Federal authorities allege that in December 2010, Matthew Keys, 26, provided hackers with login information to access the computer system of the Tribune Co., the parent company of the Times that also owns a Sacramento television station Keys was fired from months before.

Investigators allege that Keys gave a hacker named "Sharpie" the information in an Internet chat room frequented by hackers and urged the hacker to do some damage to the Tribune Co.

According to the indictment, Sharpie altered a Times news story posted Dec. 14 and 15, 2010, to read "Pressure builds in House to elect CHIPPY 1337," a reference to another hacking group. "Chippy 1337" claimed responsibility for defacing the website of video game publisher Eidos in 2011.

Keys' Facebook page says he worked as an online news producer for the Sacramento FOX affiliate KTXL from June 2008 to April 2010.

The news agency Reuters hired Keys in 2012 as a deputy editor for social media and he was at work Thursday. He didn't return a phone call or respond to email messages seeking comment. Reuters spokesman David Girardin said the company was "aware" of the indictment when Keys was hired last year, but he declined further comment.

"I am fine," Keys tweeted Thursday, hours after his federal indictment was announced."I found out the same way most of you did: From Twitter. Tonight I'm going to take a break. Tomorrow, business as usual."

The indictment alleges that a second attempt to hack the Times was unsuccessful.

Federal prosecutors allege in court papers that a legendary hacker and Anonymous leader named "Sabu" offered advice on how to infiltrate Tribune's systems. The FBI unmasked Sabu when it arrested Hector Xavier Monsegur on June 7, 2011. Monsegur secretly worked as an FBI informant until federal officials announced that he helped them arrest five other alleged hackers on March 6, 2012.

Federal officials declined to comment on whether Sabu assisted in the investigation of Keys.

The day after it was announced that Sabu was an FBI informant, Keys wrote a story for Reuters about "infiltrating" the hackers' chat room.

Keys is charged with one count each of conspiracy to transmit information to damage a protected computer, as well as transmitting and attempting to transmit that information. If convicted, the New Jersey native faces a combined 25 years prison and a $500,000 fine if sentenced to the maximum for each count.

He is scheduled for arraignment April 12 in Sacramento.

The indictment comes after recent hacks into the computer systems of two other U.S. media companies that own The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Both newspapers reported in February that their computer systems had been infiltrated by China-based hackers, likely to monitor media coverage the Chinese government deems important.

Anonymous and its offshoot, Lulz Security, have been linked to a number of high-profile computer attacks and crimes, including many that were meant to embarrass governments, federal agencies and corporate giants. They have been connected to attacks that took data from FBI partner organization InfraGard, and they've jammed websites of the CIA and the Public Broadcasting Service.

A computer security specialist said the LA Times attack would be an unusual hack if the government's charges are accurate.

"This is first case where I've heard of someone leaking stuff to Anonymous to have a site defaced, instead of defacing it himself," said Clifford Neuman, director of University of Southern California Center for Computer Systems Security. "He found some way to achieve his ends of defacing the website without having to do it himself."

A spokesman for the Chicago-based Tribune Co. declined to comment.

While Keys did not directly address the federal charges Thursday through his voluminous Twitter feed, commentary from his more than 23,500 followers and even a story about the news indictment were retweeted from his account.

He did not address the issue on his Facebook page, where his last posting Thursday was about the best way to make a grilled cheese sandwich.

According to Keys' Facebook profile, he is single, lives in New York City and works at Thomson Reuters Corp.'s New York office, where "I get paid to use Twitter and Facebook at work."

London-based Reuters has been expanding its business in the United States. This year, six of the Tribune's seven newspapers dropped The Associated Press for Reuters, citing cost savings. The Los Angeles Times stayed with AP.

___

Follow Paul Elias and Garance Burke on Twitter at https://twitter.com/paulelias1 and http://twitter.com/garanceburke

AP National Writer Martha Mendoza in Santa Cruz contributed to this report

The ceremonial legislature approved nearly three dozen trusted politicians, experienced officials and career diplomats who make up the State Council under Premier Li Keqiang, who was named Friday. Their appointment largely completes a once-a-decade transfer of power to a new generation of communist leaders.

The new team takes charge at a time of difficult transitions. With the economic model that brought decades of high growth sputtering, the government is looking to transform the world's second-largest economy by nurturing self-sustaining growth based on domestic consumption and technology industries instead of labor-intensive exports and investment.

A more assertive foreign policy, cyber-hacking and years of scouring the world for resources have touched off nervousness among China's neighbors and the U.S. and set off a small but potentially threatening backlash against Chinese investment in Africa and Latin America.

The officials installed Saturday embarked on their careers as China was re-entering world trade and politics after decades of isolation. They are representative of how far China's reach extends, having more international exposure than their predecessors.

"They will have a more rational and objective view of China and the relationship between China and the rest of the world," said Zhu Feng, a professor of international relations at Peking University. "It means they are more cognizant of how the world reacts to China and that they will be more active in seeking changes. That's a good thing."

Trade envoy Gao Hucheng, who has a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Paris and has worked in Europe and Africa, was named commerce minister. Appointed finance minister was Lou Jiwei, chairman of China's multibillion-dollar sovereign wealth fund and a fixture in international financial circles. Their appointment is likely to reassure trading partners and financial markets about policy continuity.

Central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan, another prominent figure, was also kept on.

Similarly, Wang Yi, a career diplomat with experience working on some of China's knottiest diplomatic issues, was named foreign minister. A former ambassador to Japan, Wang worked with the United States in nuclear disarmament talks with North Korea and has charted Beijing's successful outreach to Taiwan, healing an estrangement from their separation in the Chinese civil war.

For defense minister, leaders chose Gen. Chang Wanquan, a soldier from a poor farming family who has commanded the manned space program.

At home, the new leaders are expected to emphasize social spending and other measures to spread prosperity more evenly and narrow a politically volatile gap between China's wealthy elite and poor majority.

The economy is limping out of its deepest slump since the 2008 global crisis, but a dip in February consumer sales and factory output has spurred fears that the rebound might be faltering. Economic growth fell to 7.8 percent last year, China's weakest performance since the 1990s.

Weaker consumer spending has set back rebalancing plans by forcing the government to support the recovery with spending on building subways and other public works.

"We think China made some progress on rebalancing in 2012; the real work will fall to new Premier Li," Standard Chartered economist Stephen Green said in a report.

A test for the new government will be if, as reformers advocate, it curbs the dominance of state industry and encourages private companies that generate the new jobs and wealth needed to keep incomes rising.

That is likely to provoke resistance from politically powerful companies, some of which in energy, telecommunications and other industries are so large that their bosses rank higher in the government hierarchy than the regulators who oversee them.

The transfer of power to new leaders has been in the works for years and saw divisive bargaining among party power brokers and their factions. The sudden cashiering of a powerful and popular politician, Bo Xilai, over a seamy scandal of corruption and murder last year exposed fault lines that the party leadership prefers to keep hidden behind a mask of unity.

President Xi Jinping and the other party leaders installed in November must heal the rifts if they are to govern. The composition of the Cabinet is more inclusive, reaching beyond the party's inner circle, which is dominated by officials and politicians with ties to Xi and one of his political mentors.

Named vice premier in charge of economic affairs was Wang Yang, an ally of now-retired President Hu Jintao. Wang earned a reputation as a liberal reformer by encouraging compromises over workers' strikes and a revolt by a fishing village when he ran the wealthy coastal province of Guangdong.

China has relied on technocratic managers also steeped in Communist Party politics to steer the country in recent decades, and many in the new Cabinet were in line for promotions and had strong political backing.

Some are associated with support for state industry and extensive government involvement in the economy elements that might complicate possible reforms. Miao Wei was reappointed to head the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, which plays a key role in industrial planning that has frustrated foreign and private sector companies.

Also Saturday, in a sign of displeasure with severe pollution, the normally compliant National People's Congress deputies cast an unusually high number of "no" votes for members of its environmental protection committee: 1,969 in favor to 850 opposed, with another 140 who either abstained or did not vote.

___

Associated Press writer Didi Tang contributed to this report.

Nearly three years before Argentina became known as home to the first Latin American pope, it made history as the first country in the region to approve gay marriage an action that then-Cardinal Bergoglio actively opposed.

The gay community here remembers Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, as the man who launched "a war of God" against the move to approve gay marriage.

"He was the visible face of the Catholic Church's opposition to equal marriage and he approached it from a fundamentalist position, posturing that he had to wage a war of God against what he considered a plan of the devil," said Esteban Paulon, president of the Argentine Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Transsexuals.

But that isn't the whole story.

Before the Argentine Congress approved gay marriage in July 2010, some provinces in the country and individual judges had already begun allowing it.

With that reality and the pro-gay marriage stance of President Cristina Fernandez, the church had to decide what to do.

According to the new pope's authorized biographer, Sergio Rubin, Bergoglio was politically wise enough to know the church couldn't win a straight-on fight against gay marriage, so he urged his bishops to lobby for gay civil unions instead. It wasn't until his proposal was shot down by the bishops' conference that he publicly declared what Paulon described as the "war of God" and the church lost the issue altogether.

Despite his conservatism, "Bergoglio is known for being moderate and finding a balance between reactionary and progressive sectors," Paulon said. "When he came out strongly against gay marriage, he did it under pressure from the conservatives."

The first Argentine couple to be married, before the national law was passed, were Alex Freyre and Jose Maria Di Bello in December 2009, in the southern city of Ushuaia, province of Tierra del Fuego. Their union was made possible by a judge who declared unconstitutional two articles of the civil code limiting marriage to that between a man and a woman, and the province's governor, who backed the judge and issued a decree allowing gay marriage. Shortly afterward, however, a judge declared the marriage "nonexistent."

Freyre, executive director of the Buenos Aires AIDS Foundation, wrote on his Twitter account this week that Pope Francis "knows that gay marriage isn't the end of the world or the species."

"Now he can say it in Latin."

In another Tweet, he remarked, "Maybe the fact that the Vatican has chosen a pope from a country where gay marriage is allowed is a sign that they get it?"

Freyre went on to urge the new pope "to renovate the church so that it resumes a path of spirituality."

Paulon also urged Pope Francis to promote true reform in the church.

"He has seen that Argentina hasn't suffered any commotion with the gay-marriage law. ... It would be difficult for him to now argue that it leads to chaos or discord. It hasn't destroyed the family, and the anti-Christ hasn't arrived."

But Paulon is also realistic.

He recalls, for example, that when Bergoglio served as head of the Argentine conference of bishops for several years, he was a die-hard opponent of abortion, and argued against sex-education laws that permit free access to contraceptives and allow Argentines to determine their gender based on their self-identity instead of their biology.

In any case, analysts note, any real reform of these issues would not be up to Pope Francis alone, but would rise or fall only after an internal Vatican debate between diverse factions.

Bergoglio is a man "open to dialogue," said Adolfo Perez Esquivel, one of Argentina's principal human rights leaders and a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

Perez said he hoped the new pope would "form teams that can help him effect the changes that the church really needs."