The other is Mississippi, a fact that causes a certain amount of handwringing among Iowa's political classes.

With Senate and House seats open in 2014 in the wake of Sen. Tom Harkin's decision to retire, many think this could be the time for a woman to finally break through. But after several high-profile possibilities have taken themselves out of consideration most recently Republican Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds opting out of a Senate run the prospects are unclear.

"I'm frustrated. I'm disappointed. I'm irritated. I was certainly hoping we would have female candidates for top offices. It appears to me that it is not going to happen," said Roxanne Conlin, a Democrat who was the state's first woman candidate for governor in 1982 and ran again for U.S. Senate in 2010.

Just why Iowa lags behind is a bit of a head-scratcher.

"In some ways it is baffling because it's not that it's not an open-minded state," said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. "It's a state with an active women's political community."

Iowa's neighboring states have women in top political positions. Wisconsin just elected Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Nebraska voted in Sen. Deb Fischer. Sen. Amy Klobuchar represents Minnesota and Sen. Claire McCaskill is in Missouri. And Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, South Dakota and Missouri all have women in the U.S. House.

"I just don't know that there's a magic answer because if there was, we would have found it," said Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Tyler Olson, a state representative from Cedar Rapids."It's embarrassing, it really is."

Experts cite many possible reasons that Iowa politics remains a boys club. There's the lack of term limits for the governor's office and the low turnover of the state's congressional seats, meaning there are rarely open seats for women to pursue. Republican Gov. Terry Branstad is on his second stint in the governor's office, after a 16-year run that ended in January 1999. Republican Sen. Charles Grassley has served 32 years and Harkin, a Democrat, for 28.

Academic research has also shown that, nationally, women are less likely to consider running for office because of family responsibilities or a perception that they are not qualified. And veteran women politicians also say that many Iowa voters hold traditional views about gender roles, perhaps a legacy of the state's small-town farming roots.

"Part of it is historic feeling that politics is a male's job," said Maggie Tinsman, a former Republican state senator who ran unsuccessfully for Senate in 1996 and is co-founder of a group geared at electing women called "50/50 in 2020." ''We're doing a lot to try and change that. "

Still, other rural states with even more conservative leanings have elected women to powerful jobs. In the 2010 governor's race in Oklahoma, both candidates were women. Kansas, Texas, Louisiana and Nebraska have all had women governors. Women senators are representing Nebraska, North Dakota and Louisiana.

Nationally, the number of women in top elected positions is mostly growing. There are 98 women in the current Congress 20 in the Senate. That's about 18 percent of the total 535 seats in Congress. Twenty years ago there were 54 women in Congress.

The interest from advocacy groups and the political classes in changing the gender divide in Iowa politics means that viable women candidates hear a lot of sweet-talk, according to Democratic state Sen. Liz Mathis.

A well-known former news anchor from the Cedar Rapids area who was first elected in 2011, Mathis was seen as a top option to run in the state's 1st Congressional District after U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley announced he'd seek Harkin's Senate seat. Mathis said she was showered with attention from lawmakers and advocates who told her she would be making history if she won.

"I was really conflicted," she said. "Everyone put the expectation on me."

But Mathis, who has a daughter in high school, decided she didn't want to leave her family or her relatively new role in the state Senate.She said she knows she may not get another such opportunity.

"I guess it just depends on what you think success is," Mathis said.

Reynolds viewed as a rising star in the Iowa GOP also said she made her decision based on her personal interests.

"Nobody else gets to decide what the right time is for me. I get to decide that," said Reynolds, whom Branstad seems to be grooming for an eventual run for governor.

There are some women still pondering entering the open Senate and congressional races in Iowa, though no definite candidates have emerged.

Dianne Bystrom, director of the Center for Women in Politics at Iowa State University, said women need to be prepared to run when there are open seats, noting that studies show women need more persuasion but are just as successful as men when they don't face an incumbent.

"Women need to be more strategic," Bystrom said. "I'm working with several women's organizations across the state to develop benches of women that are ready to run."

----

Associated Press reporter Thomas Beaumont contributed to this report.

BOSTON (Reuters) - The body of suspected Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev remained in limbo on Monday as his family searched for a cemetery that would accept the remains.

Several Massachusetts cemeteries have refused to bury Tsarnaev, and protesters have staked out the Worcester funeral home holding the body. Despite a plea from the funeral home director, Governor Deval Patrick said on Monday he would not get involved.

The controversy marked a rare period of discord in a state that was largely united after the attacks on one of its marquee events.

Tsarnaev, 26, died in a gun battle with police on April 19, four days after bombs he is believed to have set with his younger brother Dzhokhar killed three people and injured another 264 near the finish line of the world-famous marathon.

Relatives have said they want him buried nearby. Under Islamic law, the body cannot be cremated, a procedure used for criminals including Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.

"The whole situation is unprecedented," said David Walkinshaw, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Funeral Directors Association. The state of Massachusetts does not own its own cemeteries, he said, and the federal government has only cemeteries for war veterans.

"The challenge here is that there's no way to demand a cemetery allow for a burial to take place," Walkinshaw said.

Some Massachusetts residents want the body sent back to Tsarnaev's native Russia. William Breault of Worcester told reporters on Monday he had set up a bank account to raise funds to ship the remains.

"I not only don't want to see him buried in Worcester, Massachusetts. ... I don't think he should be buried in the state," Breault told CNN.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said he was not aware that anyone from Russia or Massachusetts had contacted the department about it. "We're unaware of any efforts to coordinate sending his remains to Russia," he said.

Gabriel Gomez, a Massachusetts Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, suggested disposing of Tsarnaev's body in the ocean as was done after U.S. forces killed Osama bin Laden in 2011.

"Bureaucrats worried about where to bury Boston Marathon terrorist #1. To me, it's simple: he should be buried at sea with Bin Laden," he wrote on his official Twitter account.

UNWILLING TO ACCEPT BODY

Tsarnaev's body was taken to Graham Putnam & Mahoney Funeral Parlors in Worcester last week after spending more than a week at a medical examiner's office in Boston. Several cemeteries have said they would not accept Tsarnaev's body for burial.

Graham Putnam funeral home owner Peter Stefan, chairman of a board that oversees funeral services and embalming in Massachusetts, said he has an obligation to accept the remains.

Stefan has said he would seek help from state officials if he could not find a resting place soon. His work has drawn support from other funeral directors, including Morgan Mitchell, another member of the state board.

"There are funeral directors in Massachusetts who have buried people who have been murderers or child molesters. As professionals, we need to put these things to one side," Mitchell said.

Tsarnaev's uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, said on Sunday that his nephew should be buried in Massachusetts, where he lived. Tsarnaev's parents, ethnic Chechens who returned to southern Russia several years ago, have suggested in various interviews and reports that their son should be buried in Cambridge or returned to Russia.

The Massachusetts governor declined on Monday to get involved.

"This is a family issue ... and the family needs to make some decisions. I understand they have some options. They need to exercise one soon," Patrick told reporters.

Cambridge officials urged the Tsarnaevs to look elsewhere.

"The difficult and stressful efforts of the citizens of the City of Cambridge to return to a peaceful life would be adversely impacted by the turmoil, protests and widespread media presence at such an interment," said Cambridge City Manager Robert Healy in a statement Sunday.

"The families of loved ones interred in the Cambridge Cemetery also deserve to have their deceased family members rest in peace."

(Additional reporting by Tabassum Zakaria in Washington; Editing by Cynthia Osterman, Doina Chiacu and Philip Barbara)

It was the first time since the 1970 merger of the NFL and AFL that offensive tackles went 1-2.

Fisher became the first player from the Mid-American Conference taken to open the draft. He is the third offensive tackle picked No. 1 overall since the merger, joining Orlando Pace in 1997 and Jake Long five years ago.

"This is so surreal," Fisher said. "I'm ready to get to work right now. I'm ready to start playing some football. I can't process what's going on right now."

Fisher is the first selection by new Chiefs coach Andy Reid and general manager John Dorsey, who entertained trade offers before selecting the 6-foot-7, 306-pound Fisher over All-American Joeckel.

Not that Joeckel was any less thrilled to go second.

"I don't have words for all the emotions I feel. It's the best feeling of my entire life," he said.

After Commissioner Roger Goodell paid tribute to the first responders at the Boston Marathon bombings and the victims of the West, Texas explosion, he announced Fisher's name.

It broke a string of four straight quarterbacks taken first: Matthew Stafford, Sam Bradford, Cam Newton and Andrew Luck. This is considered a QB-weak draft.

A quick trade followed the first two picks: Miami acquired the No. 3 spot from Oakland and chose Oregon defensive end Dion Jordan, who the Dolphins envision as the next Jason Taylor.

The Raiders received the Dolphins first-rounder, 12th overall, and a second-rounder.

__

Online: http://pro32.ap.org and http://twitter.com/AP_NFL

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (AP) -- A federal appeals court says the Environmental Protection Agency had the legal authority to veto permits for one of West Virginia's largest mountaintop removal coal mines.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on Tuesday reversed a lower court's ruling and sent the case back for further proceedings.

In 2011, the EPA revoked a water-pollution permit the Army Corps of Engineers had issued four years earlier to St. Louis-based Arch Coal for its 2,300-acre Spruce No. 1 mine.

The EPA said destructive, unsustainable mining practices would cause irreparable environmental damage and threaten the health of people nearby.

Industry, politicians and state regulators wanted the appeals court to uphold a federal judge's ruling that EPA overstepped its authority.

[More from BGR: ]

Gaming companies have traditionally used E3 to showcase the future of gaming, with Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo typically holding large events. Nintendo recently announced that it has no plans to announce new hardware at the event, however, and it will therefore not hold a major press conference. The companys main focus will instead be to have people experience its software as it attempts to generate buzz for futuretitles.

[More from BGR: ]

Microsofts E3 press event is scheduled to take place on June 10th at 1:00 p.m. EDT.

This article was

Sales of the iPhone 5 helped Apple's volumes grow 6.6 percent to 37.4 million phones in the quarter from a year earlier, but that was not enough to stop its share of the market dropping to 17.3 percent from 23 percent, research firm IDC said.

A flood of cheaper Android-powered devices from the South Korean maker lifted its shipments about 60 percent to 70.7 million, giving it a 32.7 percent of the market, up from 28.8 percent a year earlier.

During the first quarter Samsung shipped more smartphones than the next four vendors combined, IDC said.

The research firm said it was eager to see how new phones from Samsung using its Tizen operating system will look and fit into the company's product line-up.

Of the top five vendors, only Apple lost market share, with LG Electronics Inc, Huawei and ZTE Corp making incremental gains.

(Reporting by Sakthi Prasad in Bangalore; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)

One man, an Algerian, was arrested in the eastern province of Zaragoza and the other, a Morrocan, in the southern province of Murcia, after a joint operation between Spain, France and Morocco, the statement said.

A spokesman for the Interior Ministry declined to give any further information.

(Reporting by Sonya Dowsett; Editing by Louise Ireland)

LONDON (Reuters) - A British computer hacker pleaded guilty on Tuesday to cyber attacks on targets including Sony, Nintendo, Rupert Murdoch's News International and the Arizona State Police.

Ryan Ackroyd's plea meant his planned jury trial did not go ahead and, as a result, the court did not hear any evidence on the motivation behind the attacks he made using the persona of a 16-year-old girl named Kayla as part of hacking group LulzSec.

Dressed in a tracksuit bottom and t-shirt, with a large tattoo on his arm and crew-cut hair, Ackroyd spoke only to identify himself and to enter his plea.

Ackroyd, 26, was arrested in 2011 with three other British young men in connection with an international cyber crime spree by LulzSec, a splinter group of hacking collective Anonymous.

The other three had already pleaded guilty to several charges including cyber attacks on the CIA and Britain's Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA).

Anonymous, and LulzSec in particular, made international headlines in late 2010 when they launched what they called the "first cyber war" in retaliation for attempts to shut down the WikiLeaks website.

Ackroyd faced four charges but pleaded guilty to just one. Prosecutors said they would not pursue the other charges.

Ackroyd and his three fellow hackers will be sentenced on May 14, judge Deborah Taylor said.

Mustafa Al-Bassam, 18, and Jake Davis, 20, had both pleaded guilty to two counts while Ryan Cleary, 21, had pleaded guilty to six counts including that he attacked Pentagon computers operated by the U.S. Air Force.

Cleary, Al-Bassam and Davis admitted to launching so-called distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks in which websites are flooded with traffic to make them crash.

Ackroyd denied taking part in DDoS attacks but admitted, as did the three others, to hacking into computer systems, obtaining confidential data and redirecting legitimate website visitors to sites hosted by the hackers.

The targets listed in the charge to which Ackroyd pleaded guilty also included Britain's National Health Service, the U.S. public broadcaster PBS and 20th Century Fox.

The defendants are free on bail pending their sentencing, under the condition that they do not access the Internet.

Cleary was indicted by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles last June but U.S. authorities have indicated they would not seek his extradition as he was being prosecuted in Britain on the same charges.

The name LulzSec is a combination of "lulz", another way of writing "lols" or "laugh out loud", and security.

(Editing by Louise Ireland)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Supreme Court justices on Monday signaled reluctance to issue too broad a ruling about patents on human genes, and some indicated they might seek a compromise distinguishing between types of genetic material.

The biotechnology industry has warned that an expansive ruling against Myriad Genetics Inc could threaten billions of dollars of investment.

In weighing the question of whether any human genes can ever be patented - meaning the holders have exclusive rights to their intellectual property for a defined period - the nine justices asked tough questions about isolated genes that Myriad holds patents for.

But the justices also appeared to be inclined to draw a line between synthetically produced genetic material and natural genes.

A court ruling along those lines, suggested by the Obama administration, would have less impact on Myriad. Some of the latest research using human genes involves a synthetic form of DNA called recombinant DNA, or rDNA.

Shares of Myriad were up $1.43 or 5.4 percent at $27.53 on midday trading on the Nasdaq. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index was down 1 percent.

The Myriad patents in dispute will all expire by 2015. A ruling is due by the end of June this year.

In probing the limits of what can be patented, the justices cited a wide range of products in raising hypothetical questions, including chocolate-chip cookies and baseball bats.

A group of medical researchers, associations and patients say human genes, including synthetically produced material, should not be patented. They sued in 2009, challenging seven patents owned by or licensed to Myriad on two human genes linked to breast and ovarian cancer. A federal judge said the patents were invalid. An appeals court overruled that decision, and the case landed at the Supreme Court.

Under the federal Patent Act, an inventor can obtain a patent on various new processes and products but "laws of nature, natural phenomena and abstract ideas" are not patentable. The broad legal question is whether the genes Myriad patented, called BRCA1 and BRCA2, are a product of nature. The appeals court said they were not.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has granted patents on at least 4,000 human genes to companies, universities and others that have discovered and decoded them.

CHOCOLATE CHIPS AND BASEBALL BATS

Lawyers from both sides and the Obama administration probed the limits of what can be patented. Justices cited examples of more familiar products, including chocolate-chip cookies and baseball bats.

It was Sotomayor who brought up the chocolate-chip cookies, wondering whether if it was possible to get a patent on an isolated human gene, it would be possible to do the same for salt, eggs and other cookie ingredients.

Separately, both Justice Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts seized upon the suggestion made by Myriad lawyer Gregory Castanias that a baseball bat doesn't exist until it's isolated from the tree.

Roberts said a baseball bat was "quite different" because "you have to invent it" and not just "cut it off" from the tree.

Alito raised an even more extreme hypothetical question by asking whether a baseball bat that was naturally crafted after a piece of wood was tossed about in the ocean before washing up on shore could then be patented.

Several of the justices also ruminated at length on another colorful hypothetical question, also offered by Alito, concerning under what circumstances a company could claim a patent on material from a plant found in the Amazon jungle that can help treat cancer.

Others on the bench, such as Justice Elena Kagan, indicated concerns about the impact a broad ruling could have on companies that invest in such research.

"Why shouldn't we worry that Myriad or companies like it will just say, 'well, you know, we're not going to do this work anymore'?" she asked Christopher Hansen, the lawyer representing the challengers.

Alito appeared most concerned about the court issuing a sweeping ruling on what he described as a "very difficult" question.

"Why should we do that?" he asked.

POSSIBLE COMPROMISE?

Hansen sought to defuse concerns among the justices that he was asking for too broad a ruling. He said he was not asking for patents on rDNA to be invalidated, something industry groups had raised concerns about.

"Recombinant DNA is in fact what all the major innovations in the industry are doing these days," he said. "There is nothing in our position that would prevent recombinant DNA from being patented."

The Obama administration, which intervened in the case in support of neither side, has urged a compromise position, which several justices probed during the hour-long argument.

Government lawyers say that "synthesized genetic materials" can be patented because they are human-made inventions. But simply removing, or isolating, human DNA does not substantively change it and so it should not be eligible for a patent, the administration says.

If the court were to adopt that approach, which neither the plaintiffs nor Myriad accept, some of Myriad's patents, concerning synthetic molecules called cDNA, could survive, although the parties disagree on that point as well.

A majority appeared inclined to find that cDNA could be patented.

Emphasizing a need to tread carefully, Justice Stephen Breyer noted that patent law often involves "uneasy compromises."

Justice Anthony Kennedy asked Castanias directly whether a ruling based on the government position would give industry "sufficient protection" relating to innovation and research.

"I can't tell you for a certainty whether it would hurt the industry," Castanias said.

The case is Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, U.S. Supreme Court, No. 12-398.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Howard Goller, John Wallace and Sofina Mirza-Reid)

LONDON (Reuters) - Lower airfares, cheaper food and rising profit margins are among the benefits that should flow from tumbling oil and commodity prices - but only after a long lead time.

Having poured $400 billion into commodities over the past decade, many investors are now selling. Their confidence that risky assets could only float higher on a rising tide of cheap central bank money has crumbled as the global economy fails to respond to the stimulus.

Even China, an important buyer of natural resources, is slowing. Inflation, against which gold in particular is a classic hedge, is falling nearly everywhere.

Price pressures will ease further if natural resources keep falling. That is bad news for exporters such as Saudi Arabia and Brazil but good news for net importers.

Weaker commodity prices should be positive for the world economy on average because falling inflation supports consumer spending, said ABN AMRO economist Han de Jong.

Standard and Poor's Goldman Sachs Commodity Indexhas fallen 6.6 percent so far this year.

But raw materials represent a small part of most firms' costs, so it is not surprising that some businesses, especially those in very competitive markets, are not getting carried away.

"There are thousands of components in a car so the impact might not be that great," said Cui Liyan with Great Wall Motor Co Ltd, China's top maker of SUVs and pick-up trucks. "Great Wall has never passed on additional costs to consumers when commodity prices have surged in the past."

For a U.S. economy experiencing slow growth, cheaper energy is a positive, said Michael Ward, chief executive of CSX Corp , the country's second-largest railroad. But CSX itself is indifferent because it runs a fuel surcharge program. "Over time, we're passing the increases or decreases in fuel to the customer," Ward said.

An official at South Korea's largest food maker, CJ CheilJedang Corp , said it normally takes four to six months before a fall in agricultural futures prices passes through into the firm's product prices.

Commodities so far in 2013 http://link.reuters.com/reb25t

Commodities vs equities http://link.reuters.com/baf47t

Gold price timeline http://link.reuters.com/jem47t

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OIL IS THE ONE TO WATCH

The lurches in gold, including the sharpest one-day drop in 30 years on Monday, have grabbed the attention, but falling oil prices are of much greater economic significance.

Brent crude is down about 16 percent from the year's high at $119.17, hit on February 8.

Economists at JP Morgan estimate a 15 percent drop in the price of oil, caused by a supply increase, would be enough to lift global economic output this year by 0.2 percentage points.

But if the price fall reflects a darkening economic outlook, the same 15 percent decline is consistent with a 0.5 percent downgrade in global growth prospects for the year, the bank calculates.

An executive at Indian engineering company Larsen & Toubrosaid the broader fall in commodity prices cut both ways. Cheaper materials would help profit margins and, if the trend were sustained, would increase the chances of lower interest rates, he said. But prices were falling for a reason.

"Prices are down today because the investment cycle has slowed and demand for commodities has slowed. If this extends over the long term, it cannot be a good thing for a projects company such as ours," he said.

THE EXCHANGE RATE FACTOR

Pinpointing the repercussions of the commodity sell off is further complicated because it cannot be seen in isolation.

KCE Electronics Pcl , a Thai maker of printed circuit boards, should be sitting pretty because it uses a lot of copper, which is down 12 percent so far in 2013.

But executive director Panja Senadisai said the savings are outweighed by the strength of the Thai baht against the dollar, which hurts KCE's exports.

The story is similar at Tenneco Inc'sIndian subsidiary: the auto components maker is seeing lower prices for steel and rubber - the key Tokyo Commodity Exchange rubber contract has shed more than 8 percent this week - but a weak rupee and high inflation are diluting the benefit.

Currencies also muddy the waters for Japan Airlines Co Ltd , with a weakening yen on balance a negative for the airline, said JAL spokesman Taro Namba. Still, JAL has already responded by announcing a 7.6 percent cut in cargo fuel surcharges from May 1 to 122 yen per kilogram on long-haul international routes. And Korean Air Lines Co Ltd , South Korea's biggest airline, expects a drop in fuel surcharges to lead to lower passenger ticket prices with a one month's lag.

PASSING ALONG THE FOOD CHAIN

Cheaper food is a particular boon in countries with uncomfortably high inflation. Take Indonesia, where inflation scaled a nearly two-year high of 5.9 percent in March.

Thanks to falling prices for everything from rice to meat and shallots, the month-on-month rise in consumer prices will probably be less than 0.1 percent in April, according to deputy central bank governor Perry Warjiyo.

Business models differ and not everyone is rushing to pass on cheaper inputs. Danish shipping group A.P. Moller - Maersk Groupis an example.

"Our job is to make sure that the customers understand that they actually have a big value proposition by shipping with us... The customers are willing to pay a bit more. This is not a commodity. There's more to it than just shipping a box," said chief executive Nils Anderson.

With global inflation by and large benign, the door is open for leading central banks to provide even more monetary stimulus. St. Louis Fed President James Bullard said he would favor increasing the pace of the Federal Reserve's bond buying if inflation continues to go down.

Falling commodity prices and slower wage growth give the Bank of England more scope to resume bond-buying to try to galvanize the economy, BOE policymaker Martin Weale argued.

Even the conservative European Central Bank has hinted that it is open to doing more. With the bank's economists forecasting an inflation rate of just 1.3 percent in 2014, well short of its target of just under 2 percent, more and more economists expect an interest rate cut next month.

China too has increased policy room. "The drop in global commodity prices is obviously very good news for China, because it will help lessen imported inflationary pressure and leaves Beijing much more scope to expand credit and loosen monetary policy to bolster the domestic economy," said Yuan Gangming, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

INDIA VS AUSTRALIA

India, Asia's third-largest economy, is hoping that the commodity rout will not only dampen inflation but also reduce its twin deficits. Crude and gold imports contribute nearly 45 percent of India's total import bill.

"The fall will help us deal with the widening current account deficit, which is the biggest worry for the government," said a senior official at the ministry of finance in New Delhi.

India spent $169 billion on foreign oil in the fiscal year that ended in March, 9 percent more than the year before. That is a big factor behind a full-year current account deficit likely to have been around 5 percent of GDP - a level the central bank governor has called unsustainable..

And because India heavily subsidizes consumer fuels and fertilizer, the government's budget deficit for the new fiscal year could well come in below its target of 4.8 percent of GDP if global commodity prices keep declining, the official added. The fall in crude prices could halve the oil subsidy bill.

Australia would appear to be an obvious loser from an end to the commodities super-cycle. The 'Lucky Country' has enjoyed more than 20 years of unbroken growth, largely thanks to booming exports of minerals and energy to Asia.

Lower commodity prices and a strong Australian dollar have already forced Treasurer Wayne Swan to slash his forecast for tax revenues, especially from company earnings and a new profits tax on big iron ore and copper mines. As a result the government has had to abandon its promise to return to a budget surplus for the year ending in June. But Swan remains optimistic about growth prospects across Asia.

"The growth in the middle classes across the Asian region will produce demand for a whole range of goods and services, not just in resources, not just in agriculture, but across a wide range of activities and I think the consequence of that will only be good for Australia," he said.

(additional reporting by Reuters reporters globally; editing by Janet McBride)