Italian cookbook author Marcella Hazan dies at 89

n">(Reuters) - Marcella Hazan, whose cookbooks brought the rich taste of authentic Italian food into kitchens across the United States, has died at the age of 89, her family said.

Hazan lived in Longboat Key, Florida, with her husband and lifelong collaborator and writing partner Victor. Her death was announced by her daughter-in-law Lael Sara Caplan Hazan on her Facebook page.

"The world of authentic home cooking has lost a giant today. My mother-in-law Marcella Hazan, melted away peacefully, my father-in-law Victor, was at her side," Caplan Hazan wrote.

Marcella Hazan was born in Italy in 1924, moving to the United States with her husband after World War Two. She claimed that she did not really learn how to cook until she was married and living in New York.

She taught her first cooking class when she was in her mid-40s and the first of her six cookbooks, "The Classic Italian Cookbook," was published when she was nearly 50, according to epicurious.com.

Perhaps her most famous recipe - tomato sauce - exemplified her culinary philosophy of simplicity. It required a can of peeled plum tomatoes, five tablespoons of unsalted butter, one small white onion and salt.

Asked in an interview with epicurious.com what she believed the keys to success were for the home cook was, she replied "taste. That is very important. They don't have to do very complicated things. And good ingredients."

Among the garlands she received over a long career as both a cookery teacher and author were a James Beard Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award and a knighthood in her native Italy.

(Reporting by Tim Gaynor; Editing by Mary Wisniewski and Eric Walsh)

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For yogi Hilaria Baldwin, pregnancy was an easy stretch

By Dorene Internicola

NEW YORK | Mon Sep 30, 2013 4:03am EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Yoga teacher and fitness expert Hilaria Baldwin practices what she preaches and credits her easy pregnancy and labor to exercising - every day and sometimes during the night.

During her pregnancy, the wife of Emmy award-winning actor Alec Baldwin and new mother to 5-week-old Carmen Gabriela, said she gave up spinning classes for a less vigorous fitness regimen that included jogging.

But yoga, the 3,000-year-old practice that marries movement to breath, was the 29-year-old's primary thing.

"When I had aches and pains in the middle of the night, I'd just get out of bed and stretch," said Baldwin, who teaches at Yoga Vida in New York and will release a fitness DVD, "@Home with Hilaria Baldwin: Fit Mommy-to-Be Prenatal Yoga," on Tuesday.

"A lot of people are so afraid to exercise they do damage by becoming sedentary," she added.

In the absence of complications, The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommends 30 minutes of moderate exercise on most, if not all, days for pregnant women.

Dr. Raul Artal, an expert on exercise and pregnancy who helped develop the ACOG guidelines, said women who are physically active have easier labor and recovery than sedentary women.

"There are also positive effects on mood that may prevent depression," said Artal, a professor and chairman of the department of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Women's Health at Saint Louis University School of Medicine.

Artal said women should not hesitate to do yoga, as long as any movement is moderate and hydration is encouraged.

"Pregnancy is one of the main contributors to obesity," he noted. "Obese women have a higher incidence of infants with birth defects."

Exercise physiologist and yoga instructor Jessica Matthews, of the American Council on Exercise, said experienced yogis don't have to abandon their practice during pregnancy.

But there are necessary tweaks and modifications.

"In the first trimester most standing poses (and) balancing postures are still accessible," said Matthews. "As the belly starts to grow, some balancing may require the support of a wall."

As pregnancy progresses, she urges women to use pillows and other props, and added that during the second trimester the body really starts to change and aches, pains and discomfort sets in.

"In the third trimester yoga's greatest benefit is not so much asana (postures) but focus on relaxation and breath work that can help with the whole delivery process," she said.

Matthews has seen the egos of even the most daring, arm-balance and inversion-loving yogis recede during pregnancy.

"They really do already have the instinct to protect their child. Ego starts to take a back seat," she explained. "And often those who came with a more physical focus find that after pregnancy they connect to yoga in a different way."

Baldwin plans to pass on her yoga expertise to her daughter, who already has two baby yoga mats.

"She's going to totally do yoga," she said, "I have high hopes for her."

Baldwin's 55-year-old husband, who appears in her DVD, practices with her.

"We do yoga together. I think we should do more," she said. "She is (Carmen) going to tell her father to get off his butt."

(Editing by Patricia Reaney and Doina Chiacu)

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Gods forbid: India's temples guard their gold from government

A view of Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple in Thiruvananthapuram, capital of the southern Indian state of Kerala, February 20, 2012.

Credit: Reuters/Danish Siddiqui

By D. Jose

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, India | Sun Sep 29, 2013 5:18pm EDT

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, India (Reuters) - India's Hindu temples are resisting divulging their gold holdings - perhaps nearly half the amount held in Fort Knox - amid mistrust of the motives of authorities who are trying to cut a hefty import bill that is hurting the economy.

The central bank, which has already taken steps that have slowed to a trickle the incoming supplies that have exacerbated India's current account deficit, has sent letters to some of the country's richest temples asking for details of their gold.

It says the inquiries are simply data collection, but Hindu groups are up in arms.

"The gold stored in temples was contributed by devotees over thousands of years and we will not allow anyone to usurp it," said V Mohanan, secretary of the Hindu nationalist Vishwa Hindu Parishad organization in Kerala state, in a statement.

Indians buy as much as 2.3 tonnes of gold, on average, every day - the weight of a small elephant - and what they don't give to the gods is mostly hoarded. Jewelry is handed down as heirlooms and stored away with bars and coins as a hedge against inflation or a source of quick funds in an emergency.

That is costing the economy dear. Gold imports totaled $54 billion in the year ending March 31, 2013, the biggest non-essential item shipped in from overseas and a major factor in swelling the current account deficit to a record in 2012/13.

Guruvayur temple, in Kerala, one of the most sacred in India and boasting a 33.5-metre (110-ft) gold-plated flagstaff, has already told the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) it won't divulge any details.

"The gold we have is mostly offered by the devotees. They would not like the details to be shared with anybody," said V M Gopala Menon, commissioner of the temple's administrative board.

The World Gold Council estimates there are about 2,000 tonnes of gold locked away in temples - worth about $84 billion at current prices - which Indian devotees have offered in the form of jewelry, bars, coins and even replicas of body parts, in the hope of winning favors from the gods or in thanks for blessings received and health restored.

Curbing gold imports and getting the gold squirreled away back into circulation has become a priority for the government and RBI this year. Import duty is at a record 10 percent and the latest new rule - that 20 percent of all imports must leave the country as jewelry exports - caused confusion that dried up buying for two months.

The head of the Hindu nationalist main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Kerala state, V Muralidharan, said the RBI wanted to "take possession" of the gold and maybe sell it for dollars.

DATA COLLECTING?

The central bank said there was "no proposal under its consideration to convert idle gold into bullion at this juncture".

But its letters, sent to leading temple trusts in Kerala, were prompted by a report looking at "issues related to gold imports" and loans outside the banking system in February, which zeroed in on temples and domestic hoards for fresh supplies.

Under the heading "supply-related measures", the report looks at recycling domestic gold and notes: "Temples in India hold large quantities of gold jewelry offered by devotees to the deities."

Subha Unnikrishnan, a clothes shop owner worshipping at one of the temples in Kerala's capital Thiruvananthapuram, said whatever had been given to the temple should stay there.

"We have given it to the god with a purpose," he said. "Nobody can take them away."

Of the three major temple boards in Kerala, which administer more than 2,800 temples, Cochin board has also decided against providing details of its gold, while another has yet to decide and a third says it has not yet received a letter from the RBI.

Some of them cite security reasons for their reticence - and the wealthiest temples do have tight controls and metal detectors at gates to keep their assets safe.

There has been no inquiry from the RBI yet at the centuries-old Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple, where two years ago treasure then estimated to be worth over $20 billion - more than India's education budget - was discovered in secret subterranean vaults. But its hoard is already being checked by the Supreme Court to make sure it is adequately protected.

There are some, for sure, who feel the temples should divulge their centuries of gold offerings.

"Everything the temple gets should be known to the devotees," said Shankaram Kutty, head of an advertising firm based in Cochin, who goes at least once a year to Guruvayur with an offering. "I feel every temple should declare their assets."

Mumbai's Shree Siddhivinayak Ganpati temple, often visited by Bollywood celebrities, had already put 10 kg (22 lbs) of its gold into a bank deposit scheme. It still has 140 kg in its vault.

"The gold we have is the nation's property, we will be proud if the nation can benefit from it," said Subhash Vitthal Mayekar, chairman of the temple's administrative trust. He has not yet received an inquiry from the RBI.

It is not alone. The Tirupati temple in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, considered one of India's richest, has lodged 2,250 kg of gold with the State Bank of India, which pays it interest.

As the central bank ponders its options, it could take heart that the temples themselves are already doing their bit to circulate the gold.

"We use some of it for making gold lockets that we sell in our temple counter. For making the lockets, we send some gold to the Mumbai mint through the State Bank of India, which is one of our bankers," said a source at the Guruvayur temple's administration.

($1 = 62.0650 Indian rupees)

(Additional reporting by Siddesh Mayenkar and Suvashree Dey Choudhury in MUMBAI; Malini Menon in NEW DELHI; A. Ananthalakshmi in SINGAPORE; Writing by Jo Winterbottom; Editing by Alex Richardson)

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Diesel founder taken aback by race for young designers

Founder of Diesel clothing company Renzo Rosso gestures as he poses in front of Rialto Bridge in Venice December 14, 2012.

Credit: Reuters/Manuel Silvestri

By Astrid Wendlandt

PARIS | Sun Sep 29, 2013 9:43am EDT

PARIS (Reuters) - Renzo Rosso, the founder of Diesel, says competition for hot designers is now as intense as for football stars, as shown by the speed at which big luxury groups such as LVMH are investing in promising new fashion names.

"Fashion is like soccer, only champions make a difference," said the tattooed 58-year-old entrepreneur as he sat in the showroom of one of his brands, Maison Martin Margiela, in a converted 19th century convent in Paris.

Earlier this month, two fledgling British fashion brands Rosso had been following for more than two years, J.W. Anderson and Nicholas Kirkwood, were taken over by LVMH, the industry leader.

"We also considered investing in them but we never expected LVMH to move so quickly," Rosso told Reuters before the Margiela show at Paris Fashion Week.

Rosso made an estimated $3 billion fortune from the stone-washed jeans brand Diesel he founded in 1978 and which grew with the help of off-the-wall advertising campaigns.

Rosso also runs fashion brands Viktor & Rolf and Marni through his OTB (Only the Brave) holding company. His Staff International unit makes and distributes clothes under license for brands including Just Cavalli, DSquared2 and Vivienne Westwood.

Rosso spends much of his time surveying the work of young designers to see if one day they could work for him or if their labels have the potential to become global brands.

The race among big luxury groups such as LVMH and Kering to attract young designers comes as at a time when growth has slowed down at their big brands, Louis Vuitton and Gucci respectively.

"What groups like LVMH are doing, is preventing young designers like Anderson from working for somebody else," Rosso said.

CREATIVE DIRECTOR

LVMH last week appointed Anderson, known for his urban androgynous style, as creative director of its Spanish luxury handbag brand Loewe.

LVMH has also invested in young French fashion label Maxime Simoens while Kering has bought stakes in British designer Christopher Kane and in U.S. brand Altuzarra.

Rosso said he was in talks to invest in a brand, whose name he declined to reveal, and hoped to finalize the deal next year. He knows it takes time to turn a fashion brand into a profitable business. Margiela, which now generates around 80 million euros in annual sales, only recently became profitable more than a decade after Rosso invested in it.

OTB is often compared to a small LVMH, being one of the only Italian fashion groups alongside Tod's, which owns Roger Vivier and Schiaparelli, which are regarded as industry consolidators. But Rosso says his ambition is not to build a giant group.

"I don't want to be a giant, I just want to be cool and modern," said the president of OTB, whose motto "Be stupid" is about being "bold, daring, breaking the rules and following your instinct".

Rosso, a father of six who was born into a farming family in Padua, northern Italy, and studied textile manufacturing, said he was looking for brands that were contemporary and original and knew "how to marry creativity with lifestyle".

He regretted not being able to buy Valentino, acquired last year by the Qatar royal family for 700 million euros, as the Italian fashion brand now appeared to be going from strength to strength.

Rosso also missed out on Milanese jeweler Pomellato, bought in April by Kering for 380 million euros.

SUCCESSION ASSURED

Companies often change hands when there is no clear succession plan or when descendents become too numerous and divided and some simply want to cash in.

Rosso said he felt his succession was assured, having named his 34-year-old son Stefano as his No. 2 this year. He also appointed his older son Andrea, 36, as creative director of Diesel's younger line 555DSL and the brand's licensing businesses in watches, sunglasses and perfume.

Rosso said he was not interested in an initial public offering as his group did not need cash, having 235 million euros on its balance sheet at the end of 2012.

"All my friends who are quoted advise me against doing it," he said.

If he wanted to make a major acquisition, Rosso estimated he could raise as much as 500 million euros in debt. OTB last year made earnings before interest and tax of 140.6 million euros on 1.5 billion euros of sales.

NO RECOVERY IN ITALY

Unlike fashion groups such as Prada, which spotted signs of recovery in Europe over the summer, particularly in Italy, Rosso said trading remained tough in southern Europe.

"I smile when I hear politicians say there is an economic improvement in Italy," Rosso said.

Rosso forecast OTB's revenue growth this year will come below the 10.1 percent recorded in 2012 due to lacklustre trading in Europe, which suffered from poor weather in the spring, and the weak yen, which also depressed the value of OTB's revenues.

The lower growth is also due to the pruning of Diesel's distribution network in countries such as Italy, where it makes between 10-15 percent of its sales.

Diesel is trying to move upmarket and has hired the designer Nicola Formichetti, Lady Gaga's ex-stylist and former artistic director at Thierry Mugler, the fashion brand owned by family-controlled cosmetics brand Clarins.

Rosso said business in northern Europe remained strong, particularly in countries such as Germany where sales growth is above 10 percent as "Germans become more fashion oriented".

(Additional reporting by Isla Binnie in Milan; Editing by Giles Elgood)

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Modern Etiquette -The pluses and perils of instant communication

By Jo Bryant

LONDON | Mon Sep 30, 2013 6:38am EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - Email and texting enable us to communicate instantly, but the ease and spontaneity of communication can present us with a multitude of digital dilemmas.

Email

More formal than a text message and less formal than a letter, emails are quick and convenient. They should, however, be approached with the same care and attention that a more traditional form of written communication would receive.

Always include a proper salutation at the beginning of an email (ie ‘Dear Mr Debrett'). Formal emails mimic letters, but for most emails, sign-offs such as ‘Best wishes' or ‘Thanks' are quite acceptable.

Beware of using capital letters too often; use italics or underlining for emphasis. Don't litter emails with exclamation marks, and avoid abbreviations or emoticons for business correspondence.

Be cautious of sarcasm and subtle humor, unless you know that the reader will ‘get it'. If in doubt, err towards the polite and formal. Similarly, think carefully before hitting ‘send' if your email is written in haste or when emotions are running high.

Use ‘reply all' discriminately; don't spam friends and colleagues. Don't overload your emails with system-slowing extras.

Texting

Texts are for conveying short, instant messages. Important information may need a more lengthy explanation; if in doubt, send an email where you have more flexibility and space. Texting is a blunt instrument - do not send a text message if tact or subtlety is required.

Use as much conventional grammar, punctuation and spelling as necessary to ensure that you make yourself clear. Tailor your text message to the recipient - using abbreviated language and emoticons may look unprofessional or confuse a recipient not used to them.

If you have to cancel an appointment or communicate some important information, make a phone call. Don't let the convenience of texting be an excuse for always being late and never respond to bad news by text message. A handwritten letter or a phone call is always preferable.

In business, sign off with your name. Your recipient may not have your contact details stored in their phone.

(Jo Bryant is an etiquette advisor and editor at Debrett's, the UK authority on etiquette and modern manners (www.debretts.com). Any opinions expressed are her own.)

(Editing by Paul Casciato)

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Pesticide ban cuts South Korea's high suicide rate - a bit

1 of 4. A man walks past a statue of a person comforting another on the Mapo Bridge, one of 25 bridges over the Han River, in central Seoul September 27, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Lee Jae-Won

By Ju-min Park

SEOUL | Mon Sep 30, 2013 3:13am EDT

SEOUL (Reuters) - Jang Chang-yoon was drunk and weepy one rainy night, troubled by debts from his divorce. On a dark impulse, the South Korean waiter bought a bottle of pesticide to end it all with a few toxic swigs.

At the last minute, he changed his mind when his young daughter grabbed his arm and begged him: "Daddy, don't die."

Unlike Jang, many people do not pull back from the brink in South Korea, which has had the highest suicide rate in the developed world for nine straight years, often drinking pesticide as their way out.

But a decade after Jang's brush with death, a ban on fatal pesticides is credited with cutting the number of suicides by 11 percent last year, the first drop in six years. The government restricted production of Gramoxone, a herbicide linked to suicides, in 2011 and outlawed its sale and storage last year.

"The number of suicides by poisoning including Gramoxone fell by 477, which accounts for about 27 percent of the total decrease in the number of people committing suicide," Lee Jae-won, an official at Statistics Korea, said last week after the government released the latest figures.

Pesticide was the method of choice for almost a quarter of the South Koreans who killed themselves between 2006 and 2010, according to a government report to parliament.

In the highly competitive society of Asia's fourth-largest economy, experts say people who end up alone battling pressure for good school grades or from financial burdens have little in the way of a safety net.

Despite the improvement in the suicide rate, more than 14,000 South Koreans killed themselves last year. Elderly people living in rural areas are a particularly high-risk group.

Since the 1950s, older generations have been fixated on South Korea becoming more competitive and productive, a side effect of rapid industrialisation that turned a war-damaged country into one of the richest in the world.

STIGMAS AND PAIN

Kim Hyun-chung, a psychiatrist at the Korean Association for Suicide Prevention, sees social stigmas as a major reason for the high suicide rate. Many South Koreans who are depressed or under heavy stress are reluctant to bring up issues like mental illness or an inability to cope, he said.

"The ban on toxic pesticides obviously led to the decline in the suicide rate because that is the easiest means of suicide for elderly people in rural towns," Kim said. "But we still have bridges and charcoal briquettes."

To help limit access to lethal chemicals, the Life Insurance Philanthropy Foundation launched a campaign to provide pesticide lockers to farming towns with high rates of depression.

The foundation, set up by private insurance firms, says no one from the villages with the lockers has committed suicide over the past three years, compared with one or two people from each village who had killed themselves in past years.

"The lockers help reduce the impulse to get hold of pesticides because they have to find keys to open them," Chung Bong-eun, an official at the foundation, told Reuters.

The 2012 figures may offer a glimmer of hope, but the latest comparisons by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development showed South Korea was by far the most suicidal society, followed by Hungary, Russia and Japan.

For Jang, working two jobs is still tough, but he regrets trying to kill himself and is happy to have his life to share with his two daughters. While he sees the ban on pesticides as a positive step, he feels for others who are under duress.

"Old and young people have their own pain from either quick economic development or unemployment," he said. "I hope the government will care more about people's health."

(Editing by John O'Callaghan and Ron Popeski)

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Half of British pilots admit to falling asleep in cockpit - survey

By Sarah Young

LONDON | Fri Sep 27, 2013 8:33am EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - More than half of British airline pilots say they have fallen asleep in the cockpit, a survey said, ahead of an EU vote on flying hours which a pilots' association said could compromise flight safety.

According to the British Airline Pilots' Association (BALPA), 56 percent of 500 commercial pilots admitted to being asleep while on the flight deck and, of those, nearly one in three said they had woken up to find their co-pilot also asleep.

Pilot exhaustion grabbed the headlines this week when a newspaper reported two pilots on a British long-haul flight fell asleep in the cockpit, leaving the packed jet travelling unsupervised on autopilot.

The survey, released by BALPA, came ahead of a vote in the European Parliament on Monday on new rules which could replace British regulations.

BALPA, a trade union for pilots, voiced concerns that these proposed changes would water down British safety standards.

The rule changes would mean that pilots could work a maximum of 110 hours in a two-week period, more than the 95-hour limit under British regulations, and at night could be expected to fly for up to 11 hours, against a current 10-hour limit.

"Tiredness is already a major challenge for pilots who are deeply concerned that unscientific new EU rules will cut UK standards and lead to increased levels of tiredness, which has been shown to be a major contributory factor in air accidents," BALPA General Secretary Jim McAuslan said in a statement.

The proposals, devised by the European Aviation Safety Agency to harmonize the rules regarding pilots' hours across the European Union, would also mean they could be called to work at any time on their days off. Currently, restrictions are in place to help them plan their rest on days off.

The survey of pilots, by pollster ComRes, found 84 percent of respondents believed their abilities had been compromised over the last six months by tiredness with almost half saying pilot exhaustion was the biggest threat to flight safety.

British lawmakers, in a report published earlier this month, expressed concern that the new European rules set the limit for the flight duty period at night too high.

But the Association of European Airlines, which represents 31 European airlines, urged support for the proposals, saying they would ensure all airlines followed the same rules.

"The new ... rules would ensure that Europe will continue to have one of the strictest rules in the world, even stricter than today," the body's acting Secretary-General Athar Husain Khan said in a statement.

The Civil Aviation Agency, Britain's aviation regulator, dismissed worries about the new rules.

"We think the new European flight time limitation regulations maintain the UK's current high safety levels, and will actually increase safety for UK passengers travelling on some other European airlines," it said in a statement.

(Reporting by Sarah Young; Editing by Belinda Goldsmith and Pravin Char)

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Online retailers go hi-tech to size up shoppers and cut returns

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Italian pasta king puts company in hot water with anti-gay comment

By Steve Scherer

ROME | Fri Sep 27, 2013 6:38pm EDT

ROME (Reuters) - When pasta king Guido Barilla found himself pilloried on social media for saying he would never use a gay family in his advertising, rival pasta maker Buitoni was quick to capitalize.

A picture on its Facebook page of an open door looking out onto a courtyard featured the caption: "At Buitoni's house, there's a place for everyone."

It was a stark demonstration of the rising power of social media. Barilla's comments to a medium-sized Italian radio station on Wednesday quickly became a global public relations disaster with a likely knock-on effect on sales.

The comments that he would "never" do an ad "with a homosexual family" to a station that has barely more than 2 million daily listeners spread like wildfire on Twitter and Facebook, sparking worldwide calls to boycott products by the world's biggest pasta maker on Thursday.

The outcry will weigh on U.S. sales in the short term, and Barilla's immediate response to the uproar was "muddled and odd", Ashley McCown, a crisis communications expert at Solomon McCown in Boston, told Reuters.

"In the U.S. people want to feel good about the things they buy and who they buy them from," she said.

In a written statement on Thursday, Barilla said he was sorry "if I offended some people".

Late on Friday the 55-year-old company chairman posted a video on Facebook saying he respected everyone, "including gays and their families".

Speaking English, the great-grandson of the man who founded the privately owned Barilla company more than 130 years ago pledged to meet "representatives" of those he offended.

"I have heard the countless reactions to my words in the world which have depressed and saddened me. It is clear that I have a lot to learn about the lively debate concerning the evolution of the family," he said.

Seeking to boost sales outside of crisis-hit Italy, Barilla has recently focused on expanding in the United States, its second biggest pasta market, by introducing microwaveable meals and more ready-made sauces.

Barilla's radio comments came after the interviewer asked him about accusations this week from Laura Boldrini, president of the lower house of parliament, that Italian advertising was full of gender stereotyping.

Barilla, whose ads often picture mothers serving their families at the dinner table, disagreed, and was then asked whether he would feature a gay family.

After saying he would not, he spoke at length about his belief in the "classic family", adding however that he supported gay marriage, which is illegal in Italy, but not adoptions by gay couples.

In the United States, gay marriage is legal in 13 states and, unlike in Italy, the gay rights movement continues to build momentum and break down barriers.

"I'm Italian, I'm gay, I'm married legally to a man, I have three adopted children. I had Barilla pasta for dinner last night. Today, tomorrow and forever more I will choose another brand of pasta. Good bye Barilla! You lose!!!" David De Maria wrote on Barilla's U.S. Facebook page.

SPAGHETTI IS STRAIGHT

The controversy generated Internet satires. BuzzFeed featured a picture showing heterosexual couples lovingly eating pasta together with the words: "Spaghetti is straight".

Another image posted widely on Twitter and Facebook showed the trademark blue Barilla pasta box with the letters "Bigotoni" on it, rather than "Rigatoni".

While Barilla's comments were condemned by most, others said the gay community was over-reacting.

"We may not agree with him but he is just expressing his opinion and doing it in a respectful way," said JasonD79, who said he was gay, in reaction to a news story on Facebook. "He is not saying gays can't work for them or anything, he is just saying he will not do an ad with a gay family."

Only time will tell how much the boycott will hurt Barilla, which saw profits tumble 21 percent in 2012.

"In the short term, it is a threat to sales. What's yet to be seen is, is there really going to be a long-term impact?" McCown said.

(Editing by Philippa Fletcher and Xavier Briand)

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Drug 'Molly' is taking a party toll in the United States

1 of 2. Ecstasy pills, which contain MDMA as their main chemical, are pictured in this undated handout photo courtesy of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

Credit: Reuters/U.S. DEA/Handout via Reuters

By Victoria Cavaliere

NEW YORK | Sat Sep 28, 2013 9:25am EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Artist and therapy student Anna and her friends marked a birthday in New York recently with a familiar ritual: They pumped up the electronic music, danced, and celebrated with a special guest called Molly.

"It was a group of about 12 people at someone's house and we were all just celebrating," Anna recalled. "Somebody had it and, and you know, it was a pretty electronic music kind of crowd."

Molly, an illegal stimulant frequently sold in pill form, has become prominent in the electronic music scene over the past decade, said Anna, 26, who did not want to give her full name because she is in school and "counseling people to be healthy."

Molly is the street name for a drug that is pushed as the pure powder form of a banned substance known as MDMA, the main chemical in ecstasy. In the last five years, Molly has made its way into popular culture, helped by references to it made by entertainers such as Madonna, Miley Cyrus and Kanye West.

The drug's dangers became more clear after a rash of overdoses and four deaths this summer, including two at a huge annual electronic music festival in New York City.

The parties of the late 1980s and early '90s saw the heyday of ecstasy, but its popularity began to wane a decade ago after a number of deaths and hospitalizations.

That's when Molly made her way onto the scene.

Over the last few years, drugs sold under that name have "flooded" the market, said Rusty Payne, a spokesman with the Drug Enforcement Administration.

In some states, there has been a 100-fold increase - the combined number of arrests, seizures, emergency room mentions and overdoses - between 2009 and 2012, according to DEA figures.

The drug is accessible and marketed to recreational drug users who believe it to be less dangerous than its predecessor, which was often cut with other substances, from Ritalin to LSD.

Like ecstasy, Molly is said to give a lengthy, euphoric high with slight hallucinogenic properties.

In reality, however, the promised pure MDMA experience "doesn't exist," said Payne.

'SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT'

Most of the Molly is one of several synthetic designer drugs that have been flooding the U.S. and European marketplace from chemical labs primarily based in China, Payne said.

"A lot of people are missing the boat here," he said. Molly could be anything ... 80 to 90 percent of the time we are given a chemical or substance believed to be Molly, we're finding most of the time it is something completely different."

Four recent deaths attributed to Molly have thrust the club drug into the national spotlight. On August 31, a 23-year-old Syracuse University graduate and a 20-year-old University of New Hampshire student died after taking what they believed to be Molly during an electronic music concert in New York City. The deaths, and several other reported overdoses, prompted the Electric Zoo festival to cancel the final day of the concert.

A University of Virginia student died at a rave in Washington, D.C., the same weekend, after taking what her friends said was Molly. Days earlier in Boston, a 19-year-old woman died in a club and three concert-goers overdosed at the waterfront, police said.

In Atlanta, this weekend's TomorrowWorld music festival organizers warned on its website of zero-tolerance for MDMA use, but noted: "If you or someone around you has taken something that you are concerned about or need help, it is important that you tell our staff. We are here to help and never judge."

The number of visits to U.S. emergency rooms involving MDMA has jumped 123 percent since 2004, according to data compiled by the Drug Abuse Warning Network. In 2011, the most recent year on record, there were 22,498 such visits.

In the New York concert deaths, the medical examiner found lethal mixtures of MDMA and methylone, a synthetic stimulant, the DEA said.

"It's exactly the same phenomenon that occurred with ecstasy a decade ago," said Dr. Charles Grob, a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the UCLA School of Medicine and an expert on MDMA. "Ecstasy had terrible reliability and it's the same with Molly. Though it's being marketed as pure MDMA, it's a hoax."

Overdose symptoms can include rapid heart beat, overheating, excessive sweating, shivering and involuntary twitching.

Grob said references in pop culture can fan misconceptions.

Miley Cyrus admitted in July that a lyric in her new dance anthem "We Can't Stop" was a reference to Molly. Last year at a Miami concert, Madonna, the mother of a teenager, asked: "How many people in this crowd have seen Molly?" She later said she was referring to a friend.

The illusion that MDMA is somehow less harmful has been branded with Molly, according to Anna.

"I have definitely heard that people think that it's pure. I have some friends that are like 'I only want to do Molly. I won't do other stuff' because it's marketed as something that's somehow better," said Anna. "But actually no one knows what's in it. All of it is a gamble."

(Editing by Scott Malone and Gunna Dickson)

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Miss Philippines crowned Miss World 2013 after protests

JAKARTA | Sat Sep 28, 2013 12:21pm EDT

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Miss Philippines was crowned Miss World 2013 on Saturday at a tightly guarded ceremony in Bali, Indonesia, after the contest was plagued by protests from Muslim hardliners and fears that extremist groups could try to disrupt the event.

U.S.-born Megan Young, a 23-year-old studying digital film, accepted the crown from last year's winner, Wenxia Yu of China, and promised to "be the best Miss World ever".

Thousands of members of the radical Islam Defenders Front took to the streets over the past month to protest holding the pageant in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, calling it "pornography".

The protests forced organizers to move the event from a venue outside Jakarta to Nusa Dua in southern Bali, a predominantly Hindu resort island.

Event organizers announced in June that contestants would eschew bikinis this year in favor of sarongs and one-piece swimwear to avoid causing offence.

The embassies of the United States, Britain and Australia issued travel warnings for Indonesia, saying extremist groups could be planning violence to disrupt the pageant.

However, Indonesian police said there were no reports of unrest surrounding the contest on Saturday.

The new Miss World will spend the next year travelling to represent the Miss World Organization and help raise money for its charitable causes.

Marine Lorphelin, a 20-year-old medical student from France, took second place. From Ghana, Carranzar Naa Okailey Shooter, 23, also a medical student, came third.

(Reporting by Fergus Jensen and Kanupriya Kapoor; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

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China artist Liu Xiaodong goes local in London for first UK show

Chinese artist Liu Xiaodong poses for a portrait in front of his painting titled ''Green Pub'' at the Lisson Gallery in London September 26, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Andrew Winning

By Paul Casciato and Minnie Brookfield

LONDON | Fri Sep 27, 2013 11:52am EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - One of China's best known artists, Liu Xiaodong, headed down to the pub for inspiration for his first London show.

The soft-spoken, bespectacled 50-year-old artist has spent the last three decades capturing the lives of ordinary people in his paintings, painted-over photographs, diaries and films from China to Europe and the Middle East.

His "Half Street" exhibition depicts the lives of people Liu befriended over six weeks in two pubs and an Egyptian café, just steps from the Lisson gallery where the large oil-on-canvas paintings are displayed alongside acrylic photo-paintings.

"It's such an exciting thing to share with other people," said Liu, a leading figure among Chinese Neo-Realist painters and professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA).

Liu likes to spend time getting to know his subjects. The Beijing-based artist writes and draws in a journal and then takes photographs before building a temporary studio in situ, to paint 'en plein air' or 'xiesheng' in Chinese.

It's a technique he has used previously living and painting among local people from Tibet to Israel. Critics have compared his work to that of British painter Lucian Freud.

"The background is important," he told Reuters in an interview this week.

In London he was invited into the homes of the staff at The Perseverance pub, had dinner with them, smoked with them and walked their dogs.

"I very much enjoyed painting here because at first we didn't know each other," Liu said. "After painting we are close, we know each other and feel very good."

"Green Pub" depicts The Perseverance with its staff and trusty dog Mati, painted from life over four consecutive days during opening hours.

"All our customers were all in the pub as it was taking place, so it created a really good vibe," said the pub's 46-year-old landlady, Margaret Finnegan, originally from New Jersey in the United States.

Photographs with touches of paint from Liu add small details such as rain drops, but also figures and in one case a portrait of Finnegan's late father painted into a photograph alongside her husband working in the kitchen.

When she saw it, Liu said: "She was almost crying ... I was crying too."

French chef Sebastien Lambot, his Polish wife Marta, their 17-month-old son and a reveler dressed as a cowboy riding a horse are the subjects in "White Pub", an oil-on-canvas painting Liu created after befriending the couple and asking permission to paint them in The Chapel pub where Sebastien works.

"When we Googled his name we found out he was a world-famous artist," Sebastien said. "We've become immortal in a way."

The final location, shown in the painting "Egyptian Restaurant", is an upstairs meeting room of an eatery on the Edgware Road in London, itself a former Art Deco cinema.

It is depicted empty, with the television off and the chairs either recently vacated or waiting for new occupants.

The work was painted just after the Muslim celebration of Eid, the feast following the fasting of Ramadan.

A few steps from the door of the gallery, an image of dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei spray-painted on a wall in the style of British street artist Banksy shouts out: "You can cage the singer, but not the song."

Liu would not be drawn on questions about Ai, who was detained without charge in April 2011 for 81 days.

"Every artist is different," he said. "Every artist has their own background.

The exhibition will run until November 2.

(Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

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Planned tax breaks for UK married couples rapped as 1950s throwback

Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron talks to cancer patients during a visit to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, southern England September 28, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Eddie Keogh

By Estelle Shirbon

LONDON | Sat Sep 28, 2013 11:38am EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - Activists and opponents accused Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron of discriminating against single parents and promoting a fantasy 1950s lifestyle through his plans to give tax breaks to some married couples.

Fulfilling a long-standing pledge by his Conservative party to "recognize marriage in the tax system", Cameron has proposed married couples in which neither spouse is a higher-rate taxpayer should get breaks worth up to 200 pounds ($320) a year.

If approved by parliament, the measure will come into force in April 2015, just one month before the next national election. It is expected to benefit around 4 million couples.

"All we're saying is that marriage is a good thing for our country - it's the ultimate form of commitment under the law - and we want to show our support for it," Cameron wrote in an article published in Saturday's Daily Mail newspaper.

The measure will also apply to same-sex couples in civil partnerships. From next year, same-sex couples will be able to marry under a new law passed by parliament in July.

"This summer I was proud to make equal marriage the law. Love is love, commitment is commitment," Cameron wrote.

The main opposition Labour party said the measure would benefit a minority of married couples to the detriment of other groups, and any benefit was outweighed by a range of welfare benefit cuts introduced by Cameron's government since 2010.

"He's so out of touch he thinks people will get married for 3.85 pounds a week," lawmaker Rachel Reeves said for the party.

Labour's deputy leader Harriet Harman took to Twitter to denounce possible consequences of Cameron's plan. "Married man's tax allowance will go to man on his third wife but not to first two wives looking after his children!" she tweeted.

A campaign group called Don't Judge My Family said the plan discriminated against widows and widowers, single parents, the one in four children whom it said grow up in single parent families, and unmarried cohabiting couples, among other groups.

"It's about promoting a fantasy 1950s family and won't go to many of the families who need support the most. In these tough times the government should be helping families, not judging them," the group said on its website.

The Conservatives' junior coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats, said the measure was "the wrong priority".

"You don't build a fairer society by using the tax system to favor one type of family over another," said Lib Dem treasury spokesman Stephen Williams.

"It is also not clear to me why a single person should pay more tax on their income than someone who is married," he said.

Under the coalition agreement signed by the Conservatives and Lib Dems in 2010, Lib Dem lawmakers will be able to abstain on a bill introducing the measure without breaking the alliance. ($1 = 0.6203 British pounds)

(Editing by Mark Heinrich)

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Gambling pro Archie Karas charged with defrauding casino

By Marty Graham

SAN DIEGO | Fri Sep 27, 2013 9:51pm EDT

SAN DIEGO (Reuters) - World-renowned professional poker player Archie Karas, has been arrested on charges of cheating and defrauding a casino after authorities say he was caught marking cards at a California blackjack table.

Karas, 62, best known for reputedly building a beginning stake of $50 into a $40 million fortune during a record three-year winning streak, was taken into custody on Tuesday at his Las Vegas home, the San Diego County District Attorney's Office said on Friday.

He will be extradited to San Diego to face a criminal complaint filed last week charging him with burglary, winning by fraudulent means and cheating, the prosecutor's office said.

If convicted, Karas, whose real name is Anargyros Karabourniotis, faces a maximum penalty of three years in prison.

"This defendant's luck ran out thanks to extraordinary cooperation between several different law enforcement agencies who worked together to investigate and prosecute this case," said county District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis.

According to prosecutors, Karas was spotted by surveillance cameras marking cards - using tiny smudges of dye secretly wiped onto the backs of jacks, queens, kings and aces - while playing blackjack in July at the Indian-owned Barona Resort and Casino in Lakeside, California.

The marks gave Karas an unfair advantage by helping him identify the value of cards before they were dealt as he chose whether to take another card, or hold, in an effort to reach the winning value of 21 without going over, prosecutors said.

The scheme worked so well that he managed to cheat the casino out of more than $8,000 before he was caught, district attorney's office spokesman Steve Walker said.

'THREAT TO THE GAMING INDUSTRY'

California Justice Department spokeswoman Michelle Gregory said Karas was doing the marking with dye inserted into a hollowed-out gambling chip that he would inconspicuously swipe over the cards while playing through a deck.

A search warrant executed on Karas's home turned up hollowed-out chips from other casinos, but so far no other gambling establishments have lodged complaints against him, Gregory said.

But authorities said Karas has been accused of cheating before.

"The Nevada Gaming Control Board has investigated Karas on multiple occasions resulting in four arrests," said Karl Bennison, that agency's enforcement chief, said in a statement. "Karas has been a threat to the gaming industry in many jurisdictions."

Karas set the record for the largest and longest documented winning streak in gambling history from 1992 to 1995, arriving in Las Vegas with $50 in his pocket and going on to amass $40 million from high-stakes poker.

He subsequently lost most of those winnings at baccarat and dice games in three weeks, according to Tom Sexton, who publishes the online gambling magazine Poker News. Karas returned to the poker table many times, often with backers, and cleaned out many of the best players in the world, according to Sexton.

He is considered by many to have been the greatest gambler of all time and often has been compared with Nick "the Greek" Dandolos, another high-stakes gambler and high roller who died in 1966.

San Diego County has 19 federally recognized Indian tribes and 10 Indian casinos, more than any other county in the United States. Industry experts estimate that casinos nationwide lose tens of millions of dollars a year in various cheating scams.

(Reporting by Marty Graham; Editing by Steve Gorman, Bernard Orr)

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Tunisia court sentences rapper over insults to government: lawyer

TUNIS | Thu Sep 26, 2013 8:36pm EDT

TUNIS (Reuters) - A Tunisian court sentenced a local rap singer on Thursday to six months in jail for a song insulting the police and government in a case likely to fuel debate over free speech under the Islamist-led government, his lawyer said.

Critics say free expression has been threatened under the governing coalition led by the moderate Islamist Ennahda party, which won an election after a 2011 uprising ousted a secular dictatorship. The government rejects those accusations.

"Tunisian rapper Ahmed Ben Ahmed, known as Klay BBJ, has been sentenced to six months in jail for insulting the authorities in his songs," Ghazi Mrabet, his lawyer, told Reuters after the decision.

He said the sentencing related to songs performed insulting the government and the police at a Tunisian festival.

Last July, a Tunisian court released a rap singer named Wled 15, who was detained after he described police as dogs in one video.

Critics have accused Ennahda authorities of encouraging intolerance for secular views and lifestyles by failing to prevent militant Islamist Salafi attacks on certain cultural institutions and individuals.

Hardline Salafis disrupted several concerts and plays last year, saying they violated Islamic principles. They also ransacked the U.S. Embassy in September 2012 during worldwide Muslim protests over an internet video.

The North African nation, which started the 2011 "Arab Spring" revolts, has been caught in a political deadlock since July between Ennahda and its secular opponents who want the government to step down and make way for elections.

(Reporting by Tarek Amara; Editing by Patrick Markey and Peter Cooney)

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Miami's high-end cigar rollers create niche industry for top smokes

1 of 9. Niurka Perez packs a box of cigars at the El Titan de Bronze cigar factory and store in the Little Havana neighborhood of Miami, Florida September 18, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Joe Skipper

By Zachary Fagenson

MIAMI | Fri Sep 27, 2013 8:13am EDT

MIAMI (Reuters) - Inside a Little Havana cigar rolling business in the heart of Cuban Miami, Maria Sierra's gnarled fingers perform the same dance they did for more than three decades for Havana's famed El Laguito cigar factory.

She cuts a teardrop from a broad tobacco leaf then glues, wraps and twists it onto the end of a near-finished cigar, forming the small fan that's the signature of high-end Cuban cigar rollers.

More than five decades after a trade embargo banned imports of cigars from Communist-ruled Cuba, the majority of U.S. cigar imports come from other Caribbean countries as well as Central America.

Yet in Miami a niche industry is growing, centered on a few dozen elite Cuban rollers who make special edition cigars that sell for as much as $700 per box in Europe.

Cigar Aficionado, the industry's leading glossy magazine, recently highlighted Miami's cigar industry describing the city as a "a new hot spot for creative cigarmakers."

Sierra, at age 18, was one of 30 Cuban women selected from thousands to learn the craft from Fidel Castro's personal cigar roller Eduardo Rivera. Women entered male-dominated factories at the urging of Cuban revolutionary Celia Sanchez, a close confidant of Castro's in the 1960s and 70s.

"We would start with one little cigar and they would watch over us very closely, removing those who didn't do well enough," said Sierra, now 64. "A group of 30 or 40 women would come in to learn and after a couple of days only one or two were left."

Sierra is one of 10 rollers working at El Titan de Bronze (The Bronze Titan), a Little Havana store named after Antonio Maceo, a general in the war for Cuban independence from Spain.

Other rollers came from Cuba's respected Partagas and H. Uppman factories. Some were arrested several times trying to escape before they made it to Miami.

"We're basically a boutique," said owner Sandy Cobas, whose father Carlos opened the small shop about 20 years ago. "We don't produce in mass quantities and the cigars are done exactly like they are in Cuba."

In Miami, Cuban rollers are prized for their rigorous training. Unlike rollers in other cigar-producing countries, each is responsible for his or her cigar, from start to finish.

"A lot of the families of plantation owners left for those countries with (Cuban tobacco) seeds in a handkerchief," Cobas said. "None of those countries were known for making cigars."

Tropical Tobacco, which produces Casa Fernandez cigars, opened a small factory in Miami in 2012, hiring a dozen or so Cuban rollers who produce about 1,200 cigars a day. At the company's factory in Esteli, Nicaragua, Fernandez employs 50 to 60 rollers who work in pairs - with one bunching tobacco and wrapping the cigars and another applying the cap - to make 15,000 cigars daily.

In 2012, the bulk of the nation's cigars came from the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Honduras, with imports from those countries totaling almost $600 million, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

"The Cuban rollers that are available in the Miami market are the best in the world," said Tropical's owner Eduardo Fernandez. "We saw a niche where we can respond quickly to the market and make high-end cigars on premises."

In Miami's specialty cigar factories, bunches of cured tobacco sit in black garbage bags in walk-in humidors to keep them pliable. They're marked with the country of origin - from Brazil to the Dominican Republic - and whether they are to be used as the cigar's filler or final wrapper.

George Rico's G.R. Tabacaleras Corp, a Miami distributor, opened a small suburban factory in 2012, offering enthusiasts the chance to learn everything about the cigar-making process.

The company does the bulk of its manufacturing in Danli, about 50 miles south of Honduras' capital Tegucigalpa. In Miami it offers the deluxe "G.A.R. Deli" experience for customers who can afford to spend $250 on a box of 25 cigars.

In a two-hour session with Rico, smokers learn that soil and seasons can affect the flavor of tobacco, and also how cigars are made. They sample dozens of tobaccos and finish by creating their own blend, which is handed off to a Cuban roller.

Despite the Cuban rollers' lofty reputation, Rico said there are more of them than there is work available. At the same time not all rollers are as passionate as El Titan's Sierra, who retired from cigar making in Cuba in 2011, but returned to it after moving to Miami to be near her daughter.

"You can make a decent living," Rico said, "but some rollers ... want to move on to other jobs."

(Editing by David Adams and Gunna Dickson)

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U.S. rights groups urge boycott of Barilla pasta after anti-gay remarks

Packs of Barilla pasta are seen in the kitchen of a restaurant in Rome September 27, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Tony Gentile

By Victoria Cavaliere

NEW YORK | Fri Sep 27, 2013 10:09pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. and international gay rights supporters called on Friday for a boycott of Italian pasta maker Barilla, whose chairman said he would never feature a gay family in its advertising.

The comments sparked a firestorm of protest on social media and resulted in online petitions in English, German and Italian, including one by Italian playwright and Nobel Prize winner Dario Fo.

A MoveOn.org petition started by Beth Allen, a Takoma Park, Maryland, mother of two and a lesbian, garnered 85,000 signatures by Friday evening.

"Guido Barilla made it clear how he felt about families like mine by saying that he'd never show gay families in advertisements for Barilla," Allen said in her petition.

"He said that gays could eat another pasta if they didn't like his message. I'm taking him up on that and so should you," she said.

Chairman Guido Barilla, 55, sparked the controversy with comments on Wednesday to an Italian radio station.

"I would never do (a commercial) with a homosexual family, not for lack of respect but because we don't agree with them. Ours is a classic family where the woman plays a fundamental role," he said.

Barilla also said he was unconcerned with whether gay consumers would stop buying pasta from the privately held company that is the world's biggest pasta maker.

If gays "like our pasta and our advertising, they'll eat our pasta. If they don't like it, then they will not eat it and they will eat another brand," he said.

The U.S.-based Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, or GLAAD, rallied behind the petition of an Italian-American mother in Connecticut who has a gay son. (Petition: r.reuters.com/qaz43v)

Consumers can express their opinions with their shopping dollars and forgo products from Barilla, one of the world's best-known makers of pasta and ready-made sauce, the group urged.

Nobel laureate Fo urged Barilla to make up for the remarks by creating an advertisement that featured a same-sex couple or parents.

The Washington, D.C.-based Human Rights Campaign, a gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender equal rights group, posted a list on its website of five Barilla competitors that are gay and lesbian-friendly. (Barilla alternatives: r.reuters.com/saz43v)

"Now, more than ever, consumers are sending a message that they are watching to see if the business they patronize understand and honor issues important to them," it said.

Shoppers in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood, an area popular with the gay community, said Barilla's comments could weigh into their decision to buy the brand.

"Making a comment is one thing," said Melissa Beyer, 40. "To me, the thing that takes it one step further is whether or not a company gives money to support some policy I don't agree with."

Christopher Houlihan, 26, a concert organist, said he saw the comments as a questionable business move.

"He can have an opinion, but he should keep it to himself," Houlihan said. "It's not just gay people that aren't going to buy it. It's friends and family members."

Barilla issued apologies on Thursday and on Friday, the company chairman posted a video in English on Facebook saying he respected everyone, "including gays and their families." (Barilla video: r.reuters.com/raz43v)

"I have heard the countless reactions to my words in the world which have depressed and saddened me. It is clear that I have a lot to learn about the lively debate concerning the evolution of the family," he said.

Guido Barilla runs the 140-year-old pasta company with brothers Luca and Paolo. The company employs 8,000 people and its 30 production sites manufacture 1.7 million tons of products each year.

Last year, fast food chain Chick-fil-A angered gay rights groups after President Dan Cathy made remarks opposing same-sex marriage.

Thousands of people pledged to boycott its 1,700 stores, while Cathy supporters staged a Chick-fil-A "Appreciation Day."

(Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

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Seven cars, crossovers win top marks for vehicle crash avoidance

DETROIT | Fri Sep 27, 2013 12:09am EDT

DETROIT (Reuters) - Cadillac, Mercedes-Benz, Volvo and Subaru earned the highest marks in a new front crash avoidance test program developed for the U.S. insurance industry.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a non-profit group funded by the insurance industry, rated 2013-2014 vehicles on how well their advanced-technology features help drivers avoid collisions.

IIHS focused on two systems, front collision warning and automatic brakes, which are typically offered as extra-cost options on an increasing number of new cars.

The group tested 74 "moderately priced" and luxury midsize cars and crossovers. IIHS awarded a "superior" rating to seven: General Motors Co's Cadillac ATS sedan and Cadillac SRX crossover; Geely Holding Group Co's Volvo S60 sedan and Volvo XC60 crossover; Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd's Subaru Legacy sedan and Subaru Outback wagon, and Daimler AG's Mercedes-Benz C-Class sedan.

The top rating is given to vehicles equipped with automatic brakes that can substantially slow down a vehicle or help it avoid a crash in tests at 12 and 25 miles per hour, IIHS said.

Automatic brakes can reduce vehicle speed or, in some cases, completely stop a car without driver intervention. They are marketed under a variety of names by different manufacturers.

Volvo's automatic braking system, called City Safety, is the only such system offered as standard on the vehicles tested by IIHS. The S60 and XC60 also can be ordered with an optional safety system called Collision Warning with Full Auto Brake and Pedestrian Detection.

Subaru's automatic brake system, which includes a pair of small cameras to monitor traffic, is called EyeSight and is an option on the Legacy and Outback. Cadillac's Automatic Collision Preparation, another auto-brake system, is an option on the ATS and SRX.

IIHS also tests and rates new vehicles in side, rear, rollover and front-end crashes.

(Reporting by Paul Lienert in Detroit; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

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Asymmetry, modernity bloom at Dior's secret garden in Paris

1 of 2. A model presents a creation by Belgian designer Raf Simons as part of his Spring/Summer 2014 women's ready-to-wear fashion show for French fashion house Christian Dior during Paris fashion week September 27, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Benoit Tessier

By Alexandria Sage

PARIS | Fri Sep 27, 2013 1:19pm EDT

PARIS (Reuters) - A colorful yet eerie pleasure garden greeted guests to the Dior fashion show in Paris on Friday, as artistic director Raf Simons introduced "a new tribe of flower women" to the ready-to-wear scene.

For Dior's spring/summer 2014 show at Paris fashion week, Simons took inspiration from the interplay between the natural and artificial worlds for his exploration of modernity that featured asymmetrical shapes and loose silhouettes.

"Sophisticated and savage" is how he described his looks, in which pleats dominated, asymmetry was ubiquitous and bursts of electric orange and yellow peppered the collection.

A scaffolding erected inside the gardens of the Musee Rodin was hung with brightly hued orchids and vines, some real and some artificial. The set, with its twisting and cascading decor, brought to mind a secret garden or a mysterious rainforest where a viper might lurk.

The hothouse's front-row guests included France's first lady, Valerie Trierweiler, Princess Siriwanwaree Nareerat of Thailand, and former "Wonderbra" supermodel Eva Herzigova.

The Paris fashion shows, which began on Tuesday, are taking place amid signs of revived demand in Europe for luxury goods. The market, which has been in decline for nearly five years, has felt most pressure in southern Europe, where consumer spending is tight and unemployment high.

The global luxury brand has sought to attract younger, hipper clients, and Christian Dior Chief Executive Sidney Toledano told Reuters that "Europe was working well" for the company.

CRISS-CROSS

Exane BNP Paribas wrote in a note to clients on Thursday that the European market was "the single most important positive surprise" for the luxury business in the second half of 2013.

In France, the women's ready-to-wear market - fashions that fill department-store racks and trendy boutiques - represents approximately 11 billion euros ($15 billion) in sales.

Simons, a Belgian appointed to the top creative post at Dior last year, took the brand's classic "Bar" jacket - with its tightly nipped waist and accented hips, but snipped and spliced it to reveal skin at the torso.

He paired those sharply tailored garments with printed silk shorts, combining fluidity and structure in flirty looks for summer.

Criss-crosses of fabric were sewn into many looks, while cut-ways revealed flashes of exposed hip, back or torso. Crisp blue-and-white seersucker shirt dresses were transformed from preppy to sexy with off-center openings at the front or exposed skin at the back.

Blue-hued silk prints featured prominently, some with writing incorporated into the patterns, while fabric in sorbet tones of pink and blue was sewn into light-as-air bubble skirts.

Simons ended his show with a parade of silver jacquard dresses. The garish, almost toxic artificiality of their colors contrasted with their classic Dior shapes, with full-hipped skirts and tight bodices.

(Editing by Pravin Char)

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Small-scale Hungarian growers look to spice up paprika market

1 of 18. Local policeman and paprika maker Zsolt Matos is seen from between hanging bags of drying peppers, near Batya, 140km south of Budapest September 21, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Laszlo Balogh

By Marton Dunai

BATYA, Hungary | Thu Sep 26, 2013 7:50pm EDT

BATYA, Hungary (Reuters) - Not long ago, Peter Szabo left a lucrative telecommunications job in Britain, sold his property and returned to Batya, a riverside village in the Hungarian flatlands south of Budapest, to grow red peppers.

Like a handful of others in the area, the 41-year-old is hoping to put Hungary's once booming paprika business back on the map after decades of neglect and despite fierce competition from countries including Brazil, Serbia and China.

Szabo is following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather - they also made the powdered paprika spice that has long been a staple in Hungarian cooking.

"I want to make sure people still eat Hungarian paprika," he told Reuters, as he poured a batch of gutted, dried and carefully selected peppers into a shiny steel electric grinder. "I stake my life on this: clean organic food, no preservatives."

Although still on a small scale, Szabo has had some success. He sells his paprika to some of the best restaurants in Hungary and has begun to find clients abroad.

But it is a far cry from Communist times, when every family in Batya had a paprika patch and some fields were as large as 50 hectares, compared with Szabo's two-hectare paprika plot.

At this time of year, drying wreaths of red peppers would hang from every roofline, but as competition undercut prices and growers quit for better-paid work elsewhere, the flood of red is all but gone.

Szabo has invested everything he owns into custom-made machines and uses methodical marketing, going after gourmets who value organic food and are willing to pay extra for it. Quality is the only way to survive, he says.

Two-thirds of his customers have returned to him after a first try. They include chefs at Hungary's top restaurants as well as regular customers. Some buyers drive hours each way to stock up.

Szabo's expertise is not unlike that of a winemaker.

"You have to let the pepper ripen on the vine and pick it at just the right time," he said. "Remove the stems by hand, then dry the peppers slowly, at a very low heat. After 20 to 30 days the sugar caramelizes and turns into the red coloring agent."

If the peppers get the right amount of sunlight, the right temperature and the proper care, you get a good vintage. 20 grams of it is enough to spice up to one kg of meat and dye it deep red. 2012 was too hot and the paprika was mediocre, Szabo said. This year's vintage is nearly ideal.

One of the few other local paprika farmers is local Batya policeman Zsolt Matos. He, too, says quality is the only weapon small farmers have against cheap imports of paprika that he says are often ground here and mislabeled as Hungarian.

"Luckily Hungarians are slowly turning toward quality," he said near his field, where a dozen workers picked the red peppers and left the green ones to ripen a few more weeks.

"Supermarket paprika contains stems, seeds, and is ground more coarsely. If you use fine stuff the taste and the color is more intense, and all of it diffuses into the food... It's like tasting mediocre or fine wine. You will know the difference."

(Reporting by Marton Dunai, editing by Paul Casciato and Mike Collett-White)

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Paris DIY shops ordered to close Sundays, prompting anger from business

By Ingrid Melander

PARIS | Fri Sep 27, 2013 6:28am EDT

PARIS (Reuters) - A court has ordered home improvement shops near Paris to close on Sundays, prompting anger about the burden of business regulation at a time when France is barely out of recession and consumers aren't spending.

The court told Castorama and Leroy Merlin to shut 15 shops in the Paris region on Sundays, a traditional day of rest, following on a complaint by competitor Bricorama, which was itself ordered last year to keep its shutters down on that day.

Earlier this week, another court ordered perfume chain Sephora, part of the LVMH group, to shut its flagship Champs-Elysee shop in the heart of Paris after 9 pm after a complaint by a labor union.

"I was shocked by the rulings," the head of the main employers' union Pierre Gattaz told BFM TV on Friday. "The law must change so that it stops wreaking havoc. It's unbearable: clients want to consume more and staff want to work more and they can't. It's crazy."

Consumer spending stagnated over the months of July and August after contracting in June, data showed on Friday.

An unexpected sharp bounce in consumer spending in May had helped pulled the country out of a shallow recession in the second quarter, with analysts saying that Friday's consumer data confirmed that the economy would likely not repeat the second quarter's 0.5 percent rebound.

Sunday has been enshrined as a day of rest in France since 1906, but myriad clauses exempt categories such as fishmongers, florists or the self-employed. Furniture and gardening stores can open, for example, but home improvement stores cannot.

The CEO of Bricorama, who was made to close 24 shops in the Paris region last year, said he was somewhat satisfied by Thursday's court ruling for the sake of fairness, but added that what he would really want is to be allowed to open Sundays.

"I am a retailer, if my clients want to come on Sundays I have a duty to be open," Jean-Claude Bourrelier told Reuters, adding that he lost 15 to 20 percent turnover on his Paris region shops after they stopped working on Sundays.

"What I want is all closed, or all open, but all equal. Otherwise it's unfair competition," he said, complaining that furniture shops such as Ikea are allowed to be open Sundays and sell tools such as drillers.

Bourrelier said he never failed to find volunteers to work on Sundays he said. One argument to convince them: they were paid three times the usual amount.

(Additional reporting by Jean-Baptiste Vey and Natalie Huet Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)

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New Jersey judge allows same-sex marriage; state plans appeal

A wedding cake is seen at a reception for same-sex couples at The Abbey in West Hollywood, California, July 1, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Lucy Nicholson

By Joseph Ax and Edith Honan

NEW YORK | Fri Sep 27, 2013 11:56pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A New Jersey judge ordered state officials on Friday to allow same-sex couples to marry starting on October 21, saying the current civil union system unfairly deprived them of federal benefits available to married couples.

A spokesman for New Jersey Governor Chris Christie indicated the state would appeal, but did not say whether it would seek a stay to stop the ruling from taking effect.

Judge Mary Jacobson in Mercer County Superior Court in Trenton issued the order, making New Jersey the first state to lift a ban on gay marriage as a result of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in June to strike down the federal law defining marriage as between a man and a woman.

"Same-sex couples must be allowed to marry in order to obtain equal protection of the law under the New Jersey constitution," she wrote.

Hayley Gorenberg of Lambda Legal, one of the attorneys for the gay couples who brought the lawsuit, said they would fight the state's appeal "every step of the way."

If Jacobson's decision stands, New Jersey would become the 14th state to permit gay marriage. It is also legal in the District of Columbia.

The ruling highlights the shifting legal and social landscape when it comes to gay marriage. Polls have shown increasing public support, and civil rights groups have prevailed at a number of courthouses across the country. Ten years ago, no U.S. states permitted gay marriage.

On Friday, Exxon Mobil Corp said same-sex spouses would be eligible for company benefits in light of the Supreme Court decision to strike down the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

An Illinois judge also ruled on Friday that lawsuits challenging the state's civil unions could move ahead, rejecting an attempt by several county clerks to have them dismissed.

Opponents of same-sex marriage reacted angrily to the New Jersey ruling, saying such an emotionally fraught issue should be left up to a voter referendum.

"It's another example of judicial activism on steroids. It's absurd," said Brian Brown, head of the National Organization for Marriage, a group that believes marriage should be defined as a union between one man and one woman.

'A LOT OF WORK LEFT'

Supporters of marriage equality held a news conference, rally and impromptu party on Friday night at the Garden State Equality headquarters at the First Congregational Church in Montclair, New Jersey.

Troy Stevenson, executive director of Garden State Equality, said he realized there would still be a battle to gain full equality in New Jersey, including an effort to overturn a veto by Christie.

"We know that we've got to continue to fight first in the Legislature as well as in the courts," he said. "We know there's a lot of work left.""

Last year, Christie, a Republican, vetoed a gay marriage bill passed by the Democratic-controlled Legislature. Lawmakers have until the end of the year to override the veto, but it is not clear the majority has enough votes.

Christie, considered among the leading possible contenders for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, has called for a referendum to decide the issue.

Across the country, the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that gay married couples must receive the same federal benefits, such as tax breaks, granted to heterosexual couples has emboldened advocates, who are pursuing lawsuits in state and federal courts.

"One of those cases is going to get to the Supreme Court sometime in the next few years," said James Esseks, who oversees gay rights advocacy for the American Civil Liberties Union.

New Jersey's civil union law was ripe for a challenge because the state's Supreme Court ruled in 2006 that same-sex couples were entitled to the same rights as heterosexual married couples. That led the Legislature to create civil unions as a way of ensuring equal treatment.

When the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated the Defense of Marriage Act, same-sex couples in New Jersey went back to court, arguing that civil unions could not guarantee equal rights because of the gap in federal benefits.

In a 53-page opinion, Jacobson agreed, stating that New Jersey same-sex couples in civil unions were missing out on federal benefits they would otherwise be entitled to as a result of the Supreme Court's action.

"These couples are now denied benefits solely as a result of the label placed upon them by the state," she wrote.

(Editing by Paul Thomasch, Gunna Dickson and Peter Cooney)

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In first census since war, Bosnia's 'Others' threaten ethnic order

1 of 4. Volunteers hand out leaflets with information about new Bosnia's census in Jablanica, 60 kilometres (37 miles) south of Sarajevo, September 27, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Dado Ruvic

By Daria Sito-Sucic

SARAJEVO | Fri Sep 27, 2013 8:14am EDT

SARAJEVO (Reuters) - Darko Brkan wants to upend Bosnia's constitutional order, and he's going to use the country's first census as an independent state to do it.

The 15-day population count begins on Tuesday, a milestone in Bosnia's recovery from a 1992-95 war but one that is stirring tensions that stifle development and threaten its future.

Brkan, 34, is behind a campaign calling on Bosnians to reject the ethnic and religious labels that dominate discourse and divide Bosnia more than two decades since it split from Yugoslavia and descended into war.

Thousands have joined, posting pictures of themselves on the Internet holding signs that read "Ethnically challenged", "Constitutionally challenged" and "A citizen above all".

The census goes to the heart of how Bosnia sees itself today - as a country united and at peace or a collection of ethnicities each vying for the upper hand.

More than an essential tool of economic planning, the count could have ramifications for the delicate system of power-sharing set in place by a 1995 U.S.-brokered peace deal.

That deal defined the warring sides - Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks (Muslims) - as 'constituent peoples', splitting territory and power between them at the expense of everyone else - Jews, Roma or the children of mixed marriages who refused to pick a side and are excluded from public sector job quotas.

Loosely defined as 'Others', they reject the labels fed upon by political parties established along ethnic lines.

"The constituent peoples jointly share a set of political rights that exclude those who are not members of these groups, and they want to protect it," Brkan said. "I don't feel an ethnic affiliation as part of my identity, nor do I state it."

The last census was in 1991, on the eve of Yugoslavia's fall, when 43.5 percent of Bosnia's then 4.4 million people declared themselves Muslims, 31.2 percent Serbs and 17.4 percent Croats. Over five percent said they were 'Yugoslav'.

In the war that followed, 100,000 people were killed, the vast majority of them Muslims. Two million were displaced.

ETHNIC QUOTAS, POLITICAL PATRONAGE

Resembling an election more than a census, Serb, Croat and Muslim political and religious leaders are urging their constituents and congregations to declare their ethnicity and faith as a matter of national duty.

They each fear being weakened in the system of ethnic quotas set down under the 1995 accord, a Byzantine form of government that stopped the war but stifled development. Bosnia trails its ex-Yugoslav peers in the quest to join the European Union.

The European Court of Human Rights has ruled the constitution discriminatory, but leaders have failed to agree on how to amend it, blocking Bosnia's application to join the EU.

"If there are more than 50 percent of us, Bosnia will be a national state of Bosniaks and we will dominate the other two peoples," said Sejfudin Tokic, leader of a campaign urging Muslims to declare themselves Bosniaks and their religion Islam.

In a letter to clergy, the Roman Catholic archbishop in Bosnia, Cardinal Vinko Puljic, said it was the "moral duty" of all Catholics to declare themselves as such in the census.

Sociology professor Slavo Kukic said the census was in danger of being hijacked.

"Instead of recording the biological potential of Bosnia, the census will in effect become a factor of ethnic homogenization and reactivate tensions that we should have expected to weaken," he told Reuters.

Brkan and the 'Others' represent a threat to the status quo, which feeds a bloated public sector and the culture of political patronage that flows from it. He says 20 percent of Bosnians consider themselves 'Others', a figure impossible to verify until the results of the census are announced in mid-January.

But the campaign has already angered nationalists.

"The reaction reveals their fear that the model they've been advocating for the past 25 years could fall apart," said Osvit Seferovic, leader of the 'Citizens Front - the Others' in the ethnically-divided town of Mostar.

"The more 'Others', the more normal Bosnia and Herzegovina will be," he said. "In the census, it's important to be anything but a Bosniak, Croat or Serb. It's important to be normal."

(Writing by Matt Robinson; editing by Ralph Boulton)

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Judge allows challenges to Illinois gay marriage ban to proceed

By Brendan O'Brien

Fri Sep 27, 2013 11:57pm EDT

n">(Reuters) - An Illinois judge on Friday allowed two lawsuits challenging the state's ban on gay marriage to proceed, possibly setting the stage for state courts rather than the legislature to decide whether same-sex couples will be allowed to marry in Illinois.

Cook County Circuit Court Judge Sophia Hall ruled that lawsuits brought by same-sex couples have a chance of succeeding with the argument that the state's ban on gay marriage discriminates against them.

The ruling is a boost for Illinois supporters of gay marriage trying to legalize gay nuptials through the courts because efforts through the state legislature fell short.

Thirteen U.S. states have legalized gay marriage. Several states including Iowa and some in New England, have done so through court rulings. Others such as Minnesota approved it through the legislature and last year Maine voted for same sex marriage in a referendum.

Supporters in other states have pursued a course similar to Illinois. On Friday, a New Jersey judge issued an order allowing same-sex marriage statewide in defiance of the state's governor, Chris Christie, who had vetoed a bill to legalize gay nuptials passed by the legislature.

The Illinois state Senate voted on Valentine's Day in February this year to legalize gay marriage but the state House of Representatives never scheduled a vote.

Civil unions for gay and lesbian couples are legal in Illinois but gay activists said this does not go far enough.

Gay marriage supporters plan to hold a rally and concert at the State Capitol on October 22 to pressure the state lawmakers to approve gay nuptials.

The judge was responding to lawsuits filed by The American Civil Liberties Union, and pro-gay rights group Lambda Legal on behalf of 25 same-sex couples in May 2012 after the clerk of Cook County, which includes Chicago, refused to marry same-sex couples or recognize nuptials performed in other states.

"Loving same-sex couples in Illinois can't wait any longer for the freedom to marry. We're excited to get to the next step and make the case for equality," said Camilla Taylor, the marriage project director for Lambda Legal, in a statement.

Opponents said they would continue efforts to block legalization of gay marriage in Illinois.

"Marriage between one man and one woman is constitutional, and we are confident that Illinois' marriage laws will ultimately be upheld," said Paul Linton, a lawyer for the Thomas More Society, which is opposed to same sex marriage.

The action in Illinois came three months after U.S. Supreme Court threw out a key part of the Defense of Marriage Act, which barred same-sex couples from federal marriage benefits. The Supreme Court left it up to the states to decide on the legality of same-sex marriage.

(Reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

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Britain's Prince George to be christened next month

Britain's Prince William and his wife Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, pose in the garden of the Middleton family home in Bucklebury, southern England, with their son Prince George, in this undated photograph released in London August 19, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Michael Middleton/The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge/Handout via Reuters

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Cuban athletes get pay raise, green light to work abroad

Cuba's Raicel Iglesias pitches a ball during the last preparation game for the World Baseball Classic (WBC) in Fukuoka in this March 1, 2013 file photo.

Credit: Reuters/AIN /Ricardo Lopez Hevia/GRANMA

By Nelson Acosta

HAVANA | Fri Sep 27, 2013 2:23pm EDT

HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuban athletes will be allowed to work abroad and have been granted significant pay increases for their performance, official media said on Friday, in hopes of stemming a decline in the country's results in international competitions.

The government's decision came as athletes, in particular baseball players, are defecting in record numbers, with 21 currently contracted by the U.S. major leagues, some earning multimillion dollar salaries.

Just this week, a promising young Cuban pitcher for the national squad, Raicel Iglesias, 23, failed to show up for training and was widely believed to have left the island, which would make him the latest prospect to seek a lucrative contract in the United States.

Cuba's famed boxing team suffered a similar series of defections in recent years, lowering its performance at the Olympics, world championships and other international events.

The exodus of athletes is mainly due to wages equivalent to $20 per month, in sharp contrast to their potential earnings abroad. The new measures would increase those salaries to between $40 and $200 for top athletes.

The measure is the latest reform of the Soviet-style system under President Raul Castro, who replaced ailing brother Fidel in 2008 with a call to update the country's economic and social system to the 21st century.

Cuba's Council of Ministers approved the measures "to perfect the compensation system of athletes, trainers and specialists," Granma, the Communist Party daily, said.

"Other measures will progressively go into effect to update practices so they are more in sync, from our perspective, with the world and thus contribute to achieving better results in sports," it added.

Although the salary increases are still modest by international standards, they are not considered insignificant in Cuba, where most public services are heavily subsidized.

"The country is changing and sports is not an exception," Stefano Arcobelli, a local baseball expert, said.

"Athletes will now be more enthusiastic and once more put their teams out front in many sports where they have lost their edge, for example volleyball and fencing," he said.

The Cuban government has repeatedly denounced what it calls the theft of its talent, charging it is part of U.S. efforts to undermine socialism and part and parcel of sanctions that do not allow contracts with Cuban athletes, who pay taxes to the government.

Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Yasiel Puig, who left Cuba in 2012, signed a seven-year, $42 million contract. Puig made his Major League debut on June 3 and has emerged as one of the top contenders for the Rookie of the Year title.

Oakland Athletics outfielder Yoenis Céspedes, winner of this year's Home Run Derby, the popular competition the day before the annual All-Star Game, defected in 2011 and signed a $36 million, four-year contract.

The new measures, approved by the government last week, allow athletes to sign contracts with professional leagues abroad, breaking with a policy established soon after the 1959 revolution, which shunned professional sports as exploitative.

The athletes will still have to "meet their obligations to national teams," Granma said, including in international competitions, and contracts with foreign teams will have to go through the state's sports institute for approval.

The announcement in Granma did not specify which foreign countries, but the U.S. major leagues were likely to remain off limits to Cuban players, baseball experts say.

Since the revolution, only a handful of baseball players living in Cuba have been contracted by foreign leagues.

This year, outfielder Alfredo Despaigne played for the Pirates of Campeche, Mexico, in July and August, and third baseman Omar Linares, as an official "exception," was allowed to play in Japan's professional league in 2000.

Under the new performance-based pay scale, athletes will earn higher monthly salaries and can obtain bonuses for success in national and international competition.

For example, an active Olympic gold medalist will earn 2,500 pesos a month, equivalent to $104 at the local exchange rate. Top baseball players would earn 5,000 pesos ($208) a month. Cuba's national championship team will earn a 65,000 peso bonus ($2,700), while the runner up will receive 45,000 pesos, ($1,870).

(Editing by David Adams and Doina Chiacu)

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Steady as he falls is key to victory for skydiving cameraman

The Arizona Arsenal skydive team jumps during the National Skydiving Championships in Ottawa, Illinois in this handout picture taken September 13, 2013. The job of professional skydiver Brandon Atwood is to look back up to the sky, point a camera attached to his helmet and record on video four teammates performing a complex skydiving routine. Without Atwood, no one on the ground would see the Arizona Arsenal's winning performance in the 4-person vertical formation skydiving event at the U.S. National Skydiving Championships near Chicago earlier this month.

Credit: Reuters/Amy Chmelecki/United States Parachuting Association/Handout via Reuters

By Michael Hirtzer

OTTAWA, Illinois | Sat Sep 28, 2013 6:51pm EDT

OTTAWA, Illinois (Reuters) - Professional skydiver Brandon Atwood has a strange but essential job while hurtling toward Earth at more than 100 miles per hour: He points a video camera attached to his helmet back up toward the sky while his teammates execute a complex aerial routine.

Without Atwood's contribution, none of the spectators on the ground would be able to see the Arizona Arsenal's winning performance in the four-person vertical formation event at the U.S. National Skydiving Championships earlier this month, 80 miles southwest of Chicago.

In competitive skydiving, all the action takes place thousands of feet above the ground - too far away for the naked eye to see.

That is a problem for the sport, which has struggled to attract attention while other extreme sports - skateboarding, surfing, BMX biking and snowboarding - have an ESPN television contract for the "X" Games and draw legions of fans.

"As skydivers, we think what we do is the coolest thing ever, but other people see it differently," said Nancy Koreen, director of sports promotion for the U.S. Parachuting Association.

She said interest in skydiving waned after September 11, 2001, and the association's membership, now at 35,400 people, is only 1,000 more than it was in 2000.

There were no corporate sponsorships or prize money at the national championships, and the 10-day event drew only a small crowd at the "drop zone" to watch more than 600 skydivers compete in Ottawa, a town on the Illinois River.

"I'm an unemployed professional skydiver," said Atwood, 35, who finances his passion in part by organizing and training new skydivers in exchange for free jumps.

VIDEO IS VITAL

The success of the Arizona Arsenal team can depend on how well Atwood is able to video the tricks they perform after jumping out of an airplane at 12,500 feet. Judges dock points if Atwood's foot or a teammate's arm blocks the camera view.

At the competition near Chicago, Atwood timed his fall slightly ahead of the team, and craned his neck to get the right angle on his camera as two team members flipped upside down while the other two grabbed their ankles. Then they switched partners before all four joined hands and flipped again. With eight jumps, or rounds, they scored a total of 157 points - a point for each trick. The second place team had 104 points.

"I just (keep) strong with the neck muscles and don't do any sudden movements with the visor," Atwood said.

After the skydiving teams coasted to a smooth landing in the grassy area abutting a corn field, their videos were turned over to a panel of judges, who scored the performances behind closed doors in an airplane hangar.

The videos and photos were posted on the association's website throughout the competition but that was pretty much where the public exposure to the sport ended.

"You could see a little bit from the ground, but not a lot. You could see the landings," said Mark Baker, who had traveled from Minnesota to watch his son, Tom, in the freestyle event.

Half a million people skydive annually on a "tandem" jump - attached to an experienced skydiver - but only a fraction of those people go on to become members of the association.

While skydiving is considered a dangerous sport, there were only 19 fatal accidents out of 3.1 million jumps last year, according to the association.

One recent safety advance is an electronic device that automatically releases a chute if a diver loses consciousness while falling.

One team at the U.S. championships called itself Eggum Racing in honor of Stephanie Eggum, 32, who was killed at the drop zone in August when her main parachute became twisted and she had to cut it away, but was too low to deploy her reserve chute.

Videographer Atwood took his first dive when he was 16 years old. But it was not until he was laid off from his office job at a real estate company in Idaho that he decided to move to Arizona to pursue skydiving full time.

"It's about being super comfortable in that extreme environment, knowing you are 100 percent in control of yourself even though you are falling to your death," he said.

(Reporting by Michael Hirtzer; editing by Greg McCune and Gunna Dickson)

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