LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) -- A contractor for Chevron Corp. in Nigeria says divers have recovered the bodies of 10 sailors who drowned when their ship sank off the coast.

Sea Trucks Group said in a statement Friday that one other sailor remained missing from the sinking of the tug boat Jascon 4 some 14 nautical miles off the coast of Escravos, Nigeria. The company says the boat overturned Sunday while trying to tow a tanker in the area.

The company says it has halted recovery efforts as the ship is now too unstable for divers to work in.

Offshore work can be dangerous, as sailors face Nigeria pirate and militant attacks. Industrial accidents happen as well. A sailor drowned in 2010 after falling overboard from a boat working for French oil firm Total SA.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Data from a pivotal trial of Amgen Inc's experimental melanoma therapy shows that it improved survival by 21 percent for patients with advanced forms of the deadly skin cancer compared with a standard white blood cell-boosting drug.

Final survival results are not expected until later this year, but Wall Street has been awaiting the interim trial details to help assess the drug's commercial potential within a new market of promising melanoma treatments.

RBC Capital Markets analyst Michael Yee said recently that the Amgen drug - talimogene laherparepvec, or T-Vec - will ultimately need to demonstrate that it improves overall survival by more than 15 percent.

T-Vec is an engineered virus designed to be injected into tumors, where it replicates until membranes of the cancer cells rupture and die. The drug is then expected to activate a systemic immune response to kill tumor cells throughout the body.

Other new drugs in the field include "immunotherapies," such as Yervoy from Bristol-Myers Squibb, which is designed to harness the body's immune system to fight the skin cancer.

Amgen had said in March that the trial met its main goal of showing that T-Vec shrank tumors for at least six months in significantly more patients, 16 percent, than a comparison treatment, where the so-called durable response rate was 2 percent.

Other new details of the trial, presented on Saturday at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, included an overall T-Vec response rate, meaning tumor shrinkage without the six-month requirement, of 26 percent. That compares with 6 percent for patients treated with GM-CSF, a type of white blood cell-booster. Eleven percent of T-Vec patients had their tumors eradicated.

The trial also showed that patients with earlier-stage disease had the highest rates of durable response. That rate was 33 percent for stage III patients, compared with 8 percent for patients with the most advanced cancer.

David Chang, head of global oncology development at Amgen, said the company is currently in discussions with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration about how to move forward and seek regulatory approval. Melanoma is diagnosed in about 132,000 people worldwide each year.

He also said the company is interested in testing its drug in combination with Yervoy and other new melanoma therapies.

The most common side effects seen in the trial of over 400 patients were mild flu-like symptoms.

Chang said Amgen is still evaluating whether to study T-Vec as a treatment for other types of cancer.

(Reporting by Deena Beasley; editing by Michele Gershberg and Matthew Lewis)

DUBAI (Reuters) - China's Huawei Technologies Co's Middle East revenue rose 18 percent to $2.08 billion in 2012 and the roll-out of 4G mobile networks and IT outsourcing will be among its main regional growth drivers, the firm said.

The world's second-largest telecom equipment maker also expects Middle East telecom operators to prioritize improving network efficiency, Shi Yaohong, president of Huawei Middle East, told Reuters in an email.

"Operators' shift toward software-defined networks, IT outsourcing and adoption of 4G ... are all going to play a key role in Huawei's future business," said Shi.

The disclosure of the Middle East revenue figures - Huawei declined to reveal its net profit or capital expenditure for the region - may be part of a broader effort to be more open, coming after the company's Chief Financial Officer Cathy Meng hosted her first news conference earlier this year to announce the company's 2012 results.

Many Middle East telecom firms, particularly in the wealthy Gulf, have unveiled 4G or long-term evolution (LTE) networks that potentially offer mobile internet speeds more than double that of 3G, but a shortage of devices has caused a slower-than-expected consumer take-up of this technology, said Shi.

Shenzhen-based Huawei is also the world's No.5 smartphone maker, competing with the likes of Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd.

"By expanding our local portfolio to include more smartphones, tablets and wifi routers that are compatible with technologies like 4G LTE, we hope to open up the market significantly over the next 12 months," said Shi.

"In the device realm, we recognize Huawei was hardly known to most local consumers just two years ago. Building our consumer brand will still take time."

The Middle East accounted for 5.9 percent of Huawei's $35.35 billion global revenue last year, up from 5.5 percent in 2011, according to Reuters calculations.

Huawei defines the Middle East as incorporating the six Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) countries - Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman and the United Arab Emirates - plus Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran.

Huawei declined to provide a segmental revenue breakdown for the Middle East, but globally its carrier business accounted for 73 percent of revenue last year, while its enterprise and consumer units contributed 5.2 and 21.8 percent respectively, according to Reuters calculations.

"Our enterprise and consumer offerings are still relatively new in this region," added Shi.

(Editing by David Holmes)

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Twitter's custom ad plan works like this: Companies will share the email address you gave to them — either at check-out or via online shopping — with Twitter, which then plans to share your address with advertisers, who will then use it to send the right ads to the right people back on Twitter. Don't be surprised if you start seeing promoted trends and tweets for your favorite stores around the end of the year, when sources tell Bloomberg the program would start rolling out. 

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It's not exactly as all-knowing as Facebook's current setup — the social network knows where we shop  — but there are still some privacy concerns. First of all, the premise alone is unsettling. This kind of targeted advertising can get specific in a way that might make tweeters uncomfortable. Why does Twitter know that Spencer's is my favorite retailer? Do I want Twitter knowing that? Maybe not.

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More worrying, at this point, is that it's unclear how Twitter will deliver this trove email addresses to advertisers. In order to ensure a certain level of anonymity between you and the marketer, for example, Facebook randomizes the letters and numbers in email addresses so that companies don't have direct access to your Facebook profile; in theory, the advertiser doesn't know who is getting the ad — just that the right person got it. If Twitter doesn't want a headache from users and privacy advocates, it will likely do some version of that process, known as hashing.

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But even that won't placate all the skeptics. "Hashing an email address in general is not very privacy protective," the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Dan Auerbach told The Atlantic Wire. Because most people use only letters in their e-mail addresses, turns out it's pretty easy to do what's called a "dictionary attack" to recreate the original address. "From a protective point of view, it might sound appealing, but it doesn't actually provide protection," Auerbach added.

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As much of a privacy overstep as Twitter's "custom audiences" strategy might present, knowing things about us fits with Twitter's advertising plan, as it . Just today, the platforma television advertising program that tracks people who tweet about certain shows to serve them Twitter ads that match those of the ads they saw during a commercial break. This type of marketing still relies on information we put into Twitter — a more standard form of web advertising. But, again, it takes our offline, off-Twitter habits — in this case television watching — and advertises directly toward that behavior, which is different than standard web advertising, which might follow us around the Internet but tends to leave our real lives alone. So much for that idea.

For Nibali, an Italian with the Astana team, the title cemented his status in an elite group of current riders considered capable of winning Grand Tours, along with Alberto Contador, Chris Froome and Bradley Wiggins.

Nibali took the overall leader's pink jersey after the seventh stage, never gave it up, and padded his lead by winning the final two mountain stages in dominating fashion.

Wearing entirely pink, Nibali was celebrated by fans throughout the mostly ceremonial final stage.

''It was a really unique emotion hearing all the fans cheering for me,'' Nibali said. ''I really enjoyed this stage. It was unbelievable seeing all those people along the road. This victory crowns a life's dream.''

Rigoberto Uran of Colombia finished second overall and Cadel Evans of Australia, the 2011 Tour de France winner, was third, 4:43 and 5:52 behind Nibali, respectively.

It was Cavendish's 15th win in his Giro career and 41st in cycling's three Grand Tours - the Giro, Tour de France and Spanish Vuelta. He has a career total of 102 victories.

The British rider with the Omega Pharma-Quick Step team clocked 5 hours, 30 minutes, 8 seconds over the 128-mile leg from Riese Pio X to Brescia. The stage route was altered slightly due to avoid passing through a few towns where local elections were being held.

Italians Sacha Modolo and Elia Viviani finished second and third in the stage, respectively, with the same time as Cavendish.

The end of the stage was held entirely in Brescia, over a 2.6-mile circuit that was completed seven times. Part of the circuit took riders over cobblestones.

While much of the three-week race was characterized by wet and cold weather, including hard rain and even a snow blizzard in the penultimate stage Saturday, the final leg was held under clear skies.

Cavendish also secured the red points jersey by winning an intermediate sprint with 10 miles to go. It's the first time he has won the points jersey at the Giro, adding it to his jerseys from the 2010 Vuelta and the 2011 Tour.

After Cavendish's sprint, Nibali rode across the finish with his arms raised.

While Nibali is not planning to ride the Tour this year, he could attempt to win the Vuelta in August and September, and perhaps go for the world title in Florence, also in September.

It was his second Grand Tour victory, having also won the 2010 Vuelta. He finished third in last year's Tour behind the Team Sky duo of Wiggins and Froome.

Wiggins began the Giro as one of the pre-race favorites but the British rider withdrew before the 13th stage due to a chest infection. Defending champion Ryder Hesjedal also pulled out at the same stage, citing a ''deteriorating physical condition.''

A 28-year-old from Messina, Sicily, Nibali (prounounced NEE-ba-lee) is nicknamed the ''Shark of the Strait,'' after the Straight of Messina.

Giuseppe Martinelli, Nibali's team director at Astana, has now guided six different riders to a total of seven Grand Tour wins. His other wins came with Marco Pantani (who had two), Stefano Garzelli, Gilberto Simoni, Damiano Cunego and Alberto Contador.

Nibali has twice finished on the Giro podium previously, placing third in 2010 and second in 2011 after Contador was stripped of victory for doping.

TORONTO (Reuters) - Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, under pressure to respond to allegations he was filmed using drugs, said on Friday that he does not smoke crack cocaine and could not comment on a video he had not seen or does not exist.

"There has been a serious accusation from the Toronto Star that I use crack cocaine. I do not use crack cocaine, nor am I an addict of crack cocaine," he told a news conference.

The Toronto Star and Internet gossip blog Gawker reported last week they had separately seen a cellphone video that allegedly shows Ford smoking a substance from a crack pipe while in the company of people involved in the drug trade.

"As for a video, I cannot comment on a video that I have never seen or does not exist," said Ford, who did not take questions from reporters.

His comments mark his first direct response to the allegations since the Star and Gawker stories were published last Thursday. Shortly afterward, he called the reports "ridiculous," but did not give a full statement or denial.

Since the allegations surfaced, he has been hounded by news media at every turn, while several city councilors and allies have encouraged him to confront the issue directly.

The Toronto Sun, a right-leaning newspaper generally considered to be Ford-friendly, published an editorial on Thursday demanding the mayor either strongly deny the allegations or step down from office to seek medical help.

Earlier on Friday, six members of the mayor's executive committee, including Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday, published an open letter to the mayor urging him to confront the allegations.

Ford told reporters he had remained quiet on the advice of his solicitor.

The video, which Reuters cannot independently verify, is allegedly being shopped around by people involved in the drug trade. Gawker launched a "Crackstarter" campaign to raise $200,000 to buy it and publish it online.

The controversy, meanwhile, has made headlines across Canada and around the world, and drawn ridicule from late-night TV humorists Jimmy Kimmel and John Stewart.

On Wednesday, Ford lost his much-loved job as a volunteer high school football coach, and on Thursday he fired his chief of staff.

This is not the first controversy for Ford, who has drawn criticism for skipping city council meetings to coach football and engaging in a confrontation outside his home with a reporter.

He was briefly ordered out of office in 2012 after being found guilty of a conflict of interest, but won an appeal and was allowed to finish his four-year term.

(With additional writing by Cameron French; Editing by Jeffrey Hodgson and Philip Barbara)

De Lappe has traveled the world over the decades working on the Oscar Hammerstein and Richard Rodgers masterpiece in places across Europe, Japan, Canada and the United States. Now she's in Chicago, trying to help director Gary Griffin recreate a version of the original "Oklahoma!" production. It opens on Saturday and runs through May 19.

"If you remain true to the script and to the music it's not old fashioned at all," de Lappe said in an interview in the rehearsal room at the Lyric Opera in downtown Chicago. "It's new. It was new then and it's new now."

Griffin calls de Lappe a link to the original intent of the production, which is often considered a landmark of American musical theater. He encourages her to talk about every number, every idea that she has during rehearsals.

"This show begins and you can see she feels the depth of what's contained in all of it and recall it and gives it to all of us," Griffin said. "Having her being able to fill in those gaps and information is incredible."

The original dances from "Oklahoma!" were crafted by famed choreographer Agnes DeMille, who often used de Lappe as an inspiration. De Lappe, who lives in New York, has actively worked for years to save de Mille's work.

Rodgers, Hammerstein and DeMille would often check up on productions of "Oklahoma!" to see if directors were departing too far from the original show, de Lappe said.

"They'd clean it up again, simplify it, make it ours," de Lappe said. "That's what I've dedicated my life to."

De Lappe, who was awarded the Tony Honors for Excellence in the Theatre in 2007, knew Rodgers and Hammerstein well, she said, even sitting in on musical sessions with Rodgers in London.

"I really learned what he wanted with all those songs, the pronunciation, the enunciation, the tempos, phrasing," de Lappe said.

Ted Chapin, president of the company that owns the rights to the Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals, Rodgers and Hammerstein: An Imagem Company, said the Lyric chose to honor the original choreographic essence of "Oklahoma!" when it hired de Lappe.

"She's very, very straight forward about what she knows and what she demands," Chapin said. "She's not going to sit back and just take notes."

De Lappe's eyes dart from dancer to dancer when she's in those rehearsals, with an intense stare observing each number. She will stop the dancers, directing them about the need to swoop in a certain way or interact with each other differently. At times she will even demonstrate the steps.

"When I hear it with the performers and with the show I'm just as enthusiastic as I was the first time I saw the show," she said.

Modern audiences haven't seen a proper production of "Oklahoma!" for two generations, de Lappe said. She said that's why it's important for Lyric to recreate the show's original concept.

The production is the first of five classic Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals that the Lyric is staging as part of its American Musical Theater Initiative. "The Sound of Music" is planned for next year, followed by "Carousel" in 2015, "The King and I" in 2016 and "South Pacific" in 2017.

The Chicago production of "Oklahoma!" includes 37 members of the Lyric Opera Orchestra and a company of nearly 40 actors.

"The minute you walk into the rehearsal hall and you start, the energy is there no matter how tired you are," de Lappe said. "I find it happens to me every day."

___

Online: http://www.lyricopera.org/oklahoma

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Follow Caryn Rousseau on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/carynrousseau

In the deadlier of the two attacks, suspected militants armed with heavy weapons attacked a police convoy in Mattani, 20 kilometers (12 miles) south of the main northwest city of Peshawar, killing six policemen and wounding seven others, said senior police officer Shafiullah Khan.

In the second attack, a suicide bomber walked up to a vehicle owned by an Afghan religious leader in Peshawar and set off his explosives, killing three people, said police officer Riaz Ali Shah. The leader, Haji Hayatullah, was not harmed in the attack because he was in a nearby mosque attending Friday prayers. Hayatullah's driver and guard were killed, said Shah.

A passerby was also killed and two others were wounded, said Peshawar police chief Liaquat Ali Khan.

There are more than 1 million refugees in Pakistan from neighboring Afghanistan.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Asked at a Senate Banking Committee hearing by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., whether Treasury is "still opposed to capping the size of banks," Lew responded that he did not see a need for additional action beyond implementing the Dodd-Frank regulatory law, which attempts to set orderly procedures for the liquidation of even the largest banks if they get into trouble. "This this is not the time to be enacting big changes to Dodd-Frank or to the regulatory system," Lew said. After Dodd-Frank is implemented, he said, he'll "take stock."

That would seem to put Lew at odds with Federal Reserve Governor Dan Tarullo, who in recent months has floated a number of proposals to further shrink the banks, a problem he that he says  "seems to inexorably call for a set of complementary policy measures" to Dodd-Frank. In a series of speeches, Tarullo has proposed limiting the expansion of big banks by restricting the funding they get from sources other than traditional deposits, and adding liquidity and capital requirements that will make it more expensive and burdensome to be too big.

Government sources familiar with the Tarullo proposals say the Fed has not received a positive response from the Treasury Department about them, and Lew's remarks at the hearing perhaps help to explain why.

Tarullo, who was appointed by Obama, has often reflected the views of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and other Fed officials, including Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Richard Fisher, a noted critic of the too-big-to-fail problem and Dodd-Frank's deficiencies. Fisher, a conservative, said at a speech in March that "a dozen megabanks today control almost 70 percent of the assets in the U.S. banking industry" and pose a huge danger to the future of the economy. Dodd-Frank, he said, "is, despite its best intentions, counterproductive and needs to be changed."

During her questioning, Warrenknown as one of the most progressive voices in Washington on reining in Wall Streetnoted that Treasury under Geithner had opposed a 2010 amendment that would have broken up the biggest banks. "Has the Treasury Department's position changed?" Warren asked Lew. He did not respond directly, other than to say he was satisfied to await the implementation of Dodd-Frank as it is.

As detailed in a new National Journal eBook, , Lew is known primarily as a budget expert and has been a virtual cipher on Wall Street-related issues until now, . But at  his 2010 Senate confirmation hearing to become head of Office of Management and Budget, Lew also indicated that he didn't consider the deregulation of Wall Street to be a "proximate" cause of the financial crisis --an answer that put him at odds with his boss, who declared as a presidential candidate in 2008: "It's because of deregulation that Wall Street was able to engage in the kind of irresponsible actions that have caused this financial crisis."

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks slipped on Thursday but finished sharply off their session lows as a rally in Hewlett-Packard's shares offset worries about weak Chinese manufacturing data and the prospects of the Federal Reserve reducing its monetary stimulus.

Trading was choppy as many traders were adjusting their positions ahead of the long holiday weekend. Markets will be closed on Monday for Memorial Day.

Hewlett-Packardshares jumped more than 17 percent to a fresh 52-week high a day after the world's largest PC maker raised its outlook. The stock's surge supported the Dow and helped limit the S&P 500's decline.

For most of the morning, the market had been pulled lower by worries that the Fed's stimulus may be scaled back sooner than hoped and after weak factory data in China.

"People are using any kind of weakness as a buying opportunity and that's why you see a fairly quick snapback throughout the day (after) what was some broad selling in the morning," said Alan Lancz, president of Alan B. Lancz & Associates Inc, based in Toledo, Ohio.

"Investors are limited with their alternatives just because it's such a low interest-rate environment.

The Dow Jones industrial averagefell 12.67 points, or 0.08 percent, to 15,294.50 at the close. The Standard & Poor's 500 Indexslipped 4.84 points, or 0.29 percent, to finish at 1,650.51. The Nasdaq Composite Indexdropped 3.88 points, or 0.11 percent, to close at 3,459.42.

Hewlett-Packard Coshares surged 17.1 percent to end at $24.86, a day after the computer maker raised its 2013 earnings outlook following quarterly results that beat low expectations. The stock touched a new 52-week high of $24.95 earlier in the session.

Signs of improvement in the housing and labor markets also helped indexes come off their lows by midday.

Earlier, the S&P 500 traded below its 14-day moving average before bouncing back above it. Holding above that level would be positive sign to investors as it would suggest the uptrend is still intact.

Ralph Lauren Corpshares lost 2.3 percent to $183.69 after the fashion company reported sales below its own projections.

On Wednesday, the S&P 500posted its biggest decline in three weeks after minutes from the U.S. Federal Reserve's latest meeting showed some officials were open to tapering large-scale asset purchases as early as at the June meeting.

The minutes came in the wake of comments from Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, who said the Fed could scale back the pace of its bond purchases at one of the "next few meetings" if the economic recovery looked set to maintain forward momentum.

When the Fed may decide to slow or halt its program of buying $85 billion of bonds a month has become one of the biggest questions on investors' minds. The central bank's stimulus efforts have helped propel markets to all-time highs this year and investors are trying to gauge whether a change in the program could spell the end of the rally.

"It isn't their absolute level of involvement in buying bonds that's going to determine the stock market. It's going to be the perception of whether they're there or not," said Uri Landesman, president of Platinum Partners in New York.

"Once they really meaningfully step away, investors are going to realize they're just not going to be there and that the market's going to have to stand on its own feet."

On the economic front, the number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell more than expected last week, suggesting strength in the labor market. New home sales rose in a sign that the sector's rebound is still intact. But separate data showed manufacturing slowed for a second straight month in May.

Volume was roughly 7 billion shares on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and the NYSE MKT, exceeding the year-to-date average daily closing volume of about 6.4 billion.

On the NYSE, decliners beat advancers by a ratio of about 17 to 12. On the Nasdaq, the opposite trend prevailed, with about 13 stocks rising for every 12 that fell.

(Additional reporting by Leah Schnurr; Editing by Jan Paschal)