BEIJING (Reuters) - The Miami Heat's Dwyane Wade visited China on Wednesday for the first time since signing a multi-million dollar contract with Chinese sportswear company Li Ning last year, but the sneakers that bear his name are in short supply.

Chinese stores are slowly being re-stocked with the "Way of Wade" shoes, but they won't be widely available on U.S. markets for some time.

With hundreds of fans cheering at a promotional event in Beijing, the six foot-four inch tall Wade chest-thumped the diminutive Chinese host on stage and towered over Olympic gymnast Li Ning, the founder of the company that bears his name.

"Li Ning is what I believe in, it's my style," the NBA superstar said, wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with his face and the signature gold and black Wade sneakers.

But Li Ning has left customers on both sides of the Pacific wanting for the Wade shoes, unable even to profit from the Heat being crowned NBA champions last month. Wade's teammate LeBron James's Nike sneakers recorded the highest U.S. sales of any NBA player last year, drawing $300 million.

It's not known how many pairs of Wade sneakers have been made and sold so far but it's only in the region of a few thousand. Most basketball fans scouring stores and the Internet for the shoes outside China are coming up empty-handed.

In China, some stores have been given stocks since the beginning of the month.

Li Ning, backed by Singapore sovereign fund GIC and U.S. private equity firm TPG Capital, lured Wade from rival Nike last year in a sponsorship deal worth an estimated $100 million over 10 years.

The company is cagey about its strategy and divulged no details of manufacturing capacity or projected sales for the Wade sneakers.

"Making revenue with this was a secondary consideration for us," executive vice chairman Jin-Goon Kim told reporters.

"We're trying very hard to increase capacity," he said, citing the limited number of factories that can manufacture Wade's shoes.

"One of the things that really made it more difficult to scale up is Wade is so meticulous. These shoes are really complicated," said Kim.

The company, which is refocusing efforts on China after posting a $318.8 million loss last year, is struggling even on its home turf, with few resources to spare for other markets.

But it may be getting its act together. Besides the start of the re-stocking, the NBA superstar will visit Shanghai and Guangdong to promote the shoes.

However, overseas markets, including the United States, will come only later.

"We have to first serve our Chinese consumers because there is so much demand here that we cannot fulfill," said Kim.

Franklin Yao, managing partner of Shanghai-based strategy consulting firm SmithStreetSolutions, said the sneakers were aimed at the Chinese market since there was no distribution in the United States and the shoes were only available in specialty websites or on e-bay.

"They are obviously missing out on potential sales in the U.S., given the buzz that the shoes have generated, but building out U.S. distribution may not be as quick as the opportunity to sign Dwyane Wade was," Yao said.

"The U.S. market itself is just not a focus for Li Ning right now - China is," said James Roy, senior analyst at Shanghai-based China Market Research.

"They don't have any stores in the U.S. and their e-commerce presence has been shut down. This is almost completely about the Chinese market," Roy said.

(Additional reporting by Donny Kwok and Twinnie Siu in Hong Kong; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

"It has been a long and difficult year for us. This is a time of reflection for all to remember Victoria Gaines, my beautiful daughter, whose life was senselessly and needlessly lost last 4thof July. I just hope that Victoria's memorycan serve as a reminderto allmotorboat owners and operatorsto be more cautious, and remember that there are lives at stake every time they leave the dock. This tragedy should be a wake up call to all legislators to enact and enforce Victoria's Law for stricter boating safety regulations. Victoria's brother, Ryan, who survived the nightmare 4th of July cruise, joins me in wishing everyone a safeIndependence Day."

Michael Della, Esq., of Gruenberg, Kelly, Della, of Ronkonkoma, New York, counsel for the Gaines family, stated, "The family and friends of Victoria Gaines continue to grieve one year after her death aboard the 34-foot 'flybridge' cabin cruiser as it was returning from a holiday fireworks cruise just off Oyster Bay. They have been courageous in pressing authorities for stricter boating regulations including the prominent posting of permitted-capacity placards on all motorboats that could help prevent future loss of life by avoiding dangerous overcrowding."

SOURCE Gruenberg Kelly Della

Robson, 19, tipped to be a future top 10 player by world number one Serena Williams, trailed by a set and 5-3 before rallying to reel off eight games in a row and seize control.

British number one Robson is now guaranteed to break into the world's top 30 after equalling her best grand slam showing after reaching the last 16 at last year's U.S. Open.

She next faces Estonian Kaia Kanepi or American wildcard Alison Riske with a potential quarter-final looming against five-times champion Serena.

Sam Smith was the last British woman to reach the fourth round at Wimbledon in 1998.

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) - Corey Stoll said one of the turning points in his life came when he was a "morbidly obese" teenager, trying to choose roles for an acting showcase at his high school.

"Someone said, How about the Elephant Man? How about the Hunchback of Notre Dame?'" Stoll told TheWrap. "I mean, these are amazing roles, but are these the only roles I'm good for?"

Shedding weight allowed Stoll, now an athletic-looking 37-year-old, to play the dashing Ernest Hemingway in Woody Allen's "Midnight in Paris" and to land the lead in FX's upcoming series "The Strain." But he said that his issues with food still affect his careerincluding his role as Peter Russo, "House of Cards'" alcoholic congressman.

You took up boxing to play Hemingway. What did you do to play Russo, a philandering alcoholic?

Well, I did not become an alcoholic. In fact, I was actually pretty clean when I was shooting it because I knew I had to do some nude scenes. So I was living a very healthy, active lifestyle. I did a lot of reading about recovery, and I found that very helpful. David Carr's autobiography "The Night of the Gun" was really interesting, and Augusten Burrough's "Dry." And speaking with Beau, who's in recovery.

Did you visit AA meetings to see what they're like?

I wanted to, and then it felt a little ... I didn't want to just observe people while they poured their hearts out. I don't know what it's like to be addicted to substances, but I know what it's like to be out of control. I know what it's like to overeat. That's something I've struggled with. I figured it was going to be more potent for me to deal with that lack of control on my terms than to try to inhabit somebody else's addiction.

When did you struggle with overeating?

I was a fat kid in junior high school and high school, and around the end of high school I really buckled down and decided I wanted to be a different person by the time I got to college. And I still swing every year a good bunch of weight. I can kind of relate to that boom-and-bust cycle. That was kind of my way in, instead of trying to do some weird thing where I got really drunk and recorded myself or something like that.

Did being overweight as a kid turn you into a fitness fanatic? I become a fitness fanatic for a few months every year. My vision of Peter Russo is when he was in recovery he was really good at it. Until he was off the wagon.

Russo faces more temptation than most people do: A call girl throws herself at him, trying to get him to drink. What I really love about the way Beau wrote that is the obvious choice would have been to have him at his lowest ebb, to have something really awful happen to him to drive him to drink. Instead, everything's really going great, and it's a celebratory drink. That's what's so pernicious about addiction. It's not just depression that can trigger it.

Going through what you did, is it hard to be on camera?

The more I'm a character, the easier it is. I can't stand looking at photos of myself on a red carpet or something like that. And those times when I'm feeling thinner or I'm in better shape, it's definitely easier to watch.

Is that why you underwent such a physical transformation in "Midnight in Paris," and had the mustache when you were on "Law & Order: Los Angeles"?

There was sort of ... inertia involved in that. I'd grown a mustache because I was playing Vershinin in this production of "Three Sisters," and I had this big Stalin-esque mustache. Then I went straight from that to "A View From the Bridge," where I played an immigrant from Italy in the 1950s, and that's when Woody Allen saw me and cast me, and the mustache seemed to work for that.

And then I went to "Law & Order," and it seemed perfect for a cop. Halfway through they asked me to shave it. And I'm so glad I did, because it can define you. Especially when you don't have hair on your head, your eyes definitely go straight to it. When you don't have hair, it's fun to have something that can change your look.

If you look a certain way, people say you'll be a character actor.

I will always be a character actor of some sort because of my look. And I happen to be very lucky to have been born at a time when you can be more than a biker or a prisoner with a shaved head.

But you're going to be the lead in The Strain. You have a romantic subplot in House of Cards. You're getting leading man-type roles.

I'll never not feel like a character actor. I don't think it's a bad thing. I think feeling like you have to transform for a role is the only way I know how to do it. Often the roles I feel like are the closest to me are the most challenging. I try to find some hook that's really different from me, whether it's an accent or a hairpiece or some kind of prosthetic.

Does "The Strain" feel like a mustache role?

No, I don't think so. We're in the early phases of figuring out the look of the whole show.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's Nikkei will rise 51 percent in 2013 on expectations of higher company earnings, driven by a weaker yen after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe embarked on radical fiscal and monetary expansionary policies to spur growth, a Reuters poll showed,

A gradual economic recovery in the United States, Japan's biggest export market, will also help reignite buying in Japanese stocks after a bout of selling in recent weeks pushed the benchmark index briefly into bear market territory.

The Nikkeiis expected to rise to 15,700 points by the end of 2013, which would mark its biggest annual percentage rise since 1972, according to the median forecast of 18 analysts polled by Reuters in the past week.

That compared with Monday's close of 13,033.12.

The previous poll in March had predicted that the index would reach 14,000 by end-2013.

"Abenomics' first arrow, or monetary easing, has been successful as it has fixed the excessively strong yen, and as a result it will lift company profits," said Masayuki Kubota, senior fund manager at Daiwa SBI Investments.

Abe's push to reflate the world's third-largest economy, dubbed "Abenomics", has revived foreign investors' interest in Japanese markets.

But the Nikkei suffered a sharp correction in recent weeks, with the index falling to as low as 12,415.85 last week, a level not seen before the Bank of Japan announced sweeping monetary easing in early April as investors worried the U.S. Federal Reserve would soon begin to taper back its massive stimulus program.

The index was also looking overbought on a technical basis, after rallying more than 80 percent from mid-November to a 5-1/2 peak on May 23.

Kubota added that Abe's so-called "third policy arrow", which includes participation in the Trans-Pacific Economic Partnership trade talks, will serve as a long-term growth strategy.

"The third arrow is overlooked as it has no immediate impact. But expanding exports means a lot to the economy, and it should have a positive impact in the long term," he said.

Market observers said investors would continue buying into exporters such as autos and machinery companies, whose earnings are expected to rise this fiscal year ending March, helped by a weaker yen, which boosts companies' competitiveness overseas and their earnings when repatriated.

"Most companies base their earnings on the assumption that the dollar will trade between 90-95 yen. We based our assumption at 100 yen to the dollar, but even at 95 yen, a lot of them can still post record profits," said Hiromichi Tamura, chief strategist at Nomura Securities, who expects the Nikkei to hit 18,000 by the end of the year.

By mid-2014, the Nikkei is expected to rise only slightly more to 16,000, according to the poll.

Risks include a steep rise in the long-term interest rate, which could spur fears about higher mortgage loan interest rates, possibly hurting real estate and bank shares and dampening sentiment.

Analysts noted that next year's planned consumption tax hike could also be a risk, which could hurt consumer spending.

"An adverse effect from the weaker yen will likely surface in the fall or the winter," said Makoto Kikuchi, the chief executive of Myojo Asset Management, adding that rising material prices could hurt companies' bottom-lines, while higher consumer prices could impact family finances.

(Editing by Kim Coghill)

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Up-and-coming actress Maika Monroe has booked the female lead opposite Dan Stevens in "The Guest," a psychological thriller from the filmmaking team behind Lionsgate's upcoming horror movie "You're Next."

Adam Wingard will direct from a script by Simon Barrett, while Keith Calder and Jessica Wu will produce via Snoot Entertainment. Production starts this summer.

Stevens ("Downton Abbey") stars as David, an ex-Marine who returns from a tour of duty a changed man and terrorizes a military family whose eldest son recently died.

Monroe will play Anna, the female lead who is suspicious of David and must protect her younger brother from his cold-blooded wrath.

The 20 year-old actress, who recently starred opposite Zac Efron in "At Any Price," will next be seen as a key character in Jason Reitman's "Labor Day." A former professional kiteboarder, she also appeared briefly in Sofia Coppola's "The Bling Ring."

A terrifying original horror movie, "You're Next" premiered at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival and will finally hit U.S. theaters on August 23 via Lionsgate.

Monroe is repped by WME, Luber Roklin Entertainment and attorney Fred Toczek.

Thousands of fans who ditched work and painted their faces red and black roared I appreciation as the buses paraded past carrying waving players in red jerseys. Captain Jonathan Toews triumphantly hoisted the silver trophy over his head.

Crowds had jammed entrances to the rally site at Grant Park next to Lake Michigan since before dawn while some die-hard fans camped out there over night, ready to sprint to the big stage at the front of the park the minute police swung barriers aside. By the time buses delivered the players and their families, the park was packed.

Supporters along the parade route waved signs reading, "Thank you, guys" and, "Best 17 seconds of my life" referring to the pair of goals scored just seconds apart in the final minutes of the Hawks' 3-2 victory over the Boston Bruins on Monday night.

Some fans hauled homemade versions of the Stanley Cup, including one fashioned from an empty beer keg. Twenty-somethings Courtney Baldwin and Meghan O'Kane, from the city's suburbs, slapped together their tribute to the trophy from a jumble of jugs and plastic bowls painted grey. Early in the morning, it was not yet full of frothy beverage.

"It will be this afternoon," Baldwin said.

One fan who dashed to the front of the park to get a spot near the stage was Michael Wilczynski, a 26-year-old sales associate from the suburbs. His father took him to his first game and they partied together downtown during the 2010 victory.

"My dad died in February. We came to 2010. I'm not going to miss this. I had to be here," he said.

The Blackhawks gave the city something to celebrate as the Cubs and White Sox grind through another lost summer and after the Bears failed to make the playoffs in each of the last two seasons.

And fans took note.

"We love the Blackhawks. This is history and this is a championship, unlike the Cubs," O'Kane said, taking a shot at a team that hasn't won a World Series since 1908. It was the second time the Blackhawks have brought the Stanley Cup home in three years.

This season's victory was dramatic. Trailing Boston until the final minutes, Chicago scored twice in 17 seconds. Delirious fans bolted from bars to celebrate in the streets. Car horns blared.

The party roared overnight and into the next day as the team returned from Boston and, making good on an NHL tradition, toted the Cup around bars and restaurants to the delight of onlookers and fans who tried to keep up.

Sarah Schmidt, 22, who grew up in Chicago and made the pilgrimage to Friday's celebrations from Milwaukee, telling her boss she was taking the day off no matter what and hoping she would still have her bar tending job when the party was over.

"I can't miss this," she said.

BRASILIA/BELO HORIZONTE (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of Brazilians took to the streets on Wednesday in new demonstrations calling for a crackdown on corruption and better public services, just a day after Congress ceded to some of the key demands galvanizing protests across the country.

In Belo Horizonte, authorities said 40,000 people gathered to demand improved education and healthcare as Brazil's third-largest city hosted a Confederations Cup semi-final soccer game between Brazil and Uruguay in a warm-up for the 2014 World Cup.

Hooded youths threw stones at police who used teargas to stop marchers 1-1/2 miles from the stadium. A banner hung from a bridge read "FIFA go home" in reference to the world soccer body. FIFA's president, Sepp Blatter, attended the game, which was not disrupted by the protests.

In Brasilia, demonstrators kicked soccer balls over a police cordon in the direction of Congress in a peaceful protest against the billions of dollars Brazil has spent building new stadiums for the global tournaments under President Dilma Rousseff. Protesters say funds should have been used to improve public services including health, education and transport.

Police deployed in force and shut off traffic in the central esplanade of Brazil's modernistic capital, where federal ministries allowed their employees to go home early.

About 2,000 people marched peacefully in the northeastern city of Recife to denounce corruption.

Almost two weeks after a wave of discontent suddenly erupted into Brazil's biggest protests in 20 years, the country's shaken political leadership is scrambling to respond to popular pressure for change.

The Senate approved a bill on Wednesday that stiffens sentences for corruption, one day after Congress rejected a constitutional amendment that limited the power of federal prosecutors to investigate crimes, a measure protesters saw as a self-serving move by politicians to avoid corruption probes.

"Our representatives are listening to the people now. We are creating a new political consciousness," said Amanda Caetano, spokeswoman for a group in Brasilia demanding an end to the privileges enjoyed by politicians.

Demonstrations on Wednesday were smaller than protests last week, which peaked when 1 million people poured onto the streets on Thursday, causing civil unrest rarely seen in the recently booming economic powerhouse of South America. Political analysts say sporadic protests may become a feature of daily life in Brazil for the foreseeable future.

In another response to the protests, the lower house of Congress voted overnight in favor of a bill allocating royalties from future oil production to education and health programs. A Senate committee approved a measure that would cut taxes on public transport, making it easier for cities and states to lower bus and subway fares.

It was a relatively small protest against higher transport fares, and the ensuing police crackdown, that ignited the unrest in Latin America's largest nation earlier this month.

Several Brazilian cities have since agreed to roll back the fare increases, but the leaderless protest movement has widened its focus to a litany of grievances, from deficient public transit services to a "gay cure" bill introduced in Congress by Evangelical lawmakers that would allow psychologists to treat homosexuality as an illness.

One common theme remains: a deep distrust of a political class that is widely viewed as corrupt, overpaid and more worried about serving itself than society at large.

Most of the protests have unfolded peacefully, though some have been marred by vandalism and looting. On June 20, for instance, a demonstration by an estimated 40,000 people in Brasilia turned violent when vandals threw Molotov cocktails at the building that houses Brazil's Foreign Ministry.

CALLS FOR POLITICAL REFORM

The demonstrations have jolted politicians of all stripes and clouded the outlook for the left-leaning Rousseff, who is expected to seek a second presidential term next year.

Rousseff sought to defuse the protests by proposing on Monday that Brazil hold a plebiscite convening a constituent assembly to make the political system more accountable and transparent.

The proposal lasted 24 hours. Rousseff withdrew the plan for an assembly late on Tuesday after politicians and lawyers questioned the legality of a president bypassing Congress to amend the constitution.

Her Workers' Party and its allies in the coalition government are now discussing a national referendum on political reforms later this year after consulting Congress.

Many, including the chief justice of Brazil's Supreme Court, doubt that a meaningful overhaul of the political system will prosper without input from the public.

Political analysts are waiting to see how the protests will affect Rousseff's approval ratings in new opinion polls. Her popularity had already begun to slip before the protests, hurt by concerns about high inflation and a sluggish economy.

(Additional reporting by Maria Carolina Marcello; Editing by Todd Benson, Paul Simao and Mohammad Zargham)

The Austrian parachutist known as "Fearless Felix" reached 843.6 mph, according to the official numbers released Monday. That's equivalent to Mach 1.25, or 1.25 times the speed of sound.

His top speed initially was estimated last October at 834 mph, or Mach 1.24.

Either way, he became the first human to break the sound barrier with only his body. He wore a pressurized suit and jumped from a capsule hoisted by a giant helium balloon over New Mexico.

Baumgartner was supersonic for a half-minute "quite remarkable," according to Brian Utley, the official record-keeping official who was present for the Oct. 14 feat. His heart rate remained below 185 beats a minute, and his breathing was fairly steady.

The leap was from an altitude of 127,852 feet. That's 248 feet lower than original estimates.

"He jumped from a little bit lower, but he actually went a little bit faster, which was pretty exciting," said Art Thompson, technical project director for the Red Bull-sponsored project.

"It's fun for us to see reaching Mach speeds and proving out a lot of the safety systems," Thompson said in a phone interview from his aerospace company in Lancaster, Calif.

Thompson said everything pretty much unfolded as anticipated, with no surprises in the final report. The updated records were provided by Utley, official observer for the National Aeronautic Association's contest and records board. Utley was in Roswell, N.M., for Baumgartner's grand finale jump.

In the foreword of the 71-page report, Baumgartner said he never imagined how many people would share in his dream to make a supersonic free fall from so high.

Some 52 million people watched You Tube's live stream of the exploit.

The scientific and engineering experts who helped bring him back alive "broke boundaries in their own fields just as surely as I broke the sound barrier," Baumgartner wrote.

Baumgartner shattered the previous record for a free fall plunge, made by Joe Kittinger, an Air Force officer, in 1960. Kittinger did not quite reach supersonic speed during his jump from 19.5 miles up.

The Shenzhou 10 spacecraft, China's fifth manned space mission since 2003, completed the final trial docking with the Tiangong (Heavenly Palace) 1, critical in Beijing's quest to build a working space station by 2020.

China Central Television showed the re-entry of the capsule, dangling from an orange parachute, and its landing on flat grasslands shortly after 8 a.m. China time.

China successfully carried out its first manned docking exercise with Tiangong 1 last June, a milestone in an effort to acquire the technological and logistical skills to run a full space station that can house people for long periods.

The Shenzhou 10 was commanded by Nie Haisheng, with Zhang Xiaoguang and female astronaut Wang Yaping also on board.

The astronauts began emerging about 90 minutes after landing, helped out of the nose of the capsule by workers in white jumpsuits and into waiting chairs, smiling and waving to the TV camera.

"It's good to be home," Nie told CCTV. "Space is our dream. The motherland is always our home."

Wang gave a 50-minute televised physics lecture last week on the effects of weightlessness, widely viewed by middle school students around the country.

"This mission made me realize two dreams: my dream of flying to outer space, and my dream of being a teacher," she told CCTV. "If you have a dream, you can succeed."

The Global Times, a tabloid published by the same company that puts out the official Communist Party newspaper the People's Daily, echoed some criticism among the public about the expense of China's space programme.

"Currently, China's passion to develop space technology mainly lingers at the government level. Some even blame the government for political vanity and question whether the money couldn't be spent improving people's livelihoods," the paper said in an editorial, published before the landing.

The mission went "perfectly", Wang Zhaoyao, director of China's manned space programme, said at a news conference in Beijing.

China is still far from catching up with the established space superpowers, the United States and Russia, which decades ago learned the docking techniques carried out by the Shenzhou 10.

China must still master launching cargo and fuel via space freighters and recycling air and water for extended manned missions, state media have said. Plans call for a working space lab, the Tiangong 2, to be put into orbit in two years.

Beijing insists its space programme is for peaceful purposes, but the U.S. Defense Department has highlighted China's increasing space capabilities and said Beijing is pursuing a variety of activities aimed at preventing its adversaries from using space-based assets during a crisis.

(Reporting and writing by Terril Yue Jones and Michael Martina.; Editing by Nick Macfie)