* Povetkin knocks out Pole to set up Klitschko fight (updates with Jones win, adds details)

MOSCOW, May 17 (Reuters) - Former champion Guillermo Jones of Panama stopped title holder Denis Lebedev with seconds remaining in the 11th round to reclaim his WBA cruiserweight crown from the Russian on Friday.

Earlier, Alexander Povetkin knocked out previously undefeated challenger Andrzej Wawrzyk in the third round to retain his WBA heavyweight crown, setting up a long-awaited clash with super champion Vladimir Klitschko later this year.

Lebedev, who knocked out previously undefeated Colombian challenger Santander Silgado in his last fight at the same Moscow arena in December, took the initiative from the start.

But 41-year-old Jones was not about to back down. Heavy punishment finally took its toll on the Russian as his right eye was completely shut down by round five.

The men continued their slugfest in the later rounds before the Panamanian stunned Lebedev and the partisan home crowd at Moscow's Crocus City Hall with a right cross as the referee stopped the fight late in the penultimate round.

Jones improved his record to 39 wins, including 31 by knockout, with three defeats and two draws, while Lebedev's record dropped to 25 wins and two loses.

Watched by Klitschko's elder brother and WBC champion Vitaly, Povetkin floored lanky Pole Wawrzyk with a right hook in round two, then sent his opponent to the canvas again in the following round before finishing the job a few seconds later.

The 33-year-old Russian improved his record to 26-0, including 18 by knockout, while Wawrzyk suffered his first defeat in 28 professional fights.

"It was a good workout. I didn't aim for an early knockout, it just happened," Povetkin told Russian television.

Asked if he was now ready to fight Ukrainian Klitschko, who stopped Italian Francesco Pianeta in his last fight in Germany earlier this month, Povetkin said: "Yes, let's do it."

Povetkin's manager Vladimir Khryunov, who last month won the bid to stage the Klitschko fight, added: "It will be held here in Moscow, probably in early October."

Vitaly Klitschko, however, was a bit more cautious.

"The fight is on the cards but the contract has not been signed yet," he told Russian television. (Reporting by Gennady Fyodorov, editing by Pritha Sarkar)

James, the NBA's reigning most valuable player, was fined along with David West and Lance Stephenson of the Indiana Pacers for exaggerating contact during Tuesday's Game Four of the best-of-seven series, which is tied at two games apiece.

With the intense series set to resume on Thursday in Miami, the league decided to crack down on the theatrics displayed in Game Four, where the players involved tried to trick referees into calling fouls off limited contact.

James and West were cited for flopping on the same play during Indiana's 99-92 home victory.

West, guarded by James, was backing in toward the basket in anticipation of receiving a pass when the nine-time Miami All Star spun and sprawled onto the floor as West stumbled awkwardly toward the baseline after minimal contact.

Stephenson earned his fine for exaggerating contact after a slight elbow push from Ray Allen following an Indiana basket.

The NBA instituted an anti-flopping policy this season to cut down on the practice.

(Reporting by Larry Fine in New York; Editing by Frank Pingue)

The longtime Calgary Flames captain waived a no-trade clause and was dealt to the Penguins in March hours after turning down a deal that would have sent him to Boston.

"I was very fortunate that both teams were interested and I was fortunate that Calgary gave me that chance," Iginla told the Penguins website.

"I know Boston is a great team and it was one of those situations that when I did it, I knew there was a big possibility that we'd be in this situation and here we are. I'm excited about the challenge."

The teams will open the best-of-seven Eastern Conference finals in Pittsburgh on Saturday to determine who will play the Western Conference representative for the Stanley Cup.

The 2011 Stanley Cup champion Bruins entered the playoffs as the fourth seed but have stepped up their game considerably and boast the postseason's top scorer in David Krejci, who has 17 points in 12 games.

Pittsburgh, who last won a Stanley Cup in 2009, finished the regular season with the best record in the conference to earn top seeding and have Sidney Crosby showing solid form.

Iginla has fit in nicely with the Penguins and is fourth in team scoring with 12 points in 11 games through the opening two rounds of the playoffs while playing alongside reigning league most valuable player Evgeni Malkin and James Neal.

"Playing with 'G' and 'Nealer,' they have such a great chemistry," Iginla said.

"They really, really enjoy playing together. So you want to play with them and play hard, but not disrupt that and kind of just find different places to go and contribute to that.

"(Even) if that's going to the net and getting out of their way..."

Iginla, 35, had played his entire NHL career in Calgary since debuting in 1996, but with the Flames in a rebuilding mode he decided to seek a trade that would give him a shot at winning his first Stanley Cup.

The production from the future Hall of Famer, a three-time Olympian who assisted on Canada's game-winning goal in the gold medal game at the 2010 Vancouver Games, has not been lost on his current team mates.

"He's been great, a guy that's fun to play with and has a great shot and he can get it off all around him," said Neal.

"So, he's a tough guy to cover. He's been doing that really well and getting some rebound goals and helping our team win. So, obviously a huge addition and he's showing why we got him."

(Reporting by Frank Pingue in Toronto; Editing by Larry Fine)

Cotter, who is currently coaching France side Clermont-Auvergne, will take over the Scotland team in 2014 at the conclusion of his contract with the Top 14 club.

The 51-year-old's appointment means that New Zealanders are now in charge at three of the four home nations.

Cotter's former assistant at Clermont, Joe Schmidt, was appointed Ireland coach in April, while British and Irish Lions coach Warren Gatland will resume his duties with Wales after the tour of Australia.

"I think we're seeing a pattern, if you're a New Zealander you're going to be an international coach," Hansen told Fairfax Media in Tauranga. "What sides aren't we coaching? So that's a huge pat on the back for the New Zealand system."

Cotter, Schmidt and Gatland are not the only New Zealand coaches plying their trade with international sides with Cotter's former boss at the Canterbury Crusaders Robbie Deans in charge of Australia, while Kieran Crowley is in Canada and Milton Haig is in charge of Georgia.

Current Auckland Blues coach John Kirwan led both Italy and Japan before he returned home with an eye on one day applying for the All Blacks job, while Hansen and his predecessor Graham Henry both coached Wales.

It should not be a surprise that coaches head offshore to further their careers.

Coaching jobs are limited in New Zealand with less than 100 potential fulltime jobs available as a head or assistant coach.

The country's population means that outside the national team setup, there are only five professional sides, who all play in the southern hemisphere's Super Rugby competition.

The country's vaunted provincial competition, a breeding ground for New Zealand's conveyer belt of talent into Super Rugby, has 26 teams in three divisions but just 14 are, at best, semi-professional.

Hansen said he understood why coaches sought a career offshore, though he did not expect it to be a necessary precursor to taking the All Blacks job.

"Do you have to have coached internationally before you coach the All Blacks?" he said.

"No. I think someone like (current assistant and former Waikato Chiefs coach) Ian Foster will make a great All Blacks coach one day." (Reporting by Greg Stutchbury; Editing by Nick Mulvenney)

GOYANG, South Korea (Reuters) - Five years after the global financial crisis, South Korean construction workers are feeling the pinch more than ever as they shoulder a mountain of debt from a real estate bust that has cast a long shadow on the country's growth prospects.

Facing the specter of bankruptcy, some construction firms persuaded their staff to take up loans to mop up unsold apartments.

"There was pressure. There's nowhere else in the world where there's a parallel to these practices," said a construction worker, who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter.

"Loyalty and hierarchy is still strong in South Korea and especially in the construction companies which are run like the armed forces," he said, adding that his employer Poonglim Industrial Co Ltd had asked him to buy two apartments, which meant he had to borrow 800 million won ($712,800).

A public relations official at Poonglim, which completed its court receivership in April, would only say employees had taken loans on behalf of the company and interest payments were being paid by Poonglim. "We are in discussions with debt creditors to resell all of these apartments with discounts to resolve the matter," he said.

Such loans represent just a small part of a big problem in Asia's fourth-largest economy, as outstanding household debt has climbed to almost $1 trillion.

South Korea's household debt has doubled over a decade to levels where debt-to-income ratios are in excess of those in the United States before the sub-prime crash in 2008.

Hit by debt and the prolonged property market slump, January-March private consumption fell for the first time in five quarters as Koreans kept a tight hold on their wallets.

Other data also indicates the economy once dubbed the "Miracle on the Han River" because of its rise from poverty to rich nation status in just one generation may be drying up.

Gross domestic product grew 2 percent in 2012 and the Bank of Korea has forecast expansion of 2.6 percent this year.

President Park Geun-hye, who took office in February, has implemented a household debt relief program. But the 800 billion won put into the scheme is far less than the 18 trillion won that she promised in her election campaign.

The original proposal for what Park dubbed the "National Happiness Fund" was to provide debt relief for 3.2 million people, but the smaller amount will see just 324,000 qualify.

Park, the daughter of Park Chung-hee, the autocratic ruler who oversaw South Korea's stellar industrialization in the 1960s and 1970s, pledged an "Era of People's Happiness" in her campaign.

Park Wong-gap, a property specialist at South Korea's Kookmin Bank, described the measures as "morphine" for a sick body, and would not solve fundamental problems of a weak domestic economy.

South Korea's construction industry makes up about 6 percent of the economy and employs more than a million people.

FORCED TO BUY

An office worker at Byucksan Engineering & Construction Co Ltd, Kim Keon-hoon said he was also pushed in 2008 to buy an unsold 800 million won two-bathroom, four-bedroom apartment in the Ilsan suburb outside Seoul as his employer teetered on the edge of bankruptcy.

Mortgages are commonly taken on by workers to provide cash-strapped companies with liquidity, and interest payments are usually shouldered by the firms.

The purchase has saddled the father of two with debts of 500 million won and monthly interest payments of 3 million won that he cannot repay. Kim and other employees say they were coerced to buy and have taken the company to court.

This was the second time Kim had been pushed by his company into buying an unsold apartment, the first was during the 1998 Asian financial crisis, still known as the International Monetary Fund crisis in South Korea.

"During the IMF crisis, many companies raised money by making their employees buy apartments ... so when the company proposed that we do it again, it wasn't the kind of atmosphere where anyone could object," Kim told Reuters in the dusty shell of an apartment in a high-rise block on the edge of Seoul. He took on a mortgage for fear his career would suffer.

When asked about workers' claims that they were forced to buy unsold properties, a Byucksan official said the company was sympathetic to the plight of its staff. "That was a practice in the past and it can now only be resolved by reselling them. There is nothing we can do to manage the problem as the company is still under receivership."

The Korean Federation of Construction Company Unions, an umbrella union grouping, estimated in February that members working for five firms placed in receivership had been told to buy a total of 1,047 unsold apartments from their employers worth a total of 454 billion won.

"We know our workers are in pain and we all hope these houses will be sold again soon so we can get rid of that pain," said the official at Byucksan, who requested anonymity as he is not authorized to speak to the media.

Due to oversupply and lack of affordability, apartment prices in the Seoul metropolitan area have fallen 14.7 percent to end-2012 from July 2008, according to Moody's Investors Service. The slump is killing off builders.

"There is a structural problem and another liquidity crisis could happen any time to construction companies unless the real estate market recovers," said Kookmin Bank's Park.

Kookmin's own data shows that house prices fell by their fastest annual level in four years in April with a 0.76 percent decline. The bank's data is considered an official indicator of South Korea's housing market conditions.

WIDESPREAD MALAISE

The woes of the construction sector aren't just confined to smaller firms.

Combined first-quarter operating losses at the top nine South Korean construction firms, including giants such as Hyundai Engineering & Construction Co Ltd and Samsung C&T Corp, were 480.9 billion won, a compilation by online financial news service FnGuide showed.

Among the top 100 builders in South Korea, 21 firms including Ssangyong Engineering & Construction Co Ltd and Kumho Industrial Co Ltd are under court receivership or debt-restructuring programs, according to the Construction Association of Korea.

Until the construction sector revives, some parts of the industry are likely to put pressure on employees to buy, banking on the same spirit of self-sacrifice that saw people sell their jewelry to help the government pay back a $57 billion loan from the IMF during the Asian crisis in the 1990s.

The 44-year-old Kim, still with Byucksan and living in a smaller apartment in the same town, is struggling to raise and educate a family under the weight of huge debts that have destroyed his lifetime savings.

"The loans are still outstanding and that is what has hurt our workers the most. I have never wanted to come and live in this apartment."

($1 = 1122.3250 Korean won)

(Additional reporting by Choonsik Yoo; Editing by David Chance and Jacqueline Wong)

INDIANAPOLIS (Reuters) - Colombian rookie Carlos Munoz enjoyed his time in the Brickyard spotlight with a dazzling runner-up finish at the Indianapolis 500 on Sunday but was headed back to motor racing's minor leagues to continue his apprenticeship.

Munoz arrived at Indianapolis Motor Speedway a promising unknown but leaves having confirmed his credentials as a future star after winning plenty of praise along with an Indy 500 rookie award.

"At the beginning I was a little bit nervous with the pit stops but in the end, the car was great, and it's a good second place," Munoz told reporters.

"Hopefully in the future, I will be able to drink the milk (that goes to the Indy 500 winner). Right now I'm thirsty."

It was a busy week for the 21-year-old driver, who pulled double duty racing in the Indy Lights (IndyCar's feeder series) on Friday and in Sunday's 200-lap main event.

Making his IndyCar debut, Munoz backed up a spectacular qualifying effort, taking second spot on the grid, with an equally brilliant performance in the main event, where he was runner-up behind Tony Kanaan in a sensational IndyCar debut.

"I really wanted to fight for the win. Maybe I could win. Maybe not, but I really wanted to fight," said Munoz "To be second and a rookie and the best of the team is a great job."

While Munoz's current full-time job is running for Andretti Autosport in the Indy Lights, where he is the series leader, team owner Michael Andretti gave the youngster the chance to show his stuff on the big stage.

Munoz made the best of his opportunity outshining Andretti Autosport regulars James Hinchcliffe, winner of two races this season, Ryan Hunter-Reay and Marco Andretti.

A fearless competitor, the sprawling Brickyard could not intimidate the Colombian who posted an average speed of 187.431 mph, the fastest ever for an Indianapolis 500 rookie.

But despite leading the race five different times, Munoz will have to wait for another call up from his boss.

"Right now let's wait and see what the future hold for me," said Munoz, who grew up idolizing Formula One great Ayrton Senna. "Right now I have to do my job and my job is Indy Lights.

"This is one race, I got more experience and it came out really good.

"I am not sure what the plan is so I have to concentrate on my Indy Lights."

(Editing by Frank Pingue)

Some children carried thank-you cards. A first-grader was eager to see her favorite gym teacher and for a chance to say goodbye for the school year.

It was one of many difficult goodbyes for the city of Moore. Family and friends attended the funeral of a 9-year-old girl who died at Plaza Towers Elementary School the first since Monday's storm, which killed 24 people.

Students who survived the storm's onslaught at the school and those whose parents had pulled them out of class just before it hit gathered with their teachers at another Moore school that wasn't damaged. Seven children died at Plaza Towers.

Authorities kept journalists at a distance, but Cheryle Dixon, a grandmother of first-grader Crisily Dixon, talked to a reporter about how hard it was for the little girl.

"A lot of tears, a lot of worry about her gym teacher, a lot of worry about a lot of the teachers that she knew, so she just can't believe it," Dixon said.

The father of 7-year-old Crisily had picked her up an hour before the tornado struck when he learned the severity of the approaching storm a top-of-the-scale EF5 that was on the ground for 40 minutes, according to the National Severe Storm Lab in Norman.

The police and the mayor's office in Oklahoma City both estimate that around 12,000 homes were damaged and destroyed by the storm in the city and to the south in Moore.

After the disaster, when Crisily saw pictures on the news of a car in the hallway that leads to her classroom, "her little face, she just turned pale," Dixon said.

At the same time, Dixon said her granddaughter was looking ahead to second grade in the fall and was hoping a book she needed was fished out of the school's ruins.

"She said, 'What about my book, what about my book? I'm supposed to have it for next year,'" the grandmother said, her eyes filling with tears. "She said, 'I'm supposed to take it to second grade. It was in my desk.' "

Moore Schools Superintendent Susan Pierce said Plaza Towers and Briarwood Elementary schools will be rebuilt. Briarwood was heavily damaged but no one was killed there.

"And we will reopen and we will have school in August," she said.

Also headed to Thursday's reunion of classmates and students was Carly Ramirez, who held her 4-year-old daughter, Kamrin, in her arms. The small, ponytailed brunette shyly buried her face in her mother's neck, tightly holding two thank-you cards she planned to give her teachers.

In each envelope were two notes: One from Kamrin and one from her mother.

Kamrin also was not at Plaza Towers when the storm hit, having already left her morning preschool class. She rode out the storm in a shelter at her grandfather's home.

The main reason they came, though, Ramirez said was so that Kamrin could see with her own eyes that all her teachers had emerged from the school alive.

"She's asked about her teacher and her book buddy, which is a fifth-grader that goes to the library with her on Wednesdays," Ramirez said.

Gov. Mary Fallin said that as the removal of mountains of debris begins "we are also in a stage of healing." A public memorial service would be held Sunday night at a church, she said.

At Thursday's funeral service, relatives and friends gathered in a chapel in Oklahoma City to remember 9-year-old Antonia Candelaria. Mournful country music played in the chapel, which was adorned with flowers and photos of the smiling girl.

An obituary posted on the funeral home's website said the girl loved to sing she knew the words to most of the songs on the country radio station her family frequently had on and she would sing along, bringing joy to the house.

The family's remembrance also talked of the "gentle and loving spirit" of a girl whose nickname was "ladybug."

The third-grader recently auditioned to sing in a talent show that would have been held Thursday.

"Tonie always danced, not walked, to the beat of her own drum," the family wrote in her obit. "And she banged her drum very well. She would bang that drum so loud that others could not help but to start dancing to her beat as well."

The director who put Robert Redford in a struggle for survival as a capsized sailor in "All Is Lost" is talking about mortality when a gust of wind lifts a large beach umbrella from its base and sends it and its heavy metal pole sailing straight toward a publicist sitting nearby.

Chandor snatches the projectile from the air just in time, to gasps from onlookers.

The garrulous American director shrugs off the feat "I have good eyes" before resuming his flow of words about life, death and putting a screen icon through the emotional and physical wringer.

"This guy is essentially me in a weird way," he said of the film's central and sole character. "Someone asked me if it's about my dad dying my dad's still alive. It's about me dying. These are my feelings about this."

"All Is Lost" is writer-director Chandor's second feature, after Academy Award-nominated Wall St. drama "Margin Call." You can't accuse him of opting for an easy project.

Redford plays a sailor whose yacht is damaged in a collision with a shipping container in the middle of the Indian Ocean. The film follows him over eight days as he tries, first, to repair his boat and sail on, then simply to survive in increasingly perilous conditions.

The cast consists of Redford and the elements, the set is the claustrophobic confines of a small boat on the open sea. And there is no dialogue. Apart from a few lines of voiceover at the start and an emphatic expletive, it's a wordless film.

"There was certainly some ego" involved in that decision, Chandor said. "It seemed like a difficult and yet exciting thing to do."

"I felt I could make a very, very compelling, dramatic, thrilling hopefully film, but then by the third act you have this very intense emotional experience about a guy essentially coming to grips with his own mortality right in front of your eyes," he said. "It came to me that the best way to do that was just to have the audience experience what he was going through, so it was shot in a way that you were literally with him."

Redford is key to the success of Chandor's old-man-and-the sea story. The 76-year-old actor's famous, weather-beaten face and aging but muscular physique help give the movie its compelling intensity.

Chandor met the star when "Margin Call" was selected for Redford's Sundance Film Festival in 2011. He later sent Redford the "All Is Lost" script, and was surprised when the actor called back within a few days to set up a meeting.

"He said, 'I just wanted to make sure you weren't totally crazy. This thing is a little out there, but let's do it.'"

Redford told reporters this week that making the film "to have an experience where I could give myself over completely to a director" was a thrill.

Chandor thinks he can see why.

"When an actor has been working for 40 years, and if you love movies he has so much baggage, that it's almost hard for him at this point to take on a fresh role, because we have all these other ideas and his voice is so specific," said Chandor who skirted that obstacle by silencing the voice.

"There was something visceral in him wanting to do this material," the director said. "He just came and gave himself to it fully. It was an amazing experience."

"All Is Lost" is screening out of competition at the Cannes festival, which ends Sunday. Audiences and critics have been enthusiastic.

Trade paper Variety called it "that mainstream-movie rarity: a virtually wordless film that speaks with grave eloquence and simplicity about the human condition." The Guardian newspaper said Redford "delivers a tour de force performance," and the actor got a long standing ovation at the film's premiere.

Chandor has had a dramatic career breakthrough in the past couple of years. He spent years directing commercials before making "Margin Call."

There has been a lot of griping about the state of the film industry at this festival, but you won't hear any of it from Chandor.

"You can make any movie you want in the world right now but you can't make it for $40 million," he said. ("All Is Lost" cost $8.5 million).

"Every person on this pier has the means in their hand of making a movie of some sort, and ... for the first time in the history of humanity there's a distribution channel to get that art out there. All it comes down to is that there is a budget for every movie.

"Do I think we need to support the distribution challenge to get these out into the world? Of course. Do I think Hollywood is making the same stupid movie over and over again? Abso-freaking-lutely.

"But to say you can't make a movie that you want today to me seems absurd. I could make a movie my whole career I just didn't have any stories worth telling."

___

Jill Lawless can be reached at http://Twitter.com/JillLawless

The Toronto Stock Exchange's S&P/TSX composite indexwas up 138.73 points, or 1.09 percent, at 12,881.16 in early afternoon trade.

(Reporting by John Tilak)

VASLUI, Romania (Reuters) - Valentin Boanta, sitting in his jail cell, proudly explains the device he has invented which, he says, could make the world's ATMs impregnable even to tech-savvy criminals like himself.

Boanta, 33, is six months into a five-year sentence for supplying gadgets an organized crime gang used to conceal ATM skimmers, which can copy data from an unsuspecting ATM user's card so a clone can be created.

He said he had started to make the devices for the sheer excitement of it and denies ever planning to use them himself, saying he only sold them to others.

Boanta says his arrest in 2009 and trial brought contrition, as he realized the impact of his actions and felt an urge to make amends. It also brought the former industrial design student a flash of technical inspiration.

"When I got caught I became happy. This liberation opened the way to working for the good side," Boanta said.

"Crime was like a drug for me. After I was caught, I was happy I escaped from this adrenaline addiction," he said. "So that the other part, in which I started to develop security solutions, started to emerge."

It was during his trial that he got down to work. The stage for Boanta's product pitch these days is the book-lined cell in the northeastern Romanian town of Vaslui he shares with five pickpockets and burglars.

"All ATMs have ageing designs so they are prone to vulnerability, they are a very weak side of the banking industry," he said.

"Every ATM can be penetrated through a skimming crime. My security solution, SRS, makes an ATM unbreachable."

Boanta says his "Secure Revolving System-SRS" can be installed in any ATM. It allows the bank card to be inserted longer side first and then rotates it to prevent skimmers being able to lock on to the magnetic data strip. The system returns the card to its user with a reverse rotation.

Outwardly it is a trapezoidal metallic box around 6 inches long with the card slot in the middle.

The SRS, funded and developed by a technology firm near Bucharest called MB Telecom, is patented and won an award this year at the International Exhibition of Inventions in Geneva. The inventor and company are not yet saying how much it will cost, but insist it will be available soon.

"He fully deserves such recognition," said SRS co-inventor and MB Telecom president Mircea Tudor. "He's taking part in improving Romania's image abroad and he'll surely join our team when released."

Romania has a deep well of technical expertise stemming from the time of communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, who backed computer research and technical education.

Digital piracy flourished after his violent overthrow in 1989, as people who could not afford proprietary products bought cheap copies instead.

Romanian hackers stole about $1 billion from U.S. accounts in 2012, according to the U.S. embassy in Bucharest. A report by Verizon said Romania was the world's second-biggest hacking centre after China. The FBI has even set up an office in Romania and helped to train specialist police agents.

(Additional reporting by Ioana Patran in Bucharest; Editing by Andrew Roche and Louise Ireland)