LONDON (Reuters) - A musical based on the meteoric rise of British pop band The Spice Girls that was mauled by the critics is closing six months after its premiere in London, the show's producer said on Thursday.

The brainchild of "Mamma Mia!" creator Judy Craymer, "Viva Forever" was loosely based on the story of The Spice Girls, with a wannabe girl band making the finals of a TV singing contest resembling "The X Factor".

But the show, written by British comedienne Jennifer Saunders, struggled after receiving appalling reviews. Critics said it lacked the "va-voom" of The Spice Girls and labored under an "insultingly banal" script, poor performances and a gloomy set.

The Spice Girls, who backed the show and all attended the red-carpet opening in London's West End theatre district last December, thanked the cast and fans for their support.

"Although 'Viva Forever' won't continue in the West End, we are thrilled that the thousands of people who came to the show had as much fun as we did," they said in a statement.

Craymer said it was "with a heavy heart" that the decision was made to close the show, which opened with strong advance tickets sales but struggled to fill seats despite discounted tickets. The last show will be on June 29.

"The show has evolved since we first opened and is now brighter, lighter and funnier, but despite the wonderful audiences and extremely positive feedback we just can't make it work," she said in the statement.

Craymer's "Mamma Mia!", based on ABBA hits, has earned nearly $2 billion worldwide and was made into a hit film.

The crash of "Viva Forever!" belies the enduring popularity of The Spice Girls who stormed the charts in the 1990s with a string of hits including "Viva Forever", "Spice Up Your Life", and "Wannabe".

They sold more 80 million records worldwide and notched up nine British No. 1 singles during their six years together before splitting up in 2000.

Now mothers in their late 30s and early 40s, The Spice Girls remain popular with Britain's celebrity-obsessed tabloids and performed at the closing ceremony of the London Olympics.

"Viva Forever!" joins a list of musicals that have failed in London. DJ Mike Read's musical about Oscar Wilde closed one night into its run in 2004 and Cameron Mackintosh's "Betty Blue Eyes" closed after six months in 2011.

Andrew Lloyd Webber, Britain's most successful composer of musicals, has condemned so-called jukebox musicals based on previously recorded songs as purely money-making schemes.

"They are cynical exercises. You must have your heart in the subject you choose to turn into a musical," Lloyd Webber said in a recent interview.

(Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

Colvin, a U.S. reporter for Britain's Sunday Times newspaper, was killed alongside French photographer Remi Ochlik as Syrian government forces attacked the town of Homs in February last year and rockets hit the house where they were staying.

"On the Front Line: The Collected Journalism of Marie Colvin" was published in April last year. The book ends with her final written dispatch from Homs.

Colvin's book was one of seven shortlisted from 210 nominations for the Orwell book prize that was set up 10 years ago to award work "that comes closest to George Orwell's ambition to make political writing into an art".

Prize director Jean Seaton said the judges started from Orwell's injunction: "My starting point is always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice".

"That is what the judges hunted for and found, writing that was measured and calm not simply angry," Seaton said in a statement.

Colvin, 56, was one of 17 professional journalists and 44 citizen journalists killed in Syria last year, according to the Paris-based rights group Reporters Without Borders.

Also nominated for the prize that will be announced on May 15 was the "Occupation Diaries" by Palestinian lawyer and writer Raja Shehadeh who won the Orwell book prize in 2008.

British human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith was nominated for a second time, this time for his book "Injustice" about the death penalty in the United States.

The others shortlisted were Carmen Bugan with "Burying the Typewriter" about growing up in Nicolae Ceausescu's Romania, the former Bishop of Edinburgh Richard Holloway with "Leaving Alexandria", Pankaj Mishra with "From the Ruins of the Empire", and British law professor A.T. Williams with "A Very British Killing: The Death of Baha Mousa".

Six journalists were shortlisted from 155 nominations for the year's journalism prize.

They were Jamil Anderlini from the Financial Times, Tom Bergin from Reuters, Ian Cobain of the Guardian, Andrew Norfolk from The Times, Christina Patterson and Kim Sengupta from The Independent.

(Reporting by Belinda Goldsmith, editing by Paul Casciato)

Ja Rule, whose real name is Jeffrey Atkins, was released from federal prison in Ray Brook, New York, and will be under house arrest until July 28, a spokesman for the "Always on Time" rapper said.

Ja Rule, 37, pleaded guilty in 2011 to failing to file tax returns over a five year period and attempted criminal possession of a weapon in 2010.

He was sentenced to 28 months in prison after failing to pay $1.1 million in taxes between 2004 and 2008, prosecutors said.

The rapper was also sentenced to two years in prison for possessing a semi-automatic handgun, which police found hidden in his car following a 2007 concert in New York.

He was able served both sentences concurrently.

Ja Rule scored No. 1 albums with 2000's "Rule 3:36" and 2001's "Pain Is Love," which also garnered a Grammy nomination.

The rapper is best known for his collaborations with Jennifer Lopez, "I'm Real" and "Ain't It Funny," which both topped the U.S. Billboard song chart in 2001.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey, editing by Jill Serjeant and Cynthia Osterman)

There are just 1,000 individual Yangtze finless porpoises left in the wild, according to a new report. That's less than half of what a similar survey of the porpoises found six years ago.

The rapidly dwindling numbers have conservationists worried that the species could vanish from the wild as early as 2025.

"The species is moving fast toward its ," said Wang Ding, head of the expedition to count the porpoises and a professor at the Institute of Hydrobiology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Yangtze finless porpoises, the only freshwater finless porpoise in the world, live mainly in theand China's Dongting and Poyang lakes. They are threatened by shrinking food resources and man-made disturbances like shipping traffic.

The expedition, which took place over 44 days last fall, comes after a similar trek along the Yangtze in 2007 failed to find any surviving , a close relative of the finless porpoise that was subsequently declared functionally extinct.

The new report showed that some finless porpoises are splintering off into relatively isolated groups, which could hurt their ability to reproduce. The scientists also noted that more of the animals seemed to be flocking to wharf and port areas, perhaps to look for food.??

"They may risk their lives for rich fish bait resources there," Wang said in a statement from the World Wildlife Fund, a conservation group involved in the report. "But busy shipping traffic close to the port areas poses a threat to the survival of finless porpoise."

Other finless porpoises seemed to be avoiding human disturbances and were spotted gathering in dense groups in waters not open to ship traffic. But that strategy could backfire in these waters, the animals risk getting caught in illegal fishing traps.

As part of their conservation recommendations, the report authors urge for a year-round fishing ban in all river dolphin reserves, and for new reserves to be established in Poyang Lake and along the Yangtze.

The report, called the 2012 Yangtze Freshwater Dolphin Survey Report, was released Thursday (March 28).

Follow Megan Gannon onandFollow us ,& . Original article on .

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The first-ever drug designed to treat social impairments associated with autism failed to show a benefit in a midstage trial, representing a blow to families and to privately held drugmaker Seaside Therapeutics.

Results of the study, presented on Wednesday at the International Meeting for Autism Research in Spain, showed the drug known as STX209 failed to improve symptoms of social withdrawal in a 12-month study of 150 individuals aged 5 to 21, most with classic autistic disorder.

The drug is the first of a handful of treatments in development that are expressly designed to correct the genetically induced signaling problems in the brain that result in autism.

Seaside's drug STX209, or arbaclofen, works to control an overabundance of signaling or "noise" at brain synapses by reducing the amount of the neurotransmitter glutamate that is available in the brain.

Other companies pursuing drugs for autism include Swiss drugmakers Novartis AG and Roche Holding AG , which last year licensed patents from Seaside for the use of drugs known as mGluR5 antagonists that attack the signaling problem in a different way.

Based on the results, however, Roche has decided to pass on its option to develop arbaclofen, said Dr. Randall Carpenter, president and chief executive officer of Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company. Roche did not return calls seeking comment.

Carpenter said Seaside will seek new partners and has already met with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to devise a new study based on the current trial's findings that he believes may yet lead to the drug's approval.

"We believe our drug works at a molecular level that corrects signaling pathway abnormalities, circuit abnormalities and even anatomical abnormalities," Carpenter said.

"So the real question for us is, if you have a disease-modifying therapeutic, how would you demonstrate that in a short-term clinical trial?" Carpenter said.

In general, individuals with autism struggle with difficulties in communication, behavior and social interaction. U.S. government researchers said in March that as many as one in 50 American school-age children have a diagnosis of autism, which can range from highly functioning individuals to those with severe speech and intellectual disabilities.

While intensive behavioral therapy has been shown to help, there are no approved drugs that can reverse or improve core symptoms of autism.

In the Seaside trial, the primary goal of improvements in social withdrawal was assessed based on parent observations, and that may have contributed to high response rates among those who got a placebo, likely reflecting parents' eagerness to see an improvement.

Dr. Bryan King, director of the Seattle Children's Autism Center at the University of Washington and Seattle Children's Hospital, said the issue of a strong placebo effect has been a problem in prior trials. "It's not uncommon at all to see a 25 to 30 percent placebo response rate in these studies," he said.

But researchers saw other signs that the Seaside drug was having an effect. On a secondary measure of severity, which is scored by clinicians, there was a significant difference between those in the study on the drug and those who were on a placebo.

"This is a clinically relevant level of change," Dr. Jeremy Veenstra-Vanderweele Of Vanderbilt University, one of the study's key investigators, said in a webcast from the meeting.

Veenstra-Vanderweele said an analysis of the results showed improvements in day-to-day social function, as measured on a scale known as the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scale.

"This is a scale that a lot of us as investigators didn't think could move over this period of time. So this is a potentially very exciting, novel outcome," he said.

He said the next step is to test to see if this same finding can be observed in a larger clinical trial that specifically targets changes in this behavior.

Carpenter said the company has collected genetic samples from more than 400 subjects and plans to study the specific genetic differences to get a better idea of which patients will likely respond to the drug.

(This version of the story corrects the name of behavior scale in paragraph 16.)

(Editing by Doina Chiacu)

It was the latest in a series of shows of force by militias, most of which have ended without bloodshed but interrupted the country's political transition and created a climate of intimidation and a weakened state.

Militias, some of which evolved out of the rebel groups that overthrew Moammar Gadhafi in 2011, say they are rising up to force officials from the deposed dictator's regime from holding government posts, according to the state-own news agency LANA.

However, Libyan democracy activists say that they are bullying the government of Prime Minister Ali Zidan, who has vowed to restore the authority of the state, to prevent him from disbanding them.

On Tuesday, militiamen sealed off the roads to the Justice Ministry with their trucks, closed the building and turned away visitors.

On Sunday, about 200 armed men surrounded the Foreign Ministry and a day later, armed men stormed the Interior Ministry and a state-owned television station al-Wataniya TV, forcing its employees out and stopping its live broadcast. Journalists said they were beaten up and intimidated.

The unrest comes as Libya's legislature, the General National Congress, debates a draft law for "political isolation" which effectively filters out those who held any post under Gadhafi from political life.

An initial version of the law presented to the parliament would have banned a whole ruling class from politics, even though some had minor posts or left the government decades before the 2011 uprising against Gadhafi. One figure who might be targeted by the law, GNC head Mohammed el-Megarif, was ambassador to India before defecting to the opposition in 1980. A second is Mahmoud Jibril, a former aide to Gadhafi's son and the liberal-leaning head of the National Forces Alliance, the bloc with the biggest number of seats in parliament.

But the latest version of the draft law, posted on the official Facebook page of the GNC on Monday, included a new article that gives parliament powers to exempt some figures from the law, in apparent attempt to prevent removal of key figures.

That version is unlikely to satisfy the protesting militias and others who want a thorough purge of Libya's political class.

The militias' moves over the past days forced parliament to suspend its sessions until May 5. Politicians say the repeated shows of force have delayed the key process of drafting Libya's post-Gadhafi constitution.

Independent lawmaker Mohammed Somoud told The Associated Press on Monday that parliament is halting sessions because "there are people who want to turn against legitimacy," in reference to the militias.

"The situation is very dangerous and I am very saddened. I talked to those youth and told them you are playing with fire," he said.

The parliament, which has been criticized for incompetence and failure to pass key measures, has been further weakened by successive attacks by militiamen.

One of the worst occurred in mid-March when the parliament met to discuss the political isolation law away from its usual venue. Militiamen stormed the building and fired gunshots in the air. Members of parliament were trapped inside for several hours before they were allowed to leave. Vehicles in Megarif's convoy were hit by bullets as he left, although no one was wounded.

More than a year after Gadhafi's ouster and death in an eight-month civil war, Libya is struggling to rebuild its state institutions, including an army and police that could keep militias under control.

Prime Minister Ali Zidan told reporters in Tripoli that the security situation continues to be perilous. He stopped short of saying which militias or armed groups might be behind the incidents.

"If the situation persists, it will give Libya a bad reputation and lead to foreign companies pulling out and embassies closing down," he warned.

Zidan was himself besieged in his office last month by militiamen over remarks he made threatening to summon outside help to confront the armed groups.

"We are now back to slightly under 3 percent and I think it will hover around this level for a good part of this year - but it's more likely than not that as we go into next year, inflation will be quite close to 2 percent," he said in an interview with the Belfast Telegraph.

Inflation is currently 2.8 percent and the central bank forecast in February that it would peak above 3 percent later this year before easing slightly to just under 3 percent in early 2014. It is not forecast to fall below its 2 percent target until early 2016.

The central bank will publish new inflation forecasts in May. Miles's views may not be representative as he is among the minority of policymakers who back more quantitative easing asset purchases.

Miles also said that he expected the squeeze on Britons' disposable incomes over the past four years to ease as inflation fell.

(Reporting by David Milliken)

RELATED:

Perhaps ironically cold in their matter-of-factness, those numbers tells the story of the state of the climate in a way that is tangible. It allows us to create a thermometer of sorts, like those used for fundraising at suburban middle schools — the goal being not to reach the line at its top. Earth Day is a similar sort of benchmark, a string tied around the finger of the country to remember to look at how we're doing. Here are the tools you need to make an assessment of the state of the Earth.

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Data resources: Theon climate

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Last month, the temperature of the world's land and oceans was . That alone seems innocuous. Here's another number: 337. For 337 straight months, the world has seen temperatures above the 20th century average. Meaning, , that anyone born after March 1985 — anyone 28 or younger — has never experienced a month during which global temperatures were below average for the century.

RELATED:

Map via .

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That data comes from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's monthly "State of the Climate" recaps, which it does forand . Each month, the reports outline the raw data: the XXth hottest month, YY degrees above the 20th century average. While the report includes broader trends in the warming, they tend to be a bit buried.

Which is whymade a bit of a splash: it suggested that global warming was actually happening more slowly than scientists expected. It didn't take long for reason to be offered. It wasn't because humans were producing less greenhouse gasses. Instead, , eruptions of which emitted particles that helped diffuse sunlight in the stratosphere.

Global temperatures are never uniformly distributed, as the map above shows. If it's hot in Australia, that doesn't mean it will be here. According to the NOAA, March 2013 was tied for the tenth-hottest March in recorded history globally, matching March 2006. But afterin 2012, temperatures during March in the United States werefor the month.

Map via .

The surprising cold the United States experienced was primarily due to an , a shift in pressure patterns that moves Arctic air south. The NOAA notes that the oscillation index provided "the most negative value on record for March."

Data resources: The , .

But there's some thinking that the Arctic ice melt played a role, too. , but the key point: while "still not settled science," three recent studies suggest that dropping ice levels also lead to colder weather.

The level of ice in the Arctic always fluctuates. From its peak, usually in March, the amount of ice melts until it reaches its minimum extent, usually in September. Last year, the amount of ice at its lowest point .

Graph via .

If scientists confirm a link between that melt and colder Springs, expect more Marches like the one we just experienced.

There are other implications to the ice melt, of course. Cargo ships can now , cutting shipment times between Asia and Europe. Last year, a major general in the U.S. Northern Command suggested that North America would soon : the shoreline on northern Canada.

Data resources: The . The Department of Energy'stracks energy use and production.

Even as the United States , the amount of carbon dioxide it creates — the most abundant type of greenhouse gas — has dropped. This is in part due to the slower economy since 2009, in part to , and in part due to— a transition spurred by low natural gas costs due, in part to fracking.

Graph via .

The most recent set of annual data from the EPA . That year, two-thirds of the country's emissions came from power plants, thanks in large part to old coal-burning plants that are old enough to have been .

But there are two big question marks in the data. The first goes back to fracking — the process of injecting fluid into shale rock to break it apart, releasing methane gas. Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, . And it's not clear how much of that methane .

Broadcaster ABC said on Thursday that the April 22 episode of "Castle," which follows a crime novelist and New York police detective, will switch dates with the April 29 episode.

Series star Stana Katic said on Twitter that the move was made "out of respect" for the victims from the twin blasts near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. The bombings killed At least three people and injured 176.

Broadcaster Fox on Tuesday pulled a recent episode of animated series "Family Guy" from rebroadcast because it had an unconnected storyline of the Boston Marathon and a bombing.

ABC is owned by Walt Disney Co and Fox by News Corp.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey; Editing by Sandra Maler)

Two of the key components of that year's AL Central division champs reunited Wednesday night to help the Tigers beat the Kansas City Royals 7-5. Victor Martinez drove in a pair of runs and Jose Valverde returned to Detroit with a save.

Martinez missed all of last season with a knee injury, and entered the game hitting .182. On a 39-degree night, he was robbed of extra bases by Eric Hosmer in his first at-bat, but he had an RBI double in the third and a run-scoring single in the fourth.

"I felt good out there... and I got some balls to fall in," he said. "It wasn't fun out there in this weather, not at all, but the important thing was getting some hits and winning a game."

Valverde, called up earlier in the day, returned to the Tigers with a perfect ninth inning. Valverde lost the closing role during last season's postseason and wasn't offered a contract, but signed a minor-league deal earlier this month and returned to Detroit after a short minor-league stint.

"This wasn't a first day I've been here for four years," he said. "I just missed a couple weeks of weather like this."

Valverde threw 18 pitches, all fastballs.

"I'd like to see one of you throw a splitter on a day like this," he joked. "Tomorrow, maybe I'll throw a split or two, but today I had my cutter and my sinker."

Max Scherzer (2-0) earned the win, allowing five runs in five innings, while Wade Davis (2-1) took the loss, giving up seven runs three earned in 3 2/3 innings. Davis allowed eight hits and four walks while only getting 11 outs.

"Pitchers need to be able to feel the ball with their fingertips that's how they are able to manipulate it," Kansas City manager Ned Yost said. "When it is this cold, you can't do that. I'm sure that was a big part of Wade's problem, but it didn't help Scherzer, either. Everyone has the same problems on a day like this."

The Tigers took the lead on Omar Infante's RBI single in the second, but Kansas City responded with four runs in the third. Salvador Perez and Chris Getz started the inning with singles, and Alex Gordon tied the game with a double. Alcides Escobar and Billy Butler made it 3-1 with RBI singles, giving the Royals five straight hits, and Hosmer drove in the fourth run with a long sacrifice fly.

The Tigers added two more in their half of the third on a Martinez RBI double and Jhonny Peralta's run-scoring single. Martinez tried to score from second on Peralta's double, and was beaten so badly by Jeff Francoeur's throw from right that he veered off for the dugout and was called out for leaving the basepath.

"I saw the catcher get the ball, and I was halfway to the plate," he said. "There was no reason to do anything stupid I want to keep playing baseball."

Detroit took control in the fourth when Infante scored on a Moustakas error and Miguel Cabrera followed with a tie-breaking sacrifice fly. Martinez added an RBI single, chasing Davis, but Luis Mendoza walked the next two batters to force in a seventh run.

The Royals loaded the bases with no one out in the fifth, but only scored once, and couldn't get anything after putting two runners on in the seventh.

"That fifth inning really hurt us," Yost said. "We did some nice things to get the bases loaded, and then we only got one run out of it. We had a couple chances after that, and never did anything, so we only ended up with the one big inning."

NOTES: The game started on time, despite rain and snow showers throughout the day. Neither team took batting practice, but the skies cleared as the evening went on. The last few innings were played under a full moon with the temperature dropping through the 30s. ... The Tigers officially purchased Valverde's contract before the game, and designated Duane Below for assignment. ... The Royals came into Wednesday having only played on two of the previous six days, thanks to the police situation Friday in Boston and Tuesday's rainout in Detroit.