First Canada lynx in 15 years found in Idaho

SALMON, Idaho (Reuters) - A Canada lynx has been documented in Idaho for the first time in over 15 years when the imperiled cat was inadvertently caught in a foot-hold trap in the Salmon-Challis National Forest, state wildlife officials said on Tuesday.

"It's a very rare occurrence," Tom Keegan, regional manager with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, said about the incidental capture last week of the high-elevation, forest-dwelling cat.

He said a man walking his dogs spotted the lynx on Thursday in the rugged mountains of east central Idaho in a legal trap set for bobcat and notified state wildlife officials. They released the animal unharmed.

The last lynx confirmed in the 4.3 million-acre forest surrounding Salmon was in 1991, when one was accidentally trapped. The cats were documented elsewhere in Idaho during the 1995-1996 trapping season, after which trapping lynx was outlawed.

Lynx were designated in 2000 as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species in the lower 48 states, where they roam the high country from Maine to Washington and south through the Rocky Mountains.

The animals have long legs and large, well-furred paws, making them highly adapted for hunting in deep snow for preferred prey like snowshoe hares, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Lynx are infrequently sighted. Biologists mostly rely on tracks and scat to document the reclusive animal's presence.

Fewer than 100 lynx are believed to roam the mid- and high-elevation forests of Idaho, where they are classified as a "species of greatest conservation need."

Just 40 lynx have been recorded in east central Idaho since the late 1800s, according to Fish and Game.

A DNA sample collected from the recently captured cat will be analyzed to verify it is a wild lynx and to gain knowledge about its possible origins, Keegan said.

Like wolverines and other elusive forest carnivores, lynx can travel long distances, even hundreds of miles, he said.

Keegan said it was too early to say whether the lynx found in the Salmon-Challis forest was a sign of the animal's return to its historic range or if it was a random event.

"There's all kinds of speculation. It may be a transient animal or a resident animal," he said.

(Editing by Dan Whitcomb and Cynthia Johnston)

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Chinese gets 15 years for killing NZ taxi driver (AP)

SHANGHAI – A Shanghai court sentenced a Chinese man who admitted killing a New Zealand taxi driver before fleeing to his homeland to 15 years in prison Wednesday.

Shanghai's Second Intermediate Court handed down the sentence, citing Xiao Zhen's remorse over the killing as a reason for not imposing a harsher sentence.

The 24-year-old Xiao was arrested last year in China for the alleged murder of Auckland taxi driver Hiren Mohini, 39, in January 2010. He was tried in Shanghai because China and New Zealand do not have an extradition treaty.

The judge who read out the sentence did not make any further comment. Xiao was convicted not of murder but of the Chinese crime that can be translated into English as "intentional assault."

New Zealand police officer Hywel Jones, who attended but did not speak at the trial, said the verdict was "fair" and that he intended to return to New Zealand.

Xiao's aunt, Li Liping, said the family did not expect him to appeal the sentence.

"He should be punished," she said. "It is our fault that we did not teach him well."

New Zealand media reported the government was promised Xiao would not face the death penalty if convicted.

China by law does not extradite its citizens and says it can put them on trial itself regardless of where a crime occurred. The number of such cases should rise as more Chinese citizens travel and live outside the country, opening the door to legal complications.

Cooperation from foreign countries opposed to capital punishment in such cases, for example in providing evidence, often depends on whether authorities promise not to apply the death penalty — which is more often used in China than anywhere else.

___

Researcher Fu Ting contributed.

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Nicaragua quake survivors get new homes - 40 years after disaster (The Christian Science Monitor)

Managua, Nicaragua; and Mexico City – When Guillermo Martin Treminio's house crumbled in the 1972 earthquake that leveled Nicaragua's capital, killing 10,000 people and destroying 50,000 buildings and homes, he had nowhere to go. So he moved his family into a crumbling apartment building in downtown Managua that the wealthy had abandoned.

Mr. Treminio's refugeelike living conditions, which he had once hoped would be temporary, became home for almost 40 years. "We had lost hope," he recalls.

But now he has finally moved his family into permanent housing, thanks to a government program to relocate 103 families who also squatted in the skeletal remains of four abandoned high-rises known as "the ruins." It's one of the last efforts of cleanup after the devastating quake.

"The so-called squatter settlements in the ruins are nothing more than earthquake refugees who never got a place to live after the quake," says Nicaraguan historian Roberto Sanchez Ramirez.

Their four-decade-long plight may be extreme, but it highlights a reality in the wake of large-scale disaster, both natural and human-caused. Though critics often fault governments and aid organizations for the slow pace of reconstruction, months and even years may pass before the displaced regain a solid sense of home.

IN PICTURES: Rebuilding after an earthquake

In Haiti, a year and a half after its devastating earthquake, permanent housing reconstruction has not even begun. Even after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the aftermath of which is seen as a model for reconstruction, it took four years for families to find permanent homes. Five years after hurricane Katrina in the United States, thousands remained in temporary housing.

"Very-large-scale disasters, especially those that have occurred in the developing world, have very long recovery periods," says Irwin Redlener, a physician and director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health in New York. "The temporary housing might become permanent, or very longstanding."

That is certainly the case in many parts of historical downtown Managua – a crossroads of fault lines that has been left in weed-grown partial abandonment since the 1972 quake. In total, 541 city blocks in Managua were destroyed or irreparably damaged and had to be leveled afterward.

The majority of middle- and upper-class citizens fled, joining an exodus of 250,000, more than half the population of the city. But those living in shantytowns had no place to go, so they forged lives for themselves among the devastation, waiting for government help. "We thought we were going to die there. We never thought we would be moved out," says Erminia Pineda, a longtime resident of the apartment buildings, where as many as 45 people would live on a floor built to house only four or five and which was governed by its own set of laws and social norms. Each floor had its own hierarchy of power, based on seniority and economic clout within the buildings. Residents took care of their own security, organizing into vigilance groups to watch over one another's belongings. Walls often fell down. Rain came through cracks. Each time the ground shook, residents worried the buildings would come down.

Temporary living is fraught with vulnerabilities, says Lilianne Fan, an independent consultant on humanitarian policy and postcrisis reconstruction who has worked in Haiti and Indonesia. Those displaced often face problems with sanitation, little access to education and health care, and limited security. The psychological pressures of not having permanence can also take a toll.

The challenges of postdisaster reconstruction are many. Among them: removing rubble, planning settlements, securing funding, procuring materials, and training builders. While aid organizations sweep into disaster zones, the degree to which they can participate in large-scale reconstruction is limited. When a disaster occurs in a developing country without a strong government, reconstruction takes even longer.

IN PICTURES: Rebuilding after an earthquake

"There are some misperceptions about what the private or voluntary sector can do," says Mr. Redlener. "The larger the disaster, the more necessary it is to have the government as the principal driver of recovery."

Those in Nicaragua blame previous governments for ignoring their plight. "The neoliberal governments [from 1990 to 2006] promised us homes, but it was all a lie," says Treminio.

But now that is changing. In early April, 30 military trucks rolled up in front of the ruins to evacuate the 700 people living there, moving them to a new neighborhood of cement-block homes about six miles away.

While some squatters resisted the move, arguing that the housing settlement was too far removed from Managua's main marketplace, many are glad to get out of the dilapidated buildings, which city officials have deemed a "deathtrap." The buildings were leveled in May.

Starting anew is a challenge for some. "It's harder here, but you can't have everything," Ms. Pineda says in her new neighborhood. "New beginnings are hard everywhere, but we have a house, we have a roof, and we have water. And that's what's important."

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Mexican judge gives 60 years to killer of top cop (AP)

MEXICO CITY – A judge sentenced a man to 60 years in prison for the 2008 murder of Mexico's acting federal police chief Edgar Millan Gomez, federal prosecutors said Saturday.

Alejandro Ramirez Baez was convicted of homicide and possessing restricted weapons, the Federal Attorney General's Office said in a statement. A second man was sentenced to one year in prison for illegal arms possession. Both were found to be part of a cell of the powerful Sinaloa Cartel, the statement said.

Millan, one of the highest ranking police officials killed by drug cartels in recent years, was attacked in his Mexico City home in May 2008. The Sinaloa cartel had been a key target of operations led by Millan prior to his death.

Also Saturday, Mexican troops discovered almost two tons of methamphetamine stored in water tanks and buried in the ground in the northern state of Coahuila, the Defense Department said. Eleven kilograms (24 pounds) of heroin were found in the same spot after a patrol found dug-up earth in the municipality of Castanos, a Defense Department statement said.

Mexican troops have conducted three other seizures this month in Coahuila, across the border from Texas. Most have been weapons seizures, the most recent one allegedly belonging to the brutal Zetas cartel. Coahuila is one of several northern Mexican states where the Gulf and Zetas cartels are fighting for control.

In the northern state of Durango, a 70-year-old farmer and his two grown sons were gunned down by unknown assailants, the state's prosecutor's office said Saturday. The men had been tending to cattle when they were killed. At least 100 empty shells from an AK-47 were found near the scene, the prosecutor's office said.

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Drugs on Virgin Islands boat nets US man 5 years (AP)

TORTOLA, British Virgin Islands – An American boat captain has been sentenced to five years in prison in the British Virgin Islands for his drug-smuggling conviction.

Ronald Weisel was captain of the 39-foot Captain Ron in December 2008 when police searched the boat and found 56 kilograms of cocaine. Authorities valued the load at $5.6 million. The New York native was living in St. Thomas at the time.

Weisel was convicted in April of charges that included importation of cocaine. Another man on board was acquitted at a separate trial.

Judge Valerie Stephens imposed Weisel's sentence Monday. She rejected a request from the defendant's brother to release Weisel to seek psychiatric help for a brain injury from a 1984 car accident.

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Nancy Garrido gets 36 years to life in Jaycee Dugard kidnapping

Phillip and Nancy Garrido abducted Jaycee Dugard when she was 11 years old.Dugard's statement to court calls the Garridos "evil"Dugard calls her 18 years of captivity a "sexual perversion" forced on herThe married couple pleaded guilty to kidnapping and sexual assault in April

(CNN) -- Phillip Garrido was sentenced Thursday to 431 years to life in prison in the kidnapping and sexual assault of Jaycee Dugard, who was held captive from age 11 to 29 by Garrido and his wife, according to the El Dorado County, California, district attorney's office.

His wife, Nancy Garrido, 55, was sentenced earlier in the day to 36 years to life in prison for her role in the abduction and rape, said Garrido's attorney, Stephen Tapson.

Dugard didn't appear in court Thursday for the sentencings, but she submitted an emotional statement that was presented by her mother, according to Dugard's media representative, Nancy Seltzer.

Jaycee Dugard, now 31, called the Garridos "evil" and described their captivity of her as a "sexual perversion" forced upon her for 18 years.

A statement by Dugard's mother, Terry Probyn, was also read in court.

The Garridos, a married couple, pleaded guilty in late April in El Dorado County Superior Court to charges of kidnapping and sexual assault.

Dugard was abducted from the street in front of her home in South Lake Tahoe, California, in 1991. Authorities found her in 2009. During those years, the Garridos held Dugard in a hidden compound on their home's grounds in Antioch, California. She bore two daughters, fathered by Phillip Garrido.

Dugard's written statement, presented during Phillip Garrido's sentencing, was lengthy.

"I chose not to be here today because I refuse to waste another second of my life in your presence. I've chosen to have my mom read this for me," Dugard wrote.

"Phillip Garrido, you are wrong. I could never say that to you before, but I have the freedom now and I am saying you are a liar and all of your so-called theories are wrong. Everything you have ever done to me has been wrong and someday I hope you can see that.

"What you and Nancy did was reprehensible. You always justified everything to suit yourself but the reality is and always has been that to make someone else suffer for your inability to control yourself and for you, Nancy, to facilitate his behavior and trick young girls for his pleasure is evil. There is no God in the universe that would condone your actions," Dugard said.

"To you, Phillip, I say that I have always been a thing for your own amusement. I hated every second of every day of 18 years because of you and the sexual perversion you forced on me," she continued.

"To you, Nancy, I have nothing to say.

"Both of you can save your apologies and empty words. For all the crimes you have both committed I hope you have as many sleepless nights as I did.

"Yes, as I think of all of those years I am angry because you stole my life and that of my family. Thankfully I am doing well now and no longer live in a nightmare. I have wonderful friends and family around me. Something you can never take from me again. You do not matter any more," Dugard wrote.

In her own statement to the court, Dugard's mother recounted June 10, 1991, the day her daughter was abducted.

"I begged, I pleaded, I cried, I ranted and raved, I went crazy and thought I was going to go insane," Probyn said in her statement. "My baby was gone and all of my dreams turned to nightmares. Dreadful nightmarish thoughts of her bondage and of her suffering.

"For 18 excruciating years, I endured a huge gaping hole in my heart that some evil being had put their hand into and had ripped out. For 18 agonizing years, I guarded what little I had left and lived in hell on this earth," Probyn wrote.

The mother condemned the Garridos.

"I hate you both for the torment and anguish you put my daughter, myself, and my family through. I am nauseous at the thought of the sexual exploitation and the brutal abuse she endured at your uncaring hand. I am sickened by the reality that she had to suffer your cruel and heartless imprisonment for so long. You are the epitome of disgust and no amount of jail time or even death will cleanse your corrupt souls. You do not deserve to live or die or even exist," Probyn's statement said.

"You are nothing...other than selfish, self serving, self gratifying monsters," the mother said. She added that the Garridos will never see Jaycee Dugard's two daughters again.

"Her daughters know what you did to their mother. They realize your backyard was a prison and understand your filthy, despicable secret. They are aware that they have been deceived and I am here to tell you that there is no love lost," the mother's statement to the court said.

Jaycee Dugard's maternal aunt, Tina Dugard, also provided a statement to the court in which she said her mother, Onita, died of "a broken heart" because of Jaycee Dugard's abduction.

"Jaycee was the center of my mom's world, as only a first grandchild can be. Facing life without her beloved Jaycee was more than my mom could handle. I wish she had found the strength to live for me, for my brothers and sisters, and for her other grandchildren. But she couldn't. Losing Jaycee was simply devastating, and she just couldn't recover," Tina Dugard's statement said.

Phillip Garrido was a registered sex offender on parole at the time of his arrest.

California law doesn't provide for a death penalty for the offenses committed by the Garridos, District Attorney Vern Pierson said in April.

Phillip Garrido, 60, pleaded guilty to one count of kidnapping and 13 counts of sexual assault, Pierson said. He has waived his right to appeal, the district attorney said.

Nancy Garrido, 55, pleaded guilty to one count of kidnapping and one count of rape by force, and to California's "one strike" rape law, Pierson said.

Her sentence is the maximum possible based on the sentencing laws in effect in 1991, he said.

Nancy Garrido also has waived her right to appeal, prosecutors said. Her plea was offered contingent on Phillip Garrido pleading guilty and waiving his right to appeal, prosecutors said.

.

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Ex-leader returns to Honduras 2 years after ouster (AP)

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras – Former President Manuel Zelaya's return to Honduras almost two years after being forced into exile by a military-backed coup has ended a crippling political crisis and paved the way for the impoverished country's reintegration into the international community.

The Organization of American States, which expelled Honduras following the June 2009 coup, is expected to bring it back into the fold in meetings in the coming week.

The Venezuelan-owned plane carrying Zelaya to Honduras' capital from neighboring Nicaragua on Saturday was greeted by thousands of his dancing and singing supporters who had set up a tent camp nearby in anticipation of his arrival.

Wearing his trademark white cowboy hat, Zelaya triumphantly told supporters to pursue change peacefully and called for an end to coups.

"The problem of poverty, of corruption, of the great challenges of Latin American societies won't be resolved through violence, but through more democracy," Zelaya, 59, told supporters in a plaza near the airport.

Zelaya was thrown out of office — and the country — by soldiers for ignoring a Supreme Court order to cancel a referendum asking Hondurans if they wanted an assembly to retool the constitution. The opposition had called it a bid by Zelaya stay in power by allowing presidential re-election, while his supporters said the assembly was to reform Honduras' outdated economic and political structures.

The coup drew condemnation from around the world as a reminder of Latin America's antidemocratic past of dictatorships and military coups. Honduras' post-coup interim government resisted international pressure to restore Zelaya — who took up exile in the Dominican Republic — and in late 2009 current President Porfirio Lobo was elected in a previously scheduled vote.

While some governments began recognizing Honduras after Lobo took office, Latin American countries such as Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil, Nicaragua and Ecuador demanded that Zelaya be allowed to return home without facing criminal charges before ending Honduras' pariah status.

Honduran courts recently dropped the corruption charges and arrest warrants pending against Zelaya, and Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez last week brokered a deal for the ousted leader's safe return home.

Zelaya has returned to a country that has enacted many of the changes he was advocating when he was whisked out of the country at gunpoint.

A congress dead set against his plan to hold a referendum on whether to change the constitution has since amended the constitution to allow just that. Under the internationally broker agreement, Zelaya will be allowed to form his own political party and potentially end the country's rigid, two-party system.

On Saturday, Zelaya indicated he wasn't backing down from some of the proposals that got him ousted in the first place, saying he supported the idea of a constitutional assembly.

"I've come to look for an exit from our problems. We should look for an exit between the bad people who want to stay in the crisis and the good people who want to leave it," he said. "The constituent assembly is a democratic exit that we have."

Zelaya was accompanied on his flight home by his wife, two of his daughters, several former officials in his government, ex-Panamanian President Martin Torrijos and the foreign ministers of Venezuela and Bolivia.

Chavez lauded his return in a Twitter message: "Mel Zelaya returned to his Honduran fatherland! It's a great victory for the Honduran people! Down with dictatorships! Long live Popular Power! Long live Real Democracy."

Thousands of people greeted Zelaya at the airport on Saturday, many wearing the red and black colors of the Zelaya-allied National Popular Resistance Front, which formed after the coup.

"Honduras is in party mode," said Zelaya supporter Ronnie Huete, of Radio Globo. One sign in the crowd read: "700 days from the coup, here no one is surrendering."

Not everyone, however, felt like celebrating Zelaya's return.

Zelaya is "repudiated by the majority of Hondurans," a group calling itself the Patriotic Committee for the Defense of the Constitution said in a message broadcast by radio station HRN.

Irma Acosta, a former congresswoman from the governing National Party, said that Zelaya "should focus on singing and playing his guitar, which he does well ... and forget about politics, because his time has passed."

After the afternoon rally, Zelaya met with Lobo, OAS chief Jose Miguel Insulza and the foreign ministers of Venezuela, Bolivia and Colombia.

In a statement, Insulza praised Lobo "for bringing about the restoration of democracy in his country, after the break suffered with the destitution of the ex-president."

Agrarian Reform Minister Cesar Ham told reporters that the meeting of Lobo and Zelaya was "warm and emotional."

"What a lot of people don't understand is that they are friends. They studied in the same school, knew each other from childhood and their families have had a good relationship for 50 years," said Ham, who was present at the meeting. Zelaya and Lobo are both wealthy landowners from the eastern province of Olancho province. Zelaya's supporters said he will visit his native town of Catacamas for a few days starting Sunday.

The deal to bring Zelaya back to Honduras — called the Cartagena accord because it was unveiled in the Colombian city — didn't call for his immediate return to power

"The Cartagena agreement has only one message: no more coup d'etats in Honduras and in Latin America," Zelaya said.

During his speech, Zelaya repeated accusations that Washington supported the interim government of Roberto Micheletti, which replaced Zelaya after his ouster. President Barack Obama and other U.S. officials publicly criticized the coup days afterward.

The OAS is expected to discuss Honduras in Washington in the coming days and at the organization's general assembly in El Salvador June 5-7.

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Playboy puts entire 57 years of magazines online (AP)

CHICAGO – Good news for those who thought their copies of Playboy were gone forever when their moms found them and threw them away.

Playboy launched a Web-based subscription service Thursday called i.Playboy.com that allows viewers to see every single page of every single magazine — from the first issue nearly 60 years ago that featured Marilyn Monroe to the ones hitting the newsstands today.

"They no longer have to store 57 years — 682 issues — of Playboy under their mattress," said Jimmy Jellinek, Playboy's chief content officer.

Chicago-based Playboy has seen its circulation plummet from 3.15 million in 2006 to 1.5 million today and has been trying all sorts of gimmicks to attract readers in recent years. One issue, for example, included a set of 3-D glasses to better see a centerfold shot in 3-D; another turned over the cover to a cartoon character, Marge Simpson.

But if those moves were widely viewed as efforts to attract a younger audience, this one is also aimed baby boomers and even their parents, who might recall pictorials of long gone movie stars, interviews with the likes of John Lennon and Dr. Martin Luther King and the time Jimmy Carter famously revealed the lust in his heart.

And for those who have claimed they bought the magazine for the articles, the online service also offers a way to look at the works of such writers as John Updike, Jack Kerouac, Kurt Vonnegut, Hunter S. Thompson and Norman Mailer just by typing in their names.

Jellinek is optimistic people will pony up the $8 per month or $60 per year for a service that's "meant to appeal to that sense of collective nostalgia and affinity." He calls the website "the world's sexiest time machine" and "an anthology of cool" for a magazine he refers to as "the Mount Rushmore of literary greatness."

But one industry analyst makes Playboy sound more like a tired, dusty half-empty amusement park.

"The problem with Playboy is it not only lost its powerful interviews, but it lost its lead," said Samir Husni, director of the Magazine Innovation Center at the University of Mississippi School of Journalism. "This is no longer the 50s and 60s when people talked about the interviews. And who cannot see the girl next door naked in this day and age?"

Husni doubts the service will do much for the company at all.

"The questions are: `Do I need it? Do I want it? Is it relevant to me?'" Husni said. "The answer is: `No, no and no.'"

Husni also said it is likely those who do subscribe will drop the service once they see whatever issues they were curious about.

Jellinek concedes the whole thing is something of an experiment aimed at a niche audience, but he also insists the service has value because it offers a unique window into the past.

"We're not trying to achieve mass scale here and move the needle for the company in a great way," he said.

Down at Stocks and Blondes, a tavern in downtown Chicago, opinions were mixed as to how many subscribers will be drawn to the website.

"The guy who would want to go back and see them (the magazines) already has them stacked up in his crawl space," said Internet ad salesman Bill Youngberg.

But his buddy, Ron Golminas, suggested such a guy is precisely the person who would jump — if he could — at the chance to subscribe.

"He can't get to them," Golminas said. "He's too old."

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New Pentagon study finds psychological toll from years of fighting

U.S. Marines patrol the outskirts of a village near a forward operating base near Kajaki, Afghanistan, in October.Stress is higher and morale is lower in the military, report saysSoldiers on their third/fourth deployment report significantly more psychological problemsThe report also has positive findings, including increased "resilience"

Washington (CNN) -- A new report paints a stark picture of the toll on the U.S. military of almost a decade of war: higher stress and lower morale.

The report, released Thursday at the Pentagon, relied on questions to soldiers and Marines in Afghanistan in July and August of last year and compared responses with similar surveys in 2005 and 2009.

The report noted "significant decline in reports of individual morale" as well as "acute stress rates significantly higher" than in earlier years.

"Psychologically, it is hard to imagine that these elevated levels of combat are not taking a toll on soldiers. Reports of acute stress symptoms among soldiers surveyed in 2010 have significantly increased and reports of individual morale have significantly decreased relative to 2009," said the report, formally known as the Joint Mental Health Advisory Team 7.

Senior military officers regularly warn that there is a cumulative cost of multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Soldiers on their third/fourth deployment report significantly more psychological problems and use of mental health medications than soldiers on their first or second deployment," the report said in the summary of findings for the Army.

But there also are multiple positive findings, including increased "resilience" and "low levels of psychological problems under conditions of high combat and significantly higher unit cohesion and readiness."

Also, military personnel reported greater access to mental health services, as the military increased the numbers of caregivers and lowered the stigma associated with seeking help.

For Marines, the report said the rate of reporting psychological problems such as acute stress, depression or anxiety is significantly higher in 2010, with a "dramatic increase" in combat exposure.

Another theme of the report is how common it is for soldiers and Marines to be exposed to explosions, for instance from roadside bombs.

"Over 50% of the soldiers reported being dismounted and within 50 meters of a blast at least once," the report said. "This number is almost certainly an underestimate of the percent of soldiers that will experience exposure to blast in a full 12-month tour."

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Rovio aims for IPO in two to three years (Reuters)

PARIS (Reuters) – Rovio Mobile, creator of hit iPhone game Angry Birds, is aiming for a stock market listing in New York in two to three years, its chief executive told Reuters.

The Finnish company, which has grown from 12 to 100 people in just over a year, raised $42 million from investors led by Accel Partners in March and named Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstroem to its board.

"In terms of time line, probably two years, two to three years down the line is realistic," CEO Mikael Hed told the Reuters Global Technology Summit in Paris on Wednesday.

"I see that this is only beneficial for us in terms of making the company more structured and more focused on creating it into a proper large organization, having grown from a company of 12," he said.

Hed added that Rovio expected to make revenue of 50 to 100 million euros ($72-$143 million) this year and said the company was "very, very profitable."

($1=.7011 Euro)

(Reporting by Georgina Prodhan; Editing by James Regan)

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Wayne State grad, Nigerian mom reunite after years apart

DETROIT — As her son was introduced to those attending Wayne State University's graduation, Mary Chukwueke wore a broad, proud smile across her face.

Victor Chukwueke of Oak Park, Mich., participates in a fundraiser to bring his mother and sister from Nigeria to his college graduation.

It was a picture she couldn't have imagined a decade ago, when she sent him away in search of a medical miracle for him.

As he stood at the podium Thursday, Victor Chukwueke, 25, stood still, gathering himself. "My presence here shows anything is possible," he said. After a 4-minute speech, the large crowd stood and clapped for 30 seconds, the only standing ovation of the evening.

In the past 10 years, Chukwueke has overcome obstacles to achieve at a high level.

He underwent six surgeries to remove large tumors on his head and face. But he also earned his GED and then a college degree in chemistry. He graduated with honors Thursday. He's now headed for medical school.

But the most emotional moment came hours before the ceremony, when his mother walked off a plane here, and they saw each other for the first time in a decade.

"I wasn't sure if I was going to see her ever again," he said. "Words cannot express how I feel."

They hugged for 5 minutes in the baggage claim area , trying to erase a decade of separation in the emotional moment.

"Don't cry," she told him in their native Nigerian tribal language, said a nun translating for the news media. "I am your mother, and you are my son."

The reunion came years after his mother agreed to send him away with missionary nuns.

Then 15, he had large tumors growing on the top of his head and side of his face. A nun arranged for a Southfield, Mich., surgeon to operate for free.

Victor Chukwueke's journey and educational achievements inspired those around him so much, he was asked to speak at his Wayne State University commencement Thursday evening. His mother was sitting in the audience for the speech, after clearing last-minute financial and visa hurdles with help from the school, a U.S. senator and a millionaire businessman. She'll stay for 11 days to visit with her son.

Chukwueke told the graduates Thursday night that they could overcome any challenges in their lives if they just have the right attitude. He said he faced the question of how he could move forward before the surgeries.

"Should I call myself a victim, or should I press forward to my dreams?" he said, interrupted once with a loud ovation. "Strive to be all you can be. ? My presence here shows anything is possible."

He also took time to thank those who helped him. "Only in this country could something this wonderful happen to someone like me," he said.

Chukwueke has neurofibromatosis, a genetic disorder that causes tumor growth in the nervous system. Experts say they believe mutations in genes that suppress cell growth are to blame. An estimated 100,000 people in the U.S. have it, according to the National Institutes of Heath.

His case is extreme. Doctors in Nigeria told the family, impoverished and living in a rural village, that there was nothing that could be done for him. He was ashamed to show his face outside, fearing the taunts that always followed. Missionary nuns offered hope and arranged for him to come to America.

Over time, Chukwueke underwent six major surgeries to remove the tumors -- a process that still isn't complete. He's facing another surgery this summer . While recovering in the Detroit area in a house with nuns, he worked to get his GED. He attended community college, transferred to Wayne State and worked on his degree in chemistry. Those who know him credit him for hard work.

"He is someone who overcame so much," said Kenneth Hohn, a professor of pathology who nominated him to speak at the commencement. Chukwueke works in Hohn's lab.

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Southern tornado outbreak nation's deadliest in 86 years

Death toll from South's latest tornado outbreak climbs to 340Deadliest single day from tornadoes was in 1925 when 747 people diedAlabama death toll rises to at least 252Funerals for University of Alabama students killed by storms start this weekend

(CNN) -- As emergency responders continued to tally the dead on Saturday, surviving family members and friends prepared to bury loved ones who perished in what has become the second deadliest single-day tornado outbreak in U.S. history.

Among the victims for whom memorial services are planned in the coming days are three students of the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. The area has emerged as the focal point for the Wednesday disaster that swept through six southern states and killed 340 people.

According to the Alabama Emergency Management Agency, at least 45 people people died during the storms in Tuscaloosa County, more than in any of the other five southern states that recorded deaths from Wednesday's violent weather.

By early Saturday morning, emergency management officials tallied 252 deaths in Alabama, 34 in Tennessee, 33 in Mississippi, 15 in Georgia, 5 in Virginia and 1 in Arkansas.

Since 1680, there has been only one other date in U.S. history on which more people died during a severe weather outbreak, according to weather experts.

On March 18, 1925, a severe storm system swept across seven states killing 747 people, according to the National Weather Service.

President Barack Obama visited Tuscaloosa on Friday. His motorcade passed street after street of homes reduced to splinters, crushed and flipped cars, and widespread debris on the way to his first stop to visit with families affected by the storms.

"I've got to say I've never seen devastation like this," Obama told reporters.

University of Alabama graduate student Arefeen Shamsuzzoha had a similar reaction after he toured much of the city on Friday taking photographs of the damage.

"The trees are completely stripped of all of their branches," Shamsuzzoha told CNN Saturday morning. "The ones that are standing just look like sticks rising from the ground."

Hundreds of people are unaccounted for in Tuscaloosa, though not all have been officially reported missing.

The University of Alabama student newspaper, The Crimson White, began tallying e-mails from students who were searching for missing friends. Within hours, the newspaper had received 68 e-mails from worried students.

Those who survived the disaster thanked God or simple luck.

Gar and Nettie Blume, husband and wife attorneys, were leaving the office Wednesday evening when the storms struck.

"We felt the pressure and heard the window implode," Gar Blume told CNN. "And the next thing we knew we had debris falling on us."

Added Nettie Blume, "We were just really lucky that the one place the roof fell off and didn't have something covering (us) was where we were. Everywhere else we would have been buried and waiting ... or dead."

Terry Nicholson, a nearby resident, pulled the Blumes out of the rubble. The only reason he survived -- and his house was still standing -- was divine intervention, he said.

"Everything was laid down and we were still standing," Nicholson said.. "It had to be my God."

CNN's Sarah Hoye contributed to this report.

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Over 50 years, Bay of Pigs vets shaped Miami, U.S.

By Jim Nickless, AP

In this undated photo, 22-year-old anti-Castro activist Santiago Alvarez, center with sun glasses, and his crew prepare for action in Nicaragua against Fidel Castro's government three years after the defeat of Cuban exiles in Bay of Pigs.

EnlargeCloseBy Jim Nickless, AP

In this undated photo, 22-year-old anti-Castro activist Santiago Alvarez, center with sun glasses, and his crew prepare for action in Nicaragua against Fidel Castro's government three years after the defeat of Cuban exiles in Bay of Pigs.

Half a century later, they are still waiting for victory.

Castro decimated the underground before Duran ever reached shore. The U.S. never provided the air and naval support the exiles expected, and Cubans on the island never rose up to join them.

The failed invasion 50 years ago this weekend forever shaped the lives of Rodriguez, Alvarez and Duran, just as it defined U.S. policy at home and abroad. But the veterans themselves also marked the nation, helping turn Miami into a world famous, Cuban-dominated metropolis and playing key roles in Vietnam, Watergate and the Iran-Contra scandal. Each of their lives tells part of the story.

The invasion was perhaps the Americans' worst-kept secret.

PHOTO GALLERYBay of Pigs vets shaped MiamiRodriguez was 16 and studying abroad in Pennsylvania when Castro rode into Havana during Christmas 1958 and overthrew dictator Fulgencio Batista. His family fled to Florida, where he was accepted by the University of Miami, and his parents bought him a baby blue Austin Healy.

As the convertible idled at a traffic light, an old woman scolded Rodriguez for joyriding rather than training to liberate his country.

Though he kept silent, that is precisely what he'd had been doing. Rodriguez was among more than 1,300 exiles training for the CIA-backed invasion in Cuba. The quick trip to Miami was meant for collecting weapons.

Rodriguez and others entered Cuba before the attack making contact with Batista supporters and former revolutionaries disillusioned with the new government's emerging communist bent. Then days before the invasion Castro made a sweep of the underground, arresting and executing its leaders.

Rodriguez would go on to have a CIA career that mirrored U.S. engagement across Latin America and Asia through the latter half of the 20th century. Now approaching 70, he still uses more than a half-dozen hidden cameras to check out visitors arriving at his modest Miami home.

From the leather recliner in his den, he bounces a laser pointer over pictures of himself with the last five U.S. presidents, including Barack Obama. By the door is the photo that made him famous: Rodriguez with Che Guevara, a day before the Argentinean doctor-turned-Cuban revolutionary icon's 1967 execution.

But that would come later.

As he awaited the invasion in a safe house in Havana, all the young Rodriguez knew was that things were bad.

Duran too had studied in the U.S. before the revolution, returning with an engineering degree just after Castro declared victory in Havana.

By the time Duran and his family made it to the U.S., the Eisenhower administration was recruiting anti-Castro exiles for the invasion modeled after the U.S.-backed overthrow of Guatemala's president nearly a decade before.

Duran entered the Bay of Pigs on April 17. Two days before, Cuban exile pilots helped destroy portions of Cuba's small air force, but Castro had enough jets remaining to take out the invaders' supply ships.

Castro's forces killed 118 exiles; 176 Cuban soldiers died. Duran and his comrades were captured and after a brief trial — in which his Cuban defense lawyer called for their execution — they were taken to prison.

Duran and more than 1,000 others were still behind bars in 1962 when Castro, fearing another U.S.-backed invasion, accepted a Soviet offer to build nuclear missiles on the island. When the U.S. went public with the news in October, the 10-day standoff brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. It was averted when the Soviets promised to remove the missiles in exchange for President John F. Kennedy's vow not to invade Cuba.

Shortly after, Duran and the others were freed through quiet negotiations between the U.S. and Cuba, but for many in Brigade 2506, and in the Kennedy administration, neither the Bay of Pigs nor the Cuban missile crisis would deter them from seeking Castro's demise.

Santiago Alvarez was stuck training and running supplies from a base on Florida's Big Pine Key during the invasion. He would spend decades making up for the fact that he missed out on the action at the Bay of Pigs.

He and other veterans quickly joined groups that staged raids on Cuba until following public outcry over increasingly high-profile attacks on the island, the U.S. government told Alvarez, Rodriguez and others to halt their efforts or take them off U.S. soil. They chose the latter.

In just one of the CIA's efforts to do away with Castro, more than 400 exiles — most of them Bay of Pigs veterans — trained and launched U.S.-funded attacks from camps in Costa Rica and Nicaragua from 1963 to 1965, according to declassified documents from the National Security Archive. Alvarez captained a small boat that made runs into Cuban territory, dropping off infiltrators, supplies and occasionally blowing up bridges and factories.

Then the exiles again went too far, sinking a Spanish freighter they believed was a Cuban ship, killing three and prompting President Lyndon Johnson to quickly halt the program.

Back in Miami, Alvarez turned his attention to his new home. He bought a dump truck with cash he'd been given for his wedding, then another. Eventually, he developed shopping centers and more than 1,000 apartments and built himself a bayfront Miami mansion.

Other successful veterans include a world-famous classical guitarist, a top Miami surgeon and a state senator. They moved up the ranks in multinational companies and founded their own.

Duran, who later turned to real estate law, says he owes his initial career to the Bay of Pigs. Remembering his Cuban lawyer's recommendation he be shot, he became a Miami criminal defense lawyer.

As their efforts to overthrow Castro became sporadic in the late 1970s, the veterans' political involvement in the United States intensified. They used their stature to help elect six Cuban-Americans to the U.S. Congress. And they became a powerful — mostly Republican— voting bloc, credited with helping give President George W. Bush beat Al Gore in 2000.

While many Bay of Pigs veterans thrived in Miami, others like Rodriguez found returning to civilian life difficult. A number of brigade members went on to serve in the U.S. military with distinction. Others became involved in shadier operations beyond Cuba.

Several of President Richard Nixon's so-called plumbers were veterans of the invasion, including those involved in the Watergate burglary that led to Nixon's resignation.

Rodriguez remained committed to fighting communism worldwide. One of several CIA consultants, Rodriguez was the last to interview Che Guevara. He also advised the Salvadoran military during that country's civil war in the 1980s — a military that was accused of numerous human rights violations. There, he became involved with clandestine U.S. support of the Contra rebels in Nicaragua as they fought against the fledgling leftist Sandinista government — even as Congress barred the government from such intervention. The ensuing scandal nearly brought down the Reagan administration.

The liquor bottles at the bar in Rodriguez's memento room hang upside down, ready to pour as he tells his tales.

"My wife, she's sick of hearing about the capture of Che," he says ruefully.

The veterans' ranks have thinned, but their influence persists: Nearly all the 2008 Republican presidential candidates made campaign stops at the small Bay of Pigs museum in Little Havana.

In 2005, Alvarez was arrested after he tried to help fellow Bay of Pigs veteran Luis Posada Carriles, Castro's longtime nemesis. Posada was acquitted last week on charges he lied to officials about his involvement in a string of 1997 Havana hotel bombings.

Alvarez, 69, was accused of sneaking Posada out of Mexico and into the U.S. aboard his yacht in the spring of 2005. He says he left Posada in Mexico with money but didn't bring him to the U.S.

Later that year, Alvarez was arrested after the Coast Guard traced weapons to him including grenades, launchers and 14 pounds of powerful C-4 plastic explosives in the Bahamas. He denies they were his. Investigators found more weapons in a South Florida apartment he owned. Alvarez eventually pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge.

Released last year, he says the weapons in the apartment were never for an attack against Castro, insisting that any trips into Cuban waters made in recent years were done with smaller, defensive arms.

Alvarez no longer blames the U.S. for the Bay of Pigs failure and even questions the effectiveness of the U.S. government's decades-old embargo of the island. Had Cubans like himself not fled the island, many would have died, but he believes their efforts to overthrow Castro would have succeeded.

"That was our mistake — leaving," he says.

Duran stunned many contemporaries in 2001 when he and others returned to Cuba and met with Castro and some of the men they had fought against.

"I felt liberated," he says of having shaken the hands of his former enemies.

He still views Castro as a dictator but believes open exchange with the island is the only way to bring about change there. Many fellow veterans remain skeptical, but Duran's visit gave cover to those in his generation and the next to speak out in favor of policy changes.

It is this new generation, on both sides of the Florida Straits, where he places his hopes.

"Nothing will change, until the Castros are gone," Duran says. "It is this new generation we must hope for."

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150 years after Civil War, descendants deal with legacy

By Gary Walts for USA TODAY

Pauline Johnson, 83, at the Harriet Tubman Home in Auburn, N.Y., says she didn't learn she was the great-grandniece of the Underground Railroad conductor until she was 25.

EnlargeCloseBy Gary Walts for USA TODAY

Pauline Johnson, 83, at the Harriet Tubman Home in Auburn, N.Y., says she didn't learn she was the great-grandniece of the Underground Railroad conductor until she was 25.

"It's our war. All the blood fell on our soil," says Lloyd Garrison, 79, great-great-grandson of the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. He says the war even has a contagious, old-time glamour.

The great-great-grandson of the abolitionist's ideological opponent, Confederate President Jefferson Davis, agrees. "Americans are fascinated by the individuals who fought," says Bertram Hayes-Davis, 62. "They want to know more about what these people did, who they were and what they went through."

CIVIL WAR: More stories, videos, profilesToday, descendants such as Garrison and Hayes-Davis underscore our link to a struggle that shaped the nation as much as the arrival of the Mayflower or the victory at Yorktown.

The Civil War ended slavery, strengthened the federal republic and allowed settlement of the West; it pioneered an industrial style of "total war," which included mass production of weapons and the systematic destruction of Southern agriculture; it killed about 620,000 combatants — nearly as many Americans as all the other wars the country has fought combined.

Like many other Americans, descendants of the war's great figures have discovered and grown into their Civil War legacies. They raise issues that still divide us: Why was the war fought? What did it achieve? Was Davis a traitor? Was Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant a drunk?

COMMEMORATION PLANS: Civil War 150th anniversaryTRACING ROOTS: Web, professionals make great genealogy tools

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Justice could be near for California woman held 18 years

AP

Phillip Garrido, who faces multiple charges for the 1991 kidnapping of Jaycee Dugard, smiles at his wife, Nancy, as she leaves the courtroom in Placerville, Calif., on March 17.

EnlargeCloseAP

Phillip Garrido, who faces multiple charges for the 1991 kidnapping of Jaycee Dugard, smiles at his wife, Nancy, as she leaves the courtroom in Placerville, Calif., on March 17.

Defendant Phillip Garrido, a convicted rapist on parole when 11-year-old Jaycee Dugard disappeared while walking to a school bus stop, was expected to plead guilty Thursday as part of a plea deal that would keep him in prison for the rest of his life, attorney Stephen Tapson said.

The agreement was outlined last week during a closed-door meeting that Tapson said he attended with prosecutors, the public defender representing Garrido and the judge presiding over the highly publicized case.

"He is going to plead unless somebody gets ill or the power goes off in the courthouse," said Tapson, who represents Garrido's wife and co-defendant Nancy Garrido.

Deputy Public Defender Susan Gellman, who represents Phillip Garrido, and El Dorado County District Attorney Vern Pierson declined to confirm a guilty plea would be entered.

The case attracted international attention after Dugard surfaced in August 2009 and authorities said she and her children had lived in a hidden compound of tents and sheds in the Garridos' backyard in Antioch, never attending school or receiving medical attention.

Phillip and Nancy Garrido were both charged with 18 counts of kidnapping, rape, false imprisonment, child pornography and committing lewd acts on a child.

If convicted on all counts, the maximum sentence for Nancy Garrido would be 181 years, while Phillip Garrido could get 431 years, according to El Dorado County Deputy District Attorney James Clinchard.

Nancy Garrido has pleaded not guilty in the case. Phillip Garrido has yet to enter a plea after his criminal proceedings were halted for more than four months while his mental competency to stand trial was under evaluation.

Both defendants gave full confessions to authorities and expressed interest in plea bargains that would spare Dugard and her two daughters — now 13 and 16 — from having to testify, Tapson said.

He said he has advised Nancy Garrido against pleading guilty unless prosecutors offer a deal that holds the possibility — however remote — that she would one day be freed from prison.

"She doesn't want to go to trial," he said. "This is her lawyer saying let's set it for trial and see what happens."

Tapson planned to ask El Dorado Superior Court Judge Douglas Phimister to dismiss the rape and lewd conduct charges against his client, since Nancy Garrido maintains she did not directly participate in any sex acts with Dugard.

Dugard gave birth to her daughters when she was 14 and 17, and Nancy Garrido delivered the children, according to court documents. The girls knew Phillip Garrido was their father but grew up thinking Dugard was their older sister.

The mother and daughters rarely interacted with the outside world. Phillip Garrido ran a printing business, and Dugard assisted him in producing business cards, brochures and flyers, occasionally interacting with clients through email.

A few neighbors and customers would later report having seen the girls but not thinking much of it, even though they knew Garrido was a sex offender.

Authorities said Dugard was grabbed by Nancy Garrido off her family's South Lake Tahoe street and forced into a car driven by Phillip Garrido on June 10, 1991, as her stepfather watched her walk to the school bus stop.

The FBI, police and volunteers searched in vain for the pretty blonde girl who was last seen wearing a pink wind breaker and pink stretch pants. But they never came close to finding her, even though Dugard's stepfather gave an accurate description of the couple's car and of Nancy Garrido, and despite the fact that Phillip Garrido was being monitored by federal and state parole agents because of his rape conviction.

Dugard's reappearance 18 years, four months and 16 days later came about almost as a fluke.

In the days before his arrest, Phillip Garrido had become more determined to tell people about the religious group he founded called God's Desire and a box he had built that he believed allowed him to speak with God. During that time, he delivered a handwritten screed called "Origin of Schizophrenia Revealed" to the FBI's San Francisco office.

But it was a visit to the University of California, Berkeley, that same day that caused his ragged family to unravel. He showed up at campus with his daughters with Dugard in tow, seeking a permit for a religious event.

Campus police officers became suspicious, and after running a background check realized he had been convicted of kidnapping and raping a woman in Reno in 1977.

The Berkeley officers contacted Garrido's parole officer, who was surprised to hear that he had young daughters and ordered him to come in for a meeting. Garrido complied and for a still unknown reason brought his wife, the girls and Dugard.

Dugard tried to conceal her identity, initially telling authorities she was hiding from an abusive husband in Minnesota and giving her name as Alyssa.

Wary investigators separated her from Phillip Garrido, who had described Dugard and the two girls as his nieces, and under further questioning he admitted kidnapping "Alyssa" and Dugard disclosed her identity, authorities said.

She was reunited with her mother the next day and has remained in Northern California with her and her daughters. She requested privacy and has not attended any of the court hearings. She is writing her memoirs, which are scheduled to be published in September.

The Associated Press as a matter of policy avoids identifying victims of sexual abuse by name in its news reports

However, Dugard's disappearance had been known and reported for nearly two decades, making impossible any effort to shield her identity when she resurfaced.

Dugard's case revealed problems with California's system for monitoring convicted sex offenders after it was determined parole agents had missed numerous clues and chances to find her.

She received a $20 million settlement under which the state acknowledged repeated mistakes were made by parole agents responsible for monitoring Phillip Garrido. California has since increased monitoring of sex offenders.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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