has found the owners of more than two dozen.

The painting's original owner, Max Cassirer, was a wealthy Berlin businessman. The black and white picture of his music room shows walls covered in paintings, including Liebermann's.

Experts believe hundreds of thousands of pieces of looted art remain unclaimed.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top U.S. intelligence official launched an aggressive defense on Saturday of a secret government data collection program, blasting what he called "reckless disclosures" of a highly classified spy agency project code-named PRISM.

While acknowledging PRISM's existence by name for the first time, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said it had been mischaracterized by the media. The project is legal, not aimed at U.S. citizens and has thwarted threats against the country, he said.

"Over the last week we have seen reckless disclosures of intelligence community measures used to keep Americans safe," Clapper said in a statement.

He said the surveillance activities reported in the Washington Post and Britain's Guardian newspaper were lawful and conducted under authorities approved by Congress. "Significant misimpressions" have resulted from recent articles, he said.

Clapper's comments were the latest development in an escalating battle over government spying and civil liberties, involving the Obama administration and news organizations that have published details of U.S. data mining efforts.

A fact sheet accompanying the statement discussed in general terms what had been until Thursday an unknown and highly classified program. It made a rare public acknowledgement that U.S. spy agencies obtained data from U.S. telecommunications providers, but defended the practice as legal and regulated by courts.

"The United States Government does not unilaterally obtain information from the servers of U.S. electronic communication service providers. All such information is obtained with FISA Court approval and with the knowledge of the provider," the fact sheet said, referring to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court.

PRISM, characterized in news reports as a top-secret National Security Agency program for extracting data from the computers of internet companies, in reality is an "internal government computer system" used to "facilitate" the government's handling of information it collects from service providers, according to the factsheet.

The reports this week said the surveillance program involving internet firms and established under Republican President George W. Bush in 2007, had seen "exponential growth" under President Barack Obama, a Democrat. It said the NSA increasingly relied on PRISM as a source of raw material for daily intelligence reports to the president.

The news reports included PowerPoint slides showing that major Internet companies such as Yahoo, Google, Facebook and a half-dozen others were involved in the program.

Alan Rusbridger, editor-in-chief of the Guardian, had no comment on Clapper's statement. Washington Post spokeswoman Kris Coratti said the company had no comment.

REAFFIRMS ADMINISTRATION POSITION

Internet providers have said they knew nothing about any NSA collection program called PRISM and that they have only cooperated with legal government requests for data.

The government can only target someone for internet surveillance if "there is an appropriate, and documented foreign intelligence purpose" for collection, the fact sheet said.

Those purposes include countering terrorism, weapons proliferation and cyber threats, Clapper said in the statement. He did not further explain how those broad targeting guidelines are used in practice.

Previous administration statements in the wake of leaks about the NSA program have not mentioned that it was gathering information related to cyber threats and weapons proliferation.

Clapper strongly reaffirmed the Obama administration's position that U.S. citizens were not "intentionally" targeted by NSA for collection and that the agency's activities were extensively supervised by both Congress and the Courts.

The Guardian published a story on Saturday, based on what it said were more leaked classified NSA documents, about what it described as an internal agency data mining tool created to track the focus of NSA's efforts to collect "metadata" - primitive raw information about message traffic - from around the world.

The newspaper said that a different NSA fact sheet it obtained said that the tool, code-named Boundless Informant, "allows users to select a country on a map and view the metadata volume and select details about the collections against that country."

The Guardian said that documents showed NSA collected "almost 3 billion" pieces of intelligence from U.S. computer networks over a period ending in March 2013. It said the new documents raised questions about what NSA had told Congress about its inability to keep close track on the extent to which it inadvertently collects information about messages sent by Americans.

(Editing by Warren Strobel and Paul Simao)

At least 100 pooches with owners in tow, holding leashes marched near the Louvre at a demonstration to demand more park space and access to public transportation for the four-legged friends.

Tongues and tails wagged Saturday under a warm Paris sun as collies, pugs, boxers, bulldogs, Labradors and other breeds paraded around the famed Paris museum.

Organizers of the canine-citizen march dubbed "My Dog, My City" estimate about 200,000 dogs live in Paris. They say other cities like New York, London, Montreal and Brussels offer more dog-oriented public spaces.

According to the city's website, two of Paris' 20 sections have only one reserved public park space for dogs. Leashes are required.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics scored a point on Tuesday over global rival Apple Inc in their long-running battle over mobile device patents.

A U.S. trade body found the Silicon Valley giant had infringed on a patent owned by the Korean company and slapped a ban on the sale of certain older iPhone and iPad models sold by AT&T Inc.

The U.S. International Trade Commission, an independent federal agency, issued a limited order stopping all imports and sales for AT&T models of the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad 3G and iPad 2 3G. The versions targeted are more than a year old but are still solid sellers.

All such exclusion orders are sent to President Barack Obama, who has 60 days to review them. If he does not veto the order, it goes into effect.

"We are disappointed that the commission has overturned an earlier ruling and we plan to appeal. Today's decision has no impact on the availability of Apple products in the United States," Apple spokeswoman Kristin Huguet said in a statement.

Designed to be a trade panel, the ITC has become a popular venue for patent lawsuits because it acts relatively quickly and it can order import bans, which are more difficult to get from district courts.

Samsung said in a statement that the ITC decision "confirmed Apple's history of free-riding on Samsung's technological innovations."

"Our decades of research and development in mobile technologies will continue and we will continue to offer innovative products to consumers in the United States," it said.

Tuesday's ruling overturned a decision by ITC Judge James Gildea, who ruled in September that Apple did not violate patents at issue in the case, which was filed in mid-2011.

Apple was found to infringe on a patent that relates to 3G wireless technology and the ability to transmit multiple services simultaneously and correctly. It is essential to ensuring that the devices are interoperable.

The U.S. Justice Department, the Federal Trade Commission and the Patent and Trademark Office have all said that infringement of these "standard essential patents" should mostly be punished by monetary charges, not sales bans.

An exception would be in the rare instances where the infringer refuses to negotiate a license or to pay.

The usual expectation among companies has been that standard essential patents will be inexpensively licensed to anyone.

Samsung, which is battling Apple in court in some 10 countries, had also accused Apple of infringing on three other patents, but the ITC found that Apple did not infringe these.

Apple has a parallel complaint filed against Samsung at the ITC, accusing Samsung, an Apple chip provider, of blatantly copying its iPhones and iPads. An ITC judge in that case found that Samsung had violated one patent but not a second one. A final decision is due in August.

Apple has waged an international patent war since 2010 as it seeks to limit the growth of Google's Android system. The fight has embroiled Samsung, HTC and others that use Android.

The ITC's decision came on the same day that President Barack Obama weighed in on curbing a totally different type of patent lawsuit - those brought by companies called "patent trolls." The disparaging name is because these companies make or sell nothing, but they specialize in suing others for infringement. Obama asked for new federal regulations on these concerns and action from Congress.

The offensive - announced before Obama makes a fundraising trip this week to California's Silicon Valley - came as U.S. lawmakers and courts are seeking ways to reduce the number of unwarranted patent lawsuits.

Samsung did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The case at the International Trade Commission is No. 337-794.

(Additional reporting by Poornima Gupta in San Francisco.; Editing by Ros Krasny, Bob Burgdorfer and Christopher Wilson)

Their heaviest competitive defeat as an independent nation notwithstanding, Montenegro top Group H with 14 points from seven matches, two more than England and three ahead of Ukraine, both having played a game less.

"I can guarantee that we will take six points from our remaining three games and I am absolutely confident that we can bounce back from this setback and finish in the top two," a defiant Brnovic told reporters after his team collapsed in the second half.

"We headed into the second half with the wrong attitude, thinking the game was already won after the Ukrainians had a player sent off.

"But then they scored and when we had two players dismissed, the floodgates opened and I also have to take responsibility for miscalculated substitutions which played into our opponents' hands," he said.

The Montenegrins next visit Poland on Sept 6 before their Oct 11 trip to Wembley, where they meet England hopeful of avoiding defeat against the Three Lions for the fourth time in a row.

The two sides drew twice in Euro 2012 qualifying, when England won the group and Montenegro lost to Czech Republic in the playoffs after finishing second, and again in March when a 76th minute goal by striker Dejan Damjanovic salvaged a 1-1 tie for Brnovic's side.

There was to be no such comeback for Montenegro against the Ukrainians after Denis Garmash broke the deadlock early in the second half as the battling Montenegrins, whose talented striker Stevan Jovetic limped off with a thigh injury shortly before the break, fell apart.

"The lad was suffering, he really played his heart out to make a difference but it wasn't to be," Brnovic said.

"He is a player who can turn the game with one deft touch of the ball and his injury was also a blow because it disrupted the planned order of substitutions, leading to poor makeshift decisions.

"But I see no reason why we can't beat Poland away and Moldova at home in our last game, in which case the England match in-between those two would be decisive." (Writing by Zoran Milosavljevic in Belgrade; Editing by Amlan Chakraborty)

Zynga said it expects the move to save about $70 million to $80 million in annual costs. But the San Francisco-based company behind "FarmVille" and "Words With Friends" also now expects a worse loss in the second quarter than it previously anticipated, as well as weak bookings, which will weigh on future revenue.

Zynga's stock plunged 12 percent to close at $2.99 on the Nasdaq stock market after trading was halted twice on Monday. Its shares have traded below $4 since about July 2012, after debuting at $10 in its December 2011 initial public offering.

The cost-cutting, which also includes some office closures, is "proactive" and done from a position of financial strength, Zynga CEO Mark Pincus said in a blog post.

"By reducing our cost structure today we will offer our teams the runway they need to take risks and develop these breakthrough new social experiences," he said.

Zynga said it now expects a net loss in the quarter through June of $28.5 million to $39 million, worse than its estimate for a net loss between $26.5 million and $36.5 million it predicted at the end of April.

It also said bookings, which reflect in-game purchases of virtual goods, would come in at the lower end of its previously estimated range between $180 million and $190 million.

Analyst Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities said investors are more concerned about lackluster revenue than any savings from the cuts.

"You can't save your way to prosperity," he said. "The market is telling you that it's not confident that revenues are going to grow."

Before the announcement, analysts polled by FactSet were already forecasting that annual revenue for Zynga would shrink to $944 million by the end of the year, down from $1.28 billion in 2012.

The cuts come on the heels of earlier efforts to reduce overhead as demand for its games on the social-networking site Facebook fades and more people shift to playing games on mobile devices, where the company finds it more difficult to generate revenue.

SANTA CLARA, Calif. (AP) -- Affymetrix Chief Financial Officer Tim Barabe is planning to retire from his post next month.

The genetic testing instrument business said Monday that it is promoting Gavin Wood to the position. Barabe's retirement is effective June 28.

Wood will be responsible for Affymetrix's finance, accounting, information technology, facilities and investor relations functions.

Wood, who has worked for Affymetrix Inc. since 2006, most recently served as vice president of finance, international controller. He will report to CEO Frank Witney.

Affymetrix is based in Santa Clara, Calif. Its shares finished at $3.69 in Friday. Its shares have traded in a 52-week range of $2.96 to $5.50.