LONDON (Reuters) - The new strain of bird flu that has killed 17 people in China has been circulating widely "under the radar" and has acquired significant genetic diversity that makes it more of a threat, scientists said on Friday.

Dutch and Chinese researchers who analyzed genetic data from seven samples of the new H7N9 strain say it has already acquired similar levels of genetic diversity as much larger outbreaks of other H7 strains of flu seen previously in birds.

"The diversity we see in these first few samples from China is as great as the diversity we have seen with a large outbreak in the Netherlands several years ago and one in Italy," said Marion Koopmans, head of virology at the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, who worked on the study as part of a nine-member team.

"This means it (the H7N9 strain in China) has been spreading quite a bit and it's important to understand where exactly that is going on."

Its genetic diversity shows the virus has an ability to mutate repeatedly and is likely to continue doing so, raising the risk that it may become transmissible among humans.

Koopmans, whose research was published in the online journal Eurosurveillance, said the circulation would probably have taken place in either birds or mammals, but said exactly which animals were involved was not yet clear.

"Simply the fact that this virus is spreading under the radar - because that is what this data confirms - is of concern," she told Reuters in a telephone interview.

The H7N9 virus is so far known to have infected 87 people in China, killing 17 of them. Health officials raised further questions on Friday about the source of the new strain after data indicated that more than half of patients had had no contact with poultry.

MUTATIONS

A scientific study published last week showed the H7N9 strain was a so-called "triple reassortant" virus with a mixture of genes from three other flu strains found in birds in Asia. One of those three strains is thought to have come from a brambling, a type of small wild bird.

For their study, Koopmans and her team compared some data from the first two weeks of the China H7N9 outbreak with data from a large H7N7 flu outbreak in birds and people the Netherlands in 2003 and an H7N1 epidemic in birds in Italy in 1999 and 2000.

The Dutch outbreak resulted in infection of poultry on 255 farms and led to the culling of about 30 million chickens. Some 89 people were also diagnosed as having the H7N7 virus and one person, a vet, died as a result of the infection.

The comparison suggested that "widespread circulation (of the H7N9 strain in China) must have occurred, resulting in major genetic diversification", the researchers wrote in their study.

They added: "Such diversification is of concern, given that several markers associated with increased risk for public health are already present."

Flu experts in China and at the World Health Organization say there is no evidence so far that H7N9 is passing easily between people.

But scientists who analyzed the genetic sequence data from three early samples from China say the virus has already acquired some mutations that might make it more likely to be able to do so in the future, raising the risk of a human pandemic.

"Although human infections with H7 influenza viruses have occurred repeatedly over the last decades without evidence of sustained human-to-human transmission, the absence of sustained human-to-human transmission of H7N9 viruses does not come with any guarantee," Koopmans' team wrote in their study.

(Editing by Ben Hirschler and Alison Williams)

The 35-year-old Froch, who lost to Kessler in Denmark three years ago, put on a typically gutsy performance to win with a scorecard that read 115-113, 116-112 and 118-110 in favor of the Nottingham fighter to the delight of the 20,000 crowd.

Froch's record is now 31-2, with his only other defeat coming at the hands of American Andre Ward in Atlantic City in 2011, compared to Kessler's 46-3 after an action-packed fight that saw the Dane hanging on near the end of the final round.

"It feels really, really good, only thing that feels bad is I have had to beat a real gentleman and a nice man, Mikkel Kessler," Froch told Sky Sports. "It's 1-1 now, who knows do you fancy a third one? Best of three maybe?

"I deserved to win, but he won't lie down for any man and massive respect to him," added Froch before turning his thoughts to a possible rematch with unbeaten WBA title holder Ward who was watching at ringside.

"The winner of this fight should be moving on to avenge their other loss and now I move on to the second best boxer in the world," said Froch. "Let's get Andre Ward over to the UK and fight him here."

The 34-year-old Kessler, whose only other defeats were against unbeaten Welshman Joe Calzaghe in 2007 and Ward in 2009, said: "I gave it my all but didn't have the energy and couldn't cope with Carl. It is nice to fight such a warrior."

(Writing by Ken Ferris; Editing by Greg Stutchbury)

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Showtime's papal drama "The Borgias" will end its run at the end of its current third season, the network said Wednesday.

The series, which stars Jeremy Irons, Francois Arnaud, Holliday Grainger and others in the tale of Pope Alexander VI, who bribed, bullied and muscled his way into the papacy, will run its Season 3 finale - and, now, its series finale - on June 16 at 10 p.m.

The series, which stars Jeremy Irons, Francois Arnaud, Holliday Grainger and others in the tale of Pope Alexander VI, who bribed, bullied and muscled his way into the papacy, will run its Season 3 finale - and, now, its series finale - on June 16 at 10 p.m.

Series creator Neil Jordan said that the series is ending for "a variety of reasons" but that the final episode, dubbed "The Prince," seemed "like the end of a journey" for the Borgia family.

"I never thought I would make a cable series and have enjoyed every minute of it," Jordan noted. "For a variety of reasons we won't be doing a fourth season, but, The Prince', when I wrote it and shot it, did seem like the end of a journey for the family. Whatever bonded them as a family dies in this episode, and the center of the drama for me was always the family. I want to thank Showtime and David Nevins for their unstinting support over the last three years, and look forward to working with them in the future."

Despite the cancelation, Showtime Networks president of entertainment David Nevins called "The Borgias" an example of "outstanding television that will live on."

"It has been an honor to work with the great Neil Jordan and the incomparable Jeremy Irons on 'The Borgias,'" Nevins said. "Neil has written nearly every episode of this series himself. His extraordinary storytelling combined with Jeremy's fascinating portrayal of the infamous Pope Alexander VI, has made for truly outstanding television that will live on. I look forward to future collaborations."

So far in his current season, "The Borgias" has averaged 2.4 million total viewers across platforms, basically what it averaged for its second season in the same time frame.

Early last year, as the show prepared to launch its second season, "Borgias" executive producer James Flynn said that the series would ideally run for four seasons.

"The overall plan in a series like this is ideally four seasons," he said Thursday. "That would be the plan, that would be the ambition."

Jay Bruce and Brandon Phillips hit solo home runs off for the Reds, who cooled of the Pirates behind their ace. Cueto (3-0) struck out six and walked one to improve to 13-4 against Pittsburgh.

Wandy Rodriguez (6-3) kept the Pirates in it even though he struggled with his command. The left-hander surrendered five hits and walked three with five strikeouts in seven innings.

The Reds broke things open with four runs off Pittsburgh reliever Mike Zagurski, a rare hiccup by baseball's best bullpen through the first third of the season as the two rivals moved into a second-place tie behind St. Louis in the NL Central at 34-21.

While Cueto's had his way with Pittsburgh in his 20 career starts, the Pirates have made inroads recently. They spoiled his chance at winning his 20th game in his final start last season and he left a 3-1 loss to the Pirates on April 13 with a strained back that sent him to the disabled list for a month.

He returned with five effective innings in a 4-3 victory over the New York Mets on May 20 then backed it up an even stronger performance six days later against the Chicago Cubs. He exited with a three-run lead the bullpen ultimately gave away in a 5-4 10-inning loss.

This time, Cueto hardly needed the bullpen at all. Keeping the Pirates off-balance with a steady mix of fastballs and sliders, Cueto kept one of baseball's hottest teams in check.

The Pirates managed to get just three balls out of the infield all night, and Inge's single in the fifth was a harmless one-hop single in front of leftfielder Derrick Robinson. The momentum lasted all of one pitch, when Clint Barmes hit into an inning-ending double play.

It would constitute the entirety of any semblance of a rally by the Pirates, who received another quality start from Rodriguez but couldn't finish off their first 20-win month in 21 years.

Rodriguez wasn't quite as sharp as Cueto but was helped early on by a series of long fly balls hit to the deepest parts of PNC Park. The Reds hit four balls to the warning track before Bruce stepped in with one out in the fourth.

Bruce has struggled against Rodriguez throughout his career entering the night just 2 for 32 (.063) against the veteran lefthander. Those numbers inched up when he took a 2-0 fastball and sent it into the first row of seats in right center for his eighth homer of the year.

Phillips followed suit in the sixth, lining a shot that scraped the top of the leftfield wall just over the glove of Pittsburgh's Starling Marte.

That would be more than enough for Cueto, who shaved his career ERA against the Pirates to 2.33.

Cueto's defense helped him out on several occasions. Todd Frazier made a brilliant bare-handed catch-and-throw on a grounder by Marte with one out in the sixth and first baseman Joey Votto speared a liner by Neil Walker two pitches later. Walker held onto his bat then tossed it into air in faux disgust.

NOTES: Votto walked twice to push his season total to a National League-leading 46 ... The game was the 1000th played at PNC Park, which opened in 2001. The Pirates are 488-512 all-time at PNC, including 49-52 against the Reds ... Pittsburgh finished May 19-9, the franchise's best record in a calendar month since September, 1992, the last time the Pirates made the playoffs ... The series continues on Saturday when Pittsburgh's Francisco Liriano (3-1, 2.35 ERA) faces Cincinnati's Mike Leake (4-2, 3.02). As part of Heritage Weekend the Pirates will wear replica uniforms of the Homestead Grays while the Reds will wear Cincinnati Tigers jerseys.

PARIS, May 31 (Reuters) - Ask Serena Williams about her dog, her stick-men self portraits or the quirky names she gives her multiple personalities and she will happily chew your ear off - mention her tennis and words are few and far between.

We learned on Friday that her dog, the one with the 'bad attitude' has had a haircut after the Parisian rain caused his fur to knot and a favourite artist was a guy on television who much to her surprise is now dead.

Her stunningly impressive start to the French Open campaign, in which she has dropped six games in three matches, however, is: "Okay. (I'm) Just taking every match a little bit at a time and just trying to stay focused."

On Friday, she motored into the third round with a straight sets win over Romanian Sorana Cirstea. It lasted just one hour and one minute.

It was her third consecutive stroll around the red clay of Paris's 16th arrondissement and provided an ominous warning to her rivals and almost certainly left her next opponent wondering if she should even bother turning up.

But if the world number one and 15-times grand slam winner is starting to let her mind wander to the possibility of a second Roland Garros title and first since 2002, then she is certainly keeping a lid on it.

"I would love to win this one, but there is still a lot of people in the draw that would love to win this tournament, as well. I'm just one of those."

The eyes that had glazed over moments ago, though, flicked back to life when the latest canine addition to her family got a mention.

"I tweeted the cutest picture of him," she beamed. "He just got a haircut, because he didn't like the Paris rain so much, so he got some knots on him. So we had to shave him. His name is Chip, and I love him a lot.

"He's just a bundle of joy." (Reporting by Toby Davis; editing by Martyn Herman)

"There is a growing sense of urgency about what's going on in the environment," Todd Clear, dean of Rutgers University's School of Criminal Justice, said here at a symposium Tuesday (May 14) on wildlife crime.

A variety of new research projects highlighted during the conference show that poaching and crimes against wildlife do follow patterns seen in other areas of criminology, knowledge that could be used to prevent these misdeeds. Famed Rutgers criminologist Ronald Clarke called on biologists and criminologists to work together to fight poaching and other issues where illegal acts are committed against nature.

As with other crimes, poaching often takes place in certain hotspots where conditions are optimal. Rhinos and elephants, for example, are often shot near watering holes where they predictably return to drink and the poaching of elephants and rhinos is at an all-time high in many areas. Poaching has already pushed , for example. []

Andrew Lemieux, a scientist at the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement, has outfitted rangers in Uganda's Queen Elizabeth National Park with GPS-enabled cameras that allow them to cheaply document signs of crimes like poaching, setting animal snares or harvesting of firewood. The project, which began earlier this year, will help rangers know where to go to best prevent these illicit activities, he said during his presentation.

'Hot products'

Animals like parrots are also desirable to poachers in the same way certain "hot products" like cellphones and jewels are desirable to thieves. These products can be described by the acronym "CRAVED," which stands for concealable, removable, available, valuable, enjoyable and disposable, Clarke said. Most parrots poached from the , for example, meet these criteria, and are opportunistically plucked from the forest by villagers looking for supplemental income, said Stephen Pires, a Florida International University researcher.

The same goes for fish, which are illegally caught more often when they are CRAVED. Fish found in multiple recipes, a measure of enjoyableness, are nine times more likely to be caught illegally than those less often found in cookbooks, said Gohar Petrossian, a researcher at William Paterson University in New Jersey. There are also 10 ports around the world that account for a large percentage of , she said. In the same way the most crimes occur near a perpetrator's home, the illegal fishing tended to take place near these ports, Petrossian said.

Poverty also plays a large role, said Kenyan scientist andat the conference. In many cases poachers are opportunistic, poaching to supplement their incomes, or merely survive. Throwing money at the problem, like hiring rangers, doesn't necessarily help, Leakey said. Some rangers in East Africa make about $500 per month. If you've got 10 elephant tusks, though, you could make a cool $10,000. It's easy to see how rangers could be bought off, especially if poaching seems like the only viable way to feed one's family, said Leaky, who is the son of famed paleontologist and fossil hunters Louis and Mary Leakey, and himself a paleoanthropologist.

"If you haven't got enough money to see your kid through the next semester of school, and if you can be offered several years worth of income by turning a blind eye who wouldn't?" Leakey said. "Hell, I would if my family were at stake."

Too often Westerners ignore the underlying poverty and assume the people committing these crimes have completely different values, Leakey said. "I think we need to change the idea that if you went to Cambridge or Rutgers, you have a different value set."

Taking aim at poaching

Besides dealing with poverty, Leakey offered two options to fight poaching. First, he advocated building more fences around large reserves a suggestion that was met with some resistance by at least one ecologist at the conference, who questioned Leakey after his talk about the fence's ability to stop elephants. Leakey noted that electrified fences were quite capable of stopping the large animals. In places where they've been installed, he added, sheep herders have come to rely on fences to protect their flock from predators inside the parks meaning they can help both people and animals, he said.

Fenced reserves have helped South Africa prevent more poaching than many of its neighbors, Leakey added (athough even in ). While this takes funding, he said, the problem is not lack of money per se, but a lack of political will.

By making it harder to enter and exit reserves, fences increase both the risks and difficulties involved in poaching, both widely accepted tenets of crime prevention, Clarke said.

The second tool to fight poaching is awareness. One of the main reasons thatand rhinos has shot up in the past few years is due to growing demand in China for ivory and medicinal products (although rhino horns are made of the same material in finger nails and have no curative properties, they are desired for their supposed healing powers in traditional Chinese medicine). But Leakey said that most of these consumers buying , or visiting traditional pharmacies have no idea these animals are dying out. []

Increasing awareness would likely reduce demand for these products. As with other illegal activities, reduced rewards mean reduced crime, Clarke said.

In 1989, when Leakey headed the Kenya Wildlife Service, he came up with the idea to burn 12 tons ofto bring public attention to poaching, which in the late '80s had flared up. The ploy worked, cutting the value of ivory by a factor of 30 and almost single-handedly suppressing elephant poaching for nearly two decades, Clarke said.

Perhaps it's time to do something similar, he said. But as to what exactly that might be, Leakey didn't have any concrete suggestions.

"We need to get youngsters in the conservation world to think outside the box," he said. "Thinking inside the box isn't working... continuing to talk, talk, talk nothing gets done."

Emailor follow him onor. Follow us ,or. Article originally on LiveScience.com.

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Humor may not always translate well, but Jon Stewart is picking up millions of fans in China, where his gloves-off political satire is refreshing for many in a country where such criticism is a rarity - especially when directed at their own leaders.

A recent segment on North Korea scored over 4 million views on microblogger Sina Weibo, and even stodgy state broadcaster CCTV has used Stewart's "The Daily Show" in a report, though they wouldn't let a Chinese version of him near their cameras.

Recent popular sequences have included one in which Stewart lampooned the Chinese hackers who hacked into the New York Times computer system earlier this year, wondering if that was the best they could do.

But far from squelching Stewart, CCTV even used one of his sequences on Guantanamo Bay to criticize Obama in a regular broadcast - a move widely derided by netizens.

In China, however, such criticism tends not to be welcomed by the government. Dissident artist Ai Weiwei, who regularly criticizes the government for what he sees as its flouting of the rule of law and human rights, was detained for 81 days in 2011, sparking an international outcry.

"There's nothing like political satire here," said David Moses, who studies and writes about Chinese humor.

Though the exact timing of Stewart's entrance to China is unclear, many have been watching him for four or five years, mainly through the Internet and Weibo.

"Being a journalist, you have to find out the truth," said Mao Moyu, a Shanghai journalism student who got hooked on Stewart four years ago.

"If there's ... something that hurts the public interest you have to stand out, no matter how sharp the thing is. You have to stand out and say that's not right."

Part of Stewart's popularity is that he seems cool to young people in love with all things foreign, but a thirst for satire that is not afraid to show its face contributes too, Moses said.

The closest thing that exists in China is coded references and puns that tweak official pronouncements or sound like obscenities.

"That's just shooting a finger at the government. But this is full-fledged jokes and routines about North Korea or about China and trade...It's just what they wish they could do here," Moses said.

Free translations into Chinese by Stewart's fans have boosted his popularity. In fact, one - known as Gu Da Bai Hua - now even has his own fan base.

China's thirst for foreign satire is so great that Stewart is not the only popular U.S. comic. Some Chinese say they prefer rival television satirist Stephen Colbert - although humor may not be the only issue at stake.

"I think I like Stephen Colbert's pronunciation more because it's much clearer for me," said Shanghai student Peng Cheng.

(Editing by Elaine Lies and Michael Perry)

retirementThere's a buzz building in California over a state move to create a retirement savings planfor private employees with no workplace 401k. It might seem that everyone has plenty of access to a retirement savings plan, but at least a third of U.S. households get to retirement with just Social Security to back them up,.

The "pioneering" part of such a retirement savings planwould be the opt-out clause. Under the California plan, which has to get past some federal rules and IRS hurdles, eligible workers would be automatically registered with the plan at a deduction rate of 3% of pay. They would have to choose to quit the plan, although of course they could instead choose to increase the takeout.

The enforced deductions requirement of a good retirement savings planis backed by research from Harvard and the University of Copenhagen. According to the research, giving people a tax break encourages them to save, but not much. Using data from Denmark, which is similar to the U.S. system but offers more detail, academics found that tax subsidies worth $1 raised the national savings rate by a penny.

That's not much bang for a buck. Meanwhile, previous research found that an automatic retirement savings plan, such as the proposed California "opt-out" model, is very effective at raising savings rates.

The reason, the , is that only about 15% of people in the system are active savers, that is, people who think about retirement and how much money it will take to achieve that goal. The remainder, a whopping 85%, are totally passive savers. They will save if obligated but make no concrete plan regarding their life after work.

All of this would be quite the revelation, except that private pensions have a long and quite well-documented history, starting back in 1980 in Chile. Under reforms instituted by the military regime of the time, anyone with a formal job in the South American country is required to pay 10% beyond a minimum monthly income level. There is an income tax break, too, on retirement savings plancontributions, which can be up to 20%.

The Chilean system was reformed in 2008 to create a bigger safety net for the poor, essentially granting public pensions to those who did not earn enough to participate in the private system. Currently, 13 countries have either private or quasi-mandatory pension systems,.

All pension plans fall into two categories, defined benefit or defined contribution (DC). A defined benefit plan puts the burden on future taxpayers to meet a minimum payout, which is essentially how Social Security works in the United States. A defined contribution retirement savings plan, the basis for private pension systems such as a 401k, means it's up to savers to put enough away and toover decades.

As the OECD notes, "the starting point for a successful DC plan is a sufficiently high contribution rate." Put another way, depending on the market to deliver miracles is a mistake, but a similarly large (and common) mistake is believing that setting aside pennies in a retirement savings planwill add up to big dollars down the line.

The agency concludes:

In DC pension systems, one clear goal for policymakers should be to improve the design of default investment strategies so that investment risk is reduced as the worker approaches retirement. Such lifecycle investment strategies may need to be carefully regulated to ensure that workers are offered sufficient diversification and protection from market shocks in old age.

Amen and hallelujah, we say. Whatever the outcome in California, two points about a proper retirement savings planby now should be impressively clear to everyone: You need to save more, sooner, and you absolutely must have ato protect and grow that nest egg over time.

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