Harvey allowed only an infield single by Alex Rios with two outs in the seventh he was safe, barely. The right-hander struck out a career-high 12 and was pulled when the game went to extra innings.

Pinch-hitter Mike Baxter lined an RBI single with one out in the 10th off Nate Jones (0-3).

Mets reliever Bobby Parnell (3-0) retired all three batters he faced.

It was a most rare interleague matchup. Because of schedule quirks, the Mets and White Sox had played just three prior games since AL vs. NL action began in 1997. Only Texas and St. Louis have met so infrequently they've played three games in the regular season, plus seven in the 2011 World Series.

It was nearly historic, too.

Harvey neared a no-hitter for the second time this season. He held Minnesota hitless for 6 2-3 innings on April 13 until Justin Morneau homered off the foul pole.

In his 17th big league start, the solidly built right-hander bid for even more. Already hailed as the face of the franchise's future, the 24-year-old Harvey nearly pitched a game for the ages.

The White Sox hadn't come close to a hit when Rios hit a grounder in the hole in the seventh. The crowd instantly gasped, sensing trouble.

Mets shortstop Ruben Tejada did his best, gloving the ball on the edge of the infield dirt and making a jump throw. First baseman Ike Davis made a long stretch and caught the ball cleanly, but Rios was safe by a shade. The fans groaned when first base umpire Mark Carlson correctly called him safe.

Harvey got a big ovation as he settled in to face the next hitter, then fanned Adam Dunn for his 10th strikeout. The crowd of 23,394 stood as Harvey walked to the dugout, where manager Terry Collins met him with a fist bump.

The Mets have had only one no-hitter in their history, last June 1 by Johan Santana against St. Louis.

Pitching after six off days, Harvey overpowered the White Sox with a fastball in the upper 90s mph and got them guessing with a sharp breaking ball and pinpoint changeup.

Harvey is 4-0 with a 1.28 ERA after seven starts. He's allowed just 22 hits in 49 1-3 innings, striking out 58 and walking 12.

White Sox starter Hector Santiago nearly matched Harvey, blanking the Mets on four singles before leaving after the seventh. He also drew a few cheers from local fans, having grown up in nearby Newark, N.J. Santiago struck out eight, walked two and threw 111 pitches.

Davis drew a leadoff walk in the 10th and moved up on a sacrifice bunt by Juan Lagares. Baxter batted for Parnell and singled into the right-field corner.

The White Sox had never visited the Mets since interleague play began. The White Sox had played in Queens, however most recently on Aug. 21, 1975, when they beat the Yankees at Shea Stadium. That was during a two-year period when the Yankees moved into the Mets' ballpark while Yankee Stadium was being remodeled.

The only previous Mets-White Sox series was in Chicago in June 2002. Paul Konerko homered three times in those three games while current White Sox coach Joe McEwing played for the Mets.

White Sox manager Robin Ventura helped the Mets reach the 2000 World Series and said before the game "there's good feelings coming in here." Mets owner Fred Wilpon, former Mets teammate John Franco and several stadium workers greeted Ventura on the field during batting practice.

For some Mets fans, this game might've rekindled a night former star Dwight Gooden pitched as a rookie in 1984 late that year, he dominated the Cubs with a one-hitter, allowing only an infield single by Keith Moreland.

Gooden has followed Harvey's rise and tweeted this as the game went to extra innings: "Matt "THE REAL DEAL" Harvey... Enough said!"

NOTES: Konerko got a day off and Dunn played first. ... There was a brief delay in the sixth when Santiago was due up. He wasn't ready to bat and plate umpire Dan Iassogna went over to the dugout to get him. Santiago came trotting to the plate. ... The Mets visit the White Sox for two games in late June. ... White Sox RHP Jake Peavy, scratched from two starts because of back spasms, is set to start Wednesday night vs. Mets RHP Jeremy Hefner. Santiago had been starting in Peavy's place. ... Mets reliever Frank Francisco (elbow inflammation) is ready to move up a level, Collins said. Francisco pitched two straight days for Class A St. Lucie.

NEW YORK (AP) -- U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor has said she wants to be called just "Sonia from the Bronx."

And on Sunday, the first Hispanic justice on the nation's highest court explained why, saying "you can't come from the world I grew up in, the South Bronx, without feeling the frenzy of exile, constantly."

She spoke at Cooper Union, a private college in Manhattan's East Village where Abraham Lincoln once gave a speech against slavery.

The justice said she wasn't "doing press" on an evening in her hometown that ended with hugs from some members of the audience who asked her to sign their copies of her memoir, "My Beloved World."The best-selling book was published earlier this year with what she called Sunday "some baring of my own heart."

She spoke on the closing night of the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature in New York City, which included her conversation with scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr.

It was hardly a private event.

With a wry smile, Sotomayor said she recognized that "it seems pointless today to exclude the press from any event, when any member of the audience can tweet quotations."

This year's festival has focused on looking at the idea of bravery in art and politics.

The judge's speech came as she and fellow Supreme Court justices are considering three issues dividing the nation: affirmative action, voting rights and gay marriage.

Sotomayor was careful not to reveal her personal opinions, though she conceded that "it is impossible for a homosexual couple today not to be affected by the DOMA and Proposition 8 cases in some way," adding to laughter, "just so you're all clear, I'm not predicting anything."

The federal Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, defines marriage as the union between one man and one woman now being considered by the Supreme Court. The court must also rule on California's Proposition 8, a ban on same-sex marriage.

The justice told the New York audience on Sunday that 2013 is likely to be "a turning point for those whose lives will be changed, for better or for worse, by those rulings."

Born in New York to Puerto Rican parents, Sotomayor was nominated for the Supreme Court in 2009 by President Barack Obama and sworn in later that year.

She said she needs to keep returning to the Bronx, "to the essence of my world, with love, to take strength from."

Sotomayor said that while the streets of her childhood South Bronx were portrayed as "ugly, dirty, crime- and drug-ridden" in movies, she wrote about "the hopes and struggles of the people," about "a beloved world for someone like me."

Officials at the Citizen Safety Department of Mexico State, which surrounds the capital, did not rule out the possibility the death toll could rise. At least a dozen people remained hospitalized late Tuesday, several of them in critical condition.

Gov. Eruviel Avila said late Tuesday that 22 people were known dead in a letter to Pope Francis, with whom he was supposed to meet at the Vatican on Wednesday. Avila said he was returning to Mexico instead.

The state safety department's spokesman, Cesar Diaz, said emergency workers would continue searching through the night in the charred remains of vehicles and homes built near the highway on the northern edge of the metropolis.

Residents pitched in to rescue people from the wreckage of the 5:30 a.m. explosion, crushed and burned cars and shattered homes. Television footage showed plumes of flame shooting out of homes in the pre-dawn darkness.

A huge piece of the truck's gas tank was blown 50 yards by the blast, landing atop the wall of a house and cars parked outside.A number of pigs, goats and other farm animals that were kept on patios were killed.

"It was thunderous sound. I thought we were all going to die," said Rita Enriquez, 42, a housewife who lives nearby. "When we ran out, we saw a car on fire and flames everywhere. Smoke was pouring all over the freeway."

Mario Lopez, 43, a mechanic, lives in the house hit by the tank and managed to escape with his three sons after being awakened by the blast.

"All the windows broke to the inside. We got down and left crawling," said Lopez, who lost a brother, a sister, three nephews and a sister-in-law who all lived in separate units of the three-story home. He said 12 people in all died in the house."Everything was in flames," he said.

Enriquez said five of her relatives were gravely injured in their concrete slab home along the road, though she had no other details as she waited for word outside Magdalena Las Salinas Hospital in Mexico City.

Her 15-year-old niece, Wendy Garrido, who was pregnant, was forced to give birth after the explosion, she said. They survived but both were in intensive care, Health Secretary Cesar Gomez said.

The pre-dawn disaster exposed two recurrent public safety issues in Mexico: extremely heavy trucks that are frequently involved in serious accidents, and the construction of improvised homes just feet away from major highways.

Some of the cinderblock homes hit by the huge explosion were just steps from the busy, eight-lane highway. Other homes were mere shacks, built of sheet tin.

Lopez said the highway recently had been widened, bringing traffic perilously closer to their dwellings.

"They never thought a car could hit them or an explosion of this magnitude," said Maribel Juarez, the cousin of another family killed in the explosion. "Now we have to bury their coffins and our family members are never going to return."

The driver, Juan Olivares, 36, was heading south from the city of Pachuca to Mexico City in a tractor that was hauling two gas tanks on tandem trailers, said Jose Luis Cervantes, an assistant state prosecutor. He said the vehicle belonged to the Termogas company.

Cervantes said the tractor hit a center divider and broke apart, with one tank flying into a house and exploding, killing 15 people, and another part of a tank hitting a separate house, killing four.

State security officials counted 33 people with various injuries.

The driver, who was under detention while being treated at a hospital, could face manslaughter and property damage charges, the prosecutor said.

"We just pulled burned people, and put out the fire in the houses, but we don't really know what happened," said Rogelio Martinez, a resident.

Emergency personnel at the scene pulled dead from their homes, some apparently burned in their beds. An Associated Press journalist saw rescue workers carry three bodies, covered with white sheets, from one home.

One small passenger van had been totally gutted by flames and tossed against the wall of one of the many improvised houses next to the highway.

Hundreds of police, ambulance drivers, paramedics, soldiers and firefighters gathered at the scene.

Pablo Bedolla, the mayor of Ecatepec, a mainly working-class area, said 20 homes and one school had been damaged by the blast. The explosion happened before class hours, so there were no apparent injuries in the school.

"People are very shaken, above all because of the injuries and the large number of dead," Bedolla said. "I've spoken with the families of the victims, and they are just sobbing."

The explosion closed the highway between Mexico City and Pachuca for hours.

Speaking in Mexico City, President Enrique Pena Nieto suggested something would have to be done to separate major highways from poor neighborhoods.

"I have instructed the Transportation Department ... to review the safety conditions on this federal highway in places where structures have been built on the right of way, so that in the near future, work can be carried out to make it safer," Pena Nieto said.

Often in Mexico, squatters settle on rights of way, the strips of land on either side of a highway or railway line that are intended to be buffer zones. The gradual spread of shacks creates neighborhoods that are inherently unsafe.

This highway, however, was recently expanded, so it was unclear whether the land occupied by homes was legally settled.

The Mexican government also appears to have realized it has a big problem with over-weight trucks. Such trucks, often unsafely operated, have been involved in a number of spectacular, deadly accidents in recent years.

On Tuesday, the Transportation Department announced it had set up a panel of experts to study the issue of maximum allowable weights, "to set out opinions on eventually changing the weight standards, or drawing up a new set of rules."

One year ago, the Mexican government announced measures to tighten inspections and lower maximum allowed weights for some freight trucks after protests over a string of deadly accidents involving double-trailer trucks like the one involved in Tuesday' disaster.

Mexico has allowed trucks to travel highways with loads of up to 80 metric tons and lengths exceeding 100 feet, compared to a U.S. limit of 80,000 pounds, or 40 tons, on interstate highways.

In April 2012, a double-trailer truck on a two-lane road in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz lost its rear trailer, which slammed into a bus carrying farm workers, killing 43 people.

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Associated Press writers Mark Stevenson and Gloria Perez contributed to this report.

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AP video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXv190oaFVw

MOSCOW/BEIRUT (Reuters) - Russia and the United States agreed to bury their differences over Syria and to try to convene international talks with both sides in the civil war to end the carnage that is inflaming the Middle East.

Visiting Moscow after Israel bombed targets near Damascus and as President Barack Obama faces new calls to arm the rebels, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Russia had agreed to try to arrange a conference as early as this month involving both President Bashar al-Assad's government and his opponents.

An East-West disagreement that has seen some of the frostiest exchanges between Washington and Moscow since the Cold War has deadlocked U.N. efforts to settle the Syrian conflict for two years, so any rapprochement could bring an international common front closer than it has been for many months.

But with Syria's factional and sectarian hatreds more entrenched than ever after 70,000 deaths, it is far from clear the warring parties are ready to negotiate. There was no immediate comment from the Syrian government, which has offered reforms but dismisses those fighting it as "terrorists".

The late hour of the announcement in Moscow - Kerry was kept waiting for three hours by President Vladimir Putin - also meant leaders of the Western-backed opposition umbrella group the Syrian National Coalition were not available for comment. Many on the body have insisted Assad's exit is a condition for talks.

Inside the country, where rebel groups are numerous and have disparate views, a military commander in the north, Abdeljabbar al-Oqaidi, told Reuters he would want to know details of the U.S.-Russian plan before taking a view. "But," he added, "if the regime were present, I do not believe we would want to attend."

Alarmed at the prospect of the conflict spilling across an already volatile and economically important region, however, the major powers have, as Kerry told Putin on Tuesday, "very significant common interests" in pushing for a settlement.

"The alternative," Kerry later told a joint news conference with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, "is that Syria heads closer to an abyss, if not over the abyss and into chaos.

"The alternative is that the humanitarian crisis will grow. The alternative is that there may be even a break-up of Syria."

GENEVA AGREEMENT

Last year at a conference in Geneva in June, Washington and Moscow agreed on the need for a transitional government in Syria but left open the question of what would happen to Assad, whose departure Obama has called for but which Russia, accusing the West of meddling, says should be a matter for Syrians only.

Rejecting a characterization of Moscow as the protector of Assad, to whose army it has been a major arms suppliers since the days of his father's rule, Lavrov said Russia was not concerned by the fate of "certain" individuals.

"The task now is to convince the government and all the opposition groups ... to sit at the negotiating table," he said.

Kerry said the conference should be held "as soon as is practical - possibly and hopefully by the end of the month". Neither he nor Lavrov said where it might take place.

Kerry said there would be "a growing crescendo of nations who will want to push for a peaceful resolution, rather than the chaos that comes with the break-up of a country".

Kerry said the decision on who takes part in any transitional government should be left to the Syrians.

Lavrov said the aim would be "to persuade the government and the opposition together ... to fully implement the Geneva communique" on creating a transitional government.

Russia, backed by China which shares its mistrust of Western enthusiasm for toppling some autocrats, has refused appeals to consider sanctions on Assad, vetoing three U.N. Security Council resolutions condemning his crackdown on opposition groups.

ASSAD DEFIANT

Recent developments have helped focus minds on the risks of wider war in the Middle East: intelligence reports that Assad's troops may have used chemical weapons had renewed calls for Obama to arm the rebels or even offer U.S. forces; Islamist fighters pledging allegiance to al Qaeda has highlighted how some of the rebels are also hostile to the West; and Israeli air strikes said to target Iranian arms headed for Lebanon's Hezbollah have underlined the risk of escalation.

In what appeared to be another sign of the country's travails, Internet connections between Syria and the outside world were cut off on Tuesday, according to data from Google Inc and other global Internet companies.

Google's Transparency Report pages showed traffic to Google services pages from Syria suddenly stopping shortly before 3 p.m. EDT (1900 GMT). Most websites within Syria were rendered unreachable as well, other experts said, as the county appeared to shut itself off.

REBELS TAKE U.N. PEACEKEEPERS HOSTAGE

Speaking before the announcement in Moscow, Assad was quoted by a sympathetic Lebanese television channel as saying he would defy Israel, the United States and Arab powers who oppose him.

"The recent Israeli aggressions expose the extent of the complicity between the Israeli occupier, regional countries and the West in promoting the current events in Syria," he said.

"The Syrian people and their heroic army ... are capable of confronting this Israeli adventure, which represents one of the faces of terrorism that is targeting Syria every day."

While showing little desire to embroil U.S. forces in Syria after winding down engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama has rejected criticism that he might back out of a commitment to act if Assad crossed a "red line" of using chemical weapons.

On Tuesday, he pointed to the killing of Osama bin Laden and the toppling of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, brought down by a U.S.-backed rebellion, as evidence that "we typically follow through on our commitments". It is still unclear if chemical weapons were used.

The chaos in Syria, where a fifth of the 25 million population has been driven from their homes, was underlined by the latest incident of rebels taking U.N. peacekeepers hostage on the ceasefire line with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon strongly condemned the incident and called for the four Filipinos' immediate release. They were detained as they patrolled close to an area where 21 Filipino observers were held for three days in March.

The Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade said the peacekeepers were seized for their own safety during clashes in the area.

More widely, the violence in a religiously and ethnically diverse country at the heart of the Arab and Muslim world has inflamed a confrontation between Iran and its fellow Shi'ite allies like Hezbollah on the one hand and the Sunni Arab powers, including U.S. ally Saudi Arabia, who back the Sunni rebels against Assad's Alawite minority, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam.

Iran, at daggers drawn with Israel and the West over its nuclear program, warned of unforeseeable consequences if Assad were toppled and said only a political settlement to Syria's civil war would avoid a regional conflagration.

"God forbid, if there is any vacuum in Syria, these negative consequences will affect all countries," Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said in Jordan. "No one knows what will happen."

(Additional reporting by Steve Holland in Washington, Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman and Arshad Mohammed, Timothy Heritage, Alexei Anishchuk and Steve Gutterman in Moscow; Writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Alison Williams and Mohammad Zargham)

Karlyn Tilley, a spokeswoman for the Golden Fire Department, tells The Denver Post (http://bit.ly/10EYRgW ) the man was climbing with his two adult children while using technical gear at a popular cliff about 20 miles west of Denver. She says he fell at about 1 p.m. Saturday.

About a dozen climbers who were nearby helped with the rescue and brought the man off the mountain within an hour of the fall.

Tilley says the man was unresponsive and not breathing when paramedics arrived.

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Information from: The Denver Post, http://www.denverpost.com

TAIPEI (Reuters) - Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC Corp will struggle to improve its margins this year as it increases marketing spend for its latest model in a bid to catch up to rivals Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Apple Inc.

HTC on Thursday forecast strong sales of its flagship HTC One smartphone to lift second-quarter revenues by almost two-thirds to T$70 billion ($2.37 billion).

Operating margins were also expected to widen to between 1 and 3 percent from the previous quarter's 0.1 percent, as HTC spends more on a campaign to improve its brand image. HTC's third-quarter 2012 operating margins were 7 percent.

"We're improving the HTC marketing execution. It's the first time since HTC developed its brand that we are really integrating brand, product and marketing all together," HTC Chief Executive Peter Chou told an investor conference call.

He did not give specific figures but the company said in March its digital media marketing budget for the first half of this year would increase 250 percent year-on-year, while the budget for traditional media will double.

Investors, however, were cautious about the HTC One's longer-term prospects as both Apple and Samsung have much deeper pockets and are more established brands.

"Samsung basically cornered the whole supply chain. To me, HTC is more of a product story: good product, higher stock price," said Hong Kong-based portfolio manager Michiel Van Voorst, who manages $1.2 billion in Asian equities for Robeco.

"I think investors will be a bit more reluctant now to price the stock at earnings that have not yet materialized," added Van Voorst, who substantially cut his holdings in HTC late last year after the company repeatedly missed profit forecasts.

The HTC One, currently available in five countries including China, runs a version of Google Inc's Android software that allows users to customize their homescreen.

Research firm Daiwa Capital, in a recent report, said HTC One was one of the top-five best selling smartphones offered by U.S. carriers and that it was out of stock at some operators and retailers in Britain, Germany and Taiwan.

KGI Securities analyst Richard Ko believes this popularity may be short-lived.

"While we think HTC's shipments will rebound strongly in Q2, we also think Samsung and other second tier players will continue to exert pressure on HTC," he said. "We remain cautious because of HTC's execution capability and long-term structural weaknesses."

Delays in the full launch of the HTC One due to a shortage of a camera component led HTC to report a record-low net profit in the previous quarter.

Future sales volumes were also thrown into doubt after rival Nokia Oyj won a court injunction last week that would prevent HTC from using microphone components made by STMicroelectronics NV in HTC One phones.

HTC has said it does not expect the decision to have any immediate impact on sales, and that it will find other suppliers once its inventory of STMicroelectronics microphones runs out.

HTC was the world's 10th-biggest smartphone maker by shipments in the fourth quarter, according to IT research firm Gartner, jostling in a crowded field behind Samsung and Apple.

Shares in HTC have slipped 1.8 percent this year, underperforming the broader market's 5.6 percent rise. On Thursday, HTC shares closed down 2 percent compared to a 0.43 percent rise in the main share index.

(Corrects timing of when fund manger cut holding in paragraph 8)

(Additional reporting by Jonathan Gordon; Editing by Miral Fahmy)

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In theory, the amendment would take effect unless Congress passes a disapproval resolution and President Barack Obama signs it. But both the White House and Senate Democrats have shown strong support for greater independence for the district, so that is highly unlikely.

Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat who represents the District of Columbia in Congress says it's unclear what will happen if the referendum passes.

Some fear the amendment will backfire or that it won't get the district any closer to its long-stated goal of spending local tax dollars without congressional approval.

Sitting before this perfectly coiffed blond businesswoman in a sun-lit corner office in her Rio de Janeiro headquarters, it's hard to picture her hacking though bovine femurs with a surgical saw to make ornamental loops for her first bikini bottoms. But steely determination that propelled Niemeyer from her garage atelier to the summit of the Brazilian fashion industry still glints in her grey eyes.

"It was all improvised. I had no idea what I was doing and one thing just led to another," said Niemeyer, seated at a desk littered with sketches, heavy art books and a rainbow of spandex swatches the inspiration for the spring-summer 2013 collection that hits the runway on Wednesday at Fashion Rio, the city's five-day-long fashion extravaganza that began on Monday.

Known for her use of muted earth tones and the clean, almost architectural lines of her swimwear, Niemeyer sells some 350,000 pieces a year, mostly at her 26 boutiques throughout the country, but also at multi-mark shops in Britain, France, the Bahamas and in 23 U.S. states. Recent signature pieces include a bikini in slate gray, an asymmetrical one-piece with a wavy metallic stripe down one side and a cage-like long-sleeve one-piece made from a mesh of 1 centimeter-wide strips of spandex.

While still almost alarmingly itsy-bitsy by American standards, Lenny's bikinis are less revealing than most bikinis here, and less flashy and cutesy than the bubblegum pink offerings of many swimwear labels here. Though Lenny's customers run the age gamut from adolescent gamines to sexy seniors, her devotees are widely regarded as mature and self-assured. Lenny emphatically doesn't count the teenyboppers - fans of things shiny who are bent on showing a maximum of skin - that constitute the core customer base for so many other Brazilian swimwear brands.

The brand of choice for well-heeled Brazilians for more than two decades, Lenny leaped to international fame in 2007, when Nicole Kidman wore one of her swimsuits in a racy "Vanity Fair" spread then ordered several Lenny suits of her own. Lenny's swimwear bikinis make regular appearances in Vogues the world over, helping her win a legion of heavy-hitting fans who include celebrated fashion designer Carolina Herrera and pop sensation Lady Gaga, who donned a turquoise strapless number by the designer while in Rio last year.

Brazilian-born, London-based socialite Andrea Dellal swears by Lenny's beachwear. Whether she's on the beach in Ipanema or a yacht in Capri, you can bet Dellal's swimsuits, cover-ups and tunics are all from the label.

Top models including Naomi Campbell, Mariacarla Boscono, Isabeli Fontana and Gisele Bundchen have walked in Lenny's shows.

In Brazil, where her bikinis which start at around $125 are among the most expensive on the market, she's adored.

"Lenny took beachwear to another category," said Alexandra Farah, a fashion columnist on the BandNews television network. "She took it from something that was really a little vulgar, all about showing skin and looing sexy, and she made it into something elegant, that breathes chic.

"And it feels very natural, not forced, because she leads the kind of lifestyle the brand is all about, one that's full of elegance and sophistication."

The daughter of a sugar cane and orange grower, Niemeyer is a native of Santos, a port city that rubs shoulders with Brazil's industrial megalopolis, Sao Paulo. She describes herself as an artsy kid, into drawing and painting. After studying fine arts in college, she fell into a job as a landscape designer, planning gardens and yards for private clients.

Her marriage to neurosurgeon Paulo Niemeyer, nephew of Brazil's legendary late architect Oscar Niemeyer, and subsequent move to Rio cut her off from her landscaping clients, but Niemeyer wasn't one to stay home.

"In Sao Paulo then, in the late seventies, beachwear was still pretty conservative, so everyone there looked to Rio for more provocative styles," said Niemeyer. "My friends in Sao Paulo were always asking me to bring them back bikinis, and I thought 'why not try?'"

And so she launched into her garage-based endeavor, at first modifying store-bought bikinis and then stitching her own out of whatever materials she could get her hands on.Rings made from cow bones, sliced with her husband's surgical saw and chemically treated to keep them from decomposing, became the initial adornment of choice.

"I didn't really know how to sew, so some of the bikinis turned out a bit weird, but it was a good learning experience," she said.

Despite a series of stumbling blocks including a flood that destroyed her little home atelier, demand for her pieces grew, quickly expanding beyond her circle of friends. Niemeyer hired proper seamstresses, most of them women from Rio's "favela" hillside slums who worked for samba schools, stitching extravagant Carnival costumes.

"When I was pregnant with my second child, I was constantly heading up to the slums to drop off, pick up or check on orders," said Niemeyer. "I was up there so often that my then-husband said, 'our kid's going to be born in a favela." (She wasn't.)

After years-worth of selling her pieces to established brands that would slap their own labels on the pieces, Niemeyer opened her first store in the chic beachfront neighborhood of Ipanema in the early 1990s.

Her ever-expanding empire has grown to more than two dozen stores throughout Brazil, and she now employs some 180 seamstresses who churn out roughly 30,000 pieces a month at her humming headquarters-cum-factory .

"It used to be that people looked down at swimwear designers and even in Brazil we weren't really consider proper fashion designers," said Niemeyer. "Now, the entire world looks to Brazil for our swimwear. It's pretty amazing."