Vienna Hosts Europe's Biggest AIDS Research Charity Event

VIENNA (AP) -- Vienna's central City Hall Square was transformed Saturday into a mythical world of pagan rites and fantastic spectacle as the city hosted its biggest annual party of the year.

The occasion, Europe's biggest charity event, was serious: raising money for AIDS and HIV research. But as in previous years, the 23rd Life Ball was also a free-for all gala with an emphasis on diversity.

This year's theme revolved around the ancient celebration of spring as the giver of life, and organizers pulled out all the stops. The normally somber neo-Gothic City hall was turned into a structure glowing with light, and its square a huge stage of blazing fire, dance, song - and of music ranging from Beethoven and Stravinsky to Trevor Jackson singing "Love Child."

Tens of thousands of spectators pushed against barriers to ogle paying guests in formal dress rubbing shoulders with celebrities, party-goers dressed in little more than body paint and cross-dressers in wild costumes.

Top tickets go for 750 euros ($850) - a price that entitles holders to an all-night party inside the ornate City Hall chambers, complete with champagne and tantalizing delicacies.

For those not in tuxedoes, the color of the evening was gold, and many of the costumes glittered correspondingly. Markus Zenner and Gerhard Grein came as fairy princes because at a party open to all "high nobility also has to be represented."

Others, like Julia, settled for little more than golden body paint. As the evening chill settled in, the 26-year old laughingly conceded that she was cold, while her near-bare partner added: "We're waiting for the party to heat up." Both declined to give full names, saying they could get in trouble with their employers.

Actress Charlize Theron was among the celebrities in attendance and took the stage to urge continued support both for her South African AIDS charity organization and the world-wide fight against HIV - a message backed by her partner, Sean Penn.

Also there were singers Paula Abdul, Mary J. Blige and Kelly Osbourne, burlesque artist Dita Von Teese - and of course Conchita Wurst, the Austrian cross-dressing winner of last year's Eurovision song contest.

Hailing the event as "one of the best nights of my life," Osbourne said: "I will do anything for this cause because it's so beautiful."

Wurst, who has become a poster person for tolerance since her song contest triumph, belted out her new torch song "You Are Unstoppable," to prolonged cheers from the crowd.

She later exchanged her simple ankle-length white skirt and skimpy top to sing "Fire Storm," another new single, in a black-and-white ball gown with a trailing cape designed by Jean Paul Gaultier for an opulent fashion show by the famed French designer.

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Philadelphia Train May Have Been Hit By Projectile Before Wreck

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - The Amtrak train that derailed in Philadelphia and a separate commuter train in the vicinity may have been hit by projectiles of some kind shortly before the wreck, a U.S. transportation safety official said on Friday, after investigators interviewed members of the Amtrak crew.

But the Amtrak engineer said he had no memory of anything that happened in the moments leading up to the crash when questioned for the first time about Tuesday night's wreck that killed eight people and injured more than 200 others, said Robert Sumwalt, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).

An assistant conductor told NTSB investigators on Friday that she heard the engineer, 32-year-old Brandon Bostian, talking by radio with the driver of another train from the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA). The other driver reported that his windshield had been cracked by a projectile that he believed was either fired from a gun or thrown at the train.

According to the conductor's account, Bostian replied that he believed his New York-bound Amtrak train had been similarly struck after pulling out of its previous stop, Sumwalt said.

It was moments later that the Amtrak train barreled into a curve at more than 100 miles per hour (160 km per hour), twice the speed limit, in the city's Port Richmond neighborhood along the Delaware River.

Sumwalt said investigators still have no explanation for why the train was going as fast as it was, and why it had accelerated from 70 mph to 100-plus mph in the 65 seconds before the crash, as was shown on video footage taken by a camera mounted on the locomotive.

The engineer had slammed on the emergency breaking system seconds before the wreck, investigators said.

Sumwalt said on Friday that Bostian, who has spoken with investigators with his lawyer present and was cooperative, told them he had no recollection of doing that, or of anything else from the time the train had departed from its previous stop.

Experts said the train's speed in the moments before the crash raised several questions: Could a technical glitch have caused the locomotive to speed up so rapidly? Would it take a deliberate action by the engineer? Or could human error, a medical issue, or some other factor like clumsiness explain the sudden burst of speed?

Sumwalt said the train, as designed, can only be accelerated by manual control, but the NTSB would examine whether a mechanical malfunction could have caused the train to speed up on its own.

He said Bostian reported to investigators that he had experienced some technical problems on his way south to Washington from New York earlier that day. He did not elaborate.

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Gatlin Storms To 9.74 Seconds 100m Lifetime Best

DOHA (Reuters) - Justin Gatlin blasted out a warning that he is ready to challenge Usain Bolt's 100 meters hegemony when he stormed to a lifetime best 9.74 seconds to win the event in the opening Diamond League meeting of the season on Friday.

In a sizzling night’s action Mo Farah suffered a rare loss, to Ethiopian Hagos Gebrhiwet over 3,000m, Pedro Pichardo and Christian Taylor joined triple jump's exclusive 18-metre club and Jasmin Stowers continued her heady rise in the 100m hurdles.

As always, however, the 100m was the race everyone wanted to watch, with the big question being whether 33-year-old Gatlin would start this season in the form he finished the last where he posted six of the year's seven fastest times.

The twice-banned doper wasted no time in answering as he was first out of the blocks and clear by halfway, punching the air after clocking the world leading time and leaving second-place American Mike Rodgers trailing by more than two meters in 9.96.

Jamaican Bolt remains the favorite to retain his world title in Beijing later this year but knows he will have to be right at the top of his game and fully fit to hold off the challenge of the 2004 Olympic champion.

"It was a magical night for me," Gatlin said. "Doha is a great place for me and with that performance I put out a statement."

Double world and Olympic distance champion Farah was hoping to do the same in the 3,000m and looked in control until just after the bell.

However, the Briton, who broke the world indoor two-mile record earlier this year, struggled over the equivalent distance in Doha.

When Ethiopian duo Gebrhiwet and Yomif Kejelcha burst past him, Farah was unable to hold them off and, although he clawed his way back into contention on the home straight, he finished second to clear winner Gebrhiwet.

Fans alongside the triple jump pit were treated to a memorable night as Cuba's Pichardo soared to 18.06 meters with his third jump, making him the third-best triple-jumper ever behind Kenny Harrison and Jonathan Edwards.

There was more to come, however, as Taylor flew to 18.04 with his final jump of the night -- becoming only the fourth man to clear 18 meters.

Fellow American Stowers hammered a stacked field with her third personal best of the year and a Diamond League record 12.35 seconds in the 100 hurdles as Olympic champion Sally Pearson came fourth and Dawn Harper-Nelson finished last.

The Diamond League continues in Shanghai, China on Sunday.

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TWITTER Founder Feeling 'SUPER' As He Heads In New Direction

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Biz Stone knows abandoning a struggling project to try something else can be a smart move. After all, he was part of a team that dumped the seldom-heard podcasting service Odeo nearly a decade ago to work on a new idea called Twitter that transformed how people communicate and made him a multimillionaire.

Stone is hoping his latest change in direction pays off as he heads down a new path at Jelly Industries, a San Francisco startup he launched shortly after leaving Twitter three years ago.

Jelly made headlines 16 months ago with the release of mobile app that taps into social networks to find experts who can answer questions that stump Internet search engines. Within a few months, Stone and Jelly co-founder Ben Finkel realized the question-and-answer format wasn't catching on so they came up with a different app called Super for sharing opinions.

Super's name reflects how Stone feels about the app about five months after it was released.

"We know in our guts that this has legs, just as we knew in our guts that it was time to stop working on Jelly," Stone says.

Super is trying to broaden its appeal with an app update available Wednesday. The new features will enable users to select and post the faces of other people who have set up profiles on the service. After "facetagging" people, their images mingle with the selection of emojis and large, colorful text that Super provides for its users to create emphatic messages declaring their passions and peeves.

The goal is to infuse Super with a fun-loving vibe that was notably missing from the more scholarly Jelly app.

"Super is more about expressing yourself with an emotional bent," Stone says. "Unfortunately, Jelly was too much like doing homework. People literally did their homework on it. It just wasn't the business we wanted to be in."

Stone, 41, knows many people think Super is stupid. The derision only reinforces his conviction that he is on the right track because he remembers people mocking Twitter in its early days too.

"Something has to be fun to use before it can become important," he says. "Look at Snapchat, Twitter and Facebook. They all started out to be fun at first, now they are important. If you want to build a platform capable of toppling despotic regimes, it also has to support fart jokes."

Although he no longer works at Twitter, Stone remains an adviser and major shareholder. He meets weekly two other co-founders, Twitter Chairman Jack Dorsey and former CEO Evan Williams, and recently had drinks with Twitter's current CEO Dick Costolo. He says he is holding on to all of his Twitter stock, which has fallen by 27 percent since the April 27 release of the company's first-quarter results that renewed concerns about user and revenue growth.

"I love, love what they are doing," Stone says.

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In Land Of Fakes, Chinese E-Commerce Giant Sells Trust

BEIJING (AP) -- Before he became a billionaire in e-commerce, Richard Liu was a failure.

As a student, Liu started a restaurant in Beijing but went bankrupt. He blames employees who he said stole from him, and when he took a second stab at business by opening an electronics store in 1998, Liu insisted on honesty. After seeing other shops overcharge customers and pass off counterfeit goods, he says he sold only genuine merchandise.

"I felt this was an opportunity to establish a new kind of business," said Liu in an interview. He said his shop became the first in northwestern Beijing's Zhongguancun neighborhood, a center for technology companies, to use price tags to avoid haggling with buyers.

After Liu went online in 2003 and expanded into selling home appliances, clothing and other goods, that focus on reliability helped his company, JD.com, grow into China's biggest Internet-based direct retailer. It is a powerful selling point for Chinese consumers who have endured repeated scandals over fake and sometimes deadly milk, medicines and other products.

In contrast to China's dominant e-commerce brand, Alibaba Group, which provides platforms for companies and consumers to sell directly to each other and leaves the handling of goods to outside delivery companies, JD.com operates like a department store, buying goods from suppliers and re-selling them to shoppers. The Beijing-based company controls the flow of merchandise from the supplier to the customer's door. It operates its own distribution network of more than 100 warehouses and a fleet of thousands of bright red delivery vehicles emblazoned with its logo of a grinning dog named Joy.

Liu, 41, said his disastrous experience operating a restaurant while studying at People's University in Beijing in the mid-1990s taught him a painful lesson about the role of honesty in business. He said pilfering and phony receipts were common.

"An employee would pay 2 yuan for bean sprouts but tell me he paid 4 yuan," said Liu, whose name in Chinese is Liu Qiangdong. "The cashier and other employees would sneak money into their own pockets."

Liu is part of a wave of Chinese business leaders in fields from e-commerce to tourism and mobile phones who are helping to drive the rapid evolution of the world's second-largest economy.

Most prominent is Alibaba founder Jack Ma, who became a media star in the West after a record-setting $25 billion U.S. stock offering last year. Another is Wang Jianlin, chairman of Wanda Group, which acquired U.S. cinema chain AMC in 2012.

China accounted for 213 billionaires on Forbes magazine's global rich list last year, more than any other country except the United States with 536. And while many of the Americans inherited their riches, nearly all the Chinese are self-made. And young, too: JD.com's Liu and some others passed $1 billion in net worth before turning 40.

JD.com has emerged as Alibaba's strongest challenger in a Chinese e-commerce market that consulting firm Forrester says could grow to $1 trillion in annual sales by 2020.

Its rise reflects the rapid emergence of more affluent and demanding Chinese consumers. Online shoppers used to look only at price and took their chances with counterfeit or shoddy goods. Today, they are willing to pay for quality and are shifting to merchants that control their supply chain and will help resolve complaints.

Last year, JD.com raised its profile abroad with a U.S. stock market debut that raised $1.8 billion ahead of Alibaba's IPO. Liu's net worth has risen to $8.8 billion.

JD.com's workforce of 68,000 includes inspectors who check product quality. A call center with a staff of 7,000 fields customer complaints. The company also operates an online mall with about 60,000 merchants that include clothing brands Uniqlo and The Gap. It screens sellers before they are allowed onto the site and those caught dealing in counterfeits can be fined 1 million yuan ($160,000).

Liu keeps a lower public profile than Alibaba's Ma.

Each June, Liu marks the anniversary of JD.com's founding by working for a day as a delivery driver. Chinese news reports say customers often fail to recognize him when he shows up at their door.

In person, Liu exudes quiet confidence rather than the exuberant energy of many Chinese entrepreneurs his age. He has a personable manner and boyish face but an older man's unwavering gaze. During an interview in his wood-paneled office in a tower adjacent to the site of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, he chuckled at a question about how he chose Joy the dog as JD.com's mascot.

"Don't you think it's cute?" he said. The logo, he said, symbolizes JD.com's loyalty to customers and is meant to make a company founded on selling to male tech nerds more welcoming to female shoppers.

JD.com is a fraction of Alibaba's size but growing faster.

The total value of goods sold across Alibaba's platforms in the first quarter of this year was more than six times JD.com's level of 87.8 billion yuan ($14.2 billion). But JD.com sales rose 99 percent, more than double Alibaba's 40 percent growth.

For its part, Alibaba has responded to pressure to help stamp out China's rampant trade in fakes by increasing spending and assigning more than 2,000 employees to keeping counterfeits off its sales platforms.

Other Chinese online retailers need to set up similar distribution and quality control systems if they want to get out of the "no-win game" of competing on price alone, said Angela Wang, an expert in retailing at the Boston Consulting Group.

Liu moved online after the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome in 2003 kept shoppers away from stores, sending Chinese retailing into a tailspin. As it grew, the company was renamed 360buy Jingdong Inc. and became JD.com in January 2014.

JD.com has yet to report a profit but says its loss narrowed to 710.2 million yuan ($114.6 million) in the first quarter, equal to about 1.9 percent of revenue.

Its network is being expanded into the populous Chinese countryside.

"By the end of this year, we will be ready to enter nearly 100,000 villages," said Liu. "A logistics network covering the whole country will have been completely built."

And JD.com is extending its model abroad.

In February, it launched a French Mall that allows Chinese customers to order wine, cosmetics and clothing directly from France. It launched a Korean Mall in March and Liu says it plans similar direct sales links to suppliers in the United States, Australia, Italy and Spain.

The company plans one day to sell in other markets, Liu said.

"As Chinese brands go abroad, we want to take the JD.com sales model to the whole world."

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USDA Develops First Goverment Label For GMO-Free Products

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Agriculture Department has developed the first government certification and labeling for foods that are free of genetically modified ingredients.

USDA's move comes as some consumer groups push for mandatory labeling of genetically modified organisms, or GMOs.

Certification would be voluntary - and companies would have to pay for it. If approved, the foods would be able to carry a "USDA Process Verified" label along with a claim that they are free of GMOs.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack outlined the department's plan in a May 1 letter to employees, saying the certification was being done at the request of a "leading global company," which he did not identify. A copy of the letter was obtained by The Associated Press.

Right now, there are no government labels that certify a food as GMO-free. Many companies use a private label developed by a nonprofit called the Non-GMO Project.

Vilsack said the USDA certification is being created through the department's Agriculture Marketing Service, which works with interested companies to certify the accuracy of the claims they are making on food packages - think "humanely raised" or "no antibiotics ever." Companies pay the Agricultural Marketing Service to verify a claim, and if approved they can market the foods with the USDA label.

"Recently, a leading global company asked AMS to help verify that the corn and soybeans it uses in its products are not genetically engineered so that the company could label the products as such," Vilsack wrote in the letter. "AMS worked with the company to develop testing and verification processes to verify the non-GE claim."

A USDA spokesman confirmed that Vilsack sent the letter but declined to comment on the certification program. Vilsack said in the letter that the certification "will be announced soon, and other companies are already lining up to take advantage of this service."

The USDA label is similar to what is proposed in a GOP House bill introduced earlier this year that is designed to block mandatory GMO labeling efforts around the country. The bill, introduced earlier this year by Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., provides for USDA certification but would not make it mandatory. The bill also would override any state laws that require the labeling.

The food industry, which backs Pompeo's bill, has strongly opposed individual state efforts to require labeling, saying labels would be misleading because GMOs are safe.

Vermont became the first state to require the labeling in 2014, and that law will go into effect next year if it survives a legal challenge from the food industry.

Genetically modified seeds are engineered in laboratories to have certain traits, like resistance to herbicides. The majority of the country's corn and soybean crop is now genetically modified, with much of that going to animal feed. GMO corn and soybeans are also made into popular processed food ingredients like high-fructose corn syrup and soybean oil.

The FDA says GMOs on the market now are safe. Consumer advocates pushing for the labeling say shoppers still have a right to know what is in their food, arguing that not enough is known about the effects of the technology. They have supported several state efforts to require labeling, with the eventual goal of having a federal standard.

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Deadline Looms For Brady's Appeal Of 4-Game Suspension

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. (AP) -- Tom Brady's challenge to his four-game suspension by the NFL is set to begin.

The star quarterback of the defending Super Bowl champions is expected to appeal by the deadline of 5 p.m. Thursday. The suspension was issued Monday for his part in the deflation of footballs below the league-mandated minimum for the AFC championship game.

His agent, Don Yee, said shortly after the suspension was announced that the appeal would be filed. The New England Patriots have not said if they'll appeal their penalty - a $1 million fine and the loss of a first-round draft pick next year and a fourth-rounder in 2017.

Yee has criticized the suspension that was based on a 243-page report of an investigation headed by NFL-appointee Ted Wells. On Tuesday, Wells was critical of Yee in a conference call with reporters.

That report issued April 29 said that it was "more probable than not" that Brady "was at least generally aware" of plans by two team employees to prepare the balls to his liking. They inflated the balls below the league minimum of 12.5 pounds per square inch.

It also said Brady and the team were not fully cooperative with the investigation, which contributed to the penalties.

The NFL will go against an experienced foe in labor lawyer Jeffrey Kessler. He has won other appeals against the league and is helping Brady.

On the other side would be NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell or a person he designates. That person would be chosen in consultation with NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith.

Brady's appeal only deals with the suspension and must be heard within 10 days.

If it is upheld, he would miss the first four games. The Patriots open the NFL season at home against Pittsburgh on Sept. 10, then travel to Buffalo before a home game against Jacksonville. After a bye week, their fourth game will be in Dallas.

Brady would be eligible to return for the fifth game on Oct. 18 at Indianapolis. The probe began after the Colts complained that Brady used deflated footballs in their 45-7 loss to the Patriots in the AFC title game.

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Lucian Freud Painting Sells For $56.2 Milli0n At Auction

NEW YORK (AP) -- In the past three days, Christie's in New York City has sold over $1 billion worth of art, a frenzied spectacle that showcases the world's rising class of uber-wealthy and its appetite for trophy art.

Wednesday's bidding was spirited at Christie's contemporary art auction highlighted by iconic works by Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon and others.

The evening sale featured Freud's "Benefits Supervisor Resting," which is considered one of the British artist's most celebrated works. It depicts the ample figure of a reclining woman, every fold, curve and blemish of her naked form revealed. It sold for $56.2 million, including buyer's premium.

Another painting from the series, "Benefits Supervisor Sleeping," brought $33.6 million at Christie's in 2008. At the time, it was the most expensive painting by a living artist sold at auction. Freud died in 2011.

Another painting of a nude, this one by Bacon, sold for $47.8 million. "Portrait of Henrietta Moraes" depicts a seductive nude of the artist's close friend and model reclining on a mattress. It has been in the same private collection for nearly 30 years. It was created in 1963, the same year of the artist's retrospective at London's Tate Gallery and Bacon's first major American exhibition at New York's Guggenheim Museum.

Cy Twombly's "Untitled," an abstract work created in 1969 with oil-based house paint, wax crayon and lead pencil, sold for $42.7 million. An untitled work from 1970 last year set a record for the artist when it sold for $69.6 million at Christie's.

Another work that created excitement was Andy Warhol's 1963 large-scale silkscreen, "Colored Mona Lisa." Exhibited in many major exhibitions, it also sold for $56.2 million.

Works by Willem de Kooning, Martin Kippenberger, Franz Kline and Jean-Michel Basquiat and others also were up for sale.

Wednesday's auction netted over $658 million, Christie's said.

At Christie's on Monday, a vibrant, multi-hued painting from Pablo Picasso set a world record for artwork at auction, selling for $179.4 million, and a sculpture by Alberto Giacometti set a record for most expensive sculpture, at $141.3 million.

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