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When Islamic fighters drove into a town in northeast Nigeria on Tuesday, they used anti-aircraft guns, mounted on the backs of trucks, to destroy nearly every landmark of the nation's federal government. Fighters also rode in on at least one bus, the military said, while in other assaults insurgents have fired rocket-propelled grenades.

The militarization of Islamic radicals in the north comes after witnesses saw Nigerian fighters mingle with the extremists who took over northern Mali in the weeks following a coup there. It also comes after fighters seized massive troves of Nigerian military equipment and have received access to arms smuggled out of the lawlessness of Libya.

Those new arms, and the willingness of extremists to use them, highlight the increasing instability in Nigeria's north and ever-growing dangers facing the nation's weak central government.

"Each year, they grow in prominence and sophistication," said David Zounmenou, an analyst at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria, South Africa. "That's what's making the fighting that much more difficult for the Nigerian security forces."

Tuesday, the sophistication of the fighters, likely from the extremist network known as Boko Haram, could be seen in their assault on Bama, a town some 65 kilometers (40 miles) southeast of Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state. The military said some 200 fighters in buses and pickup trucks lay siege to the town. In their arsenal were truck-mounted anti-aircraft guns, weapons seen during the civil war in Libya and the recent fighting in northern Mali.

That attack in Bama killed at least 42 people, as well as 13 others that authorities described as Boko Haram fighters. But the insurgents' heavy weapons helped them overrun the barracks of the Nigerian Army's 202nd Battalion, as well as a police station, a police barracks, a magistrate's court, local government offices and a federal prison. The extremist fighters freed 105 prisoners during their assault, Lt. Col. Sagir Musa said.

The use of the weapons marks a transformation of Nigeria's Islamic extremist insurgency, which grew out of a 2009 riot led by Boko Haram members in Maiduguri that ended in a military and police crackdown that killed some 700 people. The group's leader died in police custody in an apparent execution, fueling dissent that broke into the open in 2010 with the targeted killings of government officials, security agents and religious leaders who spoke out against Boko Haram.

Since then, Islamic extremists have engaged in hit-and-run shootings and suicide bombings, attacks that have killed at least 1,618 people during that time, according to an Associated Press count. That number doesn't include the killings of at least 187 people in the fishing village of Baga during fighting between extremists and security forces, as witnesses and human rights activists say Nigeria's military killed civilians and burned thousands of homes and businesses.

Extremist attack casualties are expected to rise as fighters now have access to sophisticated weaponry. While Nigeria's military has fought in the past decade with heavily armed militants and criminal gangs operating in the creeks of its oil-rich southern delta, analysts and security official say those groups never had access to anti-aircraft weapons. Nor did these groups launch attacks overrunning military barracks or leveling towns.

Where extremists gathered these sophisticated weapons also remains unclear, though they have several means available to them. A propaganda video released in March by Boko Haram, featuring its leader Abubakar Shekau, showed fighters gathered around weapons they said they stole from an attack on an army barracks. Those weapons included what appeared to be heavy machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and possibly anti-aircraft weapons, as well as ammunition and brand-new bulletproof vests.

Another source of tactics and weapons may come from northern Mali, where Nigerian extremists fought along others.

"Boko Haram will also likely recruit militants who fought and obtained new skills from warfare in Mali," wrote analyst Jacob Zenn in a recent publication by the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Army's West Point. "The Boko Haram attack on an army barracks in Monguno ... , in which the militants mounted weapons on four-wheel-drive vehicles, and the discovery of improvised fighting vehicles in a raid on a Boko Haram hideout in Maiduguri ... suggest that Boko Haram has already learned new methods of fighting from the Islamist militants in Mali."

Meanwhile, arms are likely to continue to come out of Libya from heavily armed militias there, said analyst Zounmenou. Those arms can spread quickly through the Sahara Desert and into West Africa's Sahel to Nigeria, a major shipment stop for illegal weapons, he said.

While Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan has spoken before about the need to control arms shipments throughout West Africa, the trade continues largely unstopped. And as more of those weapons end up in the hands of Islamic extremists in Nigeria's north, more violence can be expected, said Zounmenou: "They are now really going to war."

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Jon Gambrell can be reached at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP .

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt predicted on Tuesday that there will be more than a billion smartphones in use featuring its Android software within the next six to nine months.

Schmidt also noted that Google had no intention of blocking access to a new app from Facebook Inc, saying he was "phenomenally happy" with the app from Google's rival, which replaces the homescreen on Android phones.

The new Facebook Home app was released on Friday and gives the social networking service prominent placement on Android phones.

Removing Facebook Home from Google's app store would be counter to Google's "public statements, our policies, our religion," Schmidt said at a conference in New York on Tuesday organized by the technology blog AllThingsD.

Because the Android software is open source, companies are free to tinker with it and customize it to their needs. Facebook's Home app prominently displays Facebook's newsfeed and messages on the homescreen, stealing the spotlight from Google's own services such as Web search and maps.

The five-year old Android software has been a huge hit for Google, giving the Internet search company a strong footing with consumers who increasingly access the Web from mobile phones rather than from PCs. Android is now the world's No.1 mobile phone software, with more than 750 million mobile devices featuring Android in use across the world.

At the current rate, Schmidt said that Google should cross the 1 billion mark within six to nine months and will be "nearing 2 billion in a year or two."

Schmidt also said the European Union antitrust regulators were not looking at Android issues and he noted that regulators could be done evaluating a proposal to settle an investigation of the company within the year.

"If that proceeds think it will be a pretty good outcome for everybody," Schmidt said.

The European Commission, which began investigating Google's business practices in 2010, said Google may have violated antitrust rules by pushing its own services over those of rivals, copying travel and restaurant reviews from competing sites without permission and restricting advertisers from moving to competing services.

The world's most popular search engine formally submitted a package of concessions to European regulators last week. Neither the Commission nor Google have given details of the proposals. But people familiar with the matter have told Reuters these could include Google labeling its own services to differentiate them from rivals', and also imposing fewer restrictions on advertisers.

(Reporting By Alexei Oreskovic; Editing by Alden Bentley)

Scientists say the lack of moisture usually pushed up from the Gulf of Mexico was the main reason for the drought in the nation's midsection.

Thursday's report by dozens of scientists from five different federal agencies looked into why forecasters didn't see the drought coming. The researchers concluded that it was so unusual and unpredictable that it couldn't have been forecast.

"This is one of those events that comes along once every couple hundreds of years," said lead author Martin Hoerling, a research meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "Climate change was not a significant part, if any, of the event."

Researchers focused on six states Wyoming, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Missouri and Iowa but the drought spread much farther and eventually included nearly two-thirds of the Lower 48 states.For the six states, the drought was the worst four-month period for lack of rainfall since records started being kept in 1895, Hoerling said.

He said the jet stream that draws moisture north from the Gulf was stuck unusually north in Canada.

Other scientists have linked recent changes in the jet stream to shrinking Arctic sea ice, but Hoerling and study co-author Richard Seager of Columbia University said those global warming connections are not valid.

Hoerling used computer simulations to see if he could replicate the drought using man-made global warming conditions. He couldn't. So that means it was a random event, he said.

Using similar methods, Hoerling has been able to attribute increasing droughts in the Mediterranean Sea region to climate change and found that greenhouse gases could be linked to a small portion of the 2011 Texas heat wave.

Another scientist though, blasted the report.

Kevin Trenberth, climate analysis chief at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a federally funded university-run research center, said the report didn't take into account the lack of snowfall in the Rockies the previous winter and how that affected overall moisture in the air. Nor did the study look at the how global warming exacerbated the high pressure system that kept the jet stream north and the rainfall away, he said.

"This was natural variability exacerbated by global warming," Trenberth said in an email. "That is true of all such events from the Russian heat wave of 2010, to the drought and heat waves in Australia."

Hoerling noted that in the past 20 years, the world is seeing more La Ninas, the occasional cooling of the central Pacific Ocean that is the flip side of El Nino. Hoerling said that factor, not part of global warming but part of a natural cycle, increases the chances of such droughts.

Some regions should see more droughts as the world warms because of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas, he said. But the six state area isn't expected to get an increase of droughts from global warming unlike parts of the Southwest Hoerling said.

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Online:

Drought report: http://drought.gov/drought/content/drought-task-force-report-page

___

Seth Borenstein can be followed at http://twitter.com/borenbears

However, many of those purchases involved properties that were subject to foreclosures or short sales, indicating the housing market is far from recovered.

The survey by San Diego-based DataQuick also showed the median sales price in the region fell nearly 3 percent last month from December to $326,000 less than half the peak price of $665,000 reached in 2007 but up from the low of $290,000 recorded in 2009.

A total of 5,479 new and existing homes were sold in the nine-county area, according to DataQuick. The figure was down nearly 27 percent from December but marked a 10.3-percent improvement over January 2011.

The December-to-January drop was normal for the season, while the January-to-January jump showed real improvement, DataQuick said.

The year-over-year increase in January marked the seventh annual jump in a row,the firm said.

Home sales were buoyed by "lower prices, ultra-low mortgage rates, a modestly improved economy and a record level of investor purchases," DataQuick said in a statement.

The lower median price in January was "a reflection of how skewed the market has become toward distressed, lower-cost properties," DataQuick President John Walsh said in the statement. "The higher-end sales have slowed in recent months as many struggle to qualify for loans and others just sit tight."

Distressed property sales the combination of foreclosure and short sales made up more than half of all sales of existing homes. Absentee buyers, who mostly are investors, bought more than a quarter of all homes sold, DataQuick reported

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WHERE:

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WHY:

"Finovate is one of the most compelling and beneficial events in the industry for both financial institutions and solution providers that are driving true revolutionary change,” said Ryan Caldwell, CEO and founder of MoneyDesktop. “The unique ‘speed demo’ presentation format allows us to engage the audience and show what is actually game-changing about the products and tools MoneyDesktop creates. Presenting at Finovate is a near perfect way to highlight our disruptive products, and we are thrilled to unveil our latest batch of ground-breaking products at FinovateSpring 2013.”

About FinovateSpring

FinovateSpring is a demo-based conference for innovative startups and established companies in the fields of banking and financial technology.Held in San Francisco, the event offers an insight-packed glimpse of the future of money via a fast-paced, intimate and unique format.FinovateSpring is organized by The Finovate Group. For more information on the event or to view videos of previous demos, please visit

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TUPELO, Mississippi (Reuters) - A Mississippi martial arts instructor was charged on Saturday with attempting to use a biological weapon after a ricin-laced letter was sent to President Barack Obama earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Justice said.

Everett Dutschke, 41, was arrested at his Tupelo home shortly after midnight by FBI agents following searches of the residence and a former business as part of the ricin letter investigation.

He was later charged with "developing ... and possessing" ricin and "attempting" to use it "as a weapon," according to a joint statement by the U.S. attorney for the northern district of Mississippi and the head of the FBI's Mississippi office.

Ricin is a highly lethal poison made from castor beans.

If convicted, Dutschke faces maximum possible penalties of life imprisonment and a $250,000 fine.

His arrest came several days after U.S. prosecutors dropped charges in the case on Tuesday against another Mississippi man, Kevin Curtis, who was released from jail after a search of his home revealed no incriminating evidence.

Dutschke's name first surfaced when Curtis' attorney suggested in a court hearing that her client had been framed by someone, and mentioned a running feud between Dutschke and Curtis.

Saturday's announcement did not specify if Dutschke was being charged in relation to the ricin letters, but it noted that the investigation had been conducted by several federal agencies including the U. S. Postal Inspection Service and U.S. Capitol Police.

Dutschke's attorney, Lori Basham, did not return calls seeking comment, but she told Reuters earlier in the week that her client denied having anything to do with the ricin letters.

Dutschke is expected to appear in U.S. District Court in Oxford, Mississippi, on Monday.

Federal agents initially targeted Curtis, an Elvis impersonator, in their efforts to find who sent the letters laced with ricin.

Letters addressed to Obama and Senator Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican, were retrieved last week at off-site mail facilities before reaching their intended victims. A Mississippi state judge also received a ricin-laced letter.

Discovery of the letters fueled more national anxiety in the days after the bombing at the Boston Marathon.

The case also brought extra scrutiny for the FBI almost 12 years after a 2001 letter-borne anthrax attack that killed five people and puzzled investigators for years. The anthrax investigation came in the wake of the September 11, 2001, hijacked plane attacks on the United States.

Federal agents in unmarked vehicles were stationed in streets surrounding Dutschke's home on Friday afternoon and all evening.

Agents from the FBI and members of an anti-terrorist response team from the Mississippi National Guard, some wearing hazardous material suits, had searched the home on Tuesday and Wednesday, as well as the premises of a former martial arts studio Dutschke ran in the city.

Dutschke was cooperating with federal officials during the searches this week, his attorney said.

'MISSING PIECES'

Suspicion had originally fallen on Curtis because of wording contained in all three ricin letters, which included his initials "KC."

Dutschke has told local media that he knew Curtis but had only had contact with him three times, and not since 2010.

Curtis, 45, told the Northeastern Mississippi Daily Journal that he believed Dutschke deliberately sabotaged his career as a performer by calling sponsors and telling them about Curtis' numerous prior arrests. "I lost 12 really big shows in 2011 and eight in 2012 directly linked to him," Curtis told the newspaper.

Dutschke, who fronted a two-man blues band in Tupelo called RoboDrum, ran unsuccessfully as a Republican candidate in 2007 against Stephen Holland, a Democratic state representative from the Tupelo area. Holland's mother, Sadie, is the judge to whom one of the ricin-tainted letters was mailed this month.

Curtis's brother and fellow Elvis impersonator, insurance agent Jack Curtis, worked for a time with Dutschke and said he believed the feud with Dutschke was related to his brother's efforts to publicize allegations about a black market for body parts at a local Mississippi hospital.

Kevin Curtis was fired as a janitor from North Mississippi Medical Center in Tupelo after raising questions about body parts he said he observed there. The hospital strongly denied the allegations.

Dutschke faces other charges related to an April 1 indictment for fondling three children between ages 7 and 16, from 2007 to 2013, according to court records.

RICIN POTENCY

The FBI said on Thursday that more tests may be necessary to determine the potency of a granular material identified as ricin contained in the letters.

An FBI agent testified in court in Mississippi that the ricin found in the letters was in a crude form and looked like castor beans ground up in a blender, according to media accounts. Experts have said ricin in that form would have a low potency.

Castor bean plants are grown as ornamental shrubs in the Southern United States, but there is no domestic castor oil production and it is mostly imported from India and China.

Milton Leitenberg, senior research scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies at the University of Maryland, said the vast majority of ricin cases since the 1960s had involved crude ricin preparations made from recipes published in manuals and on the Internet.

"You could ingest this crude stuff, swallow a couple of tablespoons and you'd probably vomit, but not much more," Leitenberg said in a telephone interview.

A material like that described in the ricin court hearing would pose little danger, Leitenberg said.

(Additional reporting by Emily Lane in Jackson, Mississippi, Marilyn W. Thompson and Susan Cornwell in Washingon; Writing by David Adams; Editing by Sandra Maler and Peter Cooney)

Mayweather, who was in Detroit for a news conference ahead of Saturday's junior middleweight title bout between Cornelius "K9" Bundrage and Ishe Smith, likened his Showtime agreement to a matrimonial modification.

"I got a divorce," a smiling Mayweather said of leaving HBO, his longtime television home. "I'm married again."

"I couldn't have asked for a better deal," he said.

The sport's biggest star and moneymaker announced Tuesday that he'll fight Robert Guerrero on May 4 on Showtime, a move that shook up the boxing universe.Mayweather's move is a coup for Showtime, which long has trailed HBO in boxing prominence.

Mayweather (43-0, 26 KOs) said his new revenue-sharing deal could include up to six pay-per-view bouts over 30 months, a much faster pace than to which he's become accustomed.

The 147-pound champion, who hasn't fought since beating Miguel Cotto on May 5, has fought just four times since December 2007.

"The fans want to see a lot more of me," Mayweather told reporters at the MGM Grand Detroit. "I will give you excitement."

Mayweather, who turns 36 on Sunday, was there to support Saturday's card at the nearby Masonic Temple Theatre as well as Smith, his friend and sparring partner from Las Vegas, who is vying for his first-ever professional title.

The news event was testy with supporters of Bundrage and Smith screaming at each other and scuffling at one point inside one of the casino-hotel's conference rooms.

Mayweather was all smiles, putting his arm around Smith and chatting amiably with Stephen Espinoza, executive vice president and general manager of Showtime Sports, who called the deal one "which we're very, very proud of."

Mayweather, who grew up in Grand Rapids, Mich., said he began training for the Guerrero fight Wednesday by running in the gym of Ottawa Hills High School in his hometown.

"This is a guy I know I can't overlook," Mayweather said of Guerrero (31-1-1, 18 KOs), the WBC's interim welterweight champion.

Manny Pacquiao had been Mayweather's only rival in recent years, though he had a pair of losses in 2012. Asked Thursday about a possible future fight with the Filipino, Mayweather pointed to the "crucial knockout" he suffered at the hands of Juan Manuel Marquez in December.

"If people don't know, Floyd Mayweather's not scared of (any) opponent," Mayweather said. "You just don't wake up overnight and just become (the best) pound-for-pound (fighter). And sometimes people talk about my legacy. If my legacy was based upon just one fight, then I didn't need to fight 43 fights."

Shifting to his upcoming fight, Mayweather promised an entertaining bout with Guerrero.

"Call your local cable company, because it's Showtime, baby," he said.

Nigeria's military blocked access for relief officials to enter the town of Baga, which sits along the shores of Lake Chad in the nation's far northeast, said Nwakpa O. Nwakpa, a Red Cross spokesman. Another 77 people are receiving medical care there in the ruins of a town where some 300 homes burned down, he said. Local residents blamed angry soldiers for burning down neighborhoods where they knew civilians were hiding.

"Our volunteers are on standby," Nwakpa said. "We are yet to be provided clearance."

The fighting in Baga began Friday and lasted for hours, sending people fleeing into the arid scrublands surrounding the community. By the time Borno state officials could reach the city Sunday, a local government official said at least 185 people were killed, something not disputed by a brigadier general who attended the visit.

Officials could not offer a breakdown of civilian casualties versus those of soldiers and extremist fighters. Many of the bodies had been burned beyond recognition in fires that razed whole sections of the town, residents said. Those killed were buried as soon as possible, following local Muslim tradition.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed shock and sadness at the high civilian casualty toll and large number of homes destroyed and called on extremist groups to cease their attacks, U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky said.

"The secretary-general reiterates his firm conviction that no objective sought can justify this resort to violence," Nesirky said. "He underscores the need for all concerned to fully respect human rights and safeguard the lives of civilians."

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, who appeared at an event Monday on the nation's power supply at the Aso Rock presidential villa in the country's capital, did not comment on the killings there. A few hours after Ban's statement, Jonathan's office issued a release saying he had ordered "a full-scale investigation into reports of high civilian casualties."

The "administration will continue to do everything possible to avoid the killing or injuring of innocent bystanders in security operations against terrorists and insurgents," the statement read. "Rules of engagement for the military and security agencies are already in place for this purpose and the investigation ordered by President Jonathan into the incident in Baga is to amongst other things, determine whether or not these rules were fully complied with."

The statement also said "casualty figures being reported by the foreign media may be grossly exaggerated." The statement did not offer any tolls for the injured or dead, nor did it explain what military officials already had told the presidency about the fighting.

Members of the Islamic extremist network Boko Haram used heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades in the assault Friday, which Brig. Gen. Austin Edokpaye said began after soldiers surrounded a mosque they believed was housing Boko Haram members. Extremists earlier had killed a military officer, officials said.

The military said extremists used civilians as human shields during the fighting implying that soldiers opened fire in neighborhoods where they knew civilians lived.

However, local residents who spoke to an Associated Press journalist who accompanied the state officials said soldiers purposefully set the fires during the attack. Violence by security forces in the northeast targeting civilians has been widely documented by journalists and human rights activists. A similar raid in Maiduguri, Borno state's capital, in October after extremists killed a military officer saw soldiers kill at least 30 civilians and set fires across a neighborhood.

Eric Guttschuss, a researcher with Human Rights Watch who studies Nigeria, said his organization continued to study what happened, though it already had deep concerns about the allegations surrounding the soldiers' conduct.

"We are investigating this extremely serious incident," he said. "In the past, Nigeria has simply denied or tried to cover up security force abuses."

The Islamic insurgency in Nigeria grew out of a 2009 riot led by Boko Haram members in Maiduguri that ended in a military and police crackdown that killed some 700 people. The group's leader died in police custody in an apparent execution. From 2010 on, Islamic extremists have engaged in hit-and-run shootings and suicide bombings, attacks that have killed at least 1,548 people before Friday's attack, according to an AP count.

Boko Haram, which means "Western education is sacrilege" in the Hausa language of Nigeria's north, has said it wants its imprisoned members freed and Nigeria to adopt strict Shariah law across the multiethnic nation of more than 160 million people. While Jonathan has started a committee to look at the idea of offering an amnesty deal to extremist fighters, Boko Haram's leader Abubakar Shekau has dismissed the idea out of hand in messages.

Friday's violence marked the worst attack linked to Nigeria's Islamic insurgency. In January 2012, Boko Haram launched a coordinated attack in Kano, northern Nigeria's largest city, that killed at least 185 people, the previous worst attack. However, casualty numbers remain murky in Nigeria, where security and government officials often downplay figures.

Despite the deployment of more soldiers and police to northern Nigeria, the nation's weak central government has been unable to stop the killings. Meanwhile, violent atrocities committed by security forces against the local civilian population only fuels rage in the region.

Borno state Gov. Kashim Shettima, who visited Baga on Sunday, did not directly implicate the military for the killings in this attack, though anger could be heard in his voice.

"If the harassment continues, I will personally relocate from Maiduguri to here and let me be harassed along with the rest of the people," Shettima said at the time.

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Associated Press writers Haruna Umar in Maiduguri, Nigeria, and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.

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Jon Gambrell can be reached at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP .

Dow Jones industrial futures rose 58 points to 14,673. The broader S&P futures added 7.8 points to 1,581.90. Nasdaq futures are up 18 points to 2,842.

On top of strong earnings from the likes of Harley-Davidson, Southwest Airlines and Dow Chemical, the government said that unemployment benefit applications fall to 339,000, second-lowest level in 5 years.

That was better than most economists had expected and further tamped down apprehensions about a terrible jobs report from March.

There are more earning on the way in one of the busiest weeks of the quarter for U.S companies.

Also reporting Thursday are UPS, United Continental, Starbucks and Expedia.