The circumstances of this low-budget, black-and-white "Much Ado" is already well known: Whedon shot it at his Los Angeles home over just 12 days immediately after production for a slightly larger film he directed: "The Avengers." So this adaptation a Santa Monica house party of one of Shakespeare's great comedies arrives with perhaps a touch of smugness. It's almost surely the only time the Bard has been performed with a suburban golf course in the background.

But Whedon, the fanboy hero of cultishly adored TV shows like "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Firefly," is particularly suited to "Much Ado About Nothing," which Kenneth Branagh adapted in a 1993 film. Whedon can write some of the best banter around, so it's not surprising he feels a connection to Shakespeare's "merry war" of wit. It's fitting, too, that the same man that made a ponytailed teenager a supernatural warrior delights in a play that mocks male fears of female sexuality.

The verbal duel of "Much Ado" pits the proud bachelor Benedick (Alexis Denisof) against the quick-tongued Beatrice (Amy Acker), as they sling clever put-downs back and forth, even as they're drawn together by their scheming friends. Most of the cast (including, memorably, Nathan Fillion as the bumbling Constable Dogberry and Clark Gregg as the governor Leonato) are long-time Whedonites, veterans from his TV shows and films.

Rather than emphasize the Beatrice-Benedick sparring, Whedon's faithfully-adapted "Much Ado" is an amiable ensemble that spills around the director's spacious home (which was designed by Whedon's wife, Kai Cole, a producer on the film). It's a contemporary setting (a song sung in the play, for example, is played on an iPod), but most of the updating is minimal and consists of a whole lot of strewn-about wine glasses.

Fran Kranz plays the swooning Claudio, the suitor of Leonato's daughter, Hero (Jillian Morgese), whose wedding is sabotaged by false rumors of Hero's fidelity started by the villainous Don John (Sean Maher). But the scenario somehow lacks the biting gender commentary of the play.

One would expect Whedon, given his knack for wordplay, to highlight the verbal joisting and really chew the play's choice lines. But much of the acting doesn't make the language pop (Denisof is particularly without snap) and the wan black-and-white photography bleaches the play of its snappiness. Acker ("The Cabin in the Woods") gives a likable and lithe performance, even if its lacks the commanding presence Beatrice deserves.

More effort, it feels, went into making the play feel natural rather than to making it sing. This "Much Ado" (for which Whedon also composed the music) is perhaps best considered merely a promising but casual dress rehearsal, not a polished production.

Best here are the bits of farce, like the pratfalls and double takes of Beatrice and Benedick when they overhear rumor of the other's alleged infatuation.

The lack of polish, though, also gives Whedon's film its charm. The history of Shakespeare movie adaptations is littered with stiff productions that crack under the weight of its sacred material. That, thankfully, is definitely not an issue to Whedon's slinky, unadorned "Much Ado," which, if anything, is too light.

But despite all these quibbles, moviegoers will likely have few better options this summer for a good romantic comedy. Among the globe-trotting spectacles of Hollywood (whose ranks Whedon will rejoin, as he's writing an "Avengers" sequel), the micro-budget "Much Ado About Nothing" points a way for filmmakers to make with cheap technology and a few talented friends something substantial. A script by Shakespeare helps, too.

"Much Ado About Nothing," a Roadside Attractions release, is rated PG-13 for some sexuality and brief drug use. Running time: 109 minutes. Two and half stars out of four.

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Motion Picture Association of America rating definition for PG-13: Parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

This is neat. The British Antarctic Survey has createdof what Antarctica looks like underneath all that ice, which is nearly two miles thick in some areas.

Bedmap2, as it's called, was created by culling together millions of measurements from satellite imagery, aircraft using radio echo sound, and cartographic data, to create the most accurate map of the hidden continent to date. Thetaken in 2001 wasn't nearly as detailed, and relied solely on measurements taken from the ground.

"The new Bedmap shows, with unprecedented detail, the bedrock beneath the ice sheets of Antarctica,"of the British Antarctic Survey. "Before we had a regional overview of the topography, but this new map, with its much higher resolution, shows the landscape itself; a complex landscape of mountains, hills and rolling plains, dissected by valleys troughs, and deep gorges."

One of the researchers' primary goals in doing this analysis is to figure out exactly how fast Antarctica's ice is melting, which will help them better predict rising sea levels. Although it might not look that way, the continent's ice is slowly flowing into the ocean. And those sheets are said to contain more than half of the world's fresh water.

While you're thinking about this issue, , which demonstrates what Antarctica looks like with and without ice.

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The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the attack in the town of Qusair also wounded "tens of people." Qusair-based activist Hadi Abdullah described the attack to The Associated Press via Skype, saying it killed nine people and wounded many others.

The battle for Qusair has exposed Hezbollah's growing role in the Syrian conflict that has killed more than 70,000 over the past two years. The Shiite militant group, which has been fighting alongside President Bashar Assad's troops, initially tried to play down its involvement, but abandoned the attempt after dozens of its fighters were killed in the Qusair area and buried in large funerals in Lebanon.

Last week, Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah firmly linked his militant group's fate to the survival of the Assad regime, raising the stakes not just in Syria, but also in Hezbollah's tense relations with rival groups in Lebanon.

Over the past weeks, troops and Hezbollah fighters captured wide areas around Qusair and earlier this month launched an offensive on the town in an attempt to capture it. Dozens of troops, Hezbollah fighters and rebels have been killed since then.

Abdullah said he was with the convoy evacuating scores of wounded people when troops started firing shells and machine guns, wounding about 80 people. "Women and children jumped out of the cars and started running in fear," Abdullah said.

He said that there are around 800 wounded people in rebel-held areas in Qusair. Abdullah said the main makeshift hospital in the town was hit, and a home was turned into a clinic.

The regime and the opposition both value Qusair, which lies along a land corridor linking two Assad's strongholds, Damascus and the heartland of his minority Alawite sect, an area along the Mediterranean coast. For the rebels, holding the town means protecting their supply line to Lebanon, just 10 kilometers (six miles) away.

The Observatory and Abdullah said that rebels from the northern province of Aleppo managed to enter rebel-held area of Qusair to help defend it against advancing troops.

"Individuals have come in the past, but this is the first time that groups of rebels have arrived here," Abdullah said. Several days ago rebel commanders issued a call on forces around the country to move on Qusair, underlying its importance.

In Moscow, a Russian arms manufacturer said it is signing a contract to deliver at least 10 fighter jets to Syria.

Sergei Korotkov, general director of the MiG company that makes the jets, told Russian news agencies that a Syrian delegation was in Moscow to discuss terms and deadlines of a new contract supplying MiG-29 M/M2 fighters to Syria.

Korotkov did not say how many MiGs Syria were buying, but said it would be "more than 10." It was not clear when they would be delivered.

Syria's air force has been active in attacking rebel bases and strongholds around the country. Rebel forces have no answer for the government air power.

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Associated Press writer Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed.

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)

The unit of Britain's Vodafone Group said diluted headline earnings per share, which is the benchmark measure of profit in South Africa, totalled 870.2 cents in the year to end- March, from 706 cents a year earlier.

The company had previously said headline earnings would rise by 25 percent higher. It raised its final dividend by 11 percent to 785 cents, exceeding a Reuters poll of analysts that had forecast a 9 percent increase.

Vodacom, which also has operations in Lesotho, Mozambique, Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo, has been scouring Africa for acquisitions as competition intensifies in its key South African market.

It held cash and cash equivalents of 6.5 billion rand at the end of March 31, nearly double from a year earlier.

Vodacom shares are down nearly 7 percent so far this year, lagging a 5.6 percent rise in the JSE Top 40 index.

In March, $85 billion in , known as the sequester, took effect. The cuts slashed 8.2 percent from the 2013 operating budgets of most federal agencies. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) suffered a 7 percent reduction in its fiscal year 2013 budget as a result of sequestration. Thinned-out staffs and under-maintained equipment could hinder the agency's ability to give timely and accurate weather forecasts, experts say.

"It really highlights the game of chicken we're playing with the nation's safety," said J. Marshall Shepherd, president of the American Meteorological Society. []

Furloughs and cutbacks

Like many government agencies, NOAA is considering implementing agencywide furloughs, or mandatory leave days. The agency has proposed up to four furlough days per employee through Sept. 30, 2013.

"NOAA and the National Weather Service are facing furloughs particularly as we're entering the hurricane and dry weather seasons," Shepherd said. National Weather Service (NWS) offices are already short-staffed, and now there's a hiring freeze, Shepherd said. ( officially starts on June 1 and ends on Nov. 30.)

Deputy Commerce Secretary Rebecca Blank wrote in a Feb. 8 letter to the Senate Appropriations Committee that if the sequester went through, up to 2,600 NOAA employees would be furloughed (by as much as 6.5 days), about 2,700 positions would remain unfilled and there would be about 1,400 fewer contractors.

Sequestration will limit hurricane reconnaissance flights by NOAA aircraft, and the maintenance and operations of the national radar network and weather-monitoring systems, the reported. These could result in longer service outages, such as telecommunications outages, or restrict forecasters' access to weather data.

"We have to see weather forces the same way as we see National Security," Shepherd said. "Weather affects lives and property and our economy."

Under the tightened budget, travel restrictions are preventing weather scientists from where they can stay current on the latest forecasting science and interact with the emergency responder community. Dialogue between forecasters and emergency responders is critical, Shepherd said.

Aging equipment

The budget cuts will also make it harder to maintain weather forecasting equipment. Many of the country's weather satellites are aging and due for replacement. Yesterday (May 23), the GOES-13 satellite (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite), which covers much of eastern North America and the western Atlantic, stopped working. The GOES-14 backup satellite was activated, but if that fails, there is no replacement. NOAA is currently investigating the reason for the failure.

The sequester could delay the production and deployment of two new weather satellites, the GOES-R series, by two to three years, Blank wrote in her letter to Congress. The first two GOES-R satellites are scheduled to launch in 2015 and 2017.

The geosynchronous satellites could go the way of NOAA's polar-orbiting satellites, whose development is well over-budget and behind schedule.

Failure to replace old satellites could lead to a "." In February, the Government Accountability Office featured a satellite gap in its list of the top 30 challenges facing the federal government.

A gathering storm

The impact of budget cuts on the country's forecasting systems takes on added urgency in times of severe weather like the .

The NWS's Norman, Okla., office issued a warning about the tornado 16 minutes before it formed three minutes more than the average tornado warning time. Forecasters knew several days before the tornado hit that the weather would be bad that day because they had been monitoring the approaching weather system on satellite and radar.

If these services suffer because of reduced personnel or maintenance, the impacts could be dire not just for predicting tornados, but for hurricanes and other severe weather events as well. In 2012,brought home the seriousness of extreme weather, and NOAA is forecasting an active hurricane season in 2013.

"The sequester impacts are happening now," Shepherd said. "Unfortunately, it often takes tragedy to wake people up to these dangers."

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The issue in Town of Greece v. Galloway (12-696) is whether city officials violated the First Amendments ban on government endorsement of a particular religion when it set up a system that allowed local volunteers to offer a prayer prior to the towns monthly meetings.

Although non-Christians delivered a few of the prayers, the vast majority of volunteers offered and delivered pre-meeting prayers that featured Christian religious references.

At least two regulars at town meetings objected to being forced repeatedly to listen to Christian prayers. They complained to town officials that they felt marginalized by the towns prayer policy.

One of the complaining residents in thetown was Susan Galloway, who is Jewish. The other was Linda Stephens, an atheist.

After the town refused to change its prayer policy, the two filed suit in federal court. They said that by consistently presenting Christian prayers prior to its meetings, the town was intentionally discriminating against non-Christians. They also argued that the pre-meeting prayers were advancing a single faith over other religions or nonreligion.

A federal judge disagreed and dismissed the case. On appeal, thereversed. The Town of , the appeals court ruled, had aligned itself with a single religion in violation of the First Amendments .

Christian clergy delivered each and every one of the prayers for the first nine years of the towns prayer practice, and nearly all of the prayers thereafter, the appeals court said.

It added that the rare handful of cases, over the course of a decade, in which individuals from other faiths delivered the invocation, cannot overcome the impression, created by the steady drumbeat of often specifically sectarian Christian prayers, that the towns prayer practice associated the town with the Christian religion.

This put audience members at town meetings who are nonreligious or non-Christian in an awkward position, the court said.

The town defended its prayer policy, saying it was neutral and nondiscriminatory. The town created a list of anyone who might be willing to present a prayer prior to the town meeting. An official went through the list until someone agreed to deliver a prayer.

Members of many different religious traditions accepted the opportunity to offer a prayer, including Catholics, Protestants from several denominations, a Wiccan priestess, the chairman of a local Bahai congregation, and a lay Jewish man,lawyer Thomas Hungar wrote in his brief on behalf of the town, urging the high court to take up the case.

Under the towns policy, atheists and non-believers were equally welcome to volunteer to give an invocation, Mr. Hungar said. Anyone could deliver a prayer, and town officials refused to police the content of a prayer or attempt to gauge its religiosity.

Ayesha Khan, a lawyer with , said in her brief to the court that the town board exploited its prayer opportunity to advance one faith to the exclusion of others.

Ms. Khan, who is representing the two complaining residents of Greece, said the towns prayer practice violates the constitutional command that government remain neutral in matters of faith.

With the exception of a four-meeting hiatus around the time of the filing of this lawsuit in 2008, the Town has relied exclusively on Christian clergy, who have persistently delivered overtly Christian prayers, she wrote.

Clergy request that attendees join in the prayers. Town Board members participate by bowing their heads, standing, responding Amen, or making the sign of the cross, she said. Members of the audience do the same.

In asking the high court to hear the case, Hungar said there was a split within the federal appeals courts concerning the correct test judges must apply to determine if a legislative prayer crosses the line.

He said the Fourth Circuit in , and the Second Circuit in New York had both embraced an approach that requires courts to determine if a pre-meeting prayer has an impermissible effect on a reasonable observer.

In contrast, he said, a 1983 Supreme Court decision requires judges to determine only whether a pre-meeting prayer was being used to proselytize, advance, or disparage a particular faith. Under that case, there is no requirement to examine the content of the prayer and its possible effect on a listener, he said.

This more permissive approach, Hungar said, had been embraced by appeals courts in the Eleventh Circuit inand the Ninth Circuit in .

Hungar said the case is of importance nationwide. The Second Circuit decision, he said, would require public officials to engage in pre-meeting critiques of future invocations.

The frightening prospect of state officers acting as official censors of prayers delivered voluntarily by private citizens (or even paid chaplains) has no basis in this Nations tradition or this Courts jurisprudence, he wrote.

Khan disputed the existence of a significant split among the appeals courts. Differences in appellate court decisions, she said, were due to factual differences in each case.

She rejected the charge that the Second Circuit decision would lead to more litigation and confusion.

In a friend-of-the-court brief, 18 states encouraged the court to hear the case and overturn the Second Circuit decision. It is important that the Court address the growing split over this issue before it becomes yet another irredeemably muddled sector of Establishment Clause doctrine, Indiana Solicitor General Thomas Fisher wrote.

The lack of clarity in this area is especially troubling to the extent it leaves courts to delve into questions best left to theologians, not courts of law, he said.

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The ruling late Monday threw into disarray a process that had been hailed as historic for delivering the first guilty verdict for genocide against a former Latin American leader.

Constitutional Court secretary Martin Guzman said the trial needs to go back to where it stood on April 19 to solve several appeal issues.

The ruling came 10 days after a three-judge panel convicted the 86-year-old Rios Montt of genocide and crimes against humanity for his role in massacres of Mayans during Guatemala's bloody, 36-year civil war. The panel found after two months of testimony that Rios Montt knew about the slaughter of at least 1,771 Ixil Mayans in the western highlands and didn't stop it.

The tribunal sentenced the 86-year-old former general to 80 years in prison, drawing cheers from many Guatemalans. It was the first time a former Latin American leader was convicted of such crimes in his home country and the first official acknowledgment that genocide occurred during the war something the current president, retired Gen. Otto Perez Molina, has denied.

Rios Montt's lawyers immediately filed an appeal, and he spent three days in prison before he was moved to a military hospital, where he remains.

The top court on Monday said it threw out his conviction because the trial should have been stopped while appeals filed by the defense were resolved.

Defense lawyer Francisco Garcia Gudiel told The Associated Press by telephone that he would seek the former dictator's freedom on Tuesday.

"There is no alternative," Garcia said. "The court has made a legal resolution after many flaws in the process. Tomorrow we will ask that they liberate the general, who is being imprisoned unjustly."

Representatives of the victims who testified against Rios Montt couldn't be immediately reached for comment.

The proceedings, which started in March, had been whipped back and forth ever since April 18, when a Guatemalan judge ordered that the trial should be restarted just as it was nearing closing arguments.

Judge Carol Patricia Flores had been recently reinstated by the Constitutional Court after being recused in February 2012. She ruled that all actions taken in the case since she was first asked to step down were null, sending the trial back to square one.

The next day, April 19, the tribunal hearing the oral part of the trial asked the Constitutional Court to decide if the proceedings should continue.

The trial was suspended for 12 days amid appeals and at times appeared headed for annulment. But it resumed April 30, and on May 10 the three-judge tribunal found Rios Montt guilty after more than 100 witnesses and experts testified about mass rapes and the killings of women and children and other atrocities committed by government troops. Rios Montt ruled Guatemala in 1982-83 following a military coup.

Survivors and relatives of victims had sought for 30 years to bring punishment for Rios Montt. For international observers and Guatemalans on both sides of the war, the trial was seen as a turning point in a nation still wrestling with the trauma of a conflict that killed some 200,000 people.

The defense constantly claimed flaws and miscarriages of justice.

Courts solved more than 100 complaints and injunctions filed by the defense before the trial even started.

Rios Montt's defense team walked out on April 18, arguing that they couldn't continue to be part of such a bad proceeding. When the three-judge tribunal resumed the trial, it ordered two public defenders to represent Rios Montt and his co-defendant, Jose Rodriguez Sanchez.

Rios Montt rejected his public defender and instead brought in Garcia, who was expelled earlier by the tribunal but reinstated by an appeals court.

Garcia had earlier been ordered off the case after he called for the three judges on the tribunal to be removed from the proceedings. He kept trying to have the judges dismissed. And the Constitutional Court ruled Monday that the trial should have been suspended while his appeal was heard.

The trial "was unlawfully reopened," Garcia said at the time.

The Bobcats are ranked No. 1 as they head into the Frozen Four, the championship tournament for NCAA hockey.

"It's four teams that won their regionals and earned the right to be here," Connor Jones said Wednesday. "Being ranked No. 1, there's pressure, but we want to have an underdog mentality."

Quinnipiac has risen from obscurity to become the top-ranked team. They are led by goaltender Eric Hartzell, a finalist for the Hobey Baker award as the top player in U.S. college hockey, and an all-Canadian line of the Jones brothers with left winger Matthew Peca of Petawawa, Ont.

Other Canadians in the tournament are Yale centre Antoine Laganiere of Ile-Cadieux, Que., and UMass Lowell's Scott Wilson of Oakville, Ont.

The Joneses are from Montrose, B.C., and grew up watching another set of identical twins, Daniel and Henrik Sedin, weave magic for the Vancouver Canucks.

"It would be nice to be six-foot-four like them," said Jones, who like his brother is five-foot-nine. "We liked watching them play their passing, their sense of knowing where they are.

"We try to model our game after them."

Kellen Jones was picked 202nd overall by the Edmonton Oilers in the 2010 NHL draft while Peca, no relation to former NHL forward Michael Peca, went 201st overall to Tampa Bay in 2011. Connor Jones wasn't drafted, but still got invited to the Oilers' camp with his brother.

"I get a hard time from my teammates sometimes about being the one who wasn't drafted," Connor Jones said. "But it's good for both of them. We just have fun with it."

Wilson was drafted 209th overall in 2011 by Pittsburgh and will play the Frozen Four in the rink he hopes will be home ice in the future.

Yale's Laganiere is an undrafted six-foot-four centre who is to graduate with an economics degree this year.

Quinnipiac beat Union 5-1 in the East Regional final on a first-period natural hat-trick from Peca to reach the championship.

Now there is excitement over a possible Quinnipiac-Yale showdown in the final. The universities are about 15 kilometres apart in New Haven, Conn.

"It would be some story," said Jones, whose team beat Yale three times this season. "It would be great for the ECAC, which is kind of looked down upon sometimes."

Quinnipiac, with an enrolment of about 5,000, regularly packs its 3,500-seat arena for a team that has been ranked No. 1 for much of the season. Now Jones hopes to help reward them with a first national title.

"It won't be easy," he said. "The sacrifices you make all year and now you're here. . . you have to stay calm and for now only worry about Thursday's game."

St. Cloud State also has a Hobey Baker finalist in forward Drew LeBlanc..

G Dragon says he tries to separate his solo performances from how Big Bang performs. The band works as a team, and G Dragon says the concept is of artists collaborating. But "when I perform as a solo, I think a lot about what I always wanted to do but have not done yet,"

He says he asks a lot of himself, which causes stress, but "now I'm getting used to it and able to enjoy myself. I think many people see me in that way, too."

Big Bang is immensely popular throughout Asia, but G Dragon says he keeps himself grounded.

He says he doesn't assess himself that highly, and he and the other band members "can be humble when we think ourselves as a third party." And since musicians and situations change so fast, he tries to remember where he started, "to live a life without regrets."

The singer spoke while in Hong Kong on his first solo concert tour, "One of a Kind." He's performing later in Shanghai, Bangkok, Jakarta, Indonesia, and Singapore.