In the Gulf of Maine, the comical-looking seabirds have been dying of starvation and losing body weight, possibly because of shifting fish populations as ocean temperatures rise, according to scientists.

The survival rates of fledglings on Maine's two largest puffin colonies plunged last summer, and puffins are in declining health at the largest puffin colony in the Gulf, on a Canadian island about 10 miles off eastern Maine. Dozens of emaciated birds were found washed ashore in Massachusetts and Bermuda this past winter, likely victims of starvation.

Whether dead puffins will continue washing up on shore and puffin chick survival rates will stay low remains to be seen. But there are enough signals suggesting that puffins and other seabirds could be in trouble, said Rebecca Holberton, a professor at the University of Maine who has studied puffins for years.

"It's our marine canary in a coal mine, if you will," she said.

The situation has drawn the attention of scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, Mass., who are looking at how shifting fish populations can affect the productivity of puffins, as well as Arctic terns.

With its colorful striped beak, pear-shaped body and amusing waddle, the Atlantic puffin is sometimes called the clown of the sea. It's also held up as a poster child for successful seabird restoration.

An estimated 6 to 8 million puffins live across the North Atlantic, from Maine to northern Russia. But they almost disappeared from Maine after settlers hunted them in the late 1800s for food, eggs and feathers. By 1901, only one pair of puffins nested in Maine, on remote Matinicus Rock.

Steve Kress, director of the National Audubon Society's seabird restoration program, has worked to restore and maintain the puffin population off the Maine coast for the past 40 years. Puffins spend most of their lives at sea, coming ashore only to breed each spring before returning to the ocean in August. The chicks swim to sea about 40 days after hatching and typically return to the islands after two years.

More than 2,000 of the birds are now in Maine, the vast majority on three islands. But the chick survival rates on the two largest colonies took a dive last summer, possibly because of a lack of herring, their primary food source, Kress said.

On Seal Island, a national wildlife refuge 20 miles offshore that's home to about 1,000 puffins, only 31 percent of the laid eggs produced fledglings, down from the five-year average of 77 percent. Similar numbers were experienced at Matinicus Rock, a nearby island with more than 800 birds.

Instead of feeding their young primarily herring, puffin parents were giving them large numbers of butterfish, a more southerly fish that's becoming more abundant in the Gulf or perhaps more accessible to seabirds because they've moved higher up in the water column. But the chicks ended up starving to death because the butterfish were too big and round for them to swallow, Kress said. Piles of uneaten butterfish were found next to some of the dead birds.

Kress thinks the upward trend in Gulf of Maine water temperatures could be to blame, with last year's record readings causing butterfish to grow faster earlier in the season because of an early phytoplankton bloom, upon which they feed. With a low survival rate, unexplained die-offs and extreme ocean conditions washing away puffin burrows on Seal Island something he's never seen before Kress is concerned about what future years will bring.

The puffins in the Gulf of Maine are particularly vulnerable because they live on the outer edge of the bird's geographic range. Moreover, there are signs of distress elsewhere die-offs in the North Sea and population declines in Iceland, home to more than half the world puffin population, and other places that have raised fears that extreme weather and warmer ocean waters brought about by climate change may be affecting the birds.

"We don't know how the puffin will adapt to these changes or if they'll adapt to these conditions," Kress said.

The Gulf of Maine's largest puffin colony with more than 10,000 birds is found on Machias Seal Island on the Maine-Canada border 10 miles off the eastern Maine coast. There, the average body weight of both adult and baby puffins has been on the decline, most likely because of a shortage of food, said Tony Diamond, a University of New Brunswick professor who studies puffins on Machias Seal. The amount of herring in the puffin's diet has been falling by about 5 percent a year, he said.

What's more, puffins on Machias Seal are breeding later this year than any time on record, another sign of stress, Diamond said.

Another big concern is the unprecedented puffin die-offs this past winter. More than 2,500 dead puffins were found washed ashore in Scotland, and about 40 of the birds (along with hundreds of razorbills) were found on the Massachusetts shore. More dead puffins were found in Bermuda.

For every bird found dead, there are probably tens or hundreds more that died and didn't wash ashore, scientists agree.

"That's a large number of birds for the Gulf of Maine," Kress said. "We don't have that many birds to spare."

Necropsies on the Cape Cod birds indicated they starved, said Julie Ellis, project director for The Seabird Ecological Assessment Network at Tufts University.

Diamond has seen other seabird colonies virtually vanish overnight. Machias Seal Island used to have more than 3,000 terns, the largest such colony in the Gulf of Maine. But since 2007, only small numbers have come back each summer, and those that have returned haven't been able to breed, Diamond said.

Nobody knows what the future holds for puffins, but anything's possible, he said.

"In the Gulf of Maine, we're on the southern end of the bird's range. It looks like the range might be set to contract northward," Diamond said.

Kress is hopeful the Gulf population will sustain itself. But he's concerned about what he's seeing.

"You never know what climate change will bring," he said. "Historic fish could move out and more southerly fish could move in, and puffins may adapt to the new fish. Only they will know how the story will unfold."

MIAMI, June 4 (Reuters) - When LeBron James and Chris Bosh joined the Miami Heat in 2010, teaming up with Dwyane Wade to form the 'Big Three', James famously promised "not one, not two, not three" NBA championships.

It was a boast that was mocked and criticised in equal measure as traditionalists winced at the sight of the two free agents celebrating their own arrivals in a pop concert style rally.

James continued that promise, at the glitzy event, even getting as far as "not seven" as he emphasised the need for multiple titles.

So far the Heat, in the James era, are at one.

The first year with the star trio ended in defeat to the Dallas Mavericks in the 2011 Finals but they recovered to beat the Oklahoma City Thunder last year.

This year they brought the normally routine regular season to life with a remarkable 27 game winning streak - the second longest in NBA history.

Now, after seeing off the Milwaukee Bucks (4-0), the Chicago Bulls (4-1) and the Indiana Pacers (4-3), the Heat are up against the hugely experienced San Antonio Spurs.

If the series end in defeat for Miami, the questions about the effectiveness of Heat president Pat Riley packing the roster with experienced but ageing talent will surely return.

Victory though and the pundits will turn their thoughts to whether the Heat are on their way to becoming one of the league's real dynasties - albeit one which will need some rejuvenating.

The supporting cast in this current Heat team has a short shelf-life - Ray Allen, Shane Battier, Udonis Haslem, and Mike Miller are all in the twilight of their careers.

While the current team is so closely identified with James, the four-times league Most Valuable Player, it is Wade and Udonis Haslem, who have been at the heart of the Heat for the past decade.

Haslem, Miami born and a product of the University of Florida, went undrafted in 2002 and after playing in France, the Heat took a chance on him in 2003.

The same year, Miami drafted Chicago native Wade from Marquette and they were quickly rewarded with play-off runs in 2004 and 2005 and then the franchise's first NBA championship in 2006.

That Heat team, coached by Riley, beat Dallas in the finals, featured the giant presence of Shaquille O'Neal and the inspirational Alonzo Mourning, who still remains a part of the Heat organisation

The Heat, which had entered the league as an expansion franchise in 1988, had finally entered the elite of the NBA but they found it tough to stay there.

Despite Wade's talent, they failed to make it past the first round of the playoffs in the next four seasons, prompting Riley, now in command as president with his protege Erik Spoelstra as coach, to make his audacious move in free agency.

The arrival of James and Bosh instantly transformed the Heat, establishing them as the number one sports franchise in Florida and making them the team everyone else in the NBA wanted to beat.

As they have proven this season though, the chants of 'Beat the Heat' now have less to do with the jealousy at Riley's skill in the free agency market and much more to do with the simple fact that in the NBA Miami are the team you have to beat if you want a title.

(Editing by Julian Linden)

The Supreme Court today upheld a Maryland law that allows officials to take DNA without a warrant from those who have been arrested, but not convicted of a serious crime.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, for a 5-4 majority, wrote, "the Court concludes that DNA identification of arrestees is a reasonable search that can be considered part of a routine booking procedure."

He called the buccal swab to the mouth to obtain DNA a "minor intrusion."

"When officers make an arrest supported by probable cause to hold for a serious offense and they bring the suspect to the station to be detained in custody, taking and analyzing a cheek swab of the arrestee's DNA is, like fingerprinting and photographing, a legitimate police booking procedure that is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment," Kennedy wrote.

Kennedy was joined in his opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Stephen Breyer and Samuel Alito.

Justice Antonin Scalia dissented from the opinion and was joined by Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Scalia said today's decision represents an "incursion" upon the Fourth Amendment's ban against unreasonable search and seizure.

"Make no mistake about it," Scalia writes. "As an entirely predictable consequence of today's decision your DNA can be taken and entered into a national DNA data base if you are ever arrested, rightly or wrongly, and for whatever reason."

He said that "solving unsolved crimes" is a noble objective but it "occupies a lower place in the American pantheon of noble objectives than the protection of our people from suspicionless law-enforcement searches."

While all states require DNA from individuals convicted of a felony, the federal government and 26 states also take DNA samples from at least some arrestees.

The case concerns Alonzo Jay King Jr., who claims his constitutional rights were violated when he was arrested in 2009 for assault. At the time of his arrest, pursuant to Maryland's DNA Collection Act, officials swabbed his cheek and collected his DNA without a warrant.

His 2009 sample was later matched in a state data base to DNA from a 2003 rape case. . Based on the new evidence, King was eventually charged with the 2003 rape and robbery. He is serving a life sentence.

Lawyers for King appealed the decision, arguing that taking the warrantless DNA from someone who has been arrested but not convicted of a serious crime violates the Fourth Amendment's ban on unreasonable search and seizure. The Court of Appeals of Maryland ruled in King's favor.

During arguments in February, Justice Alito said of the case, "I think this is perhaps the most important criminal procedure case that this Court has heard in decades."

Kannon K. Shanmugam, a lawyer for King, argued that the government has no right to forgo ordinary rules requiring a warrant and probable cause before forcing an arrestee to submit to a search involving a physical intrusion into the body for investigatory purposes.

"Our DNA is our blueprint: an individual's DNA contains not only deeply personal information about the subject's medical history and genetic conditions, but also information that can be used to make predictions about a host of physical an behavioral characteristics, ranging from a subject's age, ethnicity, and intelligence to the subject's propensity for violence and addiction," Shanmugam wrote in court papers.

But lawyers for Maryland defend the law. In court, Katherine Winfree, chief deputy attorney general in Baltimore , pointed out that since 2009, when Maryland began to collect DNA samples from arrestees charged with violent crimes and burglary, there had been "225 matches, 75 prosecutions and 42 convictions."

The purpose of the law was to identify people "and to use the information to make bail determinations for people who are validly in their custody," she said.

The U.S. government argued in favor of the law, saying officials are forbidden to look at the DNA for anything except identification information.

ZURICH (Reuters) - Swiss billionaire Ernesto Bertarelli has bought back the Geneva headquarters of his former biotech firm Serono, hoping to establish a biotech research campus.

After selling the family business to German drugmaker Merck KGaA for $13.3 billion in 2006, the Harvard Business School graduate went on to win the America's Cup sailing prize for the second time.

He and his former beauty queen wife Kirsty cut a high profile among the Swiss jet-set.

To buy back the site, Bertarelli formed a company called Campus Biotech with fellow Swiss billionaire Hansjoerg Wyss, who made part of his fortune by selling Synthes, a maker of artificial joints, to Johnson & Johnson in 2011 for over $21 billion.

Since selling Serono, Bertarelli, Switzerland's sixth richest man, has founded investment fund Ares Life Sciences which has stakes in medtech, pharmaceutical and diagnostic imaging companies.

Last year he bemoaned Merck's decision to move Merck Serono's HQ to the German city of Darmstadt, affecting 1,250 jobs, saying that a large part of Serono's history had been written in Geneva.

Switzerland has a reputation as a hub for biotech research and is home to nearly 250 biotech companies, employing more than 19,000 people. The pharmaceutical industry accounts for 4 percent of economic output.

Details of the transaction were not disclosed. Merck said the property will be handed over on June 28.

The Technical University in Lausanne (EPFL) and Geneva University are closely involved in the project and will use part of the site as a research center.

Under the project, the Wyss Foundation will give the EPFL 100 million Swiss francs ($103 million) to convert part of the site into a bio- and neuroengineering center known as the "Wyss Institute". The consortium hopes to attract start-up companies to the remainder of the site.

(Additional reporting by Ludwig Burger in Frankfurt; Editing by David Cowell)

PORT LOUIS, Mauritius (AP) -- Soccer teams face much tougher penalties for serious racist abuse, including being relegated or having points deducted.

FIFA approved sterner punishments at its annual congress Friday following recent problems in Italy and England. The new regulations say serious or repeat offenses by a club or its fans could also lead to a team being banned from a tournament, such as the Champions League.

The measures, which were passed by a 99 percent majority in a secret ballot of FIFA member countries, also dictate that players or officials found guilty of racist abuse in any game should be banned for at least five matches. The banned player or official will also be prevented from attending any soccer stadium during that sanction.

"We are doing something now," FIFA President Sepp Blatter said following the vote.

AC Milan player Kevin-Prince Boateng walked off the field during an exhibition game against a lower-tier team after abuse from fans, while an Italian league match between Milan and Roma was stopped because of racist chanting toward Milan's black players from Roma fans.

That led FIFA to set up an anti-racism task force under Jeffrey Webb, a FIFA vice president and the president of CONCACAF, with a mandate to look at stricter sanctions.

After the resolution was passed by FIFA's congress, it is now up to its 209 member countries to individually apply and enforce it.

UEFA has endorsed a tougher 10-match ban for racist abuse in matches in European competitions.

PARIS, May 29 (Reuters) - Roger Federer was in no mood to hang around as he moved into the third round of the French Open with a 6-2 6-1 6-1 demolition of India's Somdev Devvarman on Wednesday, but his title credentials were barely put to the test in a hopelessly one-sided match.

Federer, chasing a second French Open title, was never put under pressure and ruthlessly exploited his opponent's frailties.

The Swiss did not lose a point against the 188th ranked qualifier until the third game and took the first set in just 23 minutes with two breaks of serve.

The 17-times grand slam winner broke a further three times in both the second and third sets as Devvarman wilted. (Reporting by Toby Davis; editing by Pritha Sarkar)

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) - James Bobin is in early talks to direct "Alice in Wonderland 2" for Disney and producer Joe Roth, according to two individuals with knowledge of the deal. Johnny Depp would also return to star as the Mad Hatter, although that has not been explicitly announced.

Bobin already oversees another franchise for Disney, albeit a smaller one, in "The Muppets." He directed the first film, which was a big hit in 2011, and is currently wrapping up the second one, which will open in theaters next year.

The individuals stressed that the talks were in early stages and that Bobin had not yet met with the producers, but a meeting with Depp comes first.

In "Alice," he would inherit one of Disney's most grandiose film properties. Director Tim Burton, Depp and producer Joe Roth reimagined Lewis Carroll's iconic tale in a lavish, 3D 2010 film. Their take on the story of a girl who gets sucked into a fantasy world grossed more than $1 billion across the globe.

Though some contest whether "Alice" is truly a kid's tale, the success of that film spawned a rush of revisionist classic kids' tales, including two new Snow White movies, a "Hansel & Gretel" film and "Jack the Giant Slayer."

Linda Woolverton, who wrote the first "Alice" for Roth, has been working on a script for the second. Burton will not return, and though Depp has not officially signed on, it's hard to imagine Disney making another film without him. Disney declined comment.

Depp is already signed on to reprise his role in another major Disney franchise, playing Jack Sparrow in "Pirates of the Caribbean 5." He also just dropped out of "Black Mass," a biopic of famed Boston mobster Whitey Bulger. Depp would have played Bulger.

He is currently filming "Transcendence" for Oscar-wining cinematographer turned director Wally Pfister and will soon grace screens in "The Lone Ranger."

Bobin, who has also worked in TV on "Flight of the Conchords" and "Da Ali G Show," has no firm commitment to a film after "The Muppets...Again!"

Joe Roth, Suzanne Todd and Jennifer Todd would produce.

Resident Lindiwe Mngomezulu allows curiosity-seekers to get a close-up look at the non-venomous snakes she keeps in her home, and she drapes them over tourists' shoulders for a small fee. She and her 19-year-old daughter, Nolwandle Duma, started raising snakes three years ago after going to see a snake show and coming away impressed.

Mngomezulu, 55, has two albino pythons, a Burmese python, a boa constrictor, an anaconda and a corn snake. It costs about $30 a week to feed them. She and Duma also own a bearded dragon lizard and two spiders.

They show off their snakes in their Vilakazi Street home, where tourists and local schoolchildren have become regulars. Mngomezulu said many have since overcome their fear of reptiles, which she described as harmless if handled with care. She urged people not to think of snakes as a menace.

"People are killing snakes every day," Mngomezulu said. "That's not right."

Her smallest snake, the corn snake, measures 1.2 meters (3.9 feet). The Burmese python is 3 meters (9.8 feet) long and, at 30 kilograms (66 pounds), is her heaviest snake.

Mngomezulu said her goal is to expand her snake show beyond Soweto. She is awaiting a permit that would allow her to take her snakes to non-residential areas and hopes money raised can help her to buy more snakes and get formal training from a recognized association. She is registered with the West Rand Herpetological Association, a local club for reptile lovers.

Andre Lourens, the association's chairman, said Mngomezulu's show has been instrumental in dispelling the false notion that all snakes are dangerous.

"They are no more dangerous than any dogs running down the streets, if you take into consideration the amount of dog bites here in South Africa or number of people hit by lightning," Lourens said.

Duma is saving money for university, where she plans to study zoology or psychology. She said she hopes her experience interacting with the reptiles and educating people about them could lead to a long-term career working with animals.

LONDON (Reuters) - Google Inc's tax affairs came under renewed scrutiny in Britain on Wednesday when the leader of the opposition Labour party accused the Internet company of wrongly going to "extraordinary lengths" to avoid paying tax.

In comments designed to politically outflank Prime Minister David Cameron ahead of next month's G8 summit on what has become a high-profile issue, Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, said he was disappointed that Google paid so little tax.

"I can't be the only person here who feels disappointed that such a great company as Google ... will be reduced to arguing that when it employs thousands of people in Britain, makes billions of pounds of revenue in Britain, it's fair that it should pay just a fraction of one percent of that in tax," Miliband told a Google event held just outside London.

"So when Google does great things for the world, I applaud you. But when (Google Executive Chairman) Eric Schmidt says its current approach to tax is just 'capitalism', I disagree. When Google goes to extraordinary lengths to avoid paying its taxes, I say it's wrong."

Google's methods of minimizing its British tax bill have made headlines at a time when voters' incomes are being squeezed, putting pressure on politicians.

Lawmakers have accused Google of using "smoke and mirrors" to avoid paying tax. Its northern Europe boss, Matt Brittin, was called back to testify to parliament after a Reuters investigation showed the company employed staff in sales roles in London, even though he had told the committee in November its British staff were not "selling" to British clients.

Schmidt defended his company's tax policy at the same event on Wednesday, saying its behavior was not unethical and that it was "trying to do the right thing".

"Virtually all the American companies have structures like this. This is how the international tax regime works," he told an audience at the event. "If that changes, we will follow."

CAPITALIST COMPANY

When asked whether Google intended to comply with the spirit not just the letter of the tax law, he said he would need to have the distinction between the two explained to him.

"The answer is more complicated because we're governed by U.S. securities law," he said. "Google is a capitalist country ... company," he added, to laughter and applause from the audience.

Cameron, who has placed global tax regulation at the heart of the G8 summit he is chairing in June, has been coy about singling Google out for criticism, preferring to talk more generally about corporate tax avoidance.

Miliband, whose party is ahead of Cameron's Conservatives by up to 10 percentage points in opinion polls, criticized Cameron for not taking a tougher line.

"Google is said to have paid only 10 million pounds in corporation tax in the UK between 2006 and 2011, despite revenues of 11.9 billion pounds," Miliband wrote separately in a blog for The Huffington Post UK on Tuesday.

"I was surprised the prime minister failed to raise this when Eric Schmidt attended the business advisory council's meeting."

Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, told Schmidt at the same meeting that firms like Google shouldn't wait to be pressured into changing their tax practices, a senior source from Clegg's Liberal Democrat party said on Wednesday. Cameron raised the issue too, but did not criticize Google specifically.

Britain will host a meeting of G8 leaders on June 17-18 at a golf resort in Northern Ireland and Cameron said in April that tax compliance was one of his G8 priorities.

Google is one of several high-profile companies to face far greater scrutiny of its tax affairs in recent months. Apple Inc., Microsoft and Amazon.com have all been in the spotlight at a time of weak economic growth, high levels of public debt and squeezed household incomes in Britain.

Schmidt said his company, which is building a new headquarters in central London, would not change its investment plans even if it was forced to pay more tax.

"Google will continue to invest in the UK no matter what," he said.

(Editing by Michael Roddy)

Aunque los republicanos tienen mayora en la Cmara, no cuentan con el control del Senado, sin el cual no es posible la abrogacin de la disputada ley.

El lder de la mayora demcrata del Senado, Harry Reid, asegur hoy que los republicanos "estn perdiendo la cabeza" al tratar de hacer caer una legislacin que ya lleva aplicndose ms de dos aos.

"Albert Einstein defini la locura de la siguiente manera: hacer la misma cosa una y otra vez y esperar resultados diferentes. Si la definicin es cierta, y no voy a discutir con Einstein, entonces los republicanos de la Cmara verdaderamente han perdido la cabeza", dijo.

Es la vez nmero 37 "que estn votando para derogar una ley de salud constitucional", puntualiz, en alusin al visto bueno que la legislacin recibi del Tribunal Supremo el pasado ao.

Sin embargo, el presidente de la Cmara, John Boehner, reafirm la intencin republicana de acabar con la ley, ya que a su juicio encarece sobremanera los costes sanitarios, ralentiza el crecimiento econmico del pas y representa un lastre para las pequeas y medianas empresas.

Por su parte, la Oficina de Gestin y Presupuesto (OMB, por su sigla en ingls) de la Casa Blanca dijo en un comunicado que se opone al proyecto de ley para anular la reforma sanitaria porque "privara" de un seguro de salud a precios asequibles a millones de familias de clase media, "aumentara el dficit" y desviara la atencin de prioridades como la creacin de empleos.

Adems, la anulacin de la reforma sanitaria de 2010 tendra repercusiones ms all de los 30 millones de estadounidenses sin seguro mdico, "que perderan la cobertura de salud que iban a recibir" bajo la reforma.

En total, ms de 250 millones de estadounidenses que ahora tienen un plan de seguro mdico, ya sea un plan privado o a travs de los programas de asistencia mdica pblica como "Medicare" o "Medicaid", "perderan los beneficios y protecciones que reciben bajo la reforma sanitaria", advirti la OMB.

La entidad record que, segn clculos de la propia Oficina de Presupuesto del Congreso, la anulacin de la reforma sanitaria aadira ms de 100.000 millones de dlares en la prxima dcada, y ms de un billn de dlares en la dcada siguiente.

Por ello, "lo ltimo que debe hacer el Congreso es retomar viejas batallas polticas y tomar un paso gigantesco hacia atrs al anular protecciones bsicas que proveen seguridad para la clase media. Ahora mismo, lo que el Congreso necesita hacer es trabajar juntos para centrarse en la economa y la creacin de empleos", puntualiz la OMB.

La Administracin de Barack Obama inform hoy sobre una iniciativa de mil millones de dlares para financiar proyectos de innovacin en materia de salud en el marco de la legislacin.

La inversin anunciada por el Departamento de Salud se destinar a financiar proyectos de innovacin sanitaria, cuyo objetivo sea mejorar los resultados a la vez que reducir los costes del sistema de salud.

El presidente de la Cmara, John Boehner (imagen), reafirm la intencin republicana de acabar con la ley, ya que a su juicio encarece sobremanera los costes sanitarios, ralentiza el crecimiento econmico del pas y representa un lastre para las pequeas y medianas empresas. EFE/Archivo