Nixon was pulled over just after midnight Saturday after another driver called police to report a Dodge Ram truck weaving all over the road, according to an incident report from the Cherokee County Sheriff's Office. The 54-year-old remained in jail Monday afternoon on $11,880 bond.

Officers found a pipe for smoking crack cocaine in Nixon's pants pocket and found a suspected crack rock in the driver's seat, the report says. They later found another pipe and more suspected crack rocks in the floor board of the driver's side, as well as other paraphernalia.

A sheriff's deputy arrested Nixon on charges of possession of cocaine and possession of a drug-related object. It wasn't immediately clear Monday whether Nixon had a lawyer.

Nixon told officers he was driving a friend home and didn't believe he was weaving. He told the sheriff's deputy that the substance officers found in the car was crack cocaine but said the pipes and drugs belonged to his son and that he had been planning to get rid of the pipe.

Officers conducted field sobriety tests and determined Nixon wasn't under the influence of crack cocaine or alcohol.

The speedy Nixon collected more than 600 stolen bases in 17 seasons from 1983-99. He played for several teams including the Atlanta Braves, Cleveland Indians and Montreal Expos.

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FASLANE, Scotland (Reuters) - Outside Her Majesty's Naval Base Clyde, campaigners who have fought for decades for Britain to abandon nuclear weapons believe that they are closer than ever to victory.

In the 1980s, then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher brushed aside the protesters, saying that in the Cold War, atomic arms made the world a safer place.

Now, groups such as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament believe their time has come. The referendum on Scottish independence and the looming retirement of the current Trident system herald change, they say.

The handful of activists who stay overnight in a camp of brightly-painted caravans and peace signs believe that Faslane's ballistic missile submarines will be the last of their kind.

"I think we do have a chance now," said activist Angus Chalmers. "Everything is coming together. It's possible to make the case we don't need these weapons in a way that just wasn't possible during the Cold War."

The Scottish Nationalist Party government that runs Scotland's devolved government say the nuclear weapons must go if they win the September 2014 referendum on independence.

Prime Minister David Cameron visited Faslane this month to argue a vote for independence could jeopardize British and Scottish security. The confrontation with North Korea showed that deterrent was as vital as ever, he said.

But that will not be the end of the battle. The British government has already extended the life of the current four Trident submarines towards 2030 and is spending 1.5 billion pounds already on preliminary design work for their successors.

A final decision will be made after the 2015 election, with the Defence Ministry estimating the cost of replacement at around 20 billion-25 billion pounds.

Opponents say money could be better spent elsewhere - it is enough to hire 120,000 new nurses a year for a decade.

Public opinion may be shifting. A 2009 Guardian/ICM poll showed for the first time most of those surveyed favoring outright nuclear disarmament over replacement.

"If the next British government decides that Britain is to remain a nuclear weapons state, it must be prepared to face - and defeat - the most articulate and agile single issue opposition it has ever faced," ballistic missile submarine captain Cmdr Andy Corbett told a panel at London's Royal United Services Institute last year. "It needs to be preparing now."

The United States, current and former officials said, is extremely keen Britain remains a nuclear power.

They have the closest co-operation of any two nuclear-armed states, with considerable shared planning and research and with London effectively leasing the U.S.-built Trident missiles.

DEPENDING ON SCOTLAND

Those in the immediate area are worried. Thousands were thrown out of work when the U.S. Navy abandoned its Scottish ballistic missile submarine base at nearby Holy Loch.

The Defence Ministry says it is not carrying out any contingency planning for Scottish independence as ministers believe the union will continue.

Ironically, it was the unpopularity of Thatcher's government in Scotland - as well as Tony Blair's Labour administration - that opened the door to the SNP and next year's referendum.

For now, opinion polls suggest the pro-independence camp will lose - although with up to a fifth of the electorate undecided, those on both sides say things could change.

What is clear is that in its current form - four submarines, one always at sea carrying eight missiles and 40 warheads - the British deterrent relies almost completely on its Scottish base.

While the warheads themselves are assembled in England at the Atomic Weapons Establishment in Aldermasten, Faslane is the only facility capable of handling the nuclear-armed submarines.

The two most promising alternate locations, experts say, would be Milford Haven in Wales or the existing naval dockyard at Devonport, Plymouth. But both come with problems.

If Scotland were to vote to leave the United Kingdom, moving the deterrent to Wales, which also has a vocal nationalist movement, might seem risky.

Devonport, meanwhile, stands at the centre of a densely populated area that would make any nuclear accident potentially harmful to many more people.

"Everyone in London is just hoping the referendum doesn't see a victory for the "yes" vote," says Mark Fitzpatrick, a former senior U.S. official specializing in nuclear issues and now a senior analyst at London's International Institute for Strategic Studies.

"It would be hugely difficult for what was left of the rump United Kingdom if Scotland left."

Anxious to rebuff talk of many job losses, the SNP says Faslane would remain a military centre of an independent Scotland, home to a navy of patrol boats and a handful of larger craft.

Cutting a deal on the nuclear deterrent would almost certainly be a part of negotiations between London and Edinburgh on dividing military resources. Some suggest Faslane could remain a "sovereign base" still under London's control.

"The issue of Trident is a totemic one in Scottish politics," said Angus Robertson, SNP leader in the Westminster parliament and its spokesman on defence issues. "We would want it gone."

The Defence Ministry says that if Britain is to retain a permanent nuclear deterrent, Trident replacement offers by far the best value for money.

Other potential solutions - fewer submarines, using low flying cruise instead of ballistic missiles - would be much less resilient and could be destroyed much more easily.

The ruling Conservative party says it is committed to replacing Trident with a similar submarine-based ballistic missile system. Junior coalition partners the Liberal Democrats, however, have long been opposed and are conducting their own study into potential alternatives.

The opposition Labour Party, which most opinion polls suggest will win or at least emerge as the largest single party after the next election, remains divided. The party's support for unilateral disarmament at the height of the Cold War is seen contributing hugely to its electoral defeats and it is seen likely to back a submarine missile system.

"Prime ministers do not want to take the decision to be the person to give up our deterrent," said Sir Richard Mottram, former permanent secretary in the British civil service.

"They worry that in 2050, something horrible will have happened and they will be the person who goes down in history as responsible."

(Reporting By Peter Apps; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Friday is a "sun day" of sorts for the 205 students at Bellingham Christian School, a small, private, nondenominational Christian school in Bellingham, Wash., about 90 miles north of Seattle.

"SCHOOL CANCELLED DUE TO GREAT WEATHER! WAHOOO!" the school's website announced Thursday night. "Yeah! It's a Sun Day today and everyone gets the day off from school."

Principal Bob Sampson said he wanted to give students some time to re-energize and enjoy the weather, adding that he wanted to re-create the excitement snow days get among the kids. He began teasing the possibility of giving the day off earlier in the week.

"In a world that's got a lot hard things going, it's fun to create a moment of joy," Sampson said.

The forecast for Western Washington calls for a weekend of sunshine, with highs hitting the low 80s in some parts of the region on Sunday.

The sun day was also made possible because there weren't any days off because of snow this school year.

"Kids just love the anticipation of sitting around see if school is canceled when it snows," he said. "You know, we haven't had any snow days, so I thought 'how fun would it be to create that anticipation for kids when it's nice out?'"

Sampson surveyed parents to make sure the day off wouldn't cause any hardships and floated the idea with the school board before canceling school, he said. The 22 staff members will also get the day off, he added.

Sampson and another staff member will be at the school bright and early, though, to welcome any students who didn't get the notice.

The principal asked students to take pictures of what they do on their sunny day off. He plans to show the pictures at an assembly Monday.

It's not the first time the school has given students the day off because of sunshine. The last time was two years ago.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - In the past twelve months, Zynga Inc has struggled with a contracting player base, a deflated stock price and waves of layoffs. Now it is coming to terms with downsized ambitions.

As Chief Executive Mark Pincus, 47, leads the online games developer he founded in 2007 through perhaps the most crucial year of his tenure, he is pushing to restore revenues by doubling down on "FarmVille," the franchise that took Facebook users by storm four years ago and launched Zynga to stardom.

Though some industry observers had declared farm simulation games a fad and predicted FarmVille 2's early demise, the sequel to Zynga's best-known title has defied expectations at its San Francisco headquarters, Pincus said in an interview. FarmVille 2 has clung to its perch near the top of Facebook charts and the number of people who play the game each day still hovers near all-time highs of 8 million, even six months after launch.

Given a glaring weakness in mobile games, however, one of Zynga's current priorities is porting FarmVille 2 to mobile devices so players can move from PCs to smartphones and back without losing their data. That presented technical challenges that the company is ironing out, Pincus said.

"The ideal is to make that one seamless experience between Web and mobile so you can take your farming experience from work to home," Pincus said. "We're having to retool and reinvent around our process and technology."

Pincus badly needs a reliable hit franchise. In the past nine months, Zynga has shuttered 20 titles and closed offices in Baltimore, Boston and Tokyo. It has trimmed 5 percent of its workforce, though its headcount of nearly 3,000 still dwarfs that of fierce rivals like Supercell, a Finnish company with 100 people that claims an equivalent amount of revenue, or the 600-strong Rovio, the publisher behind the "Angry Birds" games.

Gone is the swagger that defined the early years, when Zynga's army of developers flooded the market with dozens of new titles from cooking games to bingo variations, its dealmakers splashed money to snap up smaller rivals, and its managers opened studios in cities around the world.

Wall Street is viewing Pincus' shift with cautious approval, having been singed by Zynga's abysmal stock performance an 80 percent decline over the past year that began around the time it invested $180 million in then-promising game studio OMGPOP.

"Certainly their shareholder base wants to see more discipline," said Sean McGowan, an analyst at Needham and Co. "When you have limited resources, it makes sense to start with a proven winner, then expand that franchise. But it needs to be a blend of sticking with the proven brands and realizing when people might say: 'FarmVille 4? No, I'm done with that.'"

Investors place much stock on Zynga's future prospects in Internet gambling, because of its massive poker-playing community and existing game software. But with meaningful income from real-money casino efforts likely to be months, if not years, away, it may have to risk "sequelitis" for now.

TABLES TURNED

Almost 18 months after going public, Zynga is staving off fierce competition from newer or nimbler rivals that mimic its games.

Supercell, founded in 2010, has scored with "Hay Day," an iPad game that contains elements resembling FarmVille. With just one other game under its belt, Supercell says it is on track to make more than $800 million in revenue this year, roughly equal to the $860 million that Wall Street expects from Zynga in 2013.

Veteran video games publisher Electronic Arts Inc, one of Zynga's earliest rivals, in recent weeks said it would lay off an undisclosed number of employees and focus on core franchises like Battlefield and sports titles.

Activision Blizzard Inc, another publishing heavyweight, has fared better thanks to the strength of series like "Call of Duty," which has brought in more than $8 billion in cumulative sales since the first title launched in 2003. Yet even Activision is struggling to sustain revenue growth.

Zynga's bottom-line could be shored up through a more streamlined pipeline, Pincus argued. Since FarmVille first launched, it has gradually honed its development process to reduce the resources and development costs required for each significant update by more than 80 percent, he said.

"As long as our players are interested in farming, we'll offer a Farmville," Pincus said. "It could be the Seinfeld of our era in gaming, a multi-season show that has a quality and a consistency that you can rely on."

Zynga declined to address its game pipeline. Bing Gordon, an investor at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and a Zynga board member, said he has repeatedly nudged the company to develop FarmVille 3.

"Coca Cola has learned not to change their formula," said Gordon, a game industry veteran who formerly served as chief creative officer at Electronic Arts. "If you've got something people want, keep doing it."

BOLD BEATS

Even as Zynga seeks greater efficiency, it acknowledges it has been pressed to invest more to stay competitive.

At the heart of the company's strategy has been its "bold beat" schedule, a roadmap first laid out by Pincus in 2009 to release significant upgrades and new features to games every quarter to keep players hooked.

Once criticized in the industry for low-quality graphics and rudimentary gameplay, the company's latest launches and "bold beats" have placed a greater emphasis on elements like visuals that were once considered superfluous, game designers said.

"Player expectations are higher than they used to be," said Zynga Senior Vice President Todd Arnold, who overseas FarmVille and FarmVille 2. "You're not able to launch a minimalist product as we used to be able to."

For its leading franchises, the company is also investing more in quantitative and analytical tools. Every week, it shuttles players into a room deep inside its offices, where they are shown minute new design features. Their reactions are recorded by video cameras as well as a team of game designers sitting behind a two-way mirror in an adjacent room.

The company also holds periodic panel discussions with its most loyal fans to solicit suggestions for new features.

Linda Zoccolli, a retired daycare business owner in Moraga, California, suggested at a session in March that water was too scarce a commodity in FarmVille 2. Weeks later, she noticed the game began to feature periodic rainfall.

She has spent three hours almost daily for the past eight months tending her plot but hasn't found it repetitive.

"As long as they come out with new quests, new items, it keeps it interesting," she said.

(Reporting by Gerry Shih; Editing by Edwin Chan, Jonathan Weber and Chris Reese)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama will travel on Thursday to Austin, Texas, the first stop in a new series of day trips designed to draw attention to policies and programs that help spur the economy, and build support for his economic policies, the White House said on Sunday.

In Austin, Obama will visit a high school and a technology company, and will talk with entrepreneurs and workers about proposals he made earlier this year to boost jobs and training.

Despite often saying that his top priority is creating more jobs, Obama's proposals have been overshadowed by debates over reforms to gun and immigration laws as well as efforts to reduce the deficit.

Unemployment in the United States fell to 7.5 percent last month, the lowest level since Obama took office.

"Things are getting better, but our economic recovery is not as strong as it could be and far too many middle class families are still struggling," said Josh Earnest, Obama's deputy press secretary.

"There are things Washington could be doing right now to help American businesses, schools and workers," he said, explaining the tours are designed to engage Americans and push Congress to act.

In February, Obama said he wanted to invest in manufacturing "hubs" around the country, spend $50 billion on roads, bridges and other infrastructure, and raise the minimum wage to $9 per hour from the current $7.25.

Most of the proposals require Congressional approval, but there have been few signs of broad support for the measures on Capitol Hill.

(Reporting by Roberta Rampton; Editing by Sandra Maler)

Britain is counting on untapped reserves of shale gas trapped in rock formations to help reduce its growing dependence on energy imports.

"This is one of several options we are looking at," said a spokesman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change.

He also said investment into community facilities such as sports centres were part of the discussions.

"We will publish a report in the summer," he said, building on comments made last month by Chancellor George Osborne, promising local community benefits from shale gas exploration and huge tax breaks for explorers.

British shale gas firm Cuadrilla Resources said it was in discussions with local communities and the government to identify schemes through which residents can benefit from shale gas.

Public opposition against large infrastructure projects has been widespread in Britain.

Onshore wind farm developers have struggled to gain local planning approval in more populated areas as residents rebelled against the construction of wind turbines, which they called noisy and obtrusive.

The practice of offering community benefits is now widespread in the onshore wind industry. Examples include energy bill rebates for residents directly affected by the construction of wind farms.

(Reporting by Karolin Schaps; Additional reporting by Oleg Vukmanovic, editing by William Hardy)

Derick Brassard and Rick Nash scored power-play goals in the opening 10 minutes, and Mats Zuccarello, Brassard and Brad Richards turned a tight game into a rout with goals 3:25 apart late in the third period of the Rangers' 6-1 victory on Thursday night.

The Rangers remained in eighth place in the Eastern Conference, tied with Winnipeg in points but holding the final playoff spot because they have a game in hand on the Jets.

Zuccarello and Brassard both finished with two goals, Nash and Rangers captain Ryan Callahan added two assists each, and Richards also had with a two-point night as New York quickly erased the memory of a lackluster loss at Philadelphia on Tuesday that temporarily halted their surge toward the postseason.

The Rangers (22-17-4) will play at Buffalo on Friday and face desperate New Jersey at home Sunday. All of New York's final five games are against teams below the playoff cutoff in the East.

"It's a huge game," Nash said. "We've got to get a win (Friday) night. We'll enjoy this for a couple of hours, then go back to work tomorrow morning."

Brassard and Nash both scored power-play goals, with help from Callahan in the first, and Zuccarello found the net for the second straight game to give the Rangers their sixth win in nine games (6-2-1).

Zuccarello scored in the second period and then added his second of the night with 4:49 left when he tipped the puck in after Richards raced it up ice. Brassard made it 5-1 just 1:24 later with his second of the game, with an assist from Nash, and Richards pushed the lead to five goals with 1:24 remaining.

The loss on Tuesday enabled Winnipeg to get even in points with the Rangers. Winnipeg kept pace Thursday with an overtime win over Carolina.

"It's important. We don't need help," Rangers coach John Tortorella said of the standings. "I think it's an opportunity for some guys to step up. You shouldn't feel the pressure and shy away from it.

"That's the way you need to take it as an individual and as a group."

Henrik Lundqvist made 34 saves for his 20th win. Even in this lockout-shortened, 48-game season, Lundqvist reached 20 for the eighth straight time.

Jonathan Huberdeau scored in the second period for Florida (13-24-6), which has an NHL-low 32 points. Scott Clemmensen stopped 24 shots, but the Panthers lost their fourth in a row and for the fifth time in six games despite holding a 35-30 edge in shots.

"You lose by five goals, it's pretty hard to put anything (positive) to it," disappointed Panthers coach Kevin Dineen said. "It's a results business. Tonight is another example that we have to be a lot better."

The Rangers found their offense by taking advantage of the NHL's worst penalty-killing unit in the first period. New York had been 0-for-14 with the advantage in its previous four games, but connected on its first two tries to grab a 2-0 lead.

Brassard got it started at 3:05 after Callahan had a shot blocked by Clemmensen. Nash got the puck behind the net and found Brassard, leading to a goal from the doorstep. It was Brassard's ninth of the season and second in eight games since he came to the Rangers at the trade deadline from the Columbus Blue Jackets.

Nash, a former Blue Jackets star now in his first season with New York, netted his 18th goal at 9:10 with a blistering wrist shot from the right circle off the rush following a pass from Callahan during another power play.

It is the fourth time this season the Rangers scored more than one goal on their power play that came in ranked 20th in the NHL and produced only 20 goals in the previous 42 games.

"We really want to get those first goals," said Nash, who has played in the postseason just once. "We've got to pour it all into every game now. It's so important. We're desperate for points."

On the flip side, the Panthers came in having killed only 73.5 of their short-handed situations this season. Florida improved in the second period, turning aside both New York advantages.

However, with the teams at even strength, Zuccarello pushed the Rangers' lead to 3-1 at 16:34 with a backhanded shot from right in front after Ryan Clowe skated back and forth behind the net before getting the puck to him.

Huberdeau had gotten the Panthers within 2-1 with 4:43 left in the first when he used a brilliant skating move to get around Zuccarello and beat Lundqvist with a shot for his 14th of the season.

New York's third-period onslaught dashed any Panthers' hopes of a late comeback.

"We tried to do our best in the third, but it didn't work," Panthers leading scorer Tomas Fleischmann said. "Positive in a game like that? Nothing really positive."

NOTES: The Rangers were without C Brian Boyle, who injured his right leg on Tuesday. He is expected to miss both games this weekend. ... Callahan, who played in his 400th NHL game, received the team's Steven McDonald Extra Effort Award for the fourth time in five years. He and Adam Graves (five) are the only four-time winners. ... Florida recalled D Alex Petrovic from San Antonio of the AHL, and he made his NHL debut. The Panthers have used 37 players this season. ... The Rangers are 24-6-3 in their last 33 games against Southeast Division opponents, including an 9-3-1 this season. ... New York has earned at least one point in 89 consecutive games when leading after the second period (83-0-6), dating to the 2009-10 season.