James scores 24, Heat take Game 1 over Dallas

MIAMI – Dwyane Wade's night began with a hug for his mom. It ended with an embrace from LeBron James.

Nearby, Chris Bosh held up three fingers.

No explanation necessary. The Miami Heat are three wins from the reason why the Big Three came together in the first place.

James scored 24 points for his first win in five NBA finals games, Wade scored 15 of his 22 points in the second half and the Heat beat the Dallas Mavericks 92-84 in Game 1 of the title series on Tuesday night — holding the Western Conference champions to their lowest point total of the playoffs after a dominant defensive showing down the stretch.

"Feels good because it's the first game and we played well as a team," James said. "We've got a lot of work to do. ... That's one in the books. We're excited about this game. Tomorrow we prepare for Game 2, and I see ways we can get better."

Dirk Nowitzki scored 27 points — tearing a tendon in the middle finger on his left, non-shooting, hand during the game and revealing afterward that he'll likely wear a splint throughout the remainder of the series — and grabbed eight rebounds for Dallas, which got 16 points and 10 rebounds from Shawn Marion and 12 points from Jason Terry, most of those coming in an early flurry. It was Dallas' fifth straight loss to Miami in finals games, dating to the Heat rally for the 2006 crown.

Dallas held the Heat to 39 percent shooting, Miami's second-worst showing of the playoffs.

Problem was, the Mavericks shot 37 percent — by far, their worst night of the postseason offensively.

"You hold a team to 38 percent shooting and 92 points, for us, that's usually a victory," Marion said.

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House deals symbolic blow to raising debt ceiling

The House overwhelmingly refused to raise the nation's borrowing ability Tuesday — a largely symbolic vote designed to bolster Republican arguments that a successful measure must include deep spending cuts and sweeping policy revisions.

 

The vote was never intended as a final decision on raising the government's debt ceiling, but as a step in the political process leading to Aug. 2. That's when budget officials project they will need to borrow more than the current ceiling of nearly $14.3 trillion.

Failure to increase the borrowing capacity would result in a first-ever federal default, which experts predict would lead to turmoil in financial markets and severe economic consequences.

House leaders took steps to assure Wall Street that Congress does not intend to risk default, reaching out to market leaders before Tuesday's vote — which was scheduled in the evening, after U.S. financial markets had closed.

"Today, we are making clear that Republicans will not accept an increase in our nation's debt limit without substantial spending cuts and real budgetary reforms," said Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

Democrats charged that Republicans were playing with fire as they tried to force GOP priorities, including the Republican proposal to revamp Medicare, into the budget talks.

 

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Japan launches 'Super Cool Biz' to save energy

TOKYO – The Japanese government wants the country's suit-loving salarymen to be bold this summer. Ditch the stuffy jacket and tie. And for the good of a country facing a power crunch, go light and casual.

Japan's "Super Cool Biz" campaign kicked off Wednesday with a government-sponsored fashion show featuring outfits appropriate for the office yet cool enough to endure the sweltering heat.

This summer may be especially brutal. The loss of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, which was cripped by the March 11 tsunami, means electricity could be in short supply during especially hot days.

To prevent blackouts, the government is asking companies and government offices to cut electricity usage by 15 percent. It wants companies to limit air conditioning and set room temperatures at a warm 28 degrees Celsius (82 degrees Fahrenheit).

The idea isn't new. "Cool Biz" was introduced in 2005 by the environment minister at the time, Yuriko Koike. The campaign was part of efforts to fight global warming.

But with Japan dealing with an ongoing nuclear crisis and the aftermath of a magnitude-9.0 earthquake and tsunami, officials decided they needed to take Cool Biz one step further this year.

"When we started Cool Biz in 2005, people said it was undignified and sloppy," Koike said at the fashion show held at a Tokyo department store. "But this is now the sixth year, and people have grown accustomed to it."

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England and FA under attack from all sides within Fifa for standing up to Sepp Blatter over presidential election

FA chairman David Bernstein called on the 208 Fifa member associations to stop Sepp Blatter being re-elected unopposed, but they voted by 172 votes to 17 not to postpone the election.

Fifa's senior vice-president Julio Grondona then launched a stinging attack, saying: "England is always complaining."

The Argentine head of Fifa's finance committee told the congress: "We always have attacks from England which are mostly lies with the support of journalism which is more busy lying than telling the truth. This upsets and disturbs the Fifa family.

"To present such a project as David Bernstein presented is like shooting a penalty because it cannot be always from the same place that the insults and problems come from.

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US trolling for Taliban to open talks

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – After 10 years of bloody battle in Afghanistan, the United States is trolling for Taliban officials to talk peace with before the July drawdown of American troops.

Washington's special envoy, Marc Grossman, has a one-point agenda: to reconcile Afghanistan's warring factions, say Western diplomats in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

But as Washington seeks negotiating partners, it has little knowledge of who among the Taliban has the clout to make talks worthwhile.

Grossman, therefore, is trying for access to Mullah Mohammed Omar, the one-eyed Taliban leader, according to Imtiaz Gul, head of the Center for Research and Security Studies in Islamabad, Pakistan's capital.

In a meeting earlier this month in Islamabad, Gul said Grossman told him that he was looking for "persons or groups who can provide us access to Mullah Omar, who can demonstrate their ability to approach Mullah Omar and get him on board, who can get through to Mullah Omar to open talks."

Finding a genuine interlocutor is a slippery business.

Heavily sanctioned and largely ostracized during their rule, many members of the Taliban leadership are not known to U.S. officials.

For example, late last year a Quetta, Pakistan, shopkeeper posed as the Taliban's former aviation minister, Mullah Mohammed Akhtar Mansour, and met twice with Western officials before they realized they had been tricked.

The Associated Press has also learned that the United States held a series of meetings with more than one Taliban member. There also has been contact with representatives of Hezb-e-Islami, a group led by U.S.-declared terrorist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the Haqqani network, considered by NATO and the U.S. to be their deadliest enemy in Afghanistan.

Earlier this month the German weekly Der Speigel reported that Germany had helped U.S. officials contact Mullah Omar's personal secretary, Tayyab Aga. He was the last public voice of the Taliban before fighters fled southern Kandahar province in December 2001, shortly after U.S.-led invasion. While Germany has been involved, opening of contact with Aga was an American initiative, a western diplomat in the region told The AP.

The last time Aga was seen in public was Nov. 21, 2001 when he conducted a final Taliban press conference in Spin Boldak in southern Kandahar Province. The Taliban fled Kandahar on Dec. 7, 2001 allowing Hamid Karzai to be named president and the U.S. led coalition to announce that the Taliban had been routed countrywide.

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WikiLeaks reveals Liberal tension between Ignatieff, Rae

OTTAWA—Leadership tension within the federal Liberal party has been on Washington's radar for the past few years, according to a new batch of U.S. embassy cables released by WikiLeaks.

Long before the Liberals' disastrous showing in the May 2 election and the resignation of leader Michael Ignatieff, U.S. embassy officials were getting some revealing, inside glimpses of a fractious political family.

Notably, one of those glimpses was a first-hand look at the tension between Ignatieff and Bob Rae, the Toronto Centre MP and former Ontario premier who has now been named interim leader.

Rae and Ignatieff were guests at a lunch with U.S. ambassador David Jacobson in October 2009, the cables show.

"The dynamics between onetime friends and later rivals Ignatieff and Rae remain clearly tense, with Rae arriving late and then immediately dominating the conversation, while Ignatieff sat back almost meekly," says the report of the lunch, dated Oct. 23, 2009.

"Rae was by far the more forceful and eloquent of the two and showed little deference to his party chief, without at any time displaying any rudeness or personal animosity. He came across as better read and more substantive than Ignatieff, who stuck mostly to pleasantries and generalities."

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Amazon's gamble gives Lady Gaga 1M in album sales

NEW YORK – Lady Gaga sold more than 1.1 million copies of her new album "Born This Way" and set a digital sales record last week — with an assist from Amazon.com.

Billboard announced Tuesday that "Born This Way" debuted at No. 1 on its Billboard 200 album chart, becoming just the 17th album to sell a million copies in its first week since SoundScan started tracking sales in 1991 and the top-selling digital debut.

The dance pop provocateur is just the fifth female with a an album that sold more than a million copies in the SoundScan era.

Lady Gaga's first No. 1 album sold the most copies of any debut since March 2005 when 50 Cent's "The Massacre" sold 1.14 million. The last million-selling album was Taylor Swift's "Speak Now" in November.

Amazon's attention-grabbing download price of 99 cents last Tuesday and Thursday helped drive "Born This Way" to an unprecedented 662,000 in digital sales, pushing the album to nearly three times initial estimates by Universal Music Group. Amazon sold more than 440,000 of those copies alone, but with mixed results.

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