The release of Timothy Tracy, 35, was secured with the help of former U.S. Rep. William Delahunt, who has long worked to improve often strained U.S.-Venezuelan ties and was hired by Tracy's family as an attorney in the case.

"He's been informally advising us since pretty much the onset and we retained him last week," Tracy's sister, Tiffany Klaasen, said of Delahunt, a member of the U.S. delegation at the March funeral of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Both she and Delahunt also credited the U.S. State Department.

The expulsion came just as Secretary of State John Kerry was to meet with Venezuelan Foreign Minister Elias Jaua on the sidelines of a regional gathering in Guatemala to discuss relations between the two countries, which have been without ambassadors since 2010.

Delahunt acknowledged the coincidence of Tracy's release but said "no conditions" were set by Kerry for the meeting with Jaua.

He said he had intervened on Tracy's behalf with officials in Venezuela who he said did not include President Nicolas Maduro but "I want to keep those discussions private."

"On both sides there is a desire to have an improvement in the relationship based upon respect, and that's what's important," Delahunt said, suggesting it might help that Kerry, then a Massachusetts senator, met Maduro a decade ago when Delahunt took a delegation of Venezuelans including Maduro on a trip to his district in Cape Cod.

The trip was part of efforts by the so-called "Grupo de Boston" in 2002-2003 to salve internal tensions in the socialist-run South American country after a failed coup against Chavez.

Tracy's expulsion was initially tweeted by Venezuela's interior minister, Miguel Rodriguez, who described Tracy as having been "captured doing espionage in our country." He had previously accused Tracy of funding opposition student groups.

Attorney General Luisa Ortega said in a statement Wednesday that she had asked that the case against Tracy on charges including conspiracy and criminal association be shelved, even though "there were elements that could incriminate him."

Family and friends say the Hollywood producer and small-time actor had been in the country since October making a documentary about Venezuelan politics when he was arrested on April 24 at Caracas' airport as he tried to leave the country to attend his father's 80th birthday in suburban Detroit.

U.S. President Barack Obama had deemed "ridiculous" allegations by Venezuela that he was a spy. Friends said Tracy hardly spoke Spanish and had been very open about his work as he met with Venezuelans on both sides of the country's deep political divide.

Tracy's previous production work had included script consulting on "American Harmony," a documentary about barbershop quartets, and a History channel reality TV show about stock car racing called "Madhouse."

Friends said the Venezuela documentary was Tracy's first big foray into international affairs although he did produce last year a show about smuggling on the northern U.S. border.

"He literally has no political agenda. He is very sympathetic to all sides," his friend Aengus James, director of "American Harmony," said after Tracy's arrest.

Tracy's co-producer on the Venezuelan documentary, Ricardo Korda, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the two met in 2001 while students at Georgetown University and that the film's working title is "Connecting the Dots."

U.S.-Venezuelan relations have been especially tense in recent months. Maduro expelled two U.S. military attaches in March the same day Chavez died, accusing them of trying to foment instability, and Tracy's arrest came amid domestic political turmoil over the opposition candidate's claim that Maduro, Chavez's hand-picked successor, stole April 14 elections.

The Obama administration has backed opposition candidate Henrique Capriles' call for a full recount.

Klaasen said the family spoke frequently to Tracy while he was held.

"He was treated very well," she said. "I was never concerned for his safety."

Klaasen said that even after Tracy was transferred last week to a notoriously unruly prison, El Rodeo, the family was assured he was in no danger.

She said she understood from Tracy's lawyer in Caracas that he was isolated in El Rodeo in a cellblock for foreigners.

James said Tracy would be arriving in California, where he has lived for a decade, on Wednesday afternoon. He later said Tracy had stopped in Florida.

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Associated Press writers Jorge Rueda in Caracas and Christopher Weber in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

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Frank Bajak on Twitter: http://twitter.com/fbajak

Regular season record: 66-16

How they qualified: Won Southeast Division in the regular season. Beat the Milwaukee Bucks 4-0 in the first round of the playoffs, beat the Chicago Bulls 4-1 in the second round and edged the Indiana Pacers 4-3 in the Eastern Conference final.

Head coach: Erik Spoelstra

Top playoff scorer: LeBron James (26.2 points per game)

Top playoff rebounder: LeBron James (7.3 rebounds per game)

NBA titles: Two (2012, 2006)

Miami were admitted to the NBA in 1988 as an expansion franchise. They play in the southeast division of the Eastern Conference.

Nicknamed the Heat, they have made the playoffs in 17 of their 25 seasons. They won the championship in 2006 and again in 2012 and were runners-up in 2011.

After a slow start, they began to emerge as a leading team in the mid 1990s after hiring Pat Riley as head coach, winning divisional titles in 1997, 1998, 1999 and 2000.

Miami won their first championship in 2006, shortly after they had drafted Dwyane Wade and acquired Shaquille O'Neal from the Los Angeles Lakers.

In 2010-11 LeBron James and Chris Bosh joined Wade at the Heat, establishing the Big Three. In their first season together they won the Eastern Conference but lost to the Dallas Mavericks in the championship.

They won the championship last season, beating Oklahoma in the finals.

During the current season, they went on a 27-game winning streak, the second-longest run in American professional sports. Only the 1971-72 Los Angeles Lakers, who won 33 on the trot, have had a longer winning streak.

Riley now serves as the franchise president. The head coach is Erik Spoelstra, who spent seven years as an assistant coach and scouting director before getting promoted.

James was named as the NBA's most valuable player during the regular season. It was the fourth time in five years he had won the award.

(Compiled by Frank Pingue and Julian Linden, editing by Gene Cherry)

Cunningham, 71, was released from home confinement, said Chris Burke, a spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons who declined to say where or explain the circumstances, citing privacy and safety concerns. Typically authorities meet an inmate at home, work or mutually agreeable place to make the release official.

Cunningham told a federal judge last year that he planned to live near his mother and brother in a remote part of Arkansas, writing books in a small cabin. But in a brief interview with The Associated Press in April, he said he might settle with military friends in Florida, where he would write his memoirs.

"I'm like a tenderfoot in the forest," he said. "I'm just unsure where to find a branch to sit on."

Cunningham, an eight-term Republican congressman from San Diego, was sentenced to eight years, four months in prison in March 2006 after pleading guilty to accepting bribes from companies in exchange for steering government contracts their way. The bribes included a luxury house, yacht, Rolls-Royce, travel, lavish meals, $40,000 Persian rugs and antique furniture.

The bribes the largest known to be accepted by a member of Congress were one of several scandals afflicting Republicans at the time, allowing Democrats to portray a culture of corruption in midterm elections that made San Francisco Rep. Nancy Pelosi the first female Speaker of the House. Cunningham's downfall also fed controversy over congressional earmarks that allow lawmakers to direct money to pet projects.

When he tearfully announced his resignation outside San Diego's federal courthouse, Cunningham said he disgraced his office. At his sentencing, he told U.S. District Judge Larry Burns that he took "a very wrong turn" and that he would repent for the rest of his life.

The contrition didn't last. Cunningham told news organizations and others that he regretted his guilty plea and complained that the Internal Revenue Service was draining his savings.

"You can only push a man so far, your honor," Cunningham wrote the judge in 2010. He acknowledged mistakes but added in the same sentence that he was "one of the most highly decorated veterans in this nation" who gave a life of service.

His sentence required he pay $1.8 million for back taxes and forfeit an additional $1.85 million for bribes he received, plus proceeds from the sale of a home in the highly exclusive San Diego suburb of Rancho Santa Fe. He was ordered to pay $1,500 a month in prison and $1,000 monthly after his release.

Cunningham, who had his sentence cut 392 days for good behavior, wrote the judge last year that he would live on $1,700 a month after his release, saying the IRS "has me poor for the rest of my life." He portrayed the loss of his home and other property as an example of how veterans are mistreated.

"This dark period in my life is about to get a little lighter but do not think it will ever get sunny," he wrote.

In his letter, Cunningham pleaded for a gun permit, saying he longed to hunt in Arkansas. Burns denied the request as being beyond the scope of his authority.

"I flew aircraft that could disintegrate your building with a half second burst and now can't carry a 22 cal. Pls help me your honor," Cunningham wrote.

Cunningham, a former fighter pilot who invoked his war heroics throughout his career, took an interest in military affairs while in Congress. He also supported socially conservative positions but may have drawn most attention for his outbursts. During a floor debate in 1995, he attacked his adversaries as "the same ones that would put homos in the military."

Two people who bribed Cunningham also were convicted. Former contractor Brent Wilkes was convicted in 2007 and sentenced to 12 years for bribery and other charges for lavishing Cunningham with more than $700,000 in cash and other gifts in exchange for nearly $90 million in defense work. He is free while appealing the verdict.

Mitchell Wade was released from prison in 2011 after a 2-year sentence. He pleaded guilty to giving the congressman more than $1 million in gifts including a yacht that Cunningham named "Duke-Stir" in exchange for about $150 million in contracts.

Cunningham served nearly all his sentence at a minimum-security federal work camp in Tucson, Ariz., where inmates earn 12 to 40 cents an hour doing landscaping, maintenance work and food preparation. He moved to a New Orleans halfway house in December and, two months later, to a home where he lived under house arrest.

It was the longest prison sentence for a member of Congress for taking bribes until Louisiana Democrat William Jefferson got 13 years in 2009.

Cunningham, who has battled prostate cancer, said in April that he "did some things that I'm sorry for" but declined to address specific questions. He said he's done drawing attention to himself.

"What I'm trying to do is make a new start," he said. "It's like being reborn almost."

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)

Rebecca Killinger of Carlisle, Pa., said she had no idea how extensive the fire was until she debarked in Freeport, Bahamas. Photos of the Royal Caribbean ship show a large area of the stern charred on several decks.

She credited the crew's calm, orderly response. "The crew was in total control, and there was no chaos," she said, and some cracked jokes to lighten the mood.

Passengers described being awoken in their cabins as crew members knocked on doors and sent them to evacuation stations with their life jackets shortly after the fire broke out at 2:50 a.m. Monday.

Robert Alexander of Hamilton, N.J., said crew members from all parts of the Grandeur were involved. An actor from the ship's theater made announcements as passengers left their rooms.

"It just shows the training they do," Alexander said. "Our head waiter at our dinner table was one of the first responders."

Royal Caribbean says life boats were not boarded and power was never lost. The fire was extinguished in about two hours, with no injuries reported among the 2,200 passengers or the crew. The ship, which left Baltimore on Friday for a seven-night cruise, was headed originally to CocoCay, Bahamas, but instead sailed to Freeport on Monday afternoon. It remained there Tuesday.

The vice president of the Grand Bahama Shipyard said the ship would be repaired at his facility, though a full assessment of damage hadn't been done yet. "I'm assuming it will be a big job for us," Reuben Byrd said.

Royal Caribbean spokeswoman Cynthia Martinez said late Tuesday that repairs would be carried out at the shipyard. The cause of the fire was not immediately known.

Byrd said the shipyard didn't know the cause either. National Transportation Safety Board spokesman Eric Weiss said the agency has sent one senior investigator to the Bahamas. No other details about the investigation were available.

Royal Caribbean said passengers would receive full fare refunds and certificates for a future cruise. The company chartered 11 flights for passengers to return to Baltimore-Washington International Airport. Craig Dzubak, 26, of Pittsburgh, was on the second. He said he and his wife were already planning their next sailing while traveling home.

"The crew was awesome. I'll never go on any other cruise line," he said. "They couldn't have handled it any better."

The fire aboard the Grandeur was the second to halt a cruise this year. The Carnival Triumph was disabled during a February cruise by an engine room fire in the Gulf of Mexico, leaving thousands of passengers to endure cold food, unsanitary conditions and power outages while the ship was towed to Mobile, Ala. It remained there for repairs until early May when it headed back to sea under its own power.

Fran Golden, a blogger for the cruise magazine Porthole, said the two incidents were quite different.

"I think it's easier to make people happy when they're not stuck on a ship for four days without toilets," she said.

Still, she applauded Royal Caribbean's public relations efforts after the fire. She said sending Royal Caribbean CEO Adam Goldstein to meet with passengers in the Bahamas was a "brilliant move." The company also Tweeted a picture of one meeting.

"It shows that you're a responsible company. It shows that you care. It's not just, 'oh well, this incident happened,'" she said.

Mike Driscoll, editor of the Illinois-based publication Cruise Week, said Royal Caribbean had the benefit of hindsight and could use lessons from the recent Triumph fire in its response. He said company took charge of the response on social media, sending out photos and updates. He likened it to the company saying, "Hey, we're not hiding anything."

Passenger Killinger said there was no comparison to the Triumph in her experience on the Grandeur. "We joked prior to all of this happening about the Carnival ships," she said.

After Monday's fire, the Carnival ship Sensation was on standby to help the Grandeur and remained in its general vicinity as it powered to Freeport.

"We joked about the irony," Killinger said. "I was grateful at the end of the night to see the lights of that ship."

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Associated Press writers Kasey Jones in Baltimore and Jessica Gresko in Washington contributed to this report. Jeff Todd reported from Nassau, Bahamas.

Hare investors try to sprint to the finish line of a comfortable retirement without girding their portfolios against the perils of frequent ups and downs in asset value. So they tend to lag far behind tortoise investors, who take these precautions, which I'll explain in a moment.

Volatility reflects uncertainty, and markets tend to punish uncertainty with lower prices. Yet just because an investment is volatile doesn't mean it has no place in your portfolio. Because they may be less likely to go down with other assets in the portfolio, volatile investments may add highly beneficial variety, known as .

Let's say you own tech stocks like Apple and IBM. Adding more tech stocks to your portfolio doesn't decrease overall risk, so you add a gold-mining stock instead. Though highly volatile in itself, the gold-mining stock is less likely to go up or down with tech stocks, so it increases the portfolio's diversification.

Because there's little correlation between gold-mining stocks' price movements with those of tech stocks, these categories are said to have a low correlation.That sounds complicated, but you can easily look up theto see whether they're correlated, and if so, how closely.

Aware of the downsides of volatility, tortoises avoid it by assembling highly diversified portfolios. That means traditional investments such as U.S. stocks and bonds, mixed with a dash ofThese may include emerging market stocks, Treasury bonds and real estate securities.The price movements of these investments have a history of not being highly correlated with U.S. stocks or bonds.

Tortoises are like a savvy retailer on a tropical resort island who wisely sells umbrellas as well as sunscreen to help cover losses during rainy periods. Every once in while, the rain falls on everything -- which is what happened in late 2008, much to the dismay of investors. In the financial meltdown, stocks, bonds and real estate both in the US and abroad swooned, leaving little quarter for investors.

Tortoise-style investors add a touch of alternative investments, knowing this may cut their overall returns some years, but they'll sleep more peacefully with the knowledge that it can counter-balance heavy losses in traditional investments.

Hares aren't focused on this balanced approach. Instead, they assemble highly aggressive portfolios of assets that tend to rise or fall in lockstep. They're not concerned with cutting their losses because, compelled by greed, they're not planning to have any losses ior they believe they can defy gravity.This was not unlike the employees who loaded up on their company's shares before the recession, only to see their investment go south along with their job.

Like the Aesop's hare, hare investors are overconfident and turn a blind eye to the ravages of volatility, which take a long time to recover from.Tortoises, having sustained less damage, continue their slow but steady progress.

The math of recovering from hits may astonish you. Let's say your portfolio loses 33 percent of its value, leaving you with two thirds of what you had. Many believe they'd be back where they started if they gain 33 percent. But this gain wouldn't restore their losses. They would actually need to make a 50 percent gain to get back to where they started. The reason is that the gain is based on a lower value than what you started with.

Heavy gains followed by just a large losses from volatile investments is comparable to the hare in Aesop's fable sprinting for periods and then, winded, lying down to take a nap. Like the tortoise, investors with adequately diversified portfolios don't tend to need as much recovery time.

Such losses are even more damaging than they appear at first blush. Not only do hare portfolios lose time that could be used to make progress toward the goal, but they also miss out on the . Though tortoises' gains may be far lower than those made by hares during their sprints, they're more likely to enjoy the benefits of compounding.

These awkward reptiles plod steadily toward the finish line while the halting progress of hares leaves them far behind.

Ted Schwartz, a Certified Financial Planner, is president and chief investment officer of Capstone Investment Financial Group http://capstoneinvest.net. He advises individual investors and endowments, and serves as the advisor to CIFG Funds. Because Schwartz has a background in psychology and counseling, he brings insights into personal motivation when advising clients on achieving their wealth management goals. Schwartz holds a B.A. from Duke University and an M.A. from Oregon State University. He can be reached at ted@capstoneinvest.com.

Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday that the average rate for the 30-year loan increased to 3.59 percent this week. That's up from 3.51 percent last week. And it is above the rate of 3.31 percent reached in November, the lowest on records dating to 1971.

The average on the 15-year loan jumped to 2.77 percent. That's up from 2.69 percent last week. The record low of 2.56 percent was hit on May 2.

Cheaper mortgages are a key reason home sales have increased this year.

In April, sales of previously occupied homes rose at the fastest pace in three and a half years, the National Association of Realtors reported Wednesday.And sales of newly built homes jumped to the second-highest rate since July 2008.

More demand, along with a tight supply of homes for sale, has helped boost home prices. It has also encouraged builders to break ground on more homes.

Mortgage rates rose sharply this week because they tend to track the yield on the 10-year Treasury note.

The yield rose above 2 percent Wednesday for the first time since March 14 and was at 2.02 percent Thursday. Investors began selling government bonds Wednesday after minutes of the Federal Reserve's last meeting showed several policymakers favored slowing the Fed's bond purchases, perhaps as early as this summer.

The Fed is buying $85 billion a month in Treasury and mortgage bonds, which has pushed down long-term interest rates. Once it slows the bond purchases, interest rates are likely to tick up. That would decrease the value of bonds with lower yields.

To calculate average mortgage rates, Freddie Mac surveys lenders across the country on Monday through Wednesday each week. The average doesn't 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 was unchanged at 0.7 point last week. The fee for 15-year loans also was steady at 0.7 point.

The average rate on a one-year adjustable-rate mortgage held at 2.55 percent. The fee for one-year adjustable-rate loans was unchanged at 0.4 point.

The average rate on a five-year adjustable-rate mortgage edged up to 2.63 percent from 2.62 percent. The fee was steady at 0.5.

In the years before the May, 17, 1954, ruling, husband-and-wife psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark presented children with a black doll and a white doll as part of a series of social science experiments. The black couple then asked the children which doll was the nicest, smartest and prettiest. The Clarks said the system of racial segregation at the time was the reason most chose the white doll.

The doll, which was donated to the historic site last year, will be on display from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Friday. Eventually, the National Park Service plans to place the doll on permanent display after securing funding for an exhibit that will safeguard it and educate the public about the research, superintendent David Smith said.

The Clarks testified about their research in a South Carolina school desegregation case. That case was combined with other desegregation cases from Topeka, Virginia, Delaware and Washington, D.C., which were argued collectively before the Supreme Court.

The doll research influenced the court, with Chief Justice Earl Warren writing that separating children "solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely to ever be undone."

Even today, the doll studies have remained relevant. In 2005, teen filmmaker Kiri Davis recreated the experiment in Harlem, N.Y., as part of the short documentary "A Girl Like Me," finding the preference for the white doll persisted. After Barack Obama became the nation's first black president, ABC's "Good Morning America" tried another version of the experiment.

"If we could pick one object to symbolize the essence of Brown v. Board of Education, we would choose this doll," Smith said in a news release. "Tangible artifacts such as this doll make the story real and believable."

Also Friday, the Brown site will highlight several initiatives it's undertaking to teach the public about the case and the civil rights movement. Those efforts include bus tours of Topeka sites tied to the Bleeding Kansas era and the civil rights movement.

The Brown site is located in the former all-black Topeka school where the lead plaintiff's daughter and another plaintiff's child were students.

Abidjan's budding network of bloggers, strategists, designers and Web entrepreneurs organized a separate vote for "Web Mayor," in late April days after Ivorians went to the polls for local elections.

Emmanuel Assouan was crowned leader for a group that in recent years has dreamed up creative ways to aid the city's population of roughly 4 million people and draw attention to government shortcomings in areas like traffic congestion and power supply, said Amevi Midekor, who helped organize the vote.

Assouan beat out a crowded field of 12 candidates, with more than 25 percent of 534 votes counted.

In a suit, he took the oath of office on Friday night with his parents looking on. As he placed his right hand on a gleaming white iPad, Assouan vowed to foster an online community that was "healthy, safe and rich in content." Ivory Coast has a reputation for cybercrime, which has placed it on blacklists for websites like PayPal.

But it's clear Abidjan's techies see their work as central to reforming the broader image of Ivory Coast.

"Always we hear the same things about Ivory Coast - the problems of war, of politics," said Bacely Yorobi, head of a social media marketing firm called Social Spot and the third-place candidate for "Web Mayor."

"We hear no information about the world of technology. So we want the Web community to speak with one voice and bring the message that Ivory Coast is back, and we are having a technological revolution," Yorobi said.

The online community came of age during Ivory Coast's 2010-11 postelection violence, which ended with heavy fighting in Abidjan prior to the April 2011 arrest of former President Laurent Gbagbo, who had refused to leave office despite losing the vote to current President Alassane Ouattara.

Using Twitter hashtags and maps, members alerted one another to violence and to people in need of food or medical care.

With the conflict over and recovery under way, Edith Brou, blogger and founder of a webzine geared to Ivorian women, said she wanted Abidjan to blossom into "the next technopole" rivaling other African cities like Dakar, Senegal and Nairobi, Kenya.

Like other techies, she said the group had little interest in politics. She drew a contrast between April's government-sponsored local elections, which produced pockets of unrest when losing candidates contested the results, and the vote for "Web Mayor," which was decidedly peaceful.

"It's the difference between a clean election and a dirty election," said Brou, who placed second in the "Web Mayor" vote. "In the local elections, when you lose, you cry, you insult someone, you rally your supporters. For us, it's different. We are here to work together to develop the community. I lost, I accepted it, and I congratulated the person who won. It's that easy."

Still, certain members of Abidjan's online community don't shy away from challenging the government or highlighting its failures.

In late January, responding to a wave of electricity cuts, 37-year-old designer and advertiser Charles Dadie created a black-hooded cartoon villain named Delestron - a play on the French word for power cut, "delestage."

Though initially intended as a joke, Dadie soon gave Delestron his own Facebook page, and he has amassed more than 4,700 "likes." Following a citywide power cut earlier this month, a graphic on the page showed Delestron standing over a map saying, "Tonight I will strike everywhere at once."

"Delestron was created to denounce the power cuts with a bit of humor," Dadie said. "This is the character of Ivorians. And I think this is a more advanced method of articulating our concerns. It's not violent. And it allows people to express their opinion quickly, so that the authorities are aware of it."

The national electricity company already had its own superheroes: Two men in full-body orange-and-green spandex suits who restore power with a simple nod of the head. In a video on the company's home page, the men work their magic at a home, a factory and a hospital where a woman is undergoing an ultrasound before ending up at an outdoor dance party.

But after Delestron's popularity took off, a new female superhero appeared on the scene, informing Abidjan residents of efforts to repair power cuts. Electra's 710 Facebook followers are also treated to detailed posts on rate structures. The character was widely believed to have been created by the national electricity company, though officials have not confirmed this, and the company could not be reached for comment.

Dadie said it would "probably be better if officials focused on improving the electricity situation rather than creating cartoons."

But the attention garnered by Delestron shows the potential power of online activism in Abidjan, something Assouan, the new "Web Mayor," said he hopes to use to spur innovation in online commerce, government and education.

He doesn't have much time, however. A new election for "Web Mayor" is tentatively scheduled for next spring.

LONDON (Reuters) - Erotic trilogy "Fifty Shades of Grey" helped drive print and e-book sales in Britain to record levels in 2012 with publishers hailing figures on Wednesday as proof that digital books are not killing the traditional market quite yet.

Print and e-book sales rose 4 percent to 3.3 billion pounds ($5 billion) after slipping 2 percent in 2011, top British trade organization The Publishers Association said, although printed book sales fell 1 percent and had dropped 5 percent in 2011.

Chief Executive Richard Mollet said the overall rise was driven by a 21-percent jump in fiction sales to 674 million pounds, fuelled by demand for E.L. James's trilogy, a sadomasochistic story of student and businessman Christian Grey.

The books, published by Bertelsmann-owned Random House, sold over 70 million copies globally and were lampooned by critics. They are set to be made into a film, and sparked other sales of a growing genre of fiction dubbed "mummy porn".

"You can see in the world around you the growth in e-readers," said Mollet, pointing to commuters engrossed in Amazon kindles, iPads and Barnes and Noble's Nook.

"But what is interesting is that the continued growth of digital books does not seem to be eating away (as much as expected) at physical sales."

Fiction sales buoyed the print market, which nevertheless dipped to 2.93 billion pounds, and helped to more than double e-book sales to 216 million, he said.

Digital books accounted for about 12 percent of 2012 sales, up from 8 percent in 2011 and 5 percent in 2010.

The global book industry that was estimated to be worth $121 billion in 2011 is forecast to grow to $172 billion by 2017, according to a report by market research firm Lucintel.

Mollet said digital sales, for e-books, audiobook downloads and online subscriptions, jumped 66 percent in 2012 to 411 million pounds with fiction sales up 149 percent.

Philip Jones, editor of industry magazine The Bookseller, said fiction was the trailblazer for the shift to digital and it was key to now watch how print sales were affected as more non-fiction and children's titles were sold in digital formats.

(Editing by Louise Ireland)