After the NBA's prized big man Howard chose to leave the Lakers in favour of the Houston Rockets last week, Los Angeles began the process of recouping by agreeing to a one-year deal with a new seven-footer.

The 31-year-old Kaman will ink a contract worth approximately $3.2 million, according to local reports, when free agents can officially sign on Wednesday.

"I am going to be going back to LA and it's to play for the Lakers! I am excited about this move and can't wait to play!" Kaman posted on his Twitter feed.

Entering his 11th season, Kaman has career averages of 11.8 points and eight rebounds and just completed a one-year campaign with the Dallas Mavericks.

He was an All Star in 2010 while playing for the Los Angeles Clippers. (Writing by Jahmal Corner in Los Angeles. Editing by Patrick Johnston)

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And then came the Internet.

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The digital revolution has upended all aspects of print media, but the turn has been especially brutal for lad mags.– only a tenth of what its owners, Alpha Media Group, have been expecting. Back in 2007, Dennis sold the magazine, along with the publications Blender and Stuff, for $250 million. That’s money the likes of which won’t be seen again.

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Granted, Maxim’s circulation of about 2 million is still impressive – , from 12. That’s a better fate than FHM, . Playboy, the granddaddy of lad mags, cut its circulation to 1.5 million during the Great Recession – .

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So, whoever does buy Maxim will be buying little more than a name – as well as an outdated form of entertainment. What made Maxim an enjoyable “read” was that it was raunchy but not pornographic, occupying a clever middle ground between $450 gloves in Esquire and naked women in Penthouse. You would not be embarrassed, necessarily, if your aunt found you reading a copy.

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The web ruined this model by making porn virtually free and easily accessible, while also normalizing the viewing thereof, with 87% of men admitting to watching porn at least once a year, . That in turn obviated the need for Maxim, with its coy pictorials. At the same time, sites likecould offer more edgy, current content than Maxim (or at least its print version) ever could. Once subversive, lad mags came to seem lead-footed by the mid aughts, not just down-market but something worse: old.

And a deeper change was afoot, too: Men actually began to think more deeply about what it meant to be men. Part of that was due to a decreased social tolerance for sexual aggression, combined with a growing recognition for how popular culture fosters the very same. Social tropes like the metrosexual – remember that? – were a tacit approval of homosexual style and a rejection of the beefcake machismo proffered by Maxim and its ilk. Meanwhile, sites like , founded in 2009, have offered a rejoined to Maxim, with men now writing about male issues beyond whether Bar Rafaeli is hotter than Irina Shayk.

True, plenty of casual misogyny still exists. And many men still want to look at salacious pictures of women. But as the plight of Maxim shows, they don’t want to do it in lad mags anymore. 

All images via Maxim.

BOSTON (Reuters) - A murder investigation into former National Football League player Aaron Hernandez broadened on Thursday with the arrest of a second man, and a probe into the possible involvement of the onetime star tight end in a double homicide in Boston last year.

Police were investigating links between Hernandez and an unsolved shooting in July 2012, the Boston Globe reported, citing two unidentified law enforcement sources. Hernandez, 23, was swiftly fired by the New England Patriots after his arrest on Wednesday on charges of the execution-style murder of a friend, semi-pro football player Odin Lloyd.

Jake Wark, a spokesman for Suffolk County prosecutors, confirmed an investigation into the drive-by shooting of two men was "active and ongoing" but declined to comment on whether Hernandez was a suspect. Investigators believe that Lloyd may have had information about Hernandez's suspected role in the double slaying, the Boston Globe reported, citing the two law enforcement sources.

A prosecutor in Connecticut said on Thursday that a second man had been arrested in the shooting death of Lloyd, whose body was found June 17 in an industrial park near Hernandez's house in North Attleborough, Massachusetts. Authorities identified the second man as identified as Carlos Ortiz, 27, of Bristol, Connecticut, suspected of being one of the men who accompanied Hernandez during Lloyd's murder.

In a Massachusetts court on Wednesday, Hernandez was charged with Lloyd's murder, a rapid fall for a man who was signed to a $41 million contract with one of the NFL's top teams.

His lawyer entered a plea of not guilty at his initial court appearance and called the prosecution's case - based on surveillance videos and cell phone records - circumstantial.

A judge on Thursday denied Hernandez's lawyers' request that he be released on bail, saying he was a flight risk and calling the prosecution's case "very strong."

Prosecutors argue that Hernandez, along with two friends, had picked Lloyd up at his Boston home and driven him to the North Attleborough industrial park where Hernandez shot Lloyd execution-style with a high-powered handgun.

Prosecutors said Hernandez and Lloyd had argued a few nights before Lloyd's death when they went to a Boston nightclub together and Lloyd spoke with people that Hernandez said he "had trouble with."

NFL SCANDALS

The charges against Hernandez were a setback for the NFL. Over the years, despite efforts to protect itself from controversy, the league has been dragged into a string of scandals by players stretching from O.J. Simpson's murder trial in 1995 to more recent cases involving dog fighting, injury bounties, spying and gambling.

While Hernandez was in jail, Connecticut prosecutor Brian Preleski said on Thursday that Ortiz was facing a charge of being a fugitive from justice and was expected to be transferred to Massachusetts to face additional charges.

Ortiz's relationship with Hernandez is unclear, though both men are from Bristol, a suburban city about 20 miles southwest of Connecticut's capital Hartford.

Court documents show Ortiz has prior convictions in Connecticut for larceny, criminal mischief, resisting arrest, disturbing the peace and assault.

Ortiz's Facebook profile picture is a New England Patriots logo, and he posted a photograph last December of Hernandez with his fiance Shayanna Jenkins and their infant daughter under the headline 'Angels'.

In a separate case, Hernandez has been sued by a Connecticut man, Alexander Bradley, who said Hernandez shot him in the face after the two left a Miami strip club in February, causing him to lose an eye. A Florida police official said last week that law enforcement had investigated the shooting but abandoned the case after Bradley refused to cooperate.

(Editing by Grant McCool)

Whether the lunchtime meal qualified as finger food is debatable. More clear: It was as healthy as it was tasty. During the second annual Kids' State Dinner, Obama hosted 54 kids who had won her Healthy Lunchtime Challenge recipe contest. Junior chefs from throughout the country submitted recipes for meals that are both healthy and delicious; the contest, designed to promote healthy eating, is part of the First Lady's "Let's Move!" initiative.

On the menu Tuesday: Zucchini cornbread, spring rolls, mini pizzas with veggies, veggie barley salad, lettuce cups, a tropical fruit bowl and banana muffins, along with strawberry banana smoothies and passion fruit banana smoothies.

The winning recipes were chosen from more than 1,300 entries. Each recipe had to meet the U.S. Department of Agriculture's nutrition guidelines, and half the plate needed to be fruit- or veggie-based. Recipes were also judged on taste, creativity, originality and .

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During a surprise appearance, President Barack Obama took issue with his wife's dismissal of table manners. "Michelle never said to me I can just pick up something with my fingers at a state dinner. That's not fair!" he joked, before praising the kids' healthy habits. He recalled that when he was a kid, veggies would "get all soft and mushy, and nobody wanted to eat a pea or a Brussels sprout because they tasted horrible because they were all mush."

These days, he actually likes vegetables, he said - because they're prepared right. And that's something the participating kids know how to do. "You guys are going to set a good example for everybody all across the country," President Obama said. "And for parents, I want you guys to learn from the example of your children and keep working on these good recipes."

Many of the kids said they plan to continue spending time in the kitchen.

Samantha Mastrati, 12, of Rhode Island, who submitted a recipe for Italian Garden Salsa with Crunchy Chicken Tenders, has been cooking for about a year. " is important because everyone needs it," said Mastrati, who wore a pink dress, her light brown hair in curls. "It helps you live longer, you'll be happier, and you'll be healthier."

That attitude was echoed by Brynna Robert, 12, of Louisiana, who won with a recipe for sweet and spicy stir-fry. (The sweet: pineapple. The spicy: crushed garlic.) "If you don't eat healthy foods, it could cause all kinds of problems in your life," she said. "Since you only have one life, it's best to live it the best you can." Her memories of cooking trace back to when she was 4 years old, helping her mom make cakes. "I think it might be interesting for a future career," she said. "I enjoy cooking, and it's important to do something you love."

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Robert and her peers certainly had the support of White House chef Sam Kass, who's also executive director of "Let's Move!" When he first tasted 10-year-old Olivia Neely's mini pizzas, he was impressed - if not convinced. Cauliflower crust? No way, he thought. That pizza was too good.

"He didn't believe there wasn't any wheat in it," Michelle Obama said. "The health guy was skeptical. So skeptical that he walked down to the kitchen and asked the chef whether they'd slipped in some wheat to make sure that the crust tasted right. But they told him, nope, no wheat; just the ingredients Olivia put in the recipe."

Call it the magic of a junior chef. As Kass mingled with the kids, he described cooking for the president as "the greatest honor a chef can have." "Work hard," he told one eager listener. "Work hard, and I expect to see you back here. Maybe if you're the chef, I'll get an invite to come see you here."

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As Michelle Obama addressed the crowd, she stressed that they were "more than equipped" to become leaders - that they already were. "We've seen that when kids like all of you get involved in creating your own healthy meals, the results can be amazing and delicious and fun," she said. "You'll come up with ideas that none of us grownups ever thought of. You'll find new ways to get your families and friends to eat healthy and try new foods. So keep working hard, all right? You guys promise me that? I can't wait to see what you're going to do with your lives in the years to come."

In a new study, researchers sequenced a total of 79 great apes, including chimpanzees, , eastern and western gorillas,and humans, as well as seven ape subspecies. The animals were wild- and captive-born individuals from populations in Africa and Southeast Asia.

Much attention has been focused on studying the diversity among human genomes, said study researcher Tomas Marques-Bonet, a geneticist at the Institut de Biologia Evolutiva in Spain. "If we want to understand the genetic diversity of humans, we need to measure the genetic diversity of our nearest relatives," Marques-Bonet said. []

As part of the study, Marques-Bonet and his colleagues were looking for genetic markers corresponding to changes in a single letter in the genetic code that define a subspecies. The researchers identified millions of such markers, which are important for conservation efforts. For instance, these markers allow people who manage wild-ape populations to identify different kinds of ape. Most of these animals are captured from illegal trade, so scientists don't know how they're related, Marques-Bonet told LiveScience.

Surprisingly, Marques-Bonet said, the genetic history of chimpanzees turned out to be much more complex than that of humans. Compared with chimps, "it looks like our [humans'] history has been really simple," Marques-Bonet said. Human populations encountered a bottleneck when they left Africa, and have since expanded to colonize the whole planet. By contrast, chimpanzee populations have undergone at least two to three bottlenecks and expansions, Marques-Bonet said.

The findings, the researchers said, also settle a hot debate over the relationships among the four chimpanzee subspecies Central chimpanzee, Western chimpanzee, Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzee and Eastern chimpanzee. "Now, we have the full genome for all four," Marques-Bonet said. Rather than revealing four groups, the sequences show that all chimps divide into two major groups: a Nigeria-Cameroon/Western population and a Central/Eastern population.

The new findings don't change humans' position in the great-ape evolutionary tree. Chimpanzees and bonobos are still , splitting off from humanity about 5 million years ago. Humans' next-closest living relatives are gorillas, and orangutans are the most distantly related of the great apes.

Now, researchers can start tackling smaller-scale questions, such as distinguishing the subspecies, Marques-Bonet said. []

Despite the genetic similarity between , the two species are clearly quite different. Some scientists had hypothesized that the differences stem from the "lost" parts of human genomes compared with chimp genomes. But the new study disproved that theory by showing that the lost parts were mostly nonfunctional.

So if it's not genetics, what makes humans different from their great-ape cousins? "If I knew, I would have the Nobel Prize," Marques-Bonet said.

"Having these genomes is like having a book," he added. "So far, we are only just reading the book. It's not the same as understanding it."

The findings are detailed online today (July 3) in the journal Nature.

Follow Tanya Lewis on and .Follow us , & . Original article on.

Still, the Benjamin Britten opera, commissioned to help mark the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, was hardly a rousing success back in 1953.

Instead of the joyous celebration many expected, Britten and librettist William Plomer produced a somber work about the first Queen Elizabeth and her relationship with the Earl of Essex. Though the opera has festive elements, it ends on a downbeat note, with the monarch portrayed as an aging, disillusioned woman contemplating death.

The first night audience at Covent Garden which included many members of the royal family greeted it with bewilderment, some wags dubbed it "Boriana," and the piece soon disappeared from the Royal Opera's repertory.

Until now.

This month, "Gloriana" is back in a new production by Richard Jones that the company's director, Kasper Holten, notes commemorates a "triple anniversary": 60 years since the coronation and the opera's premiere and 100 years since the composer's birth.

"There was feeling that it deserved another chance, to be looked at again," said Holten, who holds the same job Lord Harewood did in 1953. "To see whether the piece isn't really better than its reputation."

That it is. "Gloriana" contains some of Britten's finest music, though it possibly falls short of being a masterpiece to rank with his "Peter Grimes" or "Billy Budd."

"There are fantastic moments," Holten said in an interview. "The courtly dances, the lute song. I think the problem is that there are other parts that dramatically fail to pick up the same pace. That makes for an uneven evening."

What may have seemed an inappropriately dark portrayal of monarchy 60 years ago also feels different with the passage of time a perspective heightened by Jones's production. He frames the work as a pageant being staged for the young queen by a local community group of amateurs. This mixture of Tudor pomp with nostalgia for a Britain that was still recovering from World War II makes for a poignant combination.

"On opening night I had a strong feeling that from the first moment, people got it," Holten said. "This piece is a part of their history and it says something about them."

Critical reaction has been mixed. Many applauded Jones's staging while finding fault with the piece itself. Writing in the Financial Times, Richard Fairman said it was "brave of the Royal Opera to bring the work back to the theatre where it had its troubled birth," but he added that "drama and music are stretched painfully thin. Perhaps that first-night audience was not so wrong-headed after all."

More positive was Michael Church in The Independent, who noted that in 1953 "people just weren't ready for a work which chimes so neatly with our post-modern consciousness. . Covent Garden," he said, "has now shown that 'Gloriana' is, if not a great work, certainly one of the most intriguing in the canon."

Part of what's intriguing is the way Britten and Plomer depict the title character. Basing his libretto on Lytton Strachey's psychological history, "Elizabeth and Essex," Plomer presents a queen who, as Holten says, "is quite a flawed character, struggling with the dilemma between personal and public roles."

The idea of the queen as outsider in her own court, beloved by her people but lonely nonetheless, struck a chord with Britten, who was drawn to portrayals of outcasts in many of his other works as well.

In the opera's final scene, after Elizabeth has condemned Essex to death for treason, she is left alone on stage. Britten daringly subverts expectations here: Instead of giving her a final aria with a soaring vocal line, he has her abandon singing altogether for stretches of spoken declamation.

"It's almost as if the musical language falls apart at the end, as if she loses her language," Holten said. "There's no more singing in her, she's been worn out. I think that's a beautiful effect."

"Gloriana," starring soprano Susan Bullock in the title role and tenor Toby Spence as Essex, runs through July 6.

Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday that the rate on the 30-year loan eased to 3.93 percent last week. That's down from 3.98 percent last week but is still the highest level since April 2012.

The rate on the 15-year mortgage fell to 3.04 percent from 3.10 percent. That's the highest since May 2012.

Freddie Mac surveys lenders across the country on Monday through Wednesday each week. Bernanke's comments during a news conference Wednesday afternoon weren't fully reflected in the latest rates.

Concern that the Fed will wind down its bond purchases has pushed mortgage rates higher in recent weeks. Mortgage rates are still low by historical standards, helping sustain the housing recovery that began last year. But a spike in long-term interest rates could drive them higher quickly.

The Fed has been buying $85 billion worth of Treasury and mortgage bonds a month since late last year. The purchases pushed long-term interest rates to historic lows, making mortgages and other consumer and business loans cheaper.

Mortgage rates are expected to rise because they tend to follow the yield on the 10-year Treasury note. The yield on the 10-year note climbed in early trading Thursday to 2.39 percent, its highest level in 15 months. That's up from a low of 1.63 percent last month.

And the yield could go even higher based on Bernanke's remarks that the Fed will begin tapering later this year and could end the program in the middle of next year, provided the economy shows continued strength.

The average mortgage rates do not include extra fees, known as points, which most borrowers must pay to get the lowest rates. One point equals 1 percent of the loan amount.

The average fee for 30-year mortgages rose to 0.8 point from 0.7 point. The fee for 15-year loans was unchanged at 0.7 point.

The average rate on a one-year adjustable-rate mortgage declined to 2.57 percent from 2.58 percent. The fee for one-year adjustable-rate loans was steady at 0.4 point.

The average rate on a five-year adjustable-rate mortgage was unchanged at 2.79 percent. The fee slipped to 0.5 point from 0.6 point.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - African American men with very low-risk prostate cancer may not do as well with a wait-and-see treatment approach as white men, suggests a new study.

Researchers found that black men who had their prostates removed soon after being diagnosed with low-risk cancer were more likely to have the severity of their cancer upgraded based on a doctor's second look, compared to their white counterparts.

"It's known that outcomes for African Americans with prostate cancer are less good. That's a known fact," said Dr. Edward Schaeffer, the study's senior author from Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.

"This study's number one highlight is that because of that observation, we don't think you should just recommend active surveillance," he told Reuters Health.

The American Cancer Society estimates about one in six U.S. men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer during his lifetime, and one in 36 will die of the disease.

About 20 percent of cancers are very low-risk and it's recommended that doctors use "active surveillance" among men who are expected to live for less than 20 years, write Schaeffer and his colleagues in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

With active surveillance, the prostate cancer is closely monitored but not treated. That allows men to avoid the potential side effects of radiation and surgery, such as incontinence and impotence. It also gives doctors a chance to intervene if the cancer worsens.

But the data used to advise doctors on who the best candidates are for active surveillance are based on studies that included mostly white men. Therefore, the guidelines may not apply to black men, who are known to have worse prostate cancer outcomes, researchers said.

For the new study, Schaeffer and his colleagues analyzed data on 256 black men, 1,473 white men and 72 men of other races who were diagnosed with very low-risk prostate cancer after 1992.

The men all had their prostates surgically removed at Johns Hopkins Hospital soon after they were diagnosed.

The researchers then looked at what doctors actually found when they removed the men's prostates and whether there were any differences in cancer characteristics between black men and white men.

Overall, about 27 percent of black men ended up having worse cancers than doctors originally thought, compared to about 14 percent of white men.

Researchers also found more black men had cancers that were likely to return after they were removed.

What's more, additional research from Schaeffer and his colleagues, published in The Journal of Urology, found that black men tend to have larger tumors located in areas of the prostate that aren't easily accessible for doctors to biopsy.

"If you have an African American man with very low-risk prostate cancer, our recommendation at this time is that they strongly consider a MRI of their prostate (to look for these tumors)," Schaeffer said.

Theresa W. Gillespie, who was not involved with the new research but has studied prostate cancer in black men, said the new study alone won't change existing treatment guidelines.

She added, however, that it sheds light on the fact that medical research needs to include more African Americans to get better population-based guidelines.

"We need to have more African Americans involved in research. All of the studies that were cited the number of African Americans involved in those studies are very small numbers," Gillespie, from the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, told Reuters Health.

Schaeffer said the new findings need to be validated in other groups and that his team is currently working on additional research.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1503i9c Journal of Clinical Oncology, online June 17, 2013 and The Journal of Urology, online June 14, 2013.

LONDON (Reuters) - The Rolling Stones will take a step back in time this weekend by replicating a woodland in London's Hyde Park present for a 1969 show there that became a tribute to band founder Brian Jones.

Jones had already left the Stones the last time frontman Mick Jagger, guitarist Keith Richards and drummer Charlie Watts played the royal park 44 years ago for a gig meant to introduce his replacement Mick Taylor.

But two days before their appearance the 27-year-old Jones drowned in his swimming pool under the influence of drugs and alcohol, turning the concert into a commemoration.

Now the band with an average age of 69, fresh from a wildly acclaimed Glastonbury festival debut and riding high on celebrations last year marking 50 years in music, have a chance to reinvent the past with sold out concerts on July 6 and 13.

"Hyde Park holds such great memories for us and we can't think of anywhere better to perform to our UK fans this summer," Jagger said in April, announcing the first of the two concerts.

Model oak trees and thousands of branches have been brought in for the set with sources telling Reuters that the Stones wanted an environment that was as natural as possible.

"When Mick and the band looked out from the stage back in the Sixties all they could see was a sea of people and a load of trees, but many of those have been cleared or replanted since," a source told British media. "They want to recreate the woodland."

Philip Norman, who wrote the unauthorized biography "Jagger", said although the modern audience may not remember Jones's adventurous musical brilliance, the band's long-serving fans would be looking for a nod to the man who started it all.

"A lot of the old hard-core fans and a lot of the people who knew the Stones in those days would be very pleased and proud if (Jagger) would (acknowledge Jones) and he may well do," Norman told Reuters.

Nostalgia has played a major part in the Rolling Stones's activities of the past year as they celebrated 50 years in the music business and embarked on a North American tour.

The Rolling Stones lived up to their reputation as one of the greatest rock'n'roll bands when they played to more than 100,000 revelers at last weekend's Glastonbury festival.

The Stones have chosen a crop of "indie" bands to support them in front of a crowd of 65,000 at Hyde Park, with The Vaccines and The Temper Trap sharing the bill. Representatives for the band said there was no truth to a rumor that Grammy-winning singer Adele would appear.

The Rolling Stones emerged alongside the Beatles in the early 1960s to become one of the most successful groups in rock and roll history with hits such as "Jumpin' Jack Flash", "Satisfaction" and "Sympathy for the Devil".

They last went on the road for their "A Bigger Bang" tour from 2005 to 2007, playing 144 shows around the world and grossing more than $550 million, one of the world's most lucrative rock tours.

Live performances have emerged as the major money earner in the music business as record sales go digital, with growing numbers of veteran acts returning to the stage and attracting well-heeled, ageing fans willing to pay high ticket prices.

(Reporting by Paul Casciato, Editing by Belinda Goldsmith)

British Defense Minister Philip Hammond told lawmakers Wednesday that military physical aptitude tests won't apply to computer experts working as reservists.

He says the military will "specifically be recruiting cyberreservists, who will not necessarily have to have the same levels of fitness or deployability as reservists in general."

Britain, like other countries, is boosting its electronic capabilities as attention increasingly turns to the twin threats of cyberespionage and cybersabotage.

The U.K. is already active in the world of hacking.

Documents recently leaked by U.S. intelligence worker Edward Snowden have revealed details of alleged aggressive British cyberattacks against other countries' diplomats at international conferences.