On Friday, HBO released the first promo video for the second season of “Silicon Valley.” It’s a short one minute clip, but it looks funnier than ever.

“Silicon Valley” is an HBO show that portrays the life of a first-time startup founder who turned down massive buy-out offers to build a sustainable business.

Billionaire venture capitalist Mac Andreessen once called it the tech industry's first “accurate satire.” Star TJ Miller was recently invited to host the Crunchies, a tech industry awards show, where he took potshots at audience members, including a long exchange with Uber CEO Travis Kalanick's girlfriend, Gabi Holzwarth.

The first episode of “Silicon Valley” season 2 will air on April 12. 

SEE ALSO: Tech awards host made fun of Uber CEO's girlfriend for a cringeworthy 10 minutes

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Paris (AFP) - The top credit rating agencies piled more pressure Friday on Greece as the country scrambles to negotiate a new debt deal with its European creditors.

Expressing concerns that Athens can win an agreement to lighten its debt burden and avoid a new default on hundreds of billions of euros worth of loans, Standard and Poor's dealt the country a fresh downgrade, while Moody's put it on review for the same.

"The liquidity constraints weighing on Greece's banks and its economy have narrowed the timeframe during which the new government can reach an agreement on a financing program," S&P said.

"A prolongation of talks with official creditors could also lead to further pressure on financial stability," it warned, with the "worst-case scenario" leading to the country's exclusion from the eurozone.

Moody's cited "considerable uncertainty" over the ability of Greece and its EU bailout lenders to reach an agreement that will strengthen the country's financial position.

"If the Greek government is unable to secure an agreement with official creditors in the next few weeks, the probability of default on debt issued to the private sector would rise sharply," it warned.

S&P reduced Greece's credit grade by one step to B-, deep in junk-bond territory, and Moody's put the country on warning that it could cut its slightly lower Caa1 rating on Greek government debt.

Greece and its key creditors in Europe appeared still far apart over Athens's demands to renegotiate its 240-billion-euro ($275-billion) bailout with the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.

The EU portion of the program is due to expire February 28, leaving just weeks for Athens and Brussels to reach a compromise or risk a default that could send Greece crashing out of the euro.

While the EU has offered an extension of its expiring program to help make time for negotiations, Greece was demanding a temporary bridge loan to cover the talks.

"We don't do bridging loans," Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the head of the eurozone group of finance ministers, told reporters in The Hague, according to Bloomberg.

But a Greek government source told AFP that the bridge program would be "an official expression of the will of all sides to negotiate without pressure and blackmail." 

Both rating agencies pinpointed the vulnerability of Greek banks to the drying up of their liquidity line from the European Central Bank.

The ECB this week cut off one route of the banks' access to its funding. 

It said Wednesday that it would no longer accept Greek government bonds as collateral for loans, because of doubts the country could meet its current obligations under the rescue program of the International Monetary Fund and European Union.

"We see the uncertainties connected to the provision of liquidity to Greek banks as potentially exacerbating deposit outflows, depressing investment and weakening tax compliance, which are already deteriorating Greece's economic and fiscal profile," S&P said.

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Five years ago, Google wanted to much more seriously compete with Microsoft. It needed to hire someone who knew the enterprise software business.

At the time, Google was losing out on big contracts for Google Apps because the company couldn't work with enterprises on their terms: handle a complicated, global request for proposal; provide enterprise-grade technical support; or even offer a product roadmap.

So it poached long-time Oracle executive Amit Singh to teach it that stuff.

Today, Google Apps has become Google for Work and it's a lot more than Apps. It includes a bunch of products from cloud computing to videoconferencing.

It's starting to win some huge customers. While Google doesn't release revenue for the unit, one analyst estimated that it was a $1.6 billion for Google in 2014. That may be tiny compared to Google's $66 billion in revenues in 2014, mostly from selling ads. But $1 billion+ business is nothing to sneeze at.

In other words, Singh has a pretty fantastic job, and has done well at it.

But at the time, moving to Google felt like a big risk, he told Business Insider.

For one thing, he and his family were living in Boston. So it meant moving them far away, to Mountain View, California.

For another, cloud software was a pretty minor project at Google at the time.

"Google wasn’t mentally there for investing that far ahead," Singh remembers. "Google for Work, that was risky. I asked them, ‘Are you really committed to this? Are you sure you want me to come?’ I was moving my family here, from Boston," he remembers.

In fact, cloud computing wasn't really all that popular among enterprises, five years ago. Many of them were still shunning it, worried it wasn't safe and reliable.

"I believed that the cloud would be big. This is like, now 'duh' five years later. But at that time, it wasn’t necessarily like a given, that wasn’t what people were thinking," he says.

And he had a great thing going at his current job. He had been at Oracle for 20 years, working his way up to a vice president of sales. At once point, he almost left Oracle, but they talked him out of it. "They said, no, no don’t go. We’ll create a role for you." He wound up helping Oracle build an enterprise app business after it acquired PeopleSoft and Siebel.

The ultimate kick in his pants that got him to leave Oracle was the support of his family.

"My kids said. ‘Hey, I love Google! You should go work for them.’ That helped tremendously because they had to make the move from Boston to San Francisco."

Looking back, what he learned is good advice. "When you are at that moment: take the chance. I mean some might feel that this was a small chance for me, [moving from Oracle to Google] but it didn’t feel like that to me at the time. I had a great career going at Oracle, so to shift here was a big thing," he says.

"So yeah, I’ve taken a sideways move to get to something bigger, which may not be obvious right away."

To sum that up: sometimes you've got to go sideways to go up, but you'll never go anyway if you don't take a chance.

SEE ALSO: IBM CEO Ginni Rometty is a true geek — and 10 other things you probably didn't know about her

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NOW WATCH: Here's the real science behind time travel

A lot of people want to work at Google. Brilliant people, amazing perks, and the chance to impact tens of millions of people are among the draws.

There's even a movie about what it's like to intern there.

But working at Google isn't all free food and bike rides around campus.

We checked out a Quora thread where people claiming to be current and former employees dish on the down sides of working there. Take them with a grain of salt, but we've heard many of these same things from our own sources.

Everyone is overqualified.

"The worst part of working at Google, for many people, is that they're overqualified for their job," said one commenter. "Google has a very high hiring bar due to the strength of the brand name, the pay & perks, and the very positive work culture."

Working at Google easily takes over your life.

"The worst part about working at Google is how, when you weren't looking, it takes over the majority of your time and energy," said a former sales employee. "If you are not intentional about how you approach your time, it can quickly become your life."

The company only cares about measurable improvements.

"Any improvement not based on a hard metric was flatly not a respected use of time," said a former Google software engineer. "Usability? Number of bugs? Nobody cared. If you couldn't measure it, nobody was interested in it."

This summer Marvel promises to smash together past, present, and alternate universes to form a new world order featuring the most popular versions of characters, eliminating less popular ones, and generally making everything more exciting and fun.

DC fans may be weary after so many reboots, as a Marvel reader I'm excited to shake things up.

This week's "Avengers #41" by writer Jonathan Hickman builds toward the cataclysm, introducing characters from Marvel's Ultimate alternate universe into the primary storyline.

These include the progressive and highly marketable Black Hispanic Spider-Man alter ego Myles Morales, shown in a page-1 splash, and a younger and more megalomaniacal version of super genius Reed Richards, who is the star of the comic.

For a sense of why mainstreaming these characters could be exciting, compare two versions of Richards from the comic.

Case 1:

The original Reed Richards, introduced in 1962, is the guy with the thick beard, his head bowed and eyes closed. He looks tired, right? So he should. This is a man whose fictional character biography stretches to 14,000 words. This is a hero who, despite all the cosmic and terrestrial threats he has defeated and personal trauma he has suffered, has not been allowed to change all that much over the past 50 years and is consequently becoming less interesting: a super-genius whose inventions never make a lasting difference; an old man fading into static benevolence.

Case 2:

Ultimate Reed Richards, introduced in 2004, is young and he's got a crazy scar, and in this panel it's not clear if he's a hero or villain. As his conversation with Nick Fury reveals, this Richards recently went full-sociopath, creating "a self-aware future city that wiped out half of Europe." This is super genius taken to an extreme, and it's fascinating to watch in the way that science fiction should be.

Here he is again:

That's the fun thing about the Ultimate Universe, which reimagined characters and freed them to develop in much more dramatic ways, and now Marvel is going to put some of these characters on center stage.

"The Ultimate Universe, the Marvel Universe, they're going to slap together,"Marvel Editor-in-Chief Axel Alonso said in January. "Imagine two pizzas: They're going to combine toppings, some toppings are going to drop off. And that is the Marvel Universe moving forward. It's more than the Marvel Universe and the Ultimate Universe, it's all the universes you can imagine. That is the Marvel Universe going forward."

For now we can only speculate on what Marvel is planning. One, both, or neither of those Reed Richards could come out of this summer alive, but it's clear that both will play a big role.

Here's the cover of issue three of the coming "Secret Wars" event:

SEE ALSO: The digital comics revolution is a big deal

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NOW WATCH: What Happened When A Bunch Of Young Boys Were Told To Hit A Girl

(Reuters) - The number of U.S. drivers under the influence of alcohol is steadily dropping, but the use of illegal drugs by drivers is on the rise, new data from a U.S. Transportation Department survey showed on Friday.

While about eight percent of drivers during weekend nighttime hours had alcohol in their system, only one percent were found with breath alcohol content higher than 0.08 percent – the legal limit in every state, according to the survey by the Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

This is a marked reduction from the 30 percent in the 2007 survey and down 80 percent from the first survey in 1973, the survey stated.

Despite that, the use of illegal drugs and medicines that can impair driving capabilities is on the rise.

The number of weekend nighttime drivers who were found with drugs in their system jumped from 16.3 percent in 2007 to 20 percent in 2014.

The number of drivers with marijuana in their system grew by nearly 50 percent.

The survey also found that marijuana users are more likely to find themselves in an accident, mostly because they are more likely to be in groups at higher risk of crashes, the NHTSA survey said.

(Editing by Andrew Hay)

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NOW WATCH: This Flying Car Is Real And It Can Fly 430 Miles On A Full Tank

The Internet of Things (IoT) is beginning to grow significantly, as consumers, businesses, and governments recognize the benefit of connecting inert devices to the internet.

In an all-new report from BI Intelligence, we examine what is currently driving growth in the Internet of Things and how various sectors of the economy will embrace IoT innovations. 

Access The Full Report And All The Data By Signing Up For a Free Trial >>

Here are a few of the key findings from the BI Intelligence report:

• The Internet of Things will be the largest device market in the world. We estimate that by 2019 it will be more than double the size of the smartphone, PC, tablet, connected car, and the wearable market combined. 
• The IoT will result in $1.7 trillion in value added to the global economy in 2019. This includes hardware, software, installation costs, management services, and economic value added from realized IoT efficiencies.
• Device shipments will reach 6.7 billion in 2019 for a five-year CAGR of 61%. Revenue from hardware sales will be only $50 billion or 8% of the total revenue from IoT-specific efforts, as software makers and infrastructure companies will earn the lion's share.
• The enterprise sector will lead the IoT, accounting for 46% of device shipments this year, but that share will decline as the government and home sectors gain momentum. By 2019, government will be the leading sector for IoT device shipments.
• The main benefit of growth in the IoT will be increased efficiency and lower costs. The IoT promises increased efficiency within the home, city, and workplace by giving control to the user. However, many are hesitant to use devices as security problems are still an issue.
• The IoT lacks a common set of standards and technologies that would allow for compatibility and ease-of-use. There are currently few standards (or regulations) for what is needed to run an IoT device. Consortia that group together global industrial, tech, and electronics companies are involved in an effort to standardize the IoT and solve the most pressing security concerns. 

In full, the report:

• Defines what devices we include in the IoT and how the devices will be controlled
• Forecasts the potential size of the IoT by 2019 in terms of revenue, number of devices, and value-added to the economy 
• Examines why factors including the drop in sensor prices, increases in internet penetration, and current sales of smartphones and tablets are the drivers of rapid IoT growth
• Looks at how the home, government, and enterprise sectors use the IoT differently, and lists possible future uses
• Identifies the major consortia of IoT companies and examines what they are doing to help drive IoT growth
• Compares our device estimates to those of other research firms 

For full access to all BI Intelligence reports, briefs, and downloadable charts on the Internet of Things and mobile computing markets, sign up for a free trial. 

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NOW WATCH: Why Bethany Mota Has A Legion Of 10 Million Fans Waiting For Her Next YouTube Video

Cardiff (United Kingdom) (AFP) - England coach Stuart Lancaster was left revelling in his reshuffled, young side's grit to claw back a 10-point deficit and choke Wales out for a gripping 21-16 victory in the opening Six Nations match on Friday.

England had been knocked pre-match by the absence through injury of centres Manu Tuilagi, Brad Barritt and Kyle Eastmond, fly-half Owen Farrell, the lock trio of Joe Launchbury, Courtney Lawes and Geoff Parling, backrowers Tom Wood and Ben Morgan, and prop David Wilson.

The team featured only nine survivors from the side that started the 26-17 victory over Australia at Twickenham in the climax to the November programme, and just five from the XV thrashed 30-3 by Wales in Cardiff two years ago.

Lancaster dubbed that Six Nations loss in the Welsh capital in 2013 the "lowest point" of his coaching career", but he cut a different figure after Friday's victory at the Millennium Stadium.

"Obviously we're just delighted to get the win, first and foremost. Being 10-0 down we closed the gap... to go in at half-time at 16-8 we gave ourselves some work to do," he said.

"We upped our intensity and to get 13 unanswered points in the second half was great and for a young side to come here and get the win is really pleasing."

Youthful Bath duo Anthony Watson and Jonathan Joseph scored England's two tries after Wales had shot out to an early lead, fly-half George Ford knocking over a conversion and three penalties to seal the win.

"To go 10-0 down to a team as good as Wales is a big hole and when you have a goalkicker the quality of Leigh Halfpenny knocking them over, it always gives you a little bit of pressure to chase the game," Lancaster said.

"But we held our nerve and we played the right field position and then our power runners and physicality that we brought in the second half and off the bench made the difference."

Lancaster said he believed the confidence-boosting win had no bearing on the World Cup England will host and in which they have been drawn in a pool along with Wales, Australia and Fiji, with only two qualifying for the knock-out phase.

"It's all about the here and now," he said, with the England-Wales pool clash set for September 26 in Twickenham. "We've got four more games of the Six Nations to go, as have Wales.

"We've got World Cup camps to prepare for, we've got decisions to make going into the August 31 naming of the 31-man squad.

"Today was all about getting that victory for that young team away from home, it's great for us in terms of belief."

Lancaster added: "I remember being interviewed two years ago (after the 30-3 loss) and it was the lowest point of my coaching career without a doubt and today's win is up there as the highest point."

It was special, he said, "because of the pressure and emotion leading up to it, the chance we had to get new combinations together".

"Whether it's one point, two points, five points, it was all about getting the win and we're delighted to have got it."

Assistant coach Andy Farrell, however, grumbled at the final score.

"The scoreline didn't really do us justice," the former Wigan and Britain rugby league star said. 

"There were three tries left out there we could have scored and that would have been just."

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Beaver Creek (United States) (AFP) - Hannes Reichelt will go for his second title in three days Mattias Mayer hopes to add World gold to his Olympic crown in Saturday's alpine World Championships men's downhill.

Reichelt topped the field in Thursday's super-G, a bruising race day on the Birds of Prey course that took an injury toll on the world's top male ski racers.

More than half a dozen athletes failed to finish the race, including American star Bode Miller, who likely saw his 2014-15 campaign end after a total of just 56 seconds.

Miller was making his season debut when he crashed heavily halfway down the course. He sliced his leg open and had to be taken to hospital in Vail where he underwent surgery to repair a torn hamstring tendon.

Norwegian star Kjetil Jansrud also hurt himself when he barged through a super-G gate, but he was back on the slopes for Friday's downhill training run and was expected to compete Saturday.

Reichelt claimed the gold in the super-G by hurling himself head first down the icy Birds of Prey slope and the Austrian veteran is hoping for a repeat performance on Saturday.

Reichelt finished 19th in Friday's training run with a time of one minute, 45.33 seconds, just one spot ahead of Sochi Olympic downhill champ Mayer, who finished in 1:45.34.

France's Brice Roger posted the fastest training time by clocking 1:44.05. Jansrud skied through the pain of his shoulder injury and finished second in 1:44.25 and Roger's teammate Guillermo Fayed finished third in 1:44.33.

"I am a little sore and I was a bit nervous before the training run as I didn't know how I would feel," said Jansrud, who followed Miller to the Vail hospital Thursday but was treated and released.

"Luckily skiing got my mind focused on other things and it was an important experience to get this training done today."

Two-time overall World Cup champion Aksel Lund Svindal, who made an amazing comeback in the super-G finishing in sixth place, was 11th-fastest in downhill training.

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London (AFP) - Harry Kane will look to cement his status as a Tottenham Hotspur hero when the club face arch-rivals Arsenal in the North London derby at White Hart Lane on Saturday.

Modern-day players are often accused of having no feeling for the importance of English football's traditional showpiece matches but that cannot be said of Kane.

The 21-year-old forward is currently 'living the dream' of many a fan by playing for the club has supported since boyhood and he is also in superb form.

Kane, who has scored 20 goals in 33 Spurs appearances so far this season, is the leading scorer in English football's top flight and he endeared himself further to the White Hart Lane faithful by signing a new five-and-a-half-year contract this week.

That's not all. Given a choice, Kane would like to join a select band of one-club men by spending his whole career with Tottenham. 

"I don't see why not," Kane told the London Evening Standard. "Tottenham are a great club on the rise. 

"If I'm still here in 10 years, I'd be over the moon."

Saturday's game has been given an extra edge by the fact both clubs are pushing for a top-four finish and a place in next season's Champions League.

Both teams are in good shape, with Tottenham having lost only once in their last nine league games and fifth-placed Arsenal only once in their last eight.

London isn't the only city staging a derby on Saturday, with Liverpool making the short trip to Everton's Goodison Park.

- Banter -

Liverpool have climbed to within four points of the Champions League places with a haul of 16 points from a possible 18.

If that was not enough of an incentive to stay on the same path, Saturday's match will be Liverpool great Steven Gerrard's last Merseyside derby before he leaves Anfield for the Los Angeles Galaxy at the end of the campaign.

The 34-year-old, who made his 700th appearance for the club in Wednesday's 2-1 FA Cup win at Bolton Wanderers, knows all about the peculiar pressures of derby day and does not expect the stick he gets from Everton fans to end when he finally leaves Liverpool.

"I doubt it very much," he said. "I love the banter with Everton fans. It's what it's all about."

Chelsea and second-place Manchester City, currently separated by five points, both face apparently straightforward fixtures.

The leaders, who held City to a 1-1 draw last weekend, visit Aston Villa, who have gone eight games without a win and not scored in over 10 hours of league football, while champions City travel to third-bottom Hull.

Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho, unhappy at what he saw as the media's role in Diego Costa's three-game ban for stamping on Liverpool's Emre Can, ended his self-imposed news blackout with a surly press conference on Friday.

By then Blues midfielder Willian had lifted the lid on the Portuguese boss's 'siege mentality' tactics, which include allegations of a conspiracy to do down Chelsea.

"Jose Mourinho talks with us a lot. I think he says these things, that there is an agenda against Chelsea, to protect us as a group," the Brazil international said.

Manchester United, a point above Southampton in third place, visit West Ham.

United's form dipped around the turn of the year as they won only once in five league games, but successive wins over Leicester City and Cambridge United, in the FA Cup, have revitalised Louis van Gaal's side.

Southampton's top-four bid was hit by a 1-0 loss to Swansea City last weekend and on Saturday they visit second-bottom Queens Park Rangers, who are without a manager following Harry Redknapp's resignation

Fixtures

Saturday (1500 GMT unless otherwise stated):

Aston Villa v Chelsea, Everton v Liverpool (1730 GMT), Leicester City v Crystal Palace, Manchester City v Hull City, Queens Park Rangers v Southampton, Swansea City v Sunderland, Tottenham Hotspur v Arsenal (1245 GMT)

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With the huge drop in oil prices over the last several months, gas prices have generally also been falling. Gasoline prices fell for 17 straight weeks from September 29 through January 26.

This week's Energy Information Administration "Gasoline and Diesel Fuel Update" shows that this streak has come to an end. Average US gas prices ticked up from $2.044/gal on January 26 to $2.068 on February 2.

That still leaves prices well below the $3.292/gal they were a year ago, even though the price crash of the last few months has at least temporarily paused:

SEE ALSO: The case for the next US housing boom in 8 charts

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NOW WATCH: Nationwide's Super Bowl commercial about dead children is about corporate profits ... in a way that we can all appreciate

Paris (AFP) - Maria Sharapova leads Russia in their Fed Cup World Group opener against Poland this weekend looking to take a step closer to the 2016 Olympics.

It will be the first meeting between the two countries and a rare Fed Cup appearance by 2012 Olympic silver medallist Sharapova, who must compete in the women's team event if she wants to bid for gold in Rio next year.

The Russian star, runner-up to Serena Williams at the Australian Open last Saturday, has played just three ties for Russia since her 2008 debut and has a 3-1 singles record.

Champions the Czech Republic open their defence against Canada in Quebec City, as 2014 runners-up Germany host Australia in Stuttgart and France travel to play Italy, last year's semi-finalists, in Genoa.

The hardcourt clash on Saturday and Sunday at Krakow Arena will see 27-year-old Sharapova return to Fed Cup for the first time since February 2012.

Attention will also be focussed on her new team captain Anastasia Myskina, who a decade ago threatened to pull out of the Russian team if Sharapova was selected.

Myskina, the first Russian woman to win a Grand Slam at Roland Garros in 2004, the year she spearheaded their first Fed Cup victory, retired as a player in 2007 and took over the Fed Cup captaincy in 2014.

Russia are favourites with world number two Sharapova joined by 27th-ranked Sveltana Kuznetsova, a two-time Grand Slam winner, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova (34), and Vitalia Diatchenko (82).

World Group newcomers Poland will be led by former Wimbledon finalist Agnieszka Radwanska, ranked eighth, after her run to the fourth round of the Australian Open, alongside her younger sister Urszula, ranked 135.

Alicja Rosolska and Klaudia Jans-Ignacik will be on doubles duty for Poland.

In Quebec City, the Czech holders are favourites having won all five of their previous meetings with the Canadians, despite being without top players Petra Kvitova and Lucie Safarova.

World number 20 Karolina Pliskova, 68th-ranked Tereza Smitkova, 107th-ranked Denisa Allertova and doubles specialist Lucie Hradecka, will line out in the first meeting between the two sides since 2002.

- Won three of last four titles -

"I think the team that's going to Canada is good enough to succeed," said Czech team captain Petr Pala, whose side have won three of the last four titles.

Canada, whose best result was a semi-final in 1988, will be without world number seven Eugenie Bouchard.

In Stuttgart, Australia face Germany for the third time in four years.

Germany won last year's semi-final in Brisbane, but Australia's Samantha Stosur believes their chances are improved with three players ranked inside the top 60.

"I don't think we've had a team this solid on the rankings for quite a while," 25th-ranked Stosur said.

Stosur will be joined by 35th-ranked Casey Dellacqua, Jarmila Gajdosova (54) and Olivia Rogowksa (157).

Seven-time winners Australia have not lifted the trophy since 1974, but are boosted by winning in Stuttgart in 2012 to secure their return to the competition's top tier.

Germany have a strong side with world number 10 Angelique Kerber, Andrea Petkovic (12), Sabine Lisicki (28) and Julia Goerges (69).

France captain Amelie Mauresmo also arrives from Melbourne and her coaching role with Australian Open men's runner-up Andy Murray.

Mauresmo will be counting on Alize Cornet (19), Caroline Garcia (36), Kristina Mladenovic (71) and Pauline Parmentier (86) for their claycourt tie in Italy.

Italy, winners of four titles in the last decade, are without top ranked Flavia Pennetta, but their team includes Sara Errani 14th, Camilia Giorgi (31), Roberta Vinci (40) and Karin Knapp (53).

World Group II also has a smattering of stardust with both Serena and Venus Williams appearing for the United States against Argentina in Buenos Aires.

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Washington (AFP) - The US said it had no proof to support a claim from the Islamic State group that a coalition air strike killed an American woman it was holding hostage in Syria.

The jihadists named the woman as Kayla Jean Mueller, saying she had been buried under rubble after a raid by a Jordanian warplane in the Syrian city of Raqa, the militant group's self-proclaimed "capital".

But Washington refused to confirm her death while Jordan, still reeling from the brutal murder of one of its pilots by the jihadist group, rejected the claim as an "old and sick trick" to deter coalition strikes.

"The plane from the crusader coalition bombed a position outside the city of Raqa after Friday prayers," IS said in a statement posted on jihadist websites.

"No fighter was wounded but we can confirm that an American hostage was killed in the strikes."

The claim came as Amman said dozens of its jet fighters had struck IS, widening their campaign from Syria to include targets in neighbouring Iraq.

Jordan is part of the international coalition battling the Sunni extremist group, which has seized swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq and imposed an extreme interpretation of Islam on the areas under its control.

Jordan had vowed an "earth-shattering" response after the jihadists burned one of its fighter pilots alive and released a video of the gruesome execution.

Washington stressed it had not seen any proof that Mueller, a 26-year-old aid worker from Arizona, had been killed. IS did not post any pictures of a body with its claim.

"We are obviously deeply concerned by these reports. We have not at this time seen any evidence that corroborates ISIL's claim," said National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan, using another acronym for IS.

Mueller's family described her as "extremely devoted to the people of Syria," adding that she had "devoted her career to helping those in need in countries around the world". She was captured in August 2013 in Aleppo, they added in a statement.

- 'Old and sick trick' -

Jordan's Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh denounced the IS claim on Twitter as "an old and sick trick used by terrorists and despots for decades: claiming that hostages human shields held captive are killed by air raids".

In Jordan thousands of people, including the nation's Queen Rania, marched on Friday to demand retribution against IS for the horrifying murder of pilot Maaz al-Kassasbeh.

"We are all Maaz... We are all Jordan," they chanted. Some held placards aloft that read: "Yes to punishment. Yes to the eradication of terrorism."

Queen Rania joined the marchers after weekly prayers at the Al-Husseini mosque, holding a portrait of the pilot with the words "Maaz the martyr of righteousness."

She told the BBC that the battle against IS "is absolutely Jordan's war", but that "to win it we need help from the international community".

Foreign Minister Judeh told CNN Jordan would hit the militants with all its might.

"We're going to go after them and we will eradicate them... We are at the forefront. This is our fight," he said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based monitoring group, said more than 30 IS fighters were killed in coalition raids Friday around Raqa, where it claims Mueller died.

US authorities have never given figures on the number of Americans kidnapped in Syria, sticking to a State Department policy of complete silence on any citizens held hostage abroad.

- 'Criminal propaganda' -

Amman's government spokesman Mohammad al-Momani dismissed the jihadists' claim as "criminal propaganda".

"They have lied that our pilot is alive and tried to negotiate claiming he is alive while they had killed him weeks before," Momani told AFP.

IS offered to spare Kassasbeh's life and free Japanese journalist Kenji Goto -- who was later beheaded -- in exchange for an Iraqi woman, Sajida al-Rishawi.

The failed suicide bomber was on death row in Jordan for her role in triple hotel blasts in Amman in 2005 that killed 60 people.

But Jordanian television suggested Kassasbeh was killed on January 3, before IS offered to spare him and free Goto in return for Rishawi's release.

Jordan hanged Rishawi after IS released the video showing the murder of the pilot, who was taken prisoner in December after his F-16 crashed in Syria.

Jordan has conducted regular air raids across the border in Syria as part of the US-led campaign against IS.

American F-16 and F-22 jets have provided cover for recent Jordanian strikes, with additional support from refuelling tankers and surveillance aircraft, according to US officials.

Following Kassasbeh's capture, the United Arab Emirates withdrew from the coalition's strike missions over fears for the safety of its pilots, but a US official said on Friday that UAE flights were likely to resume "in a couple of days".

Jihadists have flocked to Syria since anti-government protests broke out in 2011 and escalated into a multi-sided civil war in which more than 200,000 people have died.

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Niamey (AFP) - Boko Haram launched its first major attack in Niger on Friday, triggering a forceful response from regional troops who claimed to have killed more than a hundred of the Islamists.

The clashes in Bosso and Diffa, along the border with Nigeria, marked yet another expansion of violence attributed to Boko Haram, but it seemed to have come at a heavy cost.

Niger's defence minister reported that 109 of the Islamists were killed, along with four soldiers and a civilian. Seventeen other troops were wounded.

Chadian forces, who have taken a lead role in battling Boko Haram in recent days, fought alongside Niger's troops on Friday. Chad's commander in Niger, General Yaya Daoud, was also wounded with a gunshot to the stomach, a security source said.

Niger's Defence Minister Mahamadou Karidjo said calm had been restored to both Bosso and Diffa.

The clashes in Niger came as regional efforts intensified to battle Boko Haram, which has waged a six-year insurgency centred in northeastern Nigeria, where the Islamists have seized swathes of territory.

The conflict has killed at least 13,000 people and forced more than a million from their homes since 2009.

Niger announced Thursday that on Monday it would ask its parliament to approve sending troops to Nigeria to fight the militants alongside Chadian and Cameroon soldiers.

The United States condemned the fresh Boko Haram attacks in "strongest possible terms" and pledged support for regional forces.

"This unchecked killing must stop," State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said. "We continue to provide support to governments in the region, including through intelligence sharing and are increasing our support for these efforts."

US intelligence officials said Friday that while Boko Haram is flush with cash and weapons after a string of battlefield advances, the militants could face a tougher fight with Nigeria's neighbours.

The military intervention of neighbouring powers could potentially be a "game changer in a positive way," one intelligence official said.

- Heavy gunfire -

Local radio reports said Friday's fighting in Bosso broke out in the morning and resulted in heavy clashes.

"We could hear the sound of weapons all around the town, often very near our windows. There was the noise of heavy weapons and of light arms, making our houses shake," one resident told AFP.

Chadian forces have been stationed in Bosso since Monday, a humanitarian worker said, adding that Boko Haram "took the municipality" for a time before being "driven back to Nigeria".

However, a local leader said only that Niger's troops fought back the raid, while the Chadians were stationed at a distance.

A resident who spoke on condition of anonymity said soldiers from Chad and Niger "were all over the streets" of Bosso.

"It was like a race across the town," one resident said. "As the fighting drew near, we heard cries of 'Allahu Akbar' (God is greatest). We heard an aircraft fly over the town.

"We even saw smoke coming up from the town hall and the prefect's office, where heavy gunfire was heard," he added in the Hausa language, asking not to be named. "It's quiet now, but we're staying home."

- Nigerian military under fire -

Other clashes broke out some 10 kilometres (six miles) from Niger's Diffa, which is on the border with Nigeria near a bridge that links the two countries. Its control is essential for transporting troops and supplies.

Little more than a stream, the Komadougou Yobe marks the frontier between Niger and Nigeria, and the water level has recently dropped considerably, making it easy to cross.

A large number of refugees fleeing the violence in Nigeria have also crossed into Diffa.

Yacouba Soumana Gaoh, Diffa's governor, told local reporters that close to 3,000 of Niger's troops are massed in groups every 10-15 kilometres (six to nine miles) along the border with Nigeria.

Nigeria's military has drawn fierce criticism for failing to rein in the insurgents, who have intensified attacks ahead of presidential and parliamentary elections set for February 14. 

Nigerian election authorities said they will announce on Saturday whether the polls will be delayed as problems mount with distributing identity cards to 68.8 million registered voters.

The United States called Friday for the elections to be held on time, with Harf saying that Washington was renewing its calls on "all candidates, their supporters and Nigerian citizens to reject election-related violence".

Earlier this week, Chad launched a ground assault across the frontier to battle the jihadists and recapture the Nigerian town of Gamboru after having bombed the area beforehand. Chad's army said it had killed more than 200 Boko Haram fighters in the clashes.

In response, Boko Haram launched a bloody counter-attack on the Cameroonian town of Fotokol, killing 19 soldiers and at least 81 civilians.

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Los Angeles (AFP) - Antonio Banderas, 54, is on form. The Spanish star will shortly play Pablo Picasso in "33 Dias," and will be in Terrence Malick's next film, "Knight of Cups."

Relaxed, the actor sat down with a few journalists to discuss playing a pirate in the new "Spongebob Squarepants" movie, as well as hiking to Machu Picchu with his daughter, and why he wants to leave Hollywood.

Q. You play a pirate in "The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water." What was that like?

A: "Pirates are very interesting to play. There's a paradigm with them, in terms of freedom, people playing out of the box. Everybody loves that. There is something very interesting about them.

"That particular pirate... is a character inside his own narration, not only a pirate but a cook. And it's fun to see how this can connect with a kid's mind.

"It was fun, imaginative and physically very demanding. It looks nothing like me. To get there everyday at 8:00 am to get that beard... it was like a raccoon attacked you. The happiest moment of the day was when I could take it off and scratch."

Q. "Shrek,""Puss in Boots,""SpongeBob" -- you are in a lot of children's movies. Do you have a kid's mind too?

A: "I guess so. When you're 25, you don't want to say you have a kid's mind. You want to be the man. But I'm 54, so then it's good to say you have a kid's mind. So I do, in a way, in the perception I have of life. I believe a lot in senses. I'm not a cerebral guy -- what I touch, what I feel, what I smell, what I eat. It's very important, sensuality. I like the smell of the ocean, Malaga (Spain), the springtime.

"I have a house in Marbella (Spain) and two small apartments in the middle of Malaga. But to live there again... no. I will probably move to New York (from Los Angeles).

Q. You travel a lot. Is that important to you?

A. "Yes. This year, I've been shooting in Argentina, then before that in Colombia and I've been with my daughter to Peru to visit the Inca trail, Machu Picchu. That was fantastic. It's hard. It's not an easy thing. It's 4,000 meters (13,120 feet), but spiritually it was an amazing experience at this particular time of my life. We made a deal that each year, just her and me we go somewhere in the world.

"I have to get her out of Hollywood because this is not real... Hollywood is not a place anymore, it became a brand.

Q. Why do you love New York?

"Because it is more European. You can walk. You don't know who's rich, who's not. In Los Angeles, it is what you have. In New York, it is what you are. I love theater and there are 50 theaters there at your disposal. Cultural life is enormous, even in the conversations, in bars, restaurants, clubs, museums. At the same time, it is in the middle. I have Spain in six hours, Hollywood in five. 

"Los Angeles for me (is) beautiful, but I don't understand. This is a quintessentially American city and I am very European. I need sidewalks. Everywhere you go, you need a car. In New York, I don't want to have a car."

Q. Would you like to live in Malaga again one day?

"Absolutely. I'm a professional Malagan. Not that is it the best in the world. It is good for me. I love it. Overall, it is impossible for me to stop loving Malaga. It's like Spain. I'm not like a patriot but I know that I love my country, because when things are going bad, I suffer. And when things are going good, I enjoy it. It is that simple."

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Jakarta (AFP) - Indonesian divers have found a body believed to be the French co-pilot who was steering an AirAsia plane when it crashed in December with 162 people onboard, an official said Saturday.

Coordinator of the search and rescue effort S.B. Supriyadi said the body was retrieved from the front part of the fuselage during a search operation on Friday.

"It is likely the body of the French co-pilot, wearing uniform with three stripes on (the) shoulder," he told AFP, adding that the body is still being held onboard the Pacitan warship before being taken to land.

A formal confirmation will be given after the Disaster Victims Identification (DVI) team finish identifying the body, which is in poor condition, Supriyadi said.

Indonesian investigators last month said French co-pilot Remi Plesel was flying the plane before it crashed, rather than Captain Iriyanto, an experienced former fighter pilot.

Flight QZ8501 went down in stormy weather on December 28 in the Java sea during what was supposed to be a short trip from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore. 

Divers also found three bodies inside the main body of the plane on Friday and another three bodies near the fuselage today, bringing a total number of dead retrieved to 101, Supriyadi said.

Rescue services are still trying to lift the fuselage from the seabed using giant inflatable bags after earlier attempts failed.

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Tokyo (AFP) - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Saturday pledged to resolve a row with Russia over an island chain claimed by both nations and sign a bilateral peace treaty delayed since WWII.

Relations between Moscow and Tokyo have been strained for decades over of the status of four Pacific islands near Japan's north coast, known as the Southern Kurils in Russia and the Northern Territories in Japan.

"As I have agreed with (Russian President Vladimir) Putin, it is abnormal that Japan and Russia have not concluded a peace treaty," Abe told an annual gathering in Tokyo to demand the return of the territories.

"I am determined to continue working tenaciously on this issue... in full accordance with the government's fundamental policy of resolving the issue... and concluding a peace treaty with Russia."

Soviet troops seized the islands just after Japan surrendered in World War II and Tokyo says the islands are now illegally occupied by Russia.

The seven-decade dispute over their ownership has kept Moscow and Tokyo from signing a post-war peace treaty.

Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida told the same rally issue is the biggest stumbling block hindering relations between the two nations.

Japan holds a demonstration on February 7 every year to mark a 1855 bilateral treaty that set its border with Russia.

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Berlin (AFP) - As Berlin and Athens lock horns over debt relief, Greece's claim that Germany has never compensated it for all the damage wrought by the Nazis during World War II is again straining ties.

Greece's new Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, whose radical left party swept to power last month promising to reverse spending cuts imposed under the indebted country's rescue package, has vowed to tackle the long-simmering dispute.

But he is likely to run up against a firm "no" from Europe's biggest economy, which argues that Berlin does not owe it a cent and that the historic issue has long been closed.

"Nearly 70 years after the end of World War II, the question of reparations has lost legitimacy," a German finance ministry spokesman said recently.

The issue of wartime reparation claims over Germany's four-year occupation of Greece, which ruined the country financially and left thousands dead, has complicated relations between Athens and Berlin for decades.

Now, with Greece struggling under more than 300 billion euros ($340 billion) of debt, calculations that Athens is still owed just over half that amount, or 162 billion euros left over from the war, is sure to touch a nerve.

Tsipras's Syriza party and its unlikely coalition partner, the nationalist Independent Greeks party led by Panos Kammenos, plan to re-open the claim, whose impact is highly symbolic in Germany for harking back to its darkest chapter.

Haunted by its Nazi past, Germany prides itself on its efforts to come to terms with its history.

Tspiras, a former Communist, lost no time after his election victory in laying flowers at a memorial near Athens where dozens of Greek leftists were executed by German occupation troops in 1944.

His finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, during a bruising first visit last week to Germany, stressed that it had not been "a sign towards Germany" but rather was targeted against Greece's neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party, now the country's third-biggest political force.

During his election campaign, Tsipras said he would press the "unfulfilled right" to reparations for a "people who bled and payed heavily for the brutality of Nazism".

- 20th century's 'worst debt payer' -

Greece's occupation by the Nazis from 1941 was one of the most bloody in Europe, with Hitler's forces rampaging, pillaging and shooting, and encountering a nation that fiercely resisted.

The Nazi regime ended up bleeding Greece dry. The Third Reich forced the Greek central bank to loan it 476 million Reichsmarks which has never been reimbursed.

A German Bundestag lower house of parliament report in 2012 put the value of the loan at $8.25 billion.

In Greece, its estimated value is higher, at 11 billion euros, according to a confidential report to the finance ministry and reported by the To Vima newspaper in January.

After Germany's capitulation and the end of the war, the United States' main concern was to halt any advance by the communists in Greece's civil war.

It asked the Greek government, keen for economic support under the Marshall Plan -- the US aid package to rebuild Europe after World War II -- to drop its reparation claims until the signing of a peace treaty.

Germany rebuilt itself and paid practically nothing to its former enemies "which obviously helped the German economic miracle hugely" in the post-war period, according to an analysis by Rabobank.

Albrecht Ritschl, a professor of economic history, said in an interview with Germany's Spiegel news weekly in 2011 that "Germany has been the 20th century's worst payer of debts".

Just before German reunification in 1990, the two former Germanys signed a treaty with the Allies, considered as the formal end of World War II.

Although the document, which was approved by Greece among others, was not officially termed a peace treaty, for Berlin it effectively drew a line under possible future claims for war reparations.

Not so, though, for former resistance icon Manolis Glezos, who has been pressing for Germany to settle up for decades.

The issue has a "political and moral dimension", says the nonagenarian who, at the age of 18, took down the Nazi flag from atop the Acropolis.

And last year, Greek President Karolos Papoulias, another veteran of the Greek resistance, took the opportunity during a visit by his German counterpart Joachim Gauck to call for negotiations on the issue to be opened quickly.

"You know that I can't give you any other response than to say that the legal path is closed," Gauck said, before solemnly asking Greece to forgive Germany for a heinous Nazi crime committed at the height of the war.

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Abuja (AFP) - Nigeria's electoral commission on Saturday announced a six-week postponement to the presidential elections, citing fears over security and the Boko Haram insurgency.

The chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Attahiru Jega, said security chiefs advised a delay as troops would not be available because of operations against the militants.

"If the security of personnel, voters, election observers and election materials cannot be guaranteed, the lives of innocent young men and women and the prospect of free, fair and credible elections will be greatly jeopardised," he told reporters.

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