President Barak Obama - #POTUS

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South Florida gets chance to see soccer greatness as Lionel Messi comes to town

The average South Florida sports fan could see Lionel Messi walking down Ocean Drive in beachwear and flip-flops this weekend, and not give him a second glance.

He hardly looks like one of the most gifted and highest-paid athletes on the planet. He doesn?t have LeBron James? superhero build or David Beckham?s GQ style. Messi is 5-7 (in cleats), sports boyish floppy hair, and is remarkably unassuming for a man with a $43.5?million annual income, an estimated $110?million net worth, and an endorsement portfolio that includes adidas, Pepsi, Herbalife, EA Sports and Dolce & Gabbana.

But put that diminutive guy they call La Pulga (?the flea?) on a soccer field, drop a ball in front of him, and he becomes larger than life.

South Floridians have a rare chance to see Messi up close at Sun Life Stadium on Saturday night, on the eve of his 25th birthday, when he and 31 other international soccer stars play an exhibition match as part of the World Masters Tour. The Argentine forward, who plays for Spanish giant FC Barcelona, dribbles as if the ball was a yo-yo attached to his feet. He has an uncanny ability to find the back of the net no matter who is standing in his way or what angle he shoots from.

?The people of Miami should crawl on broken glass just to inhale the exhaust fumes from the bus Messi is traveling on,? said TV analyst Ray Hudson, the former Fort Lauderdale Strikers and Miami Fusion coach. ?He is that good. He is one of the gods of the game, right up there with Pel? and Diego Maradona. There is something about this player that transcends the game in that magical way.

?He?s the equivalent of the Miami Heat?s great three all rolled into one. He has the borderline genius of LeBron [James], the magical exuberance of Dwyane Wade, and the coolness and effectiveness of [Chris] Bosh. This guy is spellbinding and so astonishingly special. He is Shakespeare?s greatest sonnet in motion.?

This year, Messi scored 73 goals for Barcelona, breaking Gerd Muller?s 39-year-old record for most goals scored in a European season. Muller scored 67 goals for Bayern Munich in 1972-73. Messi, a three-time FIFA Player of the Year, had an unprecedented eight hat tricks, and also became the first player to score five goals in a Champions League match.

He is considered the best player of his time. Warren Barton, a Fox TV analyst, continues to be dazzled by the beguiling superstar.

?First and foremost, Messi is the best player of his generation, like Muhammad Ali and Michael Jordan were in their sports,? Barton said. ?He makes the art of dribbling and scoring goals look easy. And he does all this under intense pressure. People talk about the pressure on LeBron. Messi?s pressure is global. He is scrutinized and judged by the whole world.?

In fact, Messi received more media coverage than any soccer player in the world for the fourth consecutive year, according to a study conducted by the University of Navarra in Northern Spain. His score of 28.8 points means he appeared in the news nearly 29 times more than the average player.

Messi scored more goals on his own than 13 of the other 19 clubs in La Liga scored as a team this season. With 50 goals in 36 La Liga matches, Messi also outscored 12 English Premier League teams, 13 German Bundesliga teams, and 10 Italian Serie A clubs.

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Russia shifts from resource nationalism to globalism

ST PETERSBURG, Russia (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin left global oil executives in little doubt as to who was the master of the world's largest energy reserves at Russia's answer to Davos.

The sky over St Petersburg was turning white at the end of the longest day of the year, and the financiers and leaders of global industry who had gathered as Putin's guests at this year's forum were retiring to lavish parties and rooftop bars.

But the chief executives of BP, ConocoPhillips, Shell and Chevron stood with a dozen colleagues in a dark, chairless foyer, shifting from foot to foot on Thursday as they waited three hours for an audience.

"No one was angry," said a European chief executive as he whiled away the wait by hashing out an equipment issue with a colleague. "There was a lot to talk about."

Putin has kept them waiting in the past, both for meetings and for deals, sometimes for years as they struggled to find a way in with a government that controls access to some of the world's largest untapped oil and gas reserves.

Putin, whose conviction that strategic resources should be in the hands of the state was laid out in his doctoral dissertation, has shown a willingness in the past few months to share prospective oil riches on a scale unprecedented since Russia's early post-Soviet years.

Three Arctic drilling deals, personally brokered by energy tsar Igor Sechin in the final days of Putin's four-year spell as prime minister, have opened up new possibilities after a decade in which Russia became a byword for resource nationalism.

The appeal of advanced Western technology needed to tap increasingly remote and challenging fields, and the attendant promise of a more modern, healthy economy has chipped away at the Kremlin's jealous guard of its natural resources.

It has also set off debate around long-standing tax policies that are designed to skim off oil industry revenues but have proven costly in terms of investment in new barrels.

"What strikes me is that they are very much aware of the fact that they have to open up to other countries," Maria van der Hoeven, head of the International Energy Agency, said in an interview at the annual St Petersburg International Economic Forum.

"It has to do with investments and it has to do with markets, with market diversification. They need to find the right methods to do that, the right regulatory framework to get the (international oil companies) coming into the country."

OUR RESERVES, THEIR TECHNOLOGY

When Putin finally joined the CEOs, he was at pains to be welcoming, first giving the floor to Peter Voser, the CEO of Shell, which has been identified in media reports as a potential new investor in Shtokman, a troubled Barents Sea gas project.

"Twenty-five percent of our oil is produced by companies with foreign partners. That should tell you how open our industry is to foreign capital. Not in all countries is there such broad participation by foreigners," he told the executives.

"I just got back from Mexico, where the G20 was held, and (the oil industry) is almost completely state controlled. In a market-oriented country like Norway, there is really just one big company, Statoil."

Russia has one thing in common with those countries: declines in its old production base, though Russia has managed to keep pumping at ever higher rates, hitting post-Soviet output peaks thanks to new fields launched at great cost.

So it was that Sechin, a former military translator in Africa, found himself defending his decision to share the state oil company's reserves with foreigners at the company's annual meeting last week when a skeptical shareholder asked him whether such deals were in Russia's national interest.

His answer echoed a refrain that has been repeated since the Rosneft first announced its intent to grant a foreign oil company access to a new hydrocarbon province that could harbor fields like the Soviet-era "supergiants" which sustained the country through its last decades: Our reserves, their capital, their risk and, most of all, their technology.

EXXON'S SECRET

If the executives' long wait for Putin belied a welcoming stance, the body language with Exxon executives - notable by their absence at the table with Putin - has been easier to read.

CEO Rex Tillerson, who flew to a Black Sea refinery town this month at Rosneft's invitation for a strategy presentation with Putin, was photographed seated next to the Russian president, inclining his head for a private word.

Exxon executives were guests of honor at Rosneft's AGM, where Sechin had frank praise for the American major and its focus on delivering value to shareholders.

An executive at a rival major said he believed that was not what won over Sechin and his Kremlin patron. "They have really gone in with technology," the executive said.

The challenge faced by the Russian industry, said a source from a company with a long history in offshore drilling, is to move from standardized bulk drilling and top-down design decisions at old West Siberian fields to unpredictable environments and prospective projects where new technology must be developed and honed along the way.

Therein is the deep attraction of technology transfer for the Russian government, which is caught in a Catch-22 situation: With 50 percent of its budget revenue from energy, it can neither afford to let the industry stagnate, nor can it remain so heavily dependent on a volatile commodity.

Most immediately for Rosneft, it must invest in future output growth while simultaneously retooling its Soviet-built refineries to meet rising demand for high-specification gasoline and prevent politically damaging petrol shortages.

The order of the queue of executives at Rosneft's stand at the St Petersburg convention centre was telling. Behind Eni and Statoil - there to finalize their drilling deals - was Andrei Kostin, CEO of state bank VTB, on hand to sign a new financing deal to help build a new refinery near Moscow.

It was a reminder that, despite Rosneft's outward-looking stance of recent months, its concerns - and the Kremlin's - gravitate back to the domestic marketplace.

And with little build on outside the energy industry besides a crippled Soviet industrial base and a small if growing band of entrepreneurs, the Kremlin must pin its hopes for a modern economy on its oldest resource of all.

"Russia's energy sector is, perhaps, now, and must remain over the near term, the driver for modernization of the country's economy," said Sechin.

(Editing by Douglas Busvine and Timothy Heritage)

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DOJ files bias suit against towns home to polygamist sect

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N. Zealand's 'night parrot' brought back from the brink

Flightless, slow-moving and at times more sexually attracted to humans than their own species, it's small wonder New Zealand's kakapo parrot is on the verge of extinction.

But a mammoth conservation effort stretching back decades is offering hope for one of the world's rarest birds, lifting its numbers from about 50 in 1990 to 126 this year.

The plump, green kakapo -- the name means "night parrot" in Maori -- was once one of the most common birds in New Zealand, which had few land predators before European settlement in the early Nineteenth Century.

"There was a report from an early explorer, Charles Douglas, who said they were so populous you could shake them out of trees like apples," said Deirdre Vercoe Scott, head of the Department of Conservation's kakapo recovery programme.

"He said he'd once seen six kakapo shaken from a single tutu bush."

Vercoe Scott said habitat destruction by humans and the introduction of pests such as stoats and predatory cats and dogs, sowed the seeds of the kakapos' decline.

The flightless nocturnal birds, while essentially ground dwelling, are strong climbers but freeze when confronted by a threat, making them easy pickings for predators.

The males also attract mates by emitting a deep booming sound from thoracic air sacs, turning them into conspicuous targets for hunters in the night forest.

With an ageing population and bird numbers declining, kakapo recovery programme chief scientist Ron Moorehouse said the species' future appeared "dire" in the 1990s.

The situation sparked an intense conservation initiative, which has cost tens of millions of dollars, to save a bird that those who have encountered it describe as endearing and full of personality.

"They can be quite grumpy," ranger Sarah Kivi said. "They display so much personality, which I guess you don't get from a lot of birds. They'll sit there and look at you and you wonder 'what are they thinking?'".

Exacerbating the problem was the fact that kakapo, which can live up to 90 years, are notoriously slow breeders, only reproducing in seasons when abundant fruit is available from native tree species.

The breeding programme faced another hurdle when male kakapo became "imprinted" on their human handlers, meaning they saw them as more likely potential mates than female kakapo.

In the early days of the conservation effort, rangers even wore an outlandish rubber helmet dotted with dimples in an unsuccessful attempt to collect kakapo sperm when males tried to mate with their heads.

British actor Stephen Fry witnessed the kakapo's amorous antics first hand while filming his programme "Last Chance to See" in 2009, when a kakapo named Sirocco took a shine to zoologist Mark Carwardine and began vigorously coupling with his scalp.

The resulting footage, which Fry described as "one of the funniest things I've ever seen", attracted almost four million hits on video-sharing website Youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9T1vfsHYiKY.

Vercoe Scott said the birds' fortunes began to improve when they were moved to two remote islands where existing pests had been eliminated and which predators from the mainland could not reach by swimming.

"The biggest breakthrough was putting all the birds together on predator-free islands and understanding how they breed while getting over (our) fear of intervening," she said.

"If we'd taken a hands-off policy we would have lost the kakapo, so we really had to get in there and be quite intense with our management, particularly during the nesting period."

She added that her team set up cameras, weighed the chicks nightly and as a result hand reared many of the birds.

Vercoe Scott said it was highly unlikely any kakapo now survived in the wild, meaning only the conservation programme could save the species.

Such has been its success that rangers this year re-introduced eight kakapo to a third sanctuary, Little Barrier Island off the Auckland coast, after eliminating a rat infestation which forced their removal in 1999.

Moorehouse said some of the eight birds originally came from the island and immediately returned to their old nesting spots, raising hopes they will quickly settle in and breed in the new environment.

While the kakapo is still listed as critically endangered, Moorehouse said the situation no longer looked bleak.

"The trend is up, so we're encouraged by that," he said.

"We're certainly more comfortable, but with 126 birds you have to manage the genetics very carefully and that's what we're trying to do, so we retain as much genetic variation in the population as we can.

"So we're not out of the woods by any means but we're going in the right direction."

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Flynn's 'Gone Girl' poised to be summer thriller

CHICAGO (AP) ? Gillian Flynn's third novel, "Gone Girl," is the perfect beach read ? boy meets girl, boy marries girl, girl goes missing on their fifth wedding anniversary.

The boy is Nick, who grew up in a Mississippi River town in Missouri and became a magazine writer in New York, where he meets the blonde, beautiful and bright Amy. The mystery unfolds in dueling chapters, one from Nick's point of view, then one from Amy.

"I liked playing with the idea of marriage as a 'he said, she said' story," said Flynn, a Chicagoan and mother of a 2-year-old boy with her own equally compelling story ? girl loses job, girl becomes best-selling novelist.

"Gone Girl" entered The New York Times bestseller hardcover fiction list at No. 2 for the week of June 24 and earned a top-10 spot on Amazon's Top 100 list.

Critics love it, too. People magazine gave it four stars and Publishers Weekly called it "compulsively readable, creepily unforgettable." It is crime fiction that will make readers flip to the first page after they've finished the last page, looking for clues and hints they missed.

Flynn, 41, grew up in Kansas City, Mo., the daughter of two community college professors. Her 2006 debut was the mystery "Sharp Objects" and her follow-up was 2009's "Dark Places." She said she wrote her first two books on evenings and weekends while working as a journalist.

Flynn was laid off from her job as a writer and TV critic at Entertainment Weekly after she finished "Dark Places," but before the novel came out. Losing her job allowed her the chance to turn full-time novelist. It also provided inspiration for Nick in "Gone Girl". He loses his magazine writing job, too.

"I certainly wove that experience, that sense of having something that you were going to do for the rest of your life and seeing that possibility taken away... I definitely wove that sense of unrest and nervousness into Nick's character," she said.

Even though she was finding success as a novelist, Flynn said she would have kept her magazine job if she could.

"I don't know if I had it in my mind that I would do the novel thing solo. I'm a very pragmatic Midwesterner. I liked the idea of having a day job," she said. "It took me a while, that (writing) is my day job and it's going to be OK."

Flynn's writing focuses on women ? unusual, troubled women in difficult situations, said Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen bookstore in Scottsdale, Ariz., where Flynn recently gave a talk on "Gone Girl."

"Even though they're damaged they're all strong women and that has a lot of appeal," Peters said.

Flynn thinks the appeal comes from giving readers a sneak-peek into someone else's marriage: the tugs of war, power plays and gender roles. Flynn also was ready to write a mystery from inside a relationship after two novels that she describes as exploring "loneliness and isolation."

"I wanted to kind of play with the opposite of that, which is what happens when you choose to combine lives with someone. The good things that are possible and the bad things that are possible," Flynn said.

The book's subject matter didn't make Flynn's husband flinch, she said. "It takes a big guy if your wife comes and says, 'I'm going to poke and pry around the darkest side of marriage for my next book. Is that cool?'" Flynn said. "He didn't blink an eye. He said, 'Go for it. Don't censor yourself. Put everything down.'"

Her novel also tells the story of now: Characters are dealing with the aftermath of a recession. There are abandoned shopping malls, empty foreclosed homes and workers who have lost their jobs.

"I wanted the whole thing to feel bankrupt," Flynn said. "I wanted it to really feel like a marriage that had been hollowed out in a city that had been hollowed out and a country that was increasingly hollowed out."

The result, Peters said, is a novel that shows Flynn is more concerned with the "why" of the crime rather than the "how" of the crime.

"There's a real propulsion, the way she tell that story," Peters said. "You want to read it right through the end to see what's going on."

___

Online:

http://www.gillian-flynn.com

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Mexican rock heroes trial novel 'green trading' system

Public release date: 21-Jun-2012
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Beck Lockwood
beck@campusprco.uk
07-783-802-311
Campus PR

One of Latin America's biggest rock bands is leading a novel project that proposes to tackle climate change at a local level and promote local sustainable development.

Grammy Award-winning Man, based in Guadalajara, Mexico, has always been committed to environmental projects in the region. It says this project, which emerges from research carried out under the UK Government's Darwin Initiative since 2009, is one of the most important it has undertaken.

The project, which has also been given the endorsement of Mexico's President, Felipe Caldern, gives much needed support to an area of Mexico, La Primavera Forest, that has recently been devastated by fire. It also links closely to the theme of 'green economies', and the interaction between environment and economy, which features strongly in this week's Rio +20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development.

It is based on research, led by Professor Jon Lovett, of the University of Twente, in the Netherlands, and coordinated by Arturo Balderas Torres in Mexico looking at the potential to engage citizens with local forest owners and communities to compensate them for the ecological services they receive while promoting rural development.

In collaboration with the Mexican University of ITESO, the Darwin Initiative project conducted a study in an area of Western Mexico called La Primavera, an important biosphere reserve near the city of Guadalajara, to find out whether direct links could be made between citizens, who enjoy the benefits of having La Primavera national park on their doorsteps and landowners who work to improve biodiversity.

The model proposed by the team's research envisages local payment schemes for the services provided by the reserve, such as carbon sequestration to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, that would be used to directly compensate landowners who manage their land to promote conservation and biodiversity rather than simple profitability.

Balderas Torres lecturer at ITESO and pursuing a Ph.D. at the University of Twente, says: "These local schemes could have a huge impact for development, conservation and climate change mitigation. It is more sensible for people paying to enhance public goods such as carbon and biodiversity when they can also have direct access to other benefits, such as being able to visit La Primavera and enjoy its natural beauties and improved air quality."

The concept appealed to members of Man, who, in 1995, established the Selva Negra Ecologic Foundation, an organisation that finances and supports important projects aimed at protecting the environment.

With the assistance of Selva Negra the Darwin Initiative research has been carried forwards into a pilot project spearheaded by Man as they complete their Drama y Luz World Tour.

The band have estimated the cost of the carbon emissions and other environmental impacts caused during the tour and will make a contribution to mitigation activities that can be carried out locally, in a community located in one of the unprotected wildlife corridors near to La Primavera. The money paid by Man will contribute to a 0.5 million development and conservation project that will see over 1000 hectares conserved and 80 hectares replanted.

Fher Olvera, lead singer of Man, says: "This is one of the most important projects we have undertaken. It shows the way forward by taking practical, concrete, actions. It is not only about being committed to protecting the environment, but also protecting the livelihoods of people and their connection with nature."

"It is not often that research is transformed into implementation so quickly and we are very grateful to Man and Selva Negra whose support gives us an excellent example of how the model works in practice", says Professor Lovett. "The project is also very timely, the huge international Rio +20 meeting will take place in June this year. One of the main themes will be on the interaction between the environment and the economy. Here in La Primavera that linkage is being made through the Man project. Everyone benefits: the farmers receive compensation for help to mitigate climate change by planting trees; the planet benefits from removal of greenhouse gases; and biodiversity benefits from the increased forest cover."

###

For more information please contact:

Beck Lockwood, Campus PR, tel: 0121 4511321; mobile: 0778 3802318; email: beck@campuspr.co.uk

Available for interview:

Professor Jon Lovett, University of Twente

Arturo Balderas Torres, ITESO

Augusto Chacn Benavides, Selva Negra

Notes for editors:

The Darwin Initiative assists countries that are rich in biodiversity but poor in financial resources to meet their objectives under one or more of the three major biodiversity Conventions: the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD); the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES); and the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS), through the funding of collaborative projects which draw on UK biodiversity expertise.

The Darwin Initiative Project, led by Professor Lovett is called 'Market Based Scheme for Conservation in La Primavera Forest Mexico'. It aims to link the use of ecosystem services in the city of Guadalajara, in particular carbon dioxide production from urban energy use and absorption by La Primavera forests, with management of La Primavera. The project is administered by the University of Kent.

Rio+20 is the short name for the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development to take place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in June 2012. It is an historic opportunity to define pathways to a safer, more equitable, cleaner, greener and more prosperous world for all. This project embraces a number of key Rio+20 themes.

---

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?

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Public release date: 21-Jun-2012
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Beck Lockwood
beck@campusprco.uk
07-783-802-311
Campus PR

One of Latin America's biggest rock bands is leading a novel project that proposes to tackle climate change at a local level and promote local sustainable development.

Grammy Award-winning Man, based in Guadalajara, Mexico, has always been committed to environmental projects in the region. It says this project, which emerges from research carried out under the UK Government's Darwin Initiative since 2009, is one of the most important it has undertaken.

The project, which has also been given the endorsement of Mexico's President, Felipe Caldern, gives much needed support to an area of Mexico, La Primavera Forest, that has recently been devastated by fire. It also links closely to the theme of 'green economies', and the interaction between environment and economy, which features strongly in this week's Rio +20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development.

It is based on research, led by Professor Jon Lovett, of the University of Twente, in the Netherlands, and coordinated by Arturo Balderas Torres in Mexico looking at the potential to engage citizens with local forest owners and communities to compensate them for the ecological services they receive while promoting rural development.

In collaboration with the Mexican University of ITESO, the Darwin Initiative project conducted a study in an area of Western Mexico called La Primavera, an important biosphere reserve near the city of Guadalajara, to find out whether direct links could be made between citizens, who enjoy the benefits of having La Primavera national park on their doorsteps and landowners who work to improve biodiversity.

The model proposed by the team's research envisages local payment schemes for the services provided by the reserve, such as carbon sequestration to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, that would be used to directly compensate landowners who manage their land to promote conservation and biodiversity rather than simple profitability.

Balderas Torres lecturer at ITESO and pursuing a Ph.D. at the University of Twente, says: "These local schemes could have a huge impact for development, conservation and climate change mitigation. It is more sensible for people paying to enhance public goods such as carbon and biodiversity when they can also have direct access to other benefits, such as being able to visit La Primavera and enjoy its natural beauties and improved air quality."

The concept appealed to members of Man, who, in 1995, established the Selva Negra Ecologic Foundation, an organisation that finances and supports important projects aimed at protecting the environment.

With the assistance of Selva Negra the Darwin Initiative research has been carried forwards into a pilot project spearheaded by Man as they complete their Drama y Luz World Tour.

The band have estimated the cost of the carbon emissions and other environmental impacts caused during the tour and will make a contribution to mitigation activities that can be carried out locally, in a community located in one of the unprotected wildlife corridors near to La Primavera. The money paid by Man will contribute to a 0.5 million development and conservation project that will see over 1000 hectares conserved and 80 hectares replanted.

Fher Olvera, lead singer of Man, says: "This is one of the most important projects we have undertaken. It shows the way forward by taking practical, concrete, actions. It is not only about being committed to protecting the environment, but also protecting the livelihoods of people and their connection with nature."

"It is not often that research is transformed into implementation so quickly and we are very grateful to Man and Selva Negra whose support gives us an excellent example of how the model works in practice", says Professor Lovett. "The project is also very timely, the huge international Rio +20 meeting will take place in June this year. One of the main themes will be on the interaction between the environment and the economy. Here in La Primavera that linkage is being made through the Man project. Everyone benefits: the farmers receive compensation for help to mitigate climate change by planting trees; the planet benefits from removal of greenhouse gases; and biodiversity benefits from the increased forest cover."

###

For more information please contact:

Beck Lockwood, Campus PR, tel: 0121 4511321; mobile: 0778 3802318; email: beck@campuspr.co.uk

Available for interview:

Professor Jon Lovett, University of Twente

Arturo Balderas Torres, ITESO

Augusto Chacn Benavides, Selva Negra

Notes for editors:

The Darwin Initiative assists countries that are rich in biodiversity but poor in financial resources to meet their objectives under one or more of the three major biodiversity Conventions: the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD); the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES); and the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS), through the funding of collaborative projects which draw on UK biodiversity expertise.

The Darwin Initiative Project, led by Professor Lovett is called 'Market Based Scheme for Conservation in La Primavera Forest Mexico'. It aims to link the use of ecosystem services in the city of Guadalajara, in particular carbon dioxide production from urban energy use and absorption by La Primavera forests, with management of La Primavera. The project is administered by the University of Kent.

Rio+20 is the short name for the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development to take place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in June 2012. It is an historic opportunity to define pathways to a safer, more equitable, cleaner, greener and more prosperous world for all. This project embraces a number of key Rio+20 themes.

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