People walk toward the U.S. Capitol in Washington March 4, 2013.

WASHINGTON | Fri Mar 15, 2013 5:26pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A bipartisan group in the House of Representatives is close to completing work on a comprehensive immigration reform bill that would include a pathway to citizenship for 11 million illegal immigrants living in the United States, according to congressional aides.

Two of the aides confirmed on Friday that the negotiators were still trying to agree on the issue of how to handle temporary laborers coming into the United States.

House Speaker John Boehner, a Republican, was briefed on Friday on the legislation, which congressional aides described as being nearly complete. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi received a briefing on Thursday, said one senior Democratic aide.

Michael Steel, a spokesman for Boehner, said: "The speaker had a good talk with the Republicans in the bipartisan immigration reform group. They've made real progress on a tough issue." He said the group would continue to work on the measure.

Boehner's office would not comment on details of the bipartisan group's work.

The back-to-back briefings for Pelosi and Boehner were "to let them know they were close to a finished product," said one House aide with knowledge of the issue.

In the Senate, a bipartisan group also neared completion of its own broad immigration bill, said senators and Senate aides.

Andrea Zuniga DiBitetto, a lobbyist for the AFL-CIO labor federation, said, "We're confident that a deal is going to be reached."

Leading senators have said the goal is to introduce a bill by early April. If things go as planned, the legislation could be ready for Senate floor debate by June or July.

Proponents in the House hope to pass their version of a bill this year.

A comprehensive reform bill, if it comes together, would aim to further toughen border security, deal with the millions living illegally in the United States and develop a way to streamline the future legal flow of immigrants, including temporary workers.

Prospects for legislation got a major boost last November, when Hispanic-Americans voted overwhelmingly to re-elect Democratic President Barack Obama.

The election results jolted Republicans, many of whom had taken a hard-line stance against any immigration reforms other than securing the southwestern border with Mexico and luring more skilled workers from abroad for U.S. high-tech firms facing labor shortages.

Although most Republicans say they now want to see some sort of immigration bill enacted this year, many are still hesitant about, or opposed, to giving 11 million illegal immigrants a special pathway to citizenship, arguing that would reward them for breaking the law and encourage a new wave of illegal border crossings.

TOUGHEST CHALLENGE

Among the toughest issues the group of eight senators has wrestled with, more so even than a path toward citizenship, involves maids, waitresses and other low-paid foreign workers.

The group, which includes Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio, a potential 2016 presidential candidate, is trying to create a system allowing businesses to hire more low-skilled workers to fill shortages, but only after they show that they cannot find Americans to take the jobs.

In the past two weeks, the senators have submitted proposals to the AFL-CIO, the biggest labor group, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the largest business group. But those two groups remain deeply divided.

Talks "have been difficult," Randel Johnson, the chamber's senior vice president of labor and immigration, told reporters on Friday. "What is the overall cap of the (temporary visa) program is an issue," he said.

The chamber wants 400,000 visas a year. The AFL-CIO wants to cap visas in "very low five figures," said Johnson.

The chamber and the AFL-CIO had agreed that a new temporary worker program, which unions previously opposed on grounds it exploits workers, would eventually let some of the immigrants earn U.S. citizenship.

Johnson could not say how many of the temporary workers would be allowed to earn citizenship, except to say they would have to meet certain criteria such as having no criminal record.

That also is the case for the 11 million undocumented people in the United States, according to the Senate initiative outlined in late January.

Under the Senate measure, they would have to have clean criminal records, pay back taxes and a penalty and learn to speak English. In practice, it could take up to 15 years for someone to earn citizenship. But they would not live under the threat of deportation.

The group has discussed creation of a commission, perhaps within the Labor Department, to oversee the annual admission of low-skilled foreign workers. It would consider factors including the jobless rate in specific sectors, such as those that employ hotel and restaurant workers.

(Additional reporting by Rachelle Younglai; Editing by Fred Barbash and Peter Cooney)

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1 of 2. A man walks in front of a company logo outside an Apple store in downtown Shanghai January 24, 2013.

SHANGHAI | Fri Mar 15, 2013 2:14pm EDT

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Technology giant Apple Inc and car maker Volkswagen AG were singled out by state-run China Central Television (CCTV) in its annual corporate malpractice expose.

On its "3.15" investigative special aired late on Friday, CCTV said that Chinese customers were not given the same post-sales service from Apple as it gave to users in other markets.

The report also said that the direct shift gearbox (DSG) transmission, a long-standing issue for Volkswagen, was causing cars to speed up or slow down during driving.

Volkswagen, which plans to almost double production capacity in China to 4 million cars in the next five years, promised action in response to the "3:15" show, whose name refers to the date of World Consumer Rights Day.

"We take this report very seriously and we will quickly make contact with our consumers to resolve the issue," it said on its official Chinese Weibo microblog.

In a statement Apple China said: "Our team is always striving to exceed our customers' expectations, and we take any customer concerns very seriously."

Apple looks to China not just as its main production base, but also to re-energize slowing growth, the result of rising smartphone penetration in mature markets. CEO Tim Cook sees the world's No. 2 economy as virgin expansion territory, and Apple singles out the region in every quarterly results report.

The television show has named and shamed a number of prominent Western companies in the past, hitting the sales and stocks of its targets in a retail market that is forecast to be the world's largest in three years.

Last year "3:15", one of the most widely watched shows in China, singled out fast-food giant McDonald's Corp and French hypermarket chain Carrefour SA for food safety violations.

The companies were forced to apologize and their shares slumped as China's army of half a billion microbloggers unleashed their anger online.

U.S. retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Korea's Kunho Tire Co Inc also have been blasted by state TV on Consumer Rights Day.

SAFETY CONCERNS

In December, a separate state television report triggered a food safety scare at Yum Brands Inc. restaurants, cutting its China same-restaurant sales by 20 percent in January and February.

Chinese companies have not been spared from scrutiny.

Public concern about food safety, pollution and corporate corruption has intensified over the last few years, after state media exposed malpractice at local firms including web search engine Baidu Inc and milk producer Inner Mongolia Yili Industrial Group Co.

"These TV exposes create the impression that you can't trust that brand," said Torsten Stocker, head of Greater China consumer practice at Monitor Deloitte. "If there's some smoke then maybe there's much bigger fire."

In a bid to preempt any negative publicity on Consumer Rights Day, some companies launched customer-friendly promotions ahead of the TV show. McDonald's will give out free breakfasts on Monday and Wal-Mart launched an "adopt-a-tree" campaign.

But some Chinese consumers said that the revelations from the "3.15" show would nonetheless have a significant impact on their choice of products in the future.

"I think the exposure of these companies makes them hard to believe again, at least I myself will boycott these companies," Sherry Chen, a clerk at DBS bank in Shanghai, told Reuters in the city's affluent financial district ahead of Friday's show.

The show also stirred up vitriol online in China. Within an hour of the broadcast, Apple had been mentioned 50,000 times on popular web microblog Weibo, China's version of Twitter which has more than half a billion users.

While many posts on Weibo were negative, the targeted companies may take solace that some users were not entirely convinced by the "3.15" show, which is a colorful mixture of under-cover footage and pro-consumer song-and-dance routines.

"Tonight's 3.15 hit out against corruption. But the most fraudulent thing at the end of the night was the show itself," posted Weibo user 'Soledad Horse'. "Oh CCTV, can't you try and find some intelligence from now on?"

(Additional reporting by Fang Yan; Editing by Miral Fahmy and Michael Roddy)

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A computer screen is pictured before a scientific seminar to deliver the latest update in the search for the Higgs boson at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Meyrin, near Geneva July 4, 2012.

GENEVA | Thu Mar 14, 2013 11:08am EDT

GENEVA (Reuters) - Physicists who last summer triumphantly announced the discovery of a new particle but held back from saying what it was, declared on Thursday there was now little doubt it was the long-sought Higgs boson.

Latest analysis of data from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) particle accelerator, where the boson was spotted as a bump on a graph early in 2012, "strongly indicates" it is the Higgs, said CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research.

Physicists believe the boson and its linked energy field were vital in the formation of the universe after the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago by bringing flying particles together to make stars, planets and eventually humans - giving mass to matter, in the scientific jargon.

The particle and the field, named for British physicist Peter Higgs who predicted their existence 50 years ago, are also the last major missing elements in what scientists call the Standard Model of how the cosmos works at the very basic level.

But the CERN statement stopped short of claiming a discovery - which would clear the way to Nobel prizes for scientists linked to the project - and floated the idea that this might be an exotic "super-Higgs" offering a key to new worlds of physics.

"It remains an open question whether this is the Higgs boson of the Standard Model ... or possibly the lightest of several bosons predicted in some theories that go beyond the Standard Model," said CERN, a large complex on the edge of Geneva.

"Finding the answer to this question will take time."

Although some CERN physicists privately expressed irritation at the continuing refusal to - as one said - "call a Higgs a Higgs", others argued that this could only come when the evidence was all totally irrefutable.

If it is not what one CERN-watching blogger has dubbed a "common or garden Higgs" but something more complex, vistas into worlds of supersymmetry, string theory, multiple dimensions and even parallel universes could begin to unfold.

WHAT KIND OF HIGGS?

"To me it is clear that we are dealing with a Higgs boson, though we still have a long way to go to know what kind of Higgs boson it is," said Joe Incandela, spokesman for CMS, one of the two independent CERN LHC monitoring teams.

"There is every possibility that it is a Higgs boson from a more complex model, such as supersymmetry (a theory which says every elementary particle has a so-far unseen heavier partner)," another CMS researcher, John Conway, told Reuters.

In recent months, rumors have flown that the particle might be some sort of super-Higgs - "the link between our world and most of the matter in the universe" as predicted by U.S. physicist Sean Carroll in a new book.

But David Charlton, who speaks for the ATLAS team, said the latest analysis, presented on Thursday to a conference in the Italian Alps, pointed to the particle fitting the Standard Model - which would exclude exotica.

However, CERN scientists agree nothing startlingly new could be expected until much later in the decade, well after the LHC - shut down last month for two years to allow its power and reach to be doubled - resumes operations in early 2015.

In the giant subterranean collider, which started up in March 2010, particles are smashed together hundreds of times a second at near the speed of light to simulate the Big Bang. The debris is then tracked on huge detectors.

But the new particle turns up only once in every trillion collisions - leaving the thousands of physicists and analysts at CERN, and in laboratories around the world, the massive task of deciding what data to discard.

(Reporting by Robert Evans; Editing by Pravin Char)

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n">(Reuters) - Model year 2012 passenger vehicles sold in the United States had an average fuel economy rating of 23.8 miles per gallon, the highest on record, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said on Friday.

Last year's models showed a 1.4 mpg improvement over 2011, the biggest annual improvement since the EPA began keeping records on fuel economy.

Improving fuel economy is a key component of the Obama administration's effort to cut U.S. oil consumption and polluting greenhouse gases, which cause global warming.

Model year 2012 cars and light-duty trucks sold in the United States average emissions of 374 grams of carbon dioxide, down from 398 grams per mile in the previous model year, the EPA report said.

Carbon dioxide accounts for the lion's share of greenhouse gas emissions globally.

The EPA said the figures released in its report, which can be seen at 1.usa.gov/XcUqqj are preliminary.

Among major manufacturers, Honda Motor Co showed the highest average fuel economy of 26.4 mpg, followed by Volkswagen AG at 26.2 mpg, Mazda Motor Corp and at 25.9 mpg.

Among U.S. automakers, Ford Motor Co vehicles reported the best average fuel economy at 23.2 mpg, up from 21.1 mpg for its 2011 models, the EPA said.

Hyundai Motor Co would have the highest for 2012 vehicles, at 28.8 mpg, but its figures are under investigation by the EPA. In November, the EPA announced that it was investigating Hyundai and its corporate sister Kia Motors Corp after its own tests showed less performance than what the automakers claimed.

U.S. automakers have more pickup trucks and large sport utility vehicles in their lineups, which increases their corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) ratings.

Auto manufacturers have increased the number of hybrid gasoline-electric vehicles, plug-in vehicles as well as increased fuel economy for internal combustion gasoline engines in recent years, largely spurred on fuel economy targets set by the Obama administration.

In 2011, Obama reached a deal with major automakers that fuel economy for each manufacturer will rise to an average of 54.5 mpg by 2025. By model year 2016, U.S. cars and light-duty trucks by each manufacturer are to average 35.5 mpg.

The EPA said the longer term trend of improving fuel economy ratings began with the 2005 model year, during the Bush administration.

Since the 2007 model year, U.S. passenger vehicles have shown a 13-percent increase in fuel economy ratings and a 16 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.

(Reporting by Bernie Woodall; editing by Sofina Mirza-Reid)

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NEW YORK | Wed Mar 13, 2013 10:01pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Author Claire Vaye Watkins won the annual Story Prize for short fiction on Wednesday for her collection of short stories that focus on the American West.

Watkins, an assistant professor at Pennsylvania's Bucknell University, won a $20,000 cash prize for "Battleborn," a series of 10 stories published by Riverhead Books that delve into the struggles of characters in both the historical and contemporary West.

With settings ranging from the gambling meccas of Reno and Las Vegas to rural brothels and Gold Rush towns, some of the stories are informed by Watkins' family notoriety - her father was a member of the Manson family and testified against Charles Manson at Manson's murder trial before dying of leukemia in 1990. The first story is entitled "Ghosts, Cowboys."

Watkins herself was born and raised in the unforgiving lands of the Mojave Desert, where she remains co-director of the Mojave School, a non-profit creative writing workshop for teenagers in rural Nevada.

The other finalists for the prestigious award, each of whom received $5,000, included Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Diaz for "This Is How You Lose Her," and National Book Award finalist ("Among the Missing") Dan Chaon for "Stay Awake."

The finalists, all of whom read excerpts and discussed their work on Wednesday at The New School, a university in Greenwich Village, were chosen from a list of 98 entrants.

In choosing Watkins, the judges cited the first-time author for "the audacity of her voice."

"In the 10 stories in her first collection, Claire Vaye Watkins takes an unflinching look at the apocalyptic dimensions of our culture's boom-or-bust obsession," they said in a joint statement.

"She's a fierce and original new writer, and 'Battleborn' is an astonishing short story collection," they added.

The judges were critic and author Jane Ciabattari, author and past Story Prize finalist Yiyun Li and New York City bookseller Sarah McNally.

Past winners of the annual prize have included Mary Gordon, Jim Shepard, Tobias Wolff and last year's winner, Steven Millhauser.

(Reporting by Chris Michaud; Editing by Jan Paschal)

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''Hannibal Crossing the Alps on an Elephant'', a painting by Nicolas Poussin, is seen in this undated handout picture provided by Christie's in London March 15, 2013.

LONDON | Fri Mar 15, 2013 6:46pm EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - Auction house Christie's will offer an unconventional painting by French classical artist Nicolas Poussin, depicting Carthaginian general Hannibal astride an elephant, in July, expecting it to fetch 3-5 million pounds ($4.5-7.5 million).

The early work is not considered one of the artist's best and was little known until it appeared in public at an exhibition in Rouen in northern France in 1961.

But the auction house is hoping that its provenance - the painting was originally in the collection of Poussin's greatest patron in Rome, scholar Cassiano dal Pozzo - will help boost interest when it goes under the hammer in London on July 2.

"It was painted right after he arrived in Rome and he obviously developed as his career progressed," said Georgina Wilsenach, head of old master and British paintings at Christie's.

"I don't think that takes away its appeal," she added. "It is quite unusual. In terms of (Poussin) works coming up for auction, I think that most are religious paintings or mythological subjects."

The canvas, dating from the mid-1620s and measuring around 1.0 by 1.35 meters, depicts Hannibal on an elephant leading his troops on the fabled journey from Iberia into northern Italy via the Alps to attack Roman forces in the Second Punic War.

The dramatic early picture from an artist famed for works like "The Death of Germanicus" and "The Abduction of the Sabine Women" was snapped up by Cassanio for the then extravagant sum of 40 scudi.

According to Christie's, Poussin's patron paid over the odds for Hannibal in an apparent bid to help the artist who had fallen seriously ill while in Rome and, unable to work, found himself penniless.

PATCHY AUCTION RECORD

Poussin and Cassiano met soon after the French painter moved to Rome in 1624, but Cassiano was dispatched abroad on a papal legation and during his absence the artist lived hand-to-mouth and was forced to sell his pictures for whatever he could get.

Those financial difficulties ended with the return of Cassiano, who, along with his younger brother Carlo Antonio, acquired almost 50 works by Poussin including some of his masterpieces like the first "Seven Sacraments" series.

Poussin is considered one of the most influential artists in European art history and in 1640 was summoned by French king Louis XIII to be court painter, but his record at auction does not always reflect his reputation.

The highest price for a work by Poussin at auction is $6.7 million, set at Sotheby's in 1999 for "The Agony in the Garden".

When Christie's offered the key "Sacrament of Ordination" in 2010 for 15 to 20 million pounds, it did not find a buyer.

Eventually that work - a Cassiano commission and among the most important in Poussin's oeuvre - sold to the Kimbell Art Museum in Texas for $24.3 million in a private deal, the New York Times reported in 2011.

Wilsenach said she believed Poussin's depiction of Hannibal could appeal to collectors not normally interested in old master paintings yet attracted by the dramatic and powerful subject matter.

The picture would be on show in New York during Asian art week and also visit Moscow before the auction in recognition of that potential appeal, she added.

Something similar may have happened in New York in January, according to Wilsenach, when a 1574 Scipione Pulzone portrait of Jacopo Boncompagni in magnificent armor fetched $7.6 million at a Christie's sale versus estimates of $1.5-2.5 million.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, Editing by Belinda Goldsmith)

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