Tehran's stock exchange nudged higher. Merchants cut prices as the slumping Iranian currency clawed back about 4 percent against the U.S. dollar.

That's how much Rafsanjani's surprise decision reawakened Iran's presidential election process, which now includes more than 680 hopefuls and will culminate June 14 with just a handful of names on the ballot to succeed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The common wisdom held that the ruling clerics, which vet all the candidates, would clear only an establishment-friendly slate and pro-reform voters would be kept on the margins after years of withering crackdowns. The decision by another former president, Mohammad Khatami, to stay out of the race appeared to seal the scenario.

Suddenly, though, the 78-year-old elder statesman Rafsanjani has challenged that equation by putting his name in the election mix just minutes before the registration deadline Saturday.

___

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the third story in an occasional series examining the June 14 Iranian election and the wider global and internal Iranian consequences at the end of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's era.

___

He has enough of a liberal aura to re-energize reformers for the first time since being crushed in the wake of Ahmadinejad's disputed 2009 re-election. He also is seen as a potential steadying hand on Iran's sanctions-sapped economy as a "millionaire mullah" patriarch of a family-run business empire.

In one of his first statements since joining the race, Rafsanjani spoke in general terms Sunday of seeking a new "economic and political" rebirth in a time of "foreign threats and sanctions."

Meanwhile, he still holds a senior position inside the ruling theocracy and unimpeachable credentials during the 1979 Islamic Revolution that gives him tough armor against likely attempts to sully his reputation as the election moves into its next stage.

The challenge, however, is whether reformists can fully rally behind a leader who left office 16 years ago and has built a reputation as a cunning political survivor that earned him a host of nicknames including Akbar Shah, or Great King. He has criticized crackdowns on dissent, but also retains a top post inside the theocracy and closely follows the official line on issues such as Iran's nuclear program and regional alliances including Lebanon's Hezbollah and Syria's regime.

"Rafsanjani is still the only real candidate who can pull together reformists," said Hamid Reza Shokouhi, an editor at the pro-reform Mardomsalari newspaper.

There is no guarantee Rafsanjani even will make the final candidate list approved by the ruling clerics next week. But he casts a wide net that cannot be easily ignored.

As Rafsanjani headed to the Interior Ministry to submit his name on Saturday, dozens of supporters lined the streets to shout words of thanks. The numbers might be insignificant. But any kind of public outburst by reformists is certain to be noticed by authorities.

Late Saturday, a group of pro-reform leaders gathered as Khatami called Rafsanjani's candidacy "a national opportunity" and urged liberals and moderates to unite behind him. Some reformist candidates, including one of Khatami's former vice presidents, pledged to withdraw to throw his support behind Rafsanjani, who last sought the presidency in 2005 in a loss to Ahmadinejad that has left bad blood that lingers still.

"Khatami has guaranteed reformist support for Rafsanjani," said Tehran-based political analyst Ali Dowrani. "Reformists are reaching a consensus to back him."

It's somewhat of a political bandwagon by default.

With Khatami staying out, there were only longshot candidates for Iranians seeking to ease the hard-line pressures since 2009, including sharp clampdowns on the Internet and political freedoms. The leading opposition candidates from four years ago, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mahdi Karroubi, remain under house arrest, while establishment enforcers, such as the paramilitary Basij corps, have been given far greater reach.

Rafsanjani's youngest daughter, Faezeh, was released from jail in March after serving a six-month sentence in connection with the post-election chaos. His middle son, Mahdi, also is to stand trial in coming weeks for his alleged role in the riots.

Rafsanjani, too, has suffered some blows but never enough to sweep him aside.

His main dissent moment came amid the punishing attacks on protesters claiming vote fraud brought Ahmadinejad back to power in 2009. Rafsanjani denounced the violence on both sides, but the comments were perceived as a message to the Revolutionary Guard and ruling clerics.

Rafsanjani, who carries the mid-level cleric rank of hojatoleslam, was forced to resign from his prestigious role as one of the leaders of Friday prayers at Tehran University. He later was pushed out of the Assembly of Experts the only group with the power to dismiss the supreme leader after failing to get enough support to leverage possible concessions from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the postelection clampdowns.

Rafsanjani, however, managed to keep his post as head of the Expediency Council, an advisory body that mediates disputes between the parliament and the Guardian Council, the watchdog group that vets all candidates for the presidency and other elections.

"I feel we young people will have an easier situation if Rafsanjani is in office," said Faezeh Jian, a 23-year-old Tehran resident who was still in elementary school when Rafsanjani left office after eight years in 1997. "I like him. I think we will face fewer crackdowns."

Such comments hint at Rafsanjani pulling in some support from the now dismantled Green Movement of four years ago. But his strongest appeal could be as a fiscal steward.

Iran's president has no direct say over nuclear policies and no way to address international sanctions. But many Iranians complain about Ahmadinejad's economic policies of subsidies and government handouts. While they have earned Ahmadinejad a loyal following in many impoverished areas, they also are blamed for straining Iran's economy and contributing to the more than 30 percent plummet in the national currency's value.

"He (Rafsanjani) is internationally well-known and his economic team is quite powerful," said Kamyar Yaghouni, a 23-year-old law student.

Much of Rafsanjani's fiscal mystique is built around a family-owned business empire that began with pistachio trading but grew to include construction companies, an auto assembly plant, vast real estate holdings and a private airline. In 2003, he was listed among Iran's "millionaire mullahs" by Forbes magazine.

At a Tehran grocery story, owner Abbas Hemmati described Rafsanjani as the least offensive of the presumed front-runners, which include Tehran's mayor and a senior adviser to Khamenei. Also in the mix is Ahmadinejad's top aide, but there are questions on whether he will be cleared because of Ahmadinejad's internal political battles with the ruling clerics.

"Rafsanjani is bad, but I prefer him to others who are worse," said Hemmati. "When I cannot have a palace, I'll take a hut at least."

___

Murphy reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press writer Nasser Karimi in Tehran contributed to this report.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Michael Jackson's personal doctor was in financial and legal troubles at the time of the singer's death, a Los Angeles detective testified on Wednesday in the wrongful death lawsuit brought by Jackson's family against concert promoters AEG Live.

Conrad Murray was "in desperate financial straits," and under legal pressure with liens against his property in Nevada, Los Angeles police detective Orlando Martinez told a jury in the civil trial.

Martinez, who investigated Jackson's 2009 death, said Murray had unpaid student loans, was behind on credit card bills and owed rent for his business.

Murray, who had asked for $5 million to care for the singer, was convicted in 2011 for Jackson's involuntary manslaughter of Jackson through an overdose of powerful anesthetic propofol weeks before a planned series of 50 concerts.

Jackson's immediate family accuses AEG Live, who were promoting the London concerts, of negligence in hiring Murray, failing to conduct proper background checks and going to extreme lengths to get the singer ready for the shows. Murray is not being sued.

AEG Live maintains that Jackson kept his dependency on propofol secret from outsiders, that a proposed contract with Murray was never fully executed and they could not have foreseen that Murray posed a danger to Jackson.

Martinez was the second witness called by attorneys for Jackson's family. A paramedic who tended to Jackson after the overdose, testified on Tuesday that Murray had appeared "frantic," "pale" and "sweating" but never mentioned that Jackson had taken propofol, which is typically used in surgical settings.

Jackson, 50, was pronounced dead in a Los Angeles hospital on June 25, 2009, a day after a rehearsal and three weeks before the first concert on his "This Is It" tour.

Jackson's 82-year-old mother Katherine and the singer's two oldest children Prince and Paris, are also on the witness list later in the civil trial along with singers Diana Ross and Prince, and "The Incredible Hulk" actor Lou Ferrigno.

Attorneys for AEG Live warned jurors on Monday that the trial, expected to last three months, would expose "some ugly stuff" about the King of Pop.

(Editing by Eric Kelsey and David Brunnstrom)

The singer's fourth album, "Side Effects of You," debuted at No. 1 and No. 2 on Billboard's R&B/Hip-Hop and Top 200 albums charts last week. She said the response is both welcome and complicated, especially after her last few tumultuous years.

"It feels really good," she said softly. "You have to be very careful because there was a time when I went from being up here and everybody loved you and then when (that) ole thing happened, it was like, 'OK, everybody ...' so it's almost, like, tricky."

Fantasia could be addressing a number of things that have bruised her image. In 2010, police believed they were responding to an attempted suicide after Fantasia overdosed on aspirin and other pills at her home in Charlotte, N.C., but her manager says she wasn't trying to kill herself.

She gave birth to her son, Dallas, in 2011 and was trashed on blogs by people who said she had been in a relationship with a married man. She's battled bad publicity and also endured financial and emotional woes.

But the singer has had her share of positive experiences, too, since becoming an "Idol" champ. She won her first Grammy Award in 2011, has released platinum and gold albums, and starred on Broadway in Oprah Winfrey's "The Color Purple."

The big-voiced singer says she's put the drama behind her and released both her pain and happiness on her new album.

She talked about her music, an upcoming tour with Andrea Bocelli and more in an interview with The Associated Press.

____

AP: You won "American Idol" at 18 and now you're 28. Do you feel wiser?

Fantasia: I do. I think that me changing some things in my life and not really blaming everybody else anymore, actually sitting back and figuring out what it was that Fantasia was doing wrong, and then actually getting that together. Don't get me wrong, there will be more things to come, I know that. But I think at this point I know how to handle things in a much (more) mature way. In a way, I don't get it much in my mind, my mental, and let it send me into a depression, you know, 'cause there's a lot of things you just cannot change.

AP: What's your goal with this album?

Fantasia: I wanted to just kind of show the world who I am when it comes to being an artist ... just give them me, so I said I wasn't going to do another album until I could do that. I remember it being kind of tough, kind of like a pull because everybody thinks they know what you should do or they want to go with what's hot right now; somebody put out a hot single and everybody thinks you should do songs that sound like that. But I just said, 'No. I know what I want.'

AP: You're looking well. Have you been exercising?

Fantasia: I work out twice a day. If I don't get with (my trainer) twice a day, I'll get with her in the mornings and then I'll go do yoga, Pilates or spinning. I love to do spinning classes. So it's like I have to make that time for me. That's my getaway.

AP: Have you tried Zumba?

Fantasia: I haven't, but my mother keeps trying to get me to go. ... My main focus for when I started working out was ... to be an example for my cousins. I'd go back home and young people are on high blood pressure pills, and I think it's the things we put in our body; it's the food that we eat. We're not watching what we do. I know a lot of people, I sit and I'm like, 'I've never seen you drink water.' ... Water is so important, and I learned that by playing (on) Broadway. I'd always get dehydrated and have to be in the hospital with IVs getting fluids.

AP: You're opening for Andrea Bocelli for five dates this summer. How did that happen?

Fantasia: When my manager came to me about it, I thought he was playing. I thought I was being punked. I was like, 'Whatever.' He's like, 'No, I'm serious!' ... And so I had a teacher to come to the house and work with me because it wasn't easy to learn Italian. But everything that I've done, it wasn't easy. ... And to all those who said, 'I can never do that. I can never do that,' I'm going to do it to prove to them I can do anything I want to do if I put my mind to it. You may say I can't speak English, but I'm going to show you how I'm going to sing this Italian.

AP: You had a reality show on VH1 in 2010. Would you do reality TV again?

Fantasia: No. No. And if I did, it wouldn't be with my family. I want to love my family with no cameras around. ... I think sometimes it could be a blessing and it could be a curse.

____

Online:

http://www.fantasiaofficial.com/us/home

____

Follow Mesfin Fekadu at http://www.twitter.com/MusicMesfin

[More from BGR: ]

It is insulting to shareholders intelligence for the board to tell them that this board only has the best interests of shareholders at heart, and then accept Michael Dells offer to purchase the company he founded for $13.65 per share, a price far below what we consider its value to be, Icahn and Southeasterns president G. Staley Cates wrote in a letter to the board of directors, according to Bloomberg.

[More from BGR: ]

Shares of Dell have continued to rise this year as buyout talks have made shareholders feel optimistic about the companys future. The stock has gained more than 31% in the past five months and now trades around $13.40 per share, making Dells offer of $13.65 per share less appealing.

Either give shareholders the real choice they are entitled to or face the legal liability for your failures, Icahn and Southeastern said.

This article was

Marc Gasol scored 24 points and Zach Randolph added 15 as the visiting Grizzlies out-scored the Thunder 30-19 in the fourth quarter. Game Three is in Memphis on Saturday.

Kevin Durant had 36 points, 11 rebounds and nine assists in another big performance for Oklahoma City. Derek Fisher tallied 19 points and went 4-for-5 from three-point range, but the Thunder were hurt by 21 turnovers.

The Grizzlies took a 92-90 lead when Conley drained a three-pointer with 1:58 to play and he followed that up by knocking down an 18-footer with 1:04 left and a free throw with 29.4 seconds remaining to make it a five-point game.

Randolph hit two free throws and Tony Allen slammed home a dunk to cap a 10-0 run and give Memphis a 99-90 advantage.

Gasol had 17 first-half points as Memphis took a 54-51 lead into the break. Durant scored 13 points in the third quarter as Oklahoma City held the Grizzlies to 15 points and led 74-69 entering the final stanza.

(Editing by John O'Brien)

The attendees came to the first-ever Space Hacker Workshop on Saturday and Sunday (May 4 and 5) to learn about how they could build and fly experiments on a new generation of manned suborbital vehicles such as XCOR Aerospace's .

The event, which was sponsored by the Silicon Valley Space Center and Citizens in Space, attracted high-school and college students, university professors, space professionals, scientists, technology experts and others interested in this emerging field. []

New reusable vehicles slated to come online soon will provide affordable and repeated access to space for professional and amateur scientists and help to revolutionizeand science education, said Citizens in Space founder Ed Wright.

"With the suborbital vehicles being developed...there's going to be an opportunity to fly many thousands of small payloads on suborbital vehicles every year," Wright said.

Citizen space scientists

Citizens in Space is a program run by Wright's Texas-based organization, the U.S. Rocket Academy, which has purchased 10 flights aboard the two-seat Lynx just for research. Ten lucky citizen scientists will get to fly in the passenger seat of the vehicle and operate the experiments that they have designed and built. Five of those slots already have been filled.

So, just how cheap will it be to fly experiments in space? Wright said that while a typical tinymight cost between $3,000 and $5,000 to build and another $100,000 or more to launch into orbit, developing and flying scientific payloads aboard the Lynx will be many orders of magnitude cheaper.

"At the base level, you're going to have people who are able to build an experiment for $200 or less and have an opportunity to fly in space through programs such as Citizens in Space, and I think this is just going to change everything," Wright said.

"We may reach the point in five or 10 years where every high school science major will have the opportunity to build and fly a payload in space during the course of his academic career before he graduates, he added.

The development of suborbital vehicles such as the Lynx andis coming at a time when maker spaces are popping up all over the country. Wright said these joint work spaces are perfect places for people to build the types of do-it-yourself science experiments that Citizens in Space wants to fly.

Wright's academy is developing the Lynx Cub Payload Carrier, a unit that can hold up to a dozen small experiments in a space behind the pilot's seat. The carrier will give XCOR the ability to flyin the passenger's seat while also carrying scientific experiments as secondary payloads.

A seat on Lynx costs $95,000, while a ticket to fly on SpaceShipTwo which last week made its will set you back $200,000 at the moment. (Virgin Galactic founder Sir Richard Branson said recently that ticket prices would soon temporarily rise to $250,000.) []

A range of experiments

Four XCOR employees traveled 300 miles (500 kilometers) north from the town of Mojave, where they are building the first Lynx, to address the Space Hacker audience and answer questions.

Khaki Rodway, XCOR's director of payload sales and operations, gave an overview of Lynx's capabilities and a progress update on the assembly of the first vehicle, which could fly by the end of this year.

"We're doing it because there's lots of stuff to do," Rodway said of the emerging market for experiments.

During the two-day workshop, participants heard talks about the experiments that will be carried out in the microgravity environment and vacuum of space. These experiments will range across many different fields, including materials processing, fluid dynamics, life sciences, protein crystal growth and technology demonstrations.

NASA astronaut Yvonne Cagle talked about sending odd "water bears" into space. Water bears, also known as tardigrades, are tiny organisms that are virtually impervious to heat, radiation and vacuum conditions. Cagle believes that by studying water bears, scientists can learn a great deal about how to help humans adapt to space.

Jason Reimuller, president of the company Integrated Spaceflight Services, told the audience about his Polar Suborbital Science in the Upper Mesosphere (PoSSUM) campaign, which will use a Lynx to study the dynamics of clouds over the North Pole. The vehicle will operate out of a high-altitude spaceport in either Alaska or Sweden, Reimuller said.

Ryan Gillespie, an aerospace engineer from Sunnyvale, Calif., said he is interested in pursuing Citizens in Space's High Altitude Astrobiology Challenge, which is offering cash prizes of up to $10,000 for the development of a device that will collect micro-organisms living at the edge of space.

I'm not so much interested in the $10,000 it's more the fact that when you come up with anything, it needs a purpose," Gillespie said. "Here's something that actually has a purpose for mankind."

Driving technology forward

Richard Mains of Mains Associates, who works with the NASA Flight Opportunities Program that funds experiments on , said these new spaceships are driving technology development at a much faster rate than traditional NASA programs tend to do.

"I think what's actually going on here with these reusable suborbital launch vehicles is kind of a whole new paradigm where you're not putting a payload up onfor six months," Mains said. "And these vehicles aren't that big. But they are flying very often, So these payloads now have to be small, smart, autonomous very very easy to kind of activate and deactivate, reprogram, get data out of."

"I see all of that driving technology in a very, very interesting fashion," Mains added, mentioning the emergence of open-source platforms as another powerful driver. "So I'm very excited about what I've heard here."

Silicon Valley was a perfect location to hold the workshop given that it's at the leading edge of technology development, Mains said.

Wright said he was extremely pleased with the workshop, which sold all of its 95 tickets and had a waiting list on Saturday morning.

"I think it's gone very well," Wright said. "It's really been a great turnout. It's been very exciting for everyone here. The people from the NASA Flight Opportunities program were very excited about this. XCOR was very excited about this."

Wright says he hopes to conduct five or six additional workshops in cities across the country over the next year.

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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 oversees 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 Zoccoli, 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.

(This story was fixed to correct spelling in paragraph 22 to oversees instead of overseas, corrects spelling in paragraph 25 to Zoccoli instead of Zoccolli)

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

LONDON (Reuters) - Tax havens such as Bermuda and the Cayman Islands will work more closely with Britain and other European countries to fight tax evasion, British finance minister George Osborne said on Thursday.

With governments in most advanced economies short of tax revenue after the financial crisis, pressure has been growing on small territories with big banking sectors to lift bank secrecy and do more to combat tax dodging and money laundering.

The United States has been in a lengthy dispute with Switzerland over the latter's bank secrecy rules, while the European Union also has turned up pressure on two of its smaller members, Austria and Luxembourg.

Austria in turn has accused Britain and the United States of shielding their own tax havens.

Now British overseas territories such as Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands - which are effectively colonies with some self-government - will have to automatically provide details the ownership of bank accounts, and about how they are used, Britain's finance ministry said.

"This represents a significant step forward in tackling illicit finance and sets the global standard in the fight against tax evasion," Osborne said.

The information will be shared by Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Spain, which agreed in June last year to work together to combat tax evasion.

The Isle of Man also will be subject to the deal, but two other major offshore centers, Jersey and Guernsey, have not yet agreed to share information with countries other than Britain.

The other territories affected by the deal are the Caribbean islands of Anguilla, Montserrat and the Turks and Caicos.

Britain has made fighting tax evasion a priority while it chairs the G8 group of advanced economies this year, and in two weeks it will host a meeting of finance ministers from the bloc.

However, Britain also faces problems of its own in being certain that companies comply with its tax laws.

A Reuters investigation published on Wednesday highlighted inconsistencies in the way Google portrays its activities in Britain, prompting lawmakers to demand the company's executives and auditors appear before them.

(Editing by Michael Roddy)

Reilly Gibbons has no concerns.

At least, none after reading what Miami President Donna Shalala has written about the matter.

Gibbons an offensive lineman with 37 scholarship offers has decided to play for the Hurricanes starting in 2014, making up his mind last week even though the NCAA matter still hangs precariously over the school and almost certainly will for several more months. And what sealed his decision were things he found online, letters Shalala wrote in defense of the football program.

"When you have a president like President Shalala on your side, you can't lose," Gibbons said. "And there's no way Miami will lose this."

It was on a recent family vacation to Islamorada in the Florida Keys when Gibbons pulled out his computer and went to work, basically going into investigative mode to determine what is happening at Miami. When he found things written by Shalala including a statement where she said the school has "suffered enough" through self-imposed sanctions he was swayed.

Shalala's writing style, Gibbons said, reminded him of his mother's writing style. His mother is a lawyer, and Gibbons has long planned to follow in her footsteps.

Once he saw Shalala's stance regarding the case, Gibbons started believing Miami's darkest days have already come and gone.

"I knew that I really loved Miami and I knew that I wanted to go there. I just wasn't sure if the NCAA thing was going to work out and it kind of worried me, to be honest," Gibbons said. "So I looked things up and I found President Shalala's letters to the NCAA. She is amazing the way she writes. It impressed me so much that a president of an academic university like Miami would stand up for her football team."

Gibbons made his commitment to Miami publicly known on Monday, announcing his choice at his school, St. Petersburg (Fla.) Catholic High. It's not officially binding until he signs his letter of intent in early 2014, and until then, Miami coach Al Golden and his staff cannot comment about Gibbons.

Miami's saga with the NCAA became publicly known in 2011 when Yahoo Sports published claims made by former booster and convicted Ponzi scheme architect Nevin Shapiro. The investigation has lasted more than two years, Miami got its notice of allegations the detailing of what the NCAA believes the school did wrong in February and the school is fighting to have the case brought to a swift resolution.

Miami has already given up three postseason games over the past two years as self-imposed sanctions, plus held back some scholarships while dealing with the scandal. The Hurricanes are scheduled to appear before the NCAA's Committee on Infractions starting June 14.

"I think last year Coach Golden got hurt a little bit on the recruiting," said Shannon Gibbons, Reilly's father. "But this year, he's going to have a landmark year. And we want to be part of that."

Reilly Gibbons, who's listed at 6-foot-5 and 285 pounds, insists that his mind is made up. He's the fourth offensive lineman already committed to Miami for the incoming 2014 class, joining three other South Florida products K.C. McDermott and Nick Linder (both of whom have brothers already on the Hurricanes' offensive line) and Trevor Darling.

"The spring games are coming up and I wanted a lot of other kids to see this and see that Miami is the place to go," Gibbons said. "We have the best offensive line in the country now. I believe that in my heart. And if someone's out there and on the ropes because of the NCAA scandal, I hope seeing me committing and other kids committing brings them over."

Gibbons said there wasn't one particular passage in what Shalala wrote, or in other documents he reviewed about the case, that meant more than any other.

For him, it was the sum of the parts that convinced him Miami will be able to handle whatever the NCAA might throw its way.

"The NCAA, they're notorious for drawing things out," Gibbons said. "No matter how long it takes, what the football program has already done is definitely enough, and I don't believe there will be any other sanctioning against Miami."