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• SINGAPORE (AP) -- Speaking near China's backyard Saturday, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta rejected suggestions that America's new focus on the Asia-Pacific will fuel conflict in the region or that the emerging strategy is meant as a threat to Beijing.
• Instead, he appeared to offer an olive branch to the communist giant, with a broad message that the two often-feuding world powers must learn to work better together for the benefit of the entire region.
• Delivering his most extensive thoughts to date on the fragile state of U.S.-China relations, Panetta said neither side is naive about their disagreements.
• "We both understand the differences we have, we both understand the conflicts we have, but we also both understand that there really is no other alternative but for both of us to engage and to improve our communications and to improve our (military) relationship," Panetta said at a security conference in Singapore.
• At the same time, however, Panetta warned Asian nations that they must find a way to resolve their own conflict because the U.S. can't always come charging in to help.
• ___

• WASHINGTON (AP) -- Another bad month for the U.S. job market is lengthening the list of perils facing the global economy.
• American employers added only 69,000 jobs in May, the fewest in a year and not even close to what economists expected. For the first time since June, the unemployment rate rose, to 8.2 percent from 8.1 percent.
• It was the third month in a row of weak job growth and further evidence that, just as in 2010 and 2011, a winter of hope for the economy has turned to a spring of disappointment.
• "This is horrible," said Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at High Frequency Economics, a consulting firm.
• The job figures, released Friday by the Labor Department, dealt a blow to President Barack Obama at the start of a general election campaign that will turn on the

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