Theand videos from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) show the famously endangered bears, as well as some of their neighbors red pandas, leopard cats and macaques among them exploring their natural habitat.

The footage comes from more than 100 automated infrared camera traps set up in nature reserves in the Sichuan region. The images were obtained "where there was little external disturbance and therefore they truly reflect the conditions of those species in the wild," Jiang Zeyin, species program officer at WWF-China, said in a statement. []

But the camera traps may not have caught all of the animals unawares. In oneof a group of Tibetan stump-tailed macaques, one of the monkeys curiously sticks its face in front of the camera and looks as if it's inspecting the lens.

Footage of wildis of particular interest because there are thought to be just 1,600 of the lumbering, black-and-white bears left in China. The cameras also captured other threatened species, including tree-loving Asiatic black bears, which are hunted for their skins, paws and even gall bladders for use in certain Asian medical traditions. Brilliantly colored birds like golden pheasants and temminck's tragopans posed for pictures, too, as did yellow-throated martens, golden-haired takins and wild boars.

The Emmy Award winner and star of the TV comedy "How I Met Your Mother," who won plaudits for hosting the Tony Awards last year, said he was very excited to be back.

"It'll be more impressive than ever - if my math is correct, it will be 267 times bigger than last year," Harris said in a statement.

"Oh wait. No. That can't ... hold on ... carry the one ... I'm awful at math. But rest assured, the show will rock."

The Broadway League and the American Theatre Wing, the presenters of the Tony Awards, praised Harris for "his creativity and passion for Broadway."

The actor is a three-time Emmy Award winner for his guest roles on "Glee" and as host of the 2009 and 2011 Tony Awards.

"Kinky Boots," a musical with a score by pop star Cyndi Lauper, earned 13 Tony nominations, followed by "Matilda," a British import, which received 12.

Both shows will be vying for the best musical award along with "Bring It On: The Musical" and "A Christmas Story: The Musical." Lauper was nominated for best score along with book writer Harvey Fierstein and three members of the show's cast.

Actor Tom Hanks, who made his Broadway debut in the Nora Ephron play "Lucky Guy," is up for the best actor award. Other Hollywood stars including Cicely Tyson, Laurie Metcalf, Holland Taylor and David Hyde Pierce have also been nominated for awards.

The Tony Awards show will be aired live on TV.

(Reporting by Patricia Reaney; Additional reporting by Chris Michaud; Editing by Vicki Allen)

Proponents call it the most effective policing tactic to date, while opponents say it illegally targets minorities and is indiscriminate and discriminatory. But what is it and does it work?

1. What is 'stop and frisk'?

Widely adopted in the mid-1990s when formertook over the , stop and frisk is a tactic used by law enforcement to monitor urban environments and reduce crime. If a police officer reasonably suspects a person is about to commit, is committing, or has committed a crime, the practice enables the officer to stop, question, and if needed, frisk the person for weapons.

2. Is it legal?

It is now. Under the , which guards against unreasonable searches and seizures, law enforcement personnel needed probable cause to stop and search someone. That is, they need good reason to believe a person has committed or is about to commit a crime.

But a 1968decision, Terry v. , lowered that benchmark by allowing law enforcement to stop and search people in a public place if the officer reasonably suspects that someone is about to commit a crime. Reasonable suspicion alone is not grounds for arrest, as probable cause is, but incriminating evidence found during a stop and frisk may be grounds for arrest.

The problem is that reasonable suspicion is more vague than probable cause, leading some opponents to argue that law enforcement officers use a person's race to determine reasonable suspicion, and therefore, perform stop and frisks.

3. What is the court considering in this case?

The court is not considering the legality or constitutionality of stop and frisk. Rather, the class action suit, brought by the four plaintiffs who said they were racially profiled, is considering whether to install a court-appointed monitor to oversee implementation of any court rulings or amendments on the s stop and frisk program.

4. How many people are stopped and frisked?

The use of stop and frisk rose rapidly under the tenure of . In his first year in office, in 2002, there were 97,296 stops, according to aanalysis ofdata. That number rose to 398,191 stops in 2005 and peaked at 685,724 stops in 2011. Officers made 533,042 stops under the program in 2012.

Throughout the past decade, the vast majority of stops about 9 in 10 resulted in no arrest or further action.

Roughly 85 percent of people stopped in any given year are black or Hispanic. In 2012, blacks represented 55 percent of stops, Hispanics represented 32 percent of stops, and whites represented 10 percent of stops.

5. Is the practice racist?

Not surprisingly, it depends whom you ask.

Its almost like asking is the Pope Catholic? says Robert Gangi, director of the Police Reform Organizing Project at the . Of course its racist. Eighty percent of people stopped are black or brown.

Mr. Gangi says the practice targets everybody of a certain color, certain age cohort who live in certain communities, basically low-income black and brown young men.

Black and Hispanic men between 14 and 24 make up 4.7 percent of the citys population, but comprise 41.6 percent of all people stopped and frisked, evidence that the program is racially biased, according to Gangi.

Heather Mac Donald, a fellow at theand author of Are Cops Racist, says stops and arrests should be compared against crime data, not population data.

Blacks commit two-thirds of violent crimes in , 70 percent of robberies, and 80 percent of shootings, with blacks and Hispanics together committing 98 percent of shootings in New York, according todata, says Ms. Mac Donald. Those figures, she says, explain why stops are targeted toward those communities.

Shootings produce police activity, she says. Shootings are bringing police to an area, not the race of the people who live there.

As such, Mac Donald says, stop and frisk targets crime, not race. The NYPD focuses resources on where citizens need them most, they happen to be minorities.

6. Does stop and frisk work?

The case in favor

Proponents of stop and frisk say the program is a proactive, rather than reactive, tool that has led to steep drops in s crime rate. Whatever its flaws, they say there is no alternative as effective as stop and frisk.

New York has had the steepest and longest crime drop of any city in the country, says Mac Donald, noting that proactive policing has brought crime down 80 percent in minority neighborhoods since the early 1990s. Only policing explains that crime drop.... Stop and frisk is the most important thing police officers on the beat can do.

, a professor of public policy at , concurs.

In 1990, New York had 527,257 victims of serious crimes compared with 106,064 in 2011, according to data compiled by Professor Smith. In that same period, murders in the city dropped from 2,262 to 504. This is evidence that the program works, says Mr. Smith.

The bottom line is [stop and frisk] in New York does accelerate crime declines in most categories of crime, he adds.

Mac Donald acknowledges that the practice has flaws but says its the best tool law enforcement currently has.

Theres no question if you are stopped and questioned and possibly frisked and youre innocent, it is a humiliating and infuriating experience, she says. That is a real cost and the public has to acknowledge that.

But she adds, Whats the alternative? It is the lesser of two evils. Nobodys yet come up with an alternative way of decreasing violence, robberies, getting guns off the street that is as effective. It really does come down to a choice of whats worse, getting stopped or getting shot?

The case against

Opponents of stop and frisk say the controversial practice is a counterproductive tool that is both indiscriminate and discriminatory.

Besides representing a clumsy and inefficient tool to target crime, it alienates minorities and breeds resentment in communities where law enforcement agencies most need cooperation, they say.

Stop and frisk, as practiced by the , does not reduce crime because it creates so much distrust between citizens and the police, says , a law professor atand formerprosecutor. The police would have a higher hit rate if they did random searches of people. Its more of a way for police to express their dominance of the street than to solve crime.

Gangi of the Police Reform Organizing Project says stop and frisk does, in fact, work, but not for the right reasons. Thats because the program has conveyed to young minority men in New York that they may be stopped at any time. So it makes sense that some of them will leave their weapon at home rather than bring it outside, says Gangi. In that limited way, it is effective.

But it comes at a real cost, he adds.

At same time the tactic creates serious problems that undermine law enforcement by seriously damaging any possibility of a cooperative relationship between cops and the [communities they patrol].

Indeed, only 23 percent of blacks believe that police enforce the law without excess force and while treating all races equally, according to a survey by the . By comparison, some 58 percent of whites believe police treat all races equally.

7. Are there alternatives?

Opponents of stop and frisk cite a number of alternative methods law enforcement agencies can use to fight crime, including targeted policing, community collaboration, and increased social services.

They say law enforcement can work with community residents and leaders to identify the really bad actors in any given community and target those people with police intervention. That approach, says Gangi, would be more effective in creating a friendly working relationship between theand the community.

The other thing wed recommend is more government programs and more social services for [disadvantaged] communities, he says, such as remedial education, after-school programs, drug treatment programs, and programs that support families.

That could also be very useful in reducing antisocial and criminal activity in communities, he says.

Thats all well and good, says Mac Donald of the , but the way she and other proponents see it, nothing is as effective as stop and frisk.

No government program to date has proven as effective in turning around inner-city communities than policing, she says. If we want to keep crime down, keep it going down ... I just dont see any alternatives on the horizon.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Delving into the controversial relationship between government and religion, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to consider whether a town in New York could allow members of the public, who in practice were nearly all Christian clergy, to open meetings with a prayer.

Two residents sued Greece, New York, in 2008, saying it was endorsing Christianity, a violation of the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment guarantee of separation of church and state.

Susan Galloway and Linda Stephens said the vast majority of prayer-givers since the practice started in 1999 were Christian ministers. Attendees would often be asked to join in or bow their heads, they alleged.

The Supreme Court ruled in a 1983 case, Marsh v. Chambers, that legislative sessions could begin with a prayer in most circumstances, citing the "unique history" of the practice throughout U.S. history.

The new case gives the nine justices the opportunity to outline "neutral principles" that would allow government entities to hold prayers without violating the Constitution, said Marci Hamilton, a First Amendment expert at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York.

"The hard part for the court is drawing the boundary lines," she added, predicting a close vote among the justices. "I have no doubt it will be a 5-4 decision."

Despite the 1983 precedent, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York ruled against the town. A district court had previously supported the town's position by dismissing the lawsuit filed by Galloway and Stephens.

1989 PRECEDENT

The appeals court, in an opinion by Judge Guido Calabresi, cited another Supreme Court case from 1989, which he said, "suggested that legislative prayers invoking particular sectarian beliefs" could violate the Constitution.

Although the town did in theory allow anyone to volunteer, it "neither publicly solicited volunteers to invocation nor informed members of the general public that volunteers would be considered or accepted," Calabresi said.

He stressed that the court was not saying that government bodies can never open a session with prayer.

A total of 18 states and 49 members of the U.S. House of Representatives joined briefs asking the court to take the case.

The Alliance for Defending Freedom, a group that describes itself as an advocate for the rights of people to express their faith, is spearheading the town's legal fight.

The group's lawyers point out that the town has never regulated the content of prayers and did not discriminate in selecting prayer-givers.

"A few people should not be able to extinguish the traditions of our nation merely because they heard something they didn't like," Brett Harvey, one of the town's lawyers, said in a statement.

Galloway and Stephens have the support of another advocacy group, Americans United For Separation of Church and State.

Rev. Barry W. Lynn, the organization's executive director, said that a town council meeting "isn't a church service and it shouldn't seem like one."

Oral arguments and a decision are expected in the court's next term, which begins in October and ends in June 2014.

The case is Town of Greece v. Galloway, U.S. Supreme Court, No. 12-696.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Howard Goller, Doina Chiacu and Cynthia Osterman)

Then thousands of mine workers and their huge machines moved in, building a road alongside the river that reaches all the way up to Pascua-Lama, a gold mine being built along both sides of the Chile-Argentine border at a lung-busting 16,400-feet (5,000 meters) above sea level.

The crews moved mountaintops in preparation for 25 years of gold and silver production, breaking rocks and allowing mineral acids that include arsenic, aluminum and sulfates to flow into the headwaters feeding Atacama desert communities down below.

River levels dropped, the water is murky in places and the Indians now complain of cancerous growths and aching stomachs. There's no way to prove or disprove it, but villagers are convinced Barrick Gold Corp. is to blame for their health problems.

"We don't know how much contamination the fruit and vegetables we eat may have," complained Diaguita leader Yovana Paredes Paez. "They're drying up the river, our farms aren't the same. The animals are dying of hunger. Now there's no cheese or meat. It's changed completely."

Acting independently, Chile's newly empowered environmental regulator on Friday confirmed nearly two dozen violations of Barrick's environmental impact agreement, blocking construction on the $8.5 billion project until the Canadian company keeps its promises to prevent water contamination.

The Environmental Superintendent, Juan Carlos Monckeberg, also fined Barrick $16.4 million, the highest environmental fine in Chile's history, saying agency inspectors found the company hadn't told the full truth when it reported failures.

"We found that the acts described weren't correct, truthful or provable. And there were other failures of Pascua-Lama's environmental permit as well," Monckeberg said.

Barrick promised $30 million in fixes and said it remains committed to meeting the highest standards and causing no pollution. But Chile seems determined to minimize the dangers of digging huge pits and processing ore with toxic chemicals along the spine of the Andes, causing delays that threaten the future of this top priority for the world's largest gold-mining company.

"We're profoundly sorry that Pascua-Lama has suffered obstacles in its construction and we'll make our best efforts to get back on track and meet the conditions stipulated in the approved project," Eduardo Flores Zelaya, president of Barrick Sudamerica, said Friday. "We are respectful of the institutions in the countries where we operate, and as a consequence we will follow the resolution."

Monckeberg said Barrick caused permanent damage by failing to properly construct a diversionary canal, triggering a rockfall that covered a field down below with waste rock.

"I don't believe there's any way of repairing it," he told a news conference in Santiago.

Barrick had hoped to begin production in early 2014, and warned shareholders that it might abandon Pascua, the Chilean side, if construction delays keep the mine from opening this year.

Argentine authorities, meanwhile, have insisted that Lama will proceed with or without Chile, taking advantage of nearby infrastructure used for Barrick's Veladero mine, which produces ore just downhill.

Together, the two projects employ thousands of workers, fuel a third of the provincial San Juan economy, and promise millions in revenue for a country sorely in need of hard currency. But more than 70 percent of Pascua-Lama's 18 million ounces of gold and 676 million ounces of silver are on the Chilean side. The plan has been to extract it from huge open pits and carry it through a tunnel for processing in Argentina.

Rockfalls are just one of the threats to building anything in the high Andes, where gale-force winds have coated glaciers with construction dust for miles around and groundwater expands and contracts with each freeze and thaw. To refine ore into gold bullion, the company must transport thousands of tons of cyanide, mercury and other toxic chemicals to the mountaintop.

Once the precious metals are gone, Chile will be left with huge rock piles and Argentina with toxic waste that must be contained for generations to come on ever-moving slopes between melting glaciers and snowy peaks.

"I'm so angry at this company," said Meri del Rosario, 42, of El Corral, Chile. She has thyroid cancer; two cysts were removed from her throat last year. She blames water pollution from Pascua-Lama.

"If they keep working the valley will end up completely dry, and we'll have to go, and where? I think it's Barrick that has to go," she said.

Some 500 Diaguita have joined a civil lawsuit against Barrick, persuading an appellate court last month to block construction despite the company's denials that it caused any pollution or health problems.

The company's response to the environmental regulator was much more conciliatory: Faced with 23 violations, Barrick accepted nearly all of them, and obtained permission to make urgent repairs.

The violations include building some earthworks without approval, while failing to build others that were supposed to be in place before construction began so that rainfall wouldn't increase the runoff from mineral acids naturally released when rocks are broken. Instead, Barrick went ahead and moved mountaintops in preparation for 25 years of gold and silver production.

Barrick also acknowledged making an "unjustified discharge coming from the acid treatment plant to the Estrecho river" that was "neither declared nor monitored."

The company persuaded the regulator to withdraw an allegation that it had not properly built a huge, impermeable wall that stretches deep below ground and all the way across the top of the Rio del Estrecho valley.

Barrick said the wall stretches for 676 feet (206 meters) across the valley and reaches down as much as 200 feet (62 meters) below the surface, with sealants injected nearly 100 feet (30 meters) deeper still into fissures in the bedrock. It meets U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards and beats industry standards, the company said.

Despite all this work, inspectors found acid in five test wells below the wall. Barrick challenged the methodology and claimed the acid was there naturally, but after the regulator agreed that the wall met requirements, the company agreed to fortify several wells downstream to collect contaminated water.

Chile's environmentalists, farmers and indigenous communities were thrilled with Friday's ruling, saying it shows only strong oversight can force Barrick to keep its promises.

"One of the concerns we've always had is that they are going to work with an enormous quantity of cyanide," said Leonel Rivera Zuleta, 56, a farmer and member of the Diaguita community of Chipasse Tamaricunga. "Who will assure us that there won't be some kind of accident with this element so poisonous to nature and man?"

Living in adobe homes or concrete houses in the narrow Huasco valley, they tend "the garden of the Atacama," where the river enables them to grow oranges, apples, grapes and vegetables in landscape so barren it's been compared to the surface of Mars.

The Diaguita once followed the rivers up the mountains and roamed over both sides of the frontier, but now Barrick's security guards block their way at a checkpoint just above town. Dump trucks the size of two-story homes and dozens of red barrels with toxic warning labels are kept in a fenced lot nearby.

"The Earth is giving us the strength to be courageous," Diaguita leader Maglene Campillay said, amazed that they're being listened to in a country where mining sustains the economy."This might be a small community that used to be afraid, but we've united, and we're defending our rights, because we're not going to let them take away our water and end our culture."

__

Associated Press Writers Michael Warren contributed from Buenos Aires and Eva Vergara from Santiago, Chile. Follow Warren and Henao at: https://twitter.com/mwarrenap and https://twitter.com/LuisAndresHenao

HONG KONG (Reuters) - The new H7N9 bird flu virus can be transmitted between mammals not only via direct contact but also in airborne droplets, and may be capable of spreading from person to person, Chinese and American researchers have found.

A study published in the journal Science and presented at a briefing in Hong Kong on Friday found that three ferrets - an animal often used for research on flu - that were in the same cage as ferrets infected with H7N9 had contracted the disease.

One of three ferrets kept in separate cages nearby also became infected, through airborne exposure.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has previously said it has no evidence of "sustained human to human transmission" of the virus, which has killed 36 people in China.

"The findings suggest that the possibility of this virus evolving further to form the basis of a future pandemic threat cannot be excluded," said the research team, led by bird flu expert and microbiologist Yi Guan.

The virus can also infect pigs, but could not be transmitted from pig to pig or from pigs to other animals, the study showed, although the team urged authorities to maintain surveillance to check whether the virus was mutating.

The WHO said the findings were useful but warned that people "have to be very careful about what's going onthe ground".

"Studies like that are really helpful for increasing general knowledge and it's really helpful to know that, under lab conditions, this thing could transfer from person to person," WHO chief spokesman Gregory Hartl told Reuters.

"We've already seen maybe a few limited instances of human to human transmission within close family range, within close contacts, so this is another piece of the puzzle," he said.

The findings come just days after the WHO said the H7N9 virus appeared to have been brought under control in China thanks to restrictions at bird markets.

H7N9 has relatively mild clinical signs in ferrets, according to the study. All the animals infected with the virus in the experiments presented symptoms for no more than seven days and all recovered from the disease.

The researchers said that all cases where humans had died or become extremely ill had involved additional factors.

The team also found that some infected animals did not develop fever or other clinical signs, suggesting that asymptomatic infections among humans may also be possible.

"The potential public health implication of this ... is that a person infected by H7N9 avian influenza virus who does not show symptoms could nevertheless spread the virus to others," the researchers wrote in their study.

United Nations experts said this week the bird flu outbreak in China had caused some $6.5 billion in losses to the economy.

The H7N9 virus is known to have infected 131 people in mainland China and one in Taiwan since February, but no new cases have been detected since early May.

(Additional reporting by Kate Kelland in London, Sui-Lee Wee in Beijing and Tom Miles in Geneva; Editing by Ron Popeski and Sonya Hepinstall)