The 43-year-old South African made an early exit after carding a 70 for a two-under total of 142.

Former British Open champions Darren Clarke and Padraig Harrington and Scottish Open title holder Jeev Milkha Singh of India also missed the cut on 141.

Scot Chris Doak, who has had only one top-10 finish on the European Tour, hit a second successive six-under 66 to take the halfway lead in his local event.

World number eight Phil Mickelson was four strokes off the pace after returning a 70 for 136.

Els sounded almost relieved to leave the Castle Stuart links course.

"I thought I played quite well today but I had no idea on these greens so I am glad I am leaving to get on some other greens," he told the BBC.

"I did not get the run of the course - it felt like it was against me - but I am playing nicely and gave myself a lot of opportunities. It's not the first cut I've missed and it won't be the last."

The 35-year-old Doak was one stroke ahead of American Peter Uihlein (66), Dane Joachim Hansen (65) and British pair Ross Fisher (65) and Matthew Southgate (64).

"It's absolutely phenomenal to shoot 66-66 in the first two days," said the Scot. "You start the week thinking you want to go low but to actually do it is fantastic."

Doak, who lost his card at the end of his only previous season on the tour in 2009 and regained it by finishing 10th on the second-tier circuit last year, recorded five birdies, a bogey and an eagle at the long 12th to finish on 12 under.

He paid tribute to 81-year-old coach Bob Torrance, father of former Ryder Cup captain Sam, and to the home supporters.

"It helps Bob being here," Doak said. "He's not at many tournaments now so it definitely helps, makes a difference.

"It's fantastic to hear all the highland accents up here cheering you on."

(Writing by Clare Fallon; editing by Tony Jimenez)

Freeman's victory means Los Angeles Dodgers sensation Yasiel Puig will not get to play in the July 16 game at Citi Field unless he is added as an injury replacement. Puig is off to a terrific start in his first stint in the majors, but he's only been up for five weeks, leading some to question whether he belongs on the NL team.

Freeman set a record with 19.7 million votes, and Puig was second.

Delabar won with 9.6 million votes. The right-hander is 5-1 with a 1.74 ERA in 37 appearances for the Blue Jays.

Freeman is batting .307 with nine homers and 56 RBIs heading into Atlanta's game against Cincinnati on Thursday night.

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LONDON (Reuters) - A rare Mercedes race car became the most expensive car ever sold at auction when an anonymous bidder bought it for 19.6 million pounds at a sale in Britain on Friday.

The 1954 Mercedes-Benz W196 in which five-time Formula 1 World Champion driver Juan Manuel Fangio won two grands prix, also became the most expensive Mercedes-Benz ever sold, auction house Bonhams said.

"We've just witnessed history in the making," Bonhams Motoring Director James Knight told Reuters from the sale at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in southern England.

The previous auction record was held by a 1957 Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa, which sold for $16.39 million in 2011.

The 2.5-litre straight-8 Mercedes-Benz driven by Fangio already had a storied history. The driver's 1954 victories in the German and Swiss Grands Prix were the first successive wins by the Mercedes-Benz Formula 1 team in the German racing crew's post-World War Two comeback.

The car competed in five world championship-qualifying Grand Prix races. After Fangio's 1954 Swiss Grand Prix win, the W196R was retired to the Daimler-Benz Museum.

John Lennon's first car - a 1965 Ferrari GT coupe - also sold for 359,000 pounds at Goodwood on Friday.

The late Beatle bought the blue Ferrari after he passed his driving test in 1965 and sold it three years later. It had a top pre-sale estimate of 220,000 pounds.

(Reporting by Paul Casciato)

But such concerns stretch even to New England, an environmentally focused region that long has felt the effects of drifting emissions from Rust Belt states.

Just ask Gary Long, the president of the Public Service Co. of New Hampshire, the state's largest electric company.

Long says the president's plan to impose limits on carbon dioxide emissions suddenly raises questions about the fate of the state's two coal-fired power plants, electricity rates for millions of customers and the ability to find new energy sources. And he also notes that New England has already invested billions of dollars in cleaner energy, agreed to cap its own carbon pollution and crafted plans to import Canadian hydroelectric power.

"New Hampshire's always been ahead of the curve," he says. "Does no good deed go unpunished?"

Long raised those concerns in the days after Obama launched a major second-term drive to combat climate change, bypassing Congress by putting limits for the first time on carbon pollution from new and existing power plants. At the core of his plan are controls on power plants that emit carbon dioxide heat-trapping gases blamed for global warming.

Obama said the changes would reduce domestic carbon dioxide emissions by 17 percent between 2005 and 2020 and "put an end to the limitless dumping of carbon pollution." The program also is to boost renewable energy production on federal lands, increase efficiency standards and prepare communities to deal with higher temperatures.

While the specific impact of Obama's plans varies from region to region, energy industry officials across the nation warn of likely plant closures and electricity rate spikes, illustrating the practical and political challenges Obama faces while balancing the nation's tepid economic recovery with an issue he says has dire implications for the planet's future. Republican leaders, many still skeptical of the existence of man-made climate change, have seized on the potential short-term economic impact of what some call the president's "war on coal" to criticize him and fellow Democrats.

The coal industry has been the most vocal opponent of the plan aside from Republican leaders and coal-state Democrats. Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, described the president's policies last week as a "war on America."

But Obama's move was considered long overdue by environmentalists, a vocal segment of the Democratic Party base frustrated by Obama's lack of progress on climate change.

"In New Hampshire, we've been waiting for this," said Catherine Corkery, chapter director for the New Hampshire Sierra Club.

She described the industry concerns over plant closures and rates increases as "shortsighted," predicting that thousands of new jobs focused on green energy development would replace those lost if fossil fuel plants are forced to close.

"Gary Long and those other industry types and the coal types might not be psyched about this carbon standard, but everybody else is excited," Corkery said.

Despite Corkery's enthusiasm, and beyond the political posturing for 2014 congressional campaigns, there is real concern in small towns from New Hampshire to West Virginia that depend on fossil-fuel production for their economic well-being.

Indeed, 650 miles from New Hampshire's largest coal plant, employees at the Longview Power Plant in Maidsville, W.Va., fear the president is simply trying to shut down their operation.

"Our jobs are really on the line," said Joseph Douglass, the environmental manager at the plant. It employs 95 people and has strong ties to local mines, quarries and trucking industries that employ as many as 500 more.

The facility is one of the nation's newest and cleanest coal-fired power plants, with more than $500 million of its $2 billion price tag dedicated to environmental and air-quality controls.

Douglass said it does appear the administration is waging the "war on coal" that the industry has complained about for several years.

"Everybody wants to live in a clean and healthy environment. Everybody wants industry to do their best," Douglass said. "We share, I think, more than we disagree about the need for a clean environment. But, you know, we have questions about some of the conclusions that have been reached and the direction that those conclusions are leading us in. Is this really the right thing to do? We're not sure."

While West Virginia has more than 20 coal-fired plants, New Hampshire has just two.

With roughly 100 employees, New Hampshire's biggest coal-fired plant, Merrimack Station, is "in a rough place," according to Tim Sink, president of the Greater Concord Chamber of Commerce.

"It's just seems like they're being forced into a place where they may close the plant," he said.

Asked whether his company may close Merrimack Station, Long said, "That's an open question."

"We don't know the detail yet," Long continued, wondering aloud whether the state's natural gas and oil facilities would be affected. "We know that it's going to lead to a lot of litigation and uncertainty."

Energy officials may be the most vocal critics of the president's push to crack down on global warming, but strong majorities of Americans polled say global warming is a problem.

An AP-GfK poll conducted last November found that 78 percent of Americans including 70 percent of Republicans believe the world's temperature has been rising over the last 100 years. If nothing is done to reduce global warming in the future, it will become a serious problem for the United States, said 80 percent of Americans and 61 percent of Republicans.

About 97 percent of climate scientists around the world who study and publish on the issue agree the world is warming, it is caused by the burning of fossil fuels, and it is a major environmental problem.

But there is substantial disagreement among Americans over whether government should take action to combat global warming. Just 33 percent of Republicans said the government should do quite a bit or a great deal about global warming, compared with 58 percent of independents and 75 percent of Democrats. And 41 percent of Republicans say that if the U.S. took action to reduce global warming, it would hurt the economy, compared with 29 percent of independents and 12 percent of Democrats.

Inside Robie's Country Store, a few miles away from New Hampshire's Merrimack Station, local teacher and carpenter David Erikson said the environmental threat presented by global warming should supersede short-term economic concerns.

"We're going to have to do something," said Erikson, 59, of nearby Weare, N.H., "or we're doomed."

___

Associated Press writer Vicki Smith in West Virginia and AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein and Director of Polling Jennifer Agiesta in Washington contributed to this report.

Disney Theatrical Productions said Wednesday that the show's total touring box office gross in North America has reached $1 billion. Producers estimate that more than 15 million theatergoers in over 70 cities across North America have seen the show since 2002.

Says Jack Eldon, a vice president at Disney Theatrical Productions: "We remain overwhelmed by the enduring response to the show and are enormously thankful to our patrons new and returning for their continued enthusiasm and support."

It reached its milestone quickly. Three national tours of "The Phantom of the Opera" have grossed over $1.5 billion in combined box office sales but the first kicked off in 1989.

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According to the report from the  (based, of course, on unnamed sources), one of the rumored devices — which also includes a Nexus Q media-playing device — would be released this fall. But according to the Journal, it looks like the company might have another compelling reason for getting into the game on gaming, at least when it comes to competing with more traditional gaming console makers:  

"Games that run on Android software have proved particularly popular, and they are growing much more quickly than games made for the big-name consoles supplied by Microsoft Corp., Sony Corp. and Nintendo Co. The appeal of such games has prompted the development of new devices aimed specifically for Android by other hardware companies." 

Google Play's store has over 100,000 games already loaded, so the companyif they did launch a console. They wouldn't, however, be the first Android-based console out there. The , which launched this week, runs a version of Android. 

Officials in the ultraconservative Salafi Al-Nour Party warned that some of its followers were abandoning the party and joining Morsi's supporters in the street, from the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist allies.

Al-Nour leaders scrambled to try to find a way out of their corner. The group announced it was suspending cooperation with the interim leadership over its "road map" for the post-Morsi political system, denouncing the "massacre," and demanded an immediate start to reconciliation efforts between Morsi and his opponents.

In a statement, it described interim president Adly Mansour as a "dictator and with bias to a certain ideological current that doesn't have support in the Egyptian street," in reference to secularists. It said the military-backed road map for a post-Morsi system had only increased violence and led to "rise of suppressive measures and exceptional actions" referring to the arrests of five senior Brotherhood figures and the shutting down of several Islamist TV networks.

"We are presenting an initiative based on forming a committee for national reconciliation to deal with the problem since it exploded between Mohammed Morsi and his opposition," the party said.

Speaking to Al-Jazeera TV, the party's chief Younes Makhyoun raised the possibility of calling a referendum on Morsi. The idea was floated as a possible compromise before Morsi's ouster on Wednesday and had no acceptance then among the president's opponents who are even less likely to accept it now.

Since the 2011 fall of autocrat Hosni Mubarak, Al-Nour emerged as the most powerful party among the Salafist, an Islamist movement that holds an even more conservative and strict interpretation in Islam than Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood. It was the second biggest winner in 2011-2012 parliamentary elections and was initially a key ally to Morsi when he took office. But over the course of his administration, it broke with him, complaining that his Brotherhood was monopolizing power. The move caused a split in the party ranks, with a breakaway faction forming a new party to remain with the president.

Even more dramatic was its allying with the military in a loose coalition where it was a decidedly odd fit. Hours before ousting Morsi, the military chief met with his collection of backers: the liberal National Salvation Front, bitterly resented by many Islamists; the sheik of Al-Azhar and the Coptic pope, both of whom have had frictions with Salafis and other hard-liners; bitterly anti-Islamist youth activists and al-Nour.

The other factions have been eager to keep Al-Nour on board to show Morsi's ouster had backing among the Islamists. But there were quickly frictions among them. Over the weekend, the Salafis blocked an attempt to have top reform figure Mohamed ElBaradei of the Salvation Front appointed prime minister and balked at a close ally of his proposed as a compromise. The moves infuriated some liberal and secular activists who questioned why Islamists should have veto power.

Hamada Nassar, a leading figure from the Gamaa Islamiya a former Islamic militant group that is now an ally of Morsi but is in close contact with the Salafi movement, said Al-Nour is facing a "deep internal crisis."

"The generals needed a beard to join the beards of Al-Azhar's grand imam and the Coptic pope for a cinematic move to tell the world this is a revolution not a coup and all Egypt's political and religious spectrum is represented" Nassar said. "Now Al-Nour is in a trap ... with the bloodbath, the constituencies of the party are fragmenting, allies are leaving because they have been disappointed more than once."

One Al-Nour lawmaker said it's unclear how long party leaders can keep their control, with some members breaking ranks to join the Brotherhood. The lawmaker spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the group's internal situation.

The party appeared to have find some refuge in a strong position by Sheik Ahmed el-Tayeb, head of Al-Azhar Mosque, who after Sunday's killings said he would go into seclusion until "until everyone shoulders his responsibility to stop the bloodshed instead of dragging the country into civil war." His protest aimed to push all sides into some sort of reconciliation a theme Al-Nour was also hitting.

Unlike the Brotherhood, which more than 80 years old, highly disciplined and deeply versed in politics, the Salafi movement is more of an umbrella for various schools that differ in their views, spiritual leaders and methods. For nearly three decades, the Salafi school shunned politics, spreading its message through mosques, charity, and TV stations. It was not targeted in security crackdowns under Mubarak since it posed no political challenge to the ruling regime, unlike the Brotherhood and violent jihadist groups, some of which were offshoots of the Salafis.

Salafi men are known for their long beards, with the mustache shaved off a style they say was worn by Muhammad while the women wear the "niqab," an enveloping black robe and veil that leaves only the eyes visible. They advocate strict segregation of the sexes and an unbendingly literal interpretation of the Quran, saying society should mirror the way the prophet ruled the early Muslims in the 7th Century. They say they want to turn Egypt into a pure Islamic society, implementing strict Shariah, or Islamic law.

They also reject democracy as a heresy, since it would supplant God's law with man's rulings though they decided to set those concerns aside to enter post-Mubarak elections.

But it is less cohesive than the Brotherhood, clumsier with politics and more vulnerable to splits. Early on, the Salafis were divided over whether to back Morsi or a more moderate Islamist in the presidential elections last year. Al-Nour was also tarnished by other foibles. One lawmaker was kicked out of parliament for lying about getting nose job surgery, claiming he had been beaten up by political rivals. Another lawmaker was caught fondling a woman on his lap in a parked car at night and was sentenced to a year in prison for public indecency.

The public display of divisions and bitter exchanges in the press hurt a movement that presents itself as having clear-cut, divinely dictated answers to the country's problems.

"What is more dangerous is loss of confidence and trust between the youth and sheikhs," said Nassar from Gamaa Islamiya. "Now the youth are rebelling and this could have permanent effect and the confidence won't be restored easily."

ATLANTA (Reuters) - Twenty-one current and former employees of a nursing home for Alzheimer's patients in Georgia, including its owner, face a total of more than 70 criminal charges for allegedly abusing elderly patients, authorities said Tuesday.

The abuses included employees restraining patients with bed sheets and subjecting them to "inhumane and undignified conditions" at Alzheimer's Care of Commerce, about 60 miles north of Atlanta, according to a statement from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

"There were accounts of physical abuse, such as staff members striking patients and throwing water on them," the statement said.

"Experts say Alzheimer's patients are more vulnerable to abuse because they are often unable to defend themselves and because forgetfulness can make them less likely to report it.

In 2012, a Congressional report showed that patients suffer abuse or neglect in one in three nursing homes in the United States.

In a nationwide survey conducted in 2010, about 50 percent of nursing home staff surveyed admitted they had mistreated their older patients within the past year. Most of those instances included neglect of the patient.

Earlier this year, a circuit judge in West Virginia upheld a $91.5 million verdict against a nursing home in the death of an 87-year-old woman with Alzheimer's.

Accusations against employees at the Georgia nursing home included "double diapering" of patients, so that the staff would not have to change soiled diapers as often, authorities said.

Investigators also discovered that staff members at the facility had felony convictions on charges such as voluntary manslaughter and identify theft, according to the statement.

The owner, Donna Wright, is among those facing criminal charges, including cruelty to a person 65 years or older, abuse, neglect and financial exploitation, said John Heinen, a spokesman for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

By late Tuesday afternoon, 11 of the 21 suspects had been arrested, but Wright, the owner, was still at large, he said.

There were 27 patients at the nursing home on Tuesday when investigators arrived, and three were taken to a local hospital for medical treatment, he said.

The remaining patients will be moved from the home after consultation with family members, the spokesman said.

(Editing By Karen Brooks and David Brunnstrom)