NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) - Ask a group of pro wrestling fans to name their favorite lord of the ring and you might get 10 different answers.

Older fans grew up idolizing Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant and "Nature Boy" Ric Flair while newer fans might list Shawn Michaels, Stone Cold Steve Austin and John Cena.

Yet ask those same people to pick their favorite wrestler-turned-movie star and the decision gets a whole lot easier.

There's only one choice.

Dwayne Johnson, better known as The Rock, has starred in three movies over the past three months, "Snitch," "G.I Joe: Retaliation" and "Pain & Gain," and each film was the top new release at the box office its opening weekend.

His next movie, "Fast & Furious 6," will have to face down "The Hangover Part III" and "Epic" to keep that streak alive, but no one questions whether it will be a hit. Every film in the franchise has been, and early projections suggest the only question is whether it will hit $500 million, $750 million or $1 billion worldwide.

Johnson is currently in the midst of a streak unheard of not only in the history of former wrestlers but also other athletes who tried to cross over into the film business. Hogan, Cena, Shaq and even O.J. Simpson made a few movies, but none of them became a bona fide movie star. (Note: One sage reader pointed out that we forgot about Olympic swimming gold medalists Johnny Weissmuller and Buster Crabbe, who became "Tarzan" and "Flash Gordon," respectively. How could we forget Weissmuller's yell?)

"Everyone sitting in my chair is trying to work with Dwayne," Jeff Kirschenbaum, co-president of production at Universal, which has released five movies starring Johnson, told TheWrap. "I don't think he's having a moment. This isn't his 15 seconds of fame. He now has enough experience and craftsmanship that it's going to be a long run."

While this isn't the first time Johnson has been atop the box office, this is his first uninterrupted string of hits. His early films ranged from financially successful ("The Scorpion King," "The Game Plan," "The Tooth Fairy") to disappointing ("Doom," "The Rundown").

"I don't know that no one took him seriously because of wrestling, but he's the only person who has ever truly emerged out of that," an individual close to Johnson, who declined to be identified, told TheWrap.

So how did this happen? How did a former football player and member of the inimitable Rock 'n' Sock Connection became one of the most successful actors working today?

It starts with protein.

"He wakes up at 4 a.m. just so he can eat protein," Kirschenbaum, skinny as the Rock is broad, said. "He goes back to bed for an hour and at 5 a.m. he works out - when most people aren't even awake. He woke up an hour early just so the protein is already there to build muscle."

Johnson's morning routine has become a Hollywood legend, alongside Sean Penn's partying and Amanda Bynes' drunk driving.

Ask anyone who's worked with Johnson why he has succeeded where others have failed and they jump to tell a story about those pre-dawn workouts. It's what Ric Roman Waugh, who directed Johnson in "Snitch," dubbed the actor's "sweat equity."

"A lot of people can say 'we worked hard and can stay up late'," Waugh said. "But if they could only understand the amount of stuff he's putting into one day, it's astounding. The sky could be falling in his world, but in that moment you need him to focus, he's 100 percent with you."

That workload has only increased over the past two years. Since resurrecting his wrestling career in 2012, Johnson has expanded his film and TV work. Not only is he starring in several movies this year, but he just produced his first film, "Snitch," and is about to host a competition show on TNT, "The Hero."

When he first decided to try his hand at acting, Johnson retired from the WWE at the height of his popularity. Yet his specific wrestling personality explains why Johnson found his way in Hollywood where the likes of Hogan and Cena did not.

Like most any other wrestler, he can use his hands or a two-by-four to destroy someone. He demonstrated as much in early films like "The Scorpion King," where he played a mercenary, and "Walking Tall," where he played a veteran eager to rid his town of corruption.

Kirschenbaum described those early performances as "raw," and those early characters as two-dimensional. That is where the career path of most former pro wrestlers both started and stopped.

"Most wrestlers have been straight-forward characters or amped up versions of the real individual," Adi Shankar, producer of "The Grey" and an avid wrestling fan, told TheWrap. "Hulk Hogan acted in a bunch of B-movies playing Hulk Hogan."

Instead, Johnson and his representatives experimented from the get-go, taking roles most wrestlers would not want to touch.

He played the straight man next to Sean William Scott in "The Rundown," which also called for him to get dry humped by a gaggle of baboons.

He then played a gay bodyguard in "Be Cool," and later entered the family area with "Tooth Fairy" and "Journey 2." All of his hits in 2013 feature action scenes, but "Snitch" is an adult drama and "Pain & Gain" is as quirky as a Michael Bay movie comes.

"Most action stars out there would never ever break their brand," Waugh, a former stunt man, said. "They would read a script and see a scene where they get beat down and say the guy has to punch me at least 10 times and hit me with a bat 14 times. Dwayne is completely fearless."

Unlike most of his peers, Johnson's popularity in wrestling was never predicated on physical prowess or intimidation.

"Stone Cold would get over because he'd beat everyone up. Shawn Michaels was one of the greatest wrestlers of all time. Mick Foley would just do crazy stuff," Shankar said. "The Rock got over because he was funny. You take humor out of the Rock and you don't have anything."

Shankar can remember when he first fell in love with The Rock. The Undertaker, one of the largest, most intimidating wrestlers in the WWE, had just battered and bruised the former football player. At the next event, The Rock came out and challenged him.

"He said 'Undertaker, you think you impress The Rock with your Mickey Mouse tattoos?' He acted like the Undertaker's goal in life was to come out and impress The Rock," Shankar recalled. "He wasn't a heavyweight champion at this point - just a guy coming up. The Undertaker had been around for a decade."

He was a showman first and a wrestler second.

"No matter how bad the show was, The Rock could cut a promo and save it," Shankhar said. "He could get on the mic and speak for three minutes and save a bad show."

Some claim the same now applies to poorly received films, with some dubbing Johnson franchise Viagra. Did your last sequel fail? Hire Johnson.

Some, like Waugh, love this term. Yet many chafe against the idea that Johnson saved their movies, believing it disrespectful to the previous success of the franchises he joined.

Whether Viagra or a supporting hand, there is one thing all directors and studio executives can agree on.

"My biggest concern on my next movie is that he's not in it,"Waugh said.

What happens once those vehicles hit the streets, however, is shaping up as a national tragedy, experts say, with thousands of Brazilians dying every year in auto accidents that in many cases shouldn't have proven fatal.

The culprits are the cars themselves, produced with weaker welds, scant safety features and inferior materials compared to similar models manufactured for U.S. and European consumers, say experts and engineers inside the industry. Four of Brazil's five bestselling cars failed their independent crash tests.

Unsafe cars, coupled with the South American nation's often dangerous driving conditions, have resulted in aBrazilian death rate from passenger car accidents that is nearly four times that of the United States, according to an Associated Press analysis of Brazilian Health Ministry data on deaths compared to the size of each country's car fleet. In fact, the two countries are moving in opposite directions on survival rates the U.S. recorded 40 percent fewer fatalities from car wrecks in 2010 compared with a decade before. In Brazil, the number killed rose 72 percent, according to the latest available data.

Dr. Dirceu Alves, of Abramet, a Brazilian association of doctors that specializes in treating traffic accident victims, said poorly built cars take an unnecessary toll.

"The gravity of the injuries arriving at the hospitals is just ugly," he said, "injuries that should not be occurring."

Automakers in Brazil point out that their cars meet the nation's safety laws. Some said they build even tougher cars for the country because of its poorly maintained roadways and rejected any notion that cost-cutting in production leads to fatalities.

But the country's few safety activists perceive a deadly double standard, with automakers earning more money from selling cars that offer drivers fewer safeguardsa worrisome gap for new middle-class households, whose surging spending power has outpaced consumer protections taken for granted in more developed countries. The problem extends beyond Brazil, with economic forecasts showing the majority of global growth in auto sales taking place in emerging-market nations as the world's auto fleet doubles to 1.5 billion by 2020.

"Entry-level cars in Brazil are incredibly dangerous, it can't be denied. The death rate from accidents is far too high," said Maria Ines Dolci, coordinator of the Rio de Janeiro-based consumer defense group Proteste. "The manufacturers do this because the cars are a little cheaper to make and the demands of the Brazilian consumers are less; their knowledge of safety issues is lower than in Europe or the U.S."

Manufacturers earn a 10 percent profit on Brazilian-made cars, compared with 3 percent in the U.S. and a global average of 5 percent, according to IHS Automotive, an industry consulting firm.

Only next year will laws require frontal air bags and antilock braking systems on all cars, safety features that have been standard in industrial countries for years. The country will also have new impact regulations on paper, at least; Brazilian regulators don't have their own crash-test facility to verify automakers' claims about vehicle performance, nor are there independent labs in the country.

Experts say those requirements alone are not sufficient to meet basic safety standards. Some models sold in Brazil, like the Chinese-made JAC J3, scored only one star in a recent crash test despite having air bags and antilock brakes.

An independent pilot effort known as the Latin New Car Assessment Program has run initial tests of Brazil's most popular car models, and the results are bleak.

The cheapest models of four of the five top-selling cars, made by General Motors, Volkswagen and Fiat, received a one-star rating, out of five stars, while other top sellers also scored poorly. Such a rating means cars provide little protection in serious head-on wrecks, compared to four- or five-star rated cars, which are virtually the minimum that consumers in the U.S. and Europe buy.

"The difference is you're talking about somebody dead in the vehicle or dying very quickly, or somebody being able to get out of the vehicle themselves," said David Ward, director general of the London-based FIA Foundation for auto safety, which supports the Euro and Latin NCAP programs. "It's definitely a difference between life and death."

The squat Ford Ka hatchback sold in Europe scored four stars when it was tested by Euro NCAP in 2008; its Latin American version scored one star.

Ford acknowledged that particular Ka is built on an outdated platform, and said it cannot be compared with the European version of the same name it's that different. The company said it aims to have all its cars produced in Brazil built on updated, global platforms by 2015.

The Mexico-produced Nissan March compact sold in Latin America received a two-star rating from Latin NCAP, while the version sold for about the same price in Europe, called the Micra, scored four stars. The crash tests found the Latin American model had a weak, unstable body structure that offered occupants little protection in even non-serious wrecks.

In an emailed statement, Nissan said the March sold in Brazil is "practically the same model" offered in Europe. "The difference in the results achieved in Europe and Latin America is due to variations in the NCAP tests applied in different parts of the world."

Not so, said Alejandro Furas, technical director for the Global NCAP crash test programs.

"We perform the frontal crash test exactly in the same way as the Euro NCAP," he said. "The March and Micra were tested in the same lab, with the same type of crash test dummies, under the same conditions with the same people running the laboratory."

The Euro NCAP tests are more complete. They include side-impact and other tests, while the Latin American version only records front-impacts.Each type of impact test is individually scored on a 16-point scale.

The March sold in Brazil obtained a 7.62 rating in its frontal-impact test. The Micra fared much better, 12.7 points.

Italian automaker Fiat said in an emailed statement that "in general, Brazilian projects receive more reinforcements" within the cars' bodies to fortify them against the nation's "harsher roads and terrain."

However, NCAP tests found that Fiat's best-selling car in Brazil, called the Novo Uno, had an unstable body structure and scored it just one star.

Crash-test footage shows the front of the car folding up like an accordion, giving it a 2.0 point rating, the second lowest of the 28 cars NCAP has examined. Consumers purchased nearly 256,000 Novo Uno's last year the second-most popular car in the country.

Renault's safety standards also vary. The French company builds its Sandero in Brazil, selling 98,400 cars last year. That car scored one star on the Latin NCAP test, but the model sold in Europe, made by Renault's Romanian subsidiary Dacia, scored three stars.

Renault said the safety record of the Sandero and its other cars were on par with autos of the same class in Brazil.

One of those is the VW Gol, Brazil's best-selling car for the last decade.

Volkswagen said it strives to maintain a global standard for body strength, putting the same number of welds on the same models regardless of where they're produced, and using high-strength steel in Brazilian cars. It added that since 1998 it's given Brazilian consumers the option of buying a car with air bags its Gol Trend model with two frontal air bags scored three stars, while the same model without air bags scored one star.

The company didn't respond to requests for figures on how many consumers requested air bags.

"Structural integrity during a crash is a global standard for Volkswagen," the company said in an emailed statement. "The passenger compartment for the Gol remained stable and thus guarantees survival space for occupants."

Latin NCAP has tested three VW models. The Gol and the Polo had stable bodies. The Bora sedan, however, was rated as unstable, though other factors helped it score three stars.

And then there are the cars the companies do not market outside Latin America, such as the Celta by GM. Celta is Brazil's No. 5 car in terms of sales, with 137,615 sold last year. It received one star after its door unhinged and the passenger cabin roof bent into an inverted V shape during its crash test.

General Motors had no comment other than to say that its cars in Brazil are legal.

An engineer for a major U.S. automaker, speaking only on condition of anonymity for fear of losing his job, said he has watched for years as his company failed to implement more advanced safety features in Brazil, simply because the law did not require them.

""The automakers are pleased to make more profitable cars for countries where the demands, whatever they may be, are less rigorous," he said. "It happens everywhere India, China and Russia, for example."

___

About 40 million Brazilians moved into the middle class during the past decade with more income than ever to buy their first car. The growth potential is enormous: One out of every seven Brazilians owns a car, while the U.S. vehicle fleet covers nearly every American.

But as auto sales boom in Brazil, so have the number of accidents and deaths.

An analysis of Health Ministry data shows that 9,059 car occupants died in vehicle crashes in Brazil in 2010, according to the most recent statistics available. That same year, 12,435 people in the U.S. were killed in car crashes, though the U.S. passenger car fleet is five times larger than Brazil's. The result: Brazilian automobile crash victims died at four times the rate as those in the U.S.

The dangers come down to basics, engineers said: the lack of body reinforcements, lower-quality steel in car bodies, weaker or fewer weld spots to hold the vehicles together and car platforms designed decades before modern safety advances.

"The electricity used in building a car is about 20 percent of the cost of the structure," said Marcilio Alves, an engineering professor at Brazil's premier University of Sao Paulo and one of the few independent researchers in the nation looking at car safety.

"If you save on electricity, you save on cost. One way to save electricity is either reducing the number of spot welds or using less energy for each spot weld made. This affects structural performance in the event of a crash."

In a car with no air bags and an unstable body structure, a driver's biggest danger is the steering wheel.

A weak body structure and fragile steering column make it easier for the wheel to slam into the driver's chest and abdomen in frontal crashes, the deadliest and most common, causing serious damage to vital organs.

Ward talks of steering wheels that break off and "float" during wrecks in poorly made cars moving around the cabin in the driver's area. That means that even if an air bag is deployed, the steering wheel may go around or under it and directly hit the driver.

Many Brazilian car bodies also don't contain crumple zones, areas that absorb energy during wrecks. The omission endangers occupants' lower limbs, as foot wells rip off and expose feet and legs to car parts slamming into them from the front.

"If a car's body cannot absorb the energy of a crash, it will logically result in more damage, more injuries to passengers," said Alves, the doctor who specializes in traffic accident victims.

One auto engineer described the situation by sketching two car body designs with identical perimeters, but one depicted internal gaps missing body reinforcements.

He worked three decades for Volkswagen and spent the last 10 years as an independent engineering consultant for big automakers. He asked that his name not be published for fear of losing contracts and benefits.

"The secret of a car's body being able to withstand the crash test are the weld spots," he said.

"Let's say this is a German car," he pointed to the gapless sketch. "It's really sophisticated. Nothing is missing."

Then he pointed at the car made in Brazil, full of incomplete ink strokes.

"The Brazilian version looks the same from the outside, but it's missing pieces," he said. "In one version they include the reinforcement, in the other they don't. What's of interest is the final shape. What's inside, nobody can see."

___

In 2008, Carlos Alberto Lopes, then a 23-year-old waiter, was riding in a one-star car traveling about 50 mph on a rainy highway in the southeastern Brazilian state of Minas Gerais when the road curved smoothly left. The car hydroplaned, skidded into an embankment and rolled several times down a long incline. Of the four occupants, Lopes was the only one with serious injuries, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down.

Lopes says the three-point seatbelt he was wearing didn't lock his body in place, allowing him to repeatedly hit the collapsing roof as the car rolled. He suffered a crushed vertebra.

"If the seatbelt had locked when the car rolled I wouldn't have hit my back. None of this would have happened," Lopes said.

A study by a chain of Brazilian rehabilitation centers where Lopes is being treated found that in 2011, 40 percent of the patients it worked with in Sao Paulo with serious spinal injuries were hurt in traffic accidents.

Lopes never considered a lawsuit. In fact, in more than a dozen interviews with accident victims left paralyzed after crashes, not one considered taking legal action against vehicle manufacturers.

That's in part a reflection of the lack of police investigations into car accidents, the majority of which, like Lopes', only result in simple "occurrence bulletins" that include minimal information.

But it's also indicative of the deference Brazil's new middle class consumers show to automakers and most other industries.

"We're 20 years behind the U.S. and Europe in terms of consumer awareness," said Dolci, coordinator of the Proteste consumer defense group. "The new, emerging middle class entering the market has little information on car safety. They think little of automobile security. It's this very class of consumer the automakers are targeting and to whom they're selling a mountain of cars."

Accidents like Lopes' involve more than a poorly built car.

Drivers fail to obey traffic laws, which many of the region's governments notoriously don't enforce. Cars must navigate crumbling roads and poorly designed highway systems that all but make gridlock and accidents unavoidable. And many drivers simply value perks such as alloy wheels and sound systems over unseen crumple zones.

In 1965, there were 47,089 motor vehicle fatalities in the U.S.That same year, consumer activist Ralph Nader's famous indictment of the auto industry was published, Unsafe at Any Speed. The book ignited a national discussion on auto safety and ultimately led to reforms that dramatically refashioned the industry's standards, helping lead to a 32 percent drop in deaths by 2011.

Nader said halting the growing number of auto deaths in Brazil would take "a public uproar, product liability lawsuits, selective boycotts by motorists or by mandatory Brazilian law equalizing safety standards with the safest engineering required in other countries."

"These responses in the past have worked in other countries confronted by auto industry double standards for protecting lives on the highway. Such actions are long overdue but now Brazilians know the truth in more detail," he said.

The Brazilian government says its new laws mandating frontal air bags and anti-lock brakes will dramatically improve safety, as will new impact standards. But because there are no independent crash-test centers in Brazil, companies will not face the same scrutiny as elsewhere. They will run the impact tests themselves and present the results to the government for approval.Because there is no "conformity of production" clause in the Brazilian legislation, cars won't be spot-checked to ensure they meet safety laws.

Alexandre Cordeiro, the top government minister overseeing auto safety laws, acknowledged that the government doesn't have its own crash-test center but said Brazil will monitor crash tests conducted outside the country.

"Regarding front- and rear-end crash tests, our cars are as secure as European or American cars," Cordeiro said.

However, when asked about the stark differences in performance that the NCAP tests document between Brazilian and European cars, Cordeiro acknowledged improvements need to be made, saying "we need to evolve and we're working on it."

Over the years Ward said he has watched the same battles play out over auto safety the only thing that changes is the location.

"The sad thing is, this has been the experience in the 1960s in the U.S., in the 1990s in Europe and now in Latin America," Ward said. "The industry does the least it can get away with until they're forced to do something different. It's maddening."

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A panel of experts discussed the slimy side of science at an event held here on April 30 at the New York Academy of Sciences and moderated by "Scientific American" Editor-in-Chief Mariette DiChristina.

Dr. Morton Meyers, professor and emeritus chairman of the department of radiology at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Stony Brook, recounted historical conflicts over the Nobel Prize; Harold "Skip" Garner, a professor at Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech, described wholesale plagiarism in scientific literature; and Dr. Ivan Oransky, executive editor of Reuters Health, delved into the slippery world of retracted studies.

Scientists "are people who have ambition and envy and , just as you and I do," Meyers said at the event. It's "interesting to lift the veil on scientific discovery to trace the human elements that underlie many of these things." []

Battle for recognition

As most humans do, scientists seek recognition for their efforts, and nowhere are the stakes higher than for that pinnacle of scientific honor: the Nobel Prize. Meyers' new book, "Prize Fight: The Race and the Rivalry to be the First in Science" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) deals with some of the great conflicts over priority and credit in the Nobels.

One such conflict involved the inventor and biochemist Selman Waksman and his then-graduate student Albert Schatz. Waksman and Schatz were studying antibiotics found in the soil when they came across streptomycin, the first antibiotic effective against tuberculosis. The two patented and published their research. Schatz was listed as first author on the paper but second on the patent.

Waksman was awarded a of streptomycin in 1952, prompting Schatz to sue Waksman for a share of the credit and the patent royalties. Schatz won a settlement, but was blacklisted from getting a job and faced major struggles for the rest of his career. []

"Both were right, and both were wrong," Meyers said. The story illustrates the gray area of apportioning credit in a supervisor-graduate-student collaboration. But in other cases, it is more black and white who deserves the credit.

'Borrowed' work

Scientists are usually fastidious about citing their work, but sometimes the pressures to publish become too great. With success in academia tied to scientific output, it's not surprising that some researchers stray into .

Garner found such plagiarism while developing software to search the Web for paragraphs of text in order to track down scientific studies. In doing so, he inadvertently stumbled upon a plethora of results that "were virtually identical but had author sets that were nonoverlapping," Garner said. In other words, the papers were "borrowed" and republished by other scientists without the correct attribution.

Garner ran his program on a supercomputer, comparing the texts of tens of millions of scientific articles. From the results, he created the "Dj Vu Database," containing about 80,000 pairs of papers that were more similar than mere chance would allow. About 10 percent of these appeared to have two sets of authors, so Garner sent questionnaires to the authors, asking them to explain the duplication.

"Ninety-five percent of the original authors were unaware of being ripped off," Garner said. About one-third of the copiers said they didn't think the practice was wrong, another third apologized and the rest made excuses, such as not knowing they were an author.

Some pretty prominent people were among the copiers, including the chairman of the clinical department of a prominent university in Boston, and a former vice president of Iran, Garner said. He even received mortal threats from the Iranian VP.

Garner has developed similar technology to detect instances of fraud, such as applying for multiple grants for one study. In biomedicine, such "double-dipping" accounts for $200 million to $300 million in government spending, Garner estimated. Ultimately, Garner hopes the government will make use of this software to prevent this kind of malfeasance.

Retract that

But it doesn't always stop with copying. In some cases, individuals stray into the realm of fabrication.

The number of statements that a scientific study should not have been published because its data or conclusions are erroneous, plagiarized or made up has been growing steadily in recent years, at a rate that outstrips the increase in studies.

Oransky and Adam Marcus, managing editor of "Anethesiology News," run a blog called . They started the blog because they wanted to shine a light on retractions. Some retractions are the result of minor mistakes, but all too frequently, foul play is involved.

Some scientists are repeat offenders. Take the Dutch psychologist Diederik Stapel, who has been in the news recently for committingin several dozen published papers.

Then there's the Japanese scientist Yoshitaka Fujii, who has had 183 papers retracted, Oransky said. Or the South Korean plant scientist Hyung-In Moon, who faked other scientists' email addresses so he could review his own papers.

It was once thought that misconduct was behind fewer than half of retractions, but it turns out to be responsible for two-thirds of them, Oransky said. The problem is compounded by the fact that retracted papers remain in scientific-article databases, so people continue to read and cite them.

In light of all these problems, science loses some of its luster. But as in any profession, it's important to remember that "scientists are humans, too," Garner said.

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With his younger brother following along and constantly pushing him, Moore became a rising talent in action sports.

The innovative freestyle snowmobile rider, who was hurt in a crash at the Winter X Games in Colorado, died Thursday morning. He was 25.

Moore had been undergoing care at a hospital in Grand Junction since the Jan. 24 crash. Family spokeswoman Chelsea Lawson confirmed his death, the first in the 18-year history of the X Games.

"He lived his life to the fullest. He was an inspiration," Lawson said.

A former all-terrain vehicle racer, Moore switched over to snowmobiles as a teenager and quickly rose to the top of the sport. He won four Winter X Games medals, including a bronze last season when his younger brother, Colten, captured gold.

Caleb Moore was attempting a backflip in the freestyle event in Aspen last week when the skis on his 450-pound snowmobile caught the lip of the landing area, sending him flying over the handlebars. Moore landed face first into the snow with his snowmobile rolling over him.

Moore stayed down for quite some time, before walking off with help and going to a hospital to treat a concussion. Moore developed bleeding around his heart and was flown to a hospital in Grand Junction for surgery. The family later said that Moore, of Krum, Texas, also had a complication involving his brain.

Colten Moore was injured in a separate crash that same night. He suffered a separated pelvis in the spill.

The family said in a statement they were grateful for all the prayers and support they have received from people around the world.

X Games officials expressed their condolences and said Moore, a four-time X Games medallist , would be remembered "for his natural passion for life and his deep love for his family and friends."

B.C. Vaught, Caleb Moore's agent for almost a decade, said he first saw Moore when he was racing an ATV in Minnesota and signed him up to star in some action sports movies.

Later, Moore wanted to make the switch from ATVs to snowmobiles and Vaught helped him. A natural talent, it only took Moore two weeks to master a difficult backflip.

Moore honed his skills in Krum, a town about 5,000 people 50 miles northwest of Dallas that rarely sees snow. Instead, he worked on tricks by launching his sled into a foam pit. After a brief training run on snow ramps in Michigan, he was ready for his sport's biggest stage the 2010 Winter X Games.

In that contest, Moore captured a bronze in freestyle and finished sixth in best trick. Two years later, his biography on ESPN said, "Caleb Moore has gone from 'beginner's luck' to 'serious threat.'"

That was hardly a surprise to Vaught, who said, "Whatever he wanted to do, he did it."

Vaught said Moore didn't believe his sport was too extreme, but rather "it was a lifestyle." He was good at it along with ATV racing as he accumulated a garage full of trophies.

Fellow snowmobile rider Levi LaVallee recently described Moore as a "fierce competitor."

"A very creative mind," LaVallee said. "I've watched him try some crazy, crazy tricks and some of them were successful, some of them not so much. But he was first guy to get back on a sled and go try it again. It shows a lot of heart."

X Games officials said in a statement that they would conduct a thorough review of freestyle snowmobiling events and adopt any appropriate changes.

"For 18 years, we have worked closely on safety issues with athletes, course designers and other experts. Still, when the world's best compete at the highest level in any sport, risks remain," they said, noting that Moore was hurt performing a move he had done several times before.

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Florida (Reuters) - Lee Westwood believes patience is a virtue, and the former world number one who turned 40 last month believes the best years of his golfing career could be yet to come.

The Englishman put his faith into practice at this week's Players Championship, biding his time before a late surge in the first round and a six-under 66 in Friday's second round that put him within two shots of the lead.

He said he was looking forward to weekend play at the TPC Sawgrass layout, home to what is widely regarded as golf's unofficial fifth major, which he expects will get firmer and more difficult to score on.

"A lot of patience is involved there. It will be sort of like a major championship-style mentality to go out there and play disciplined golf and not attack flags when they shouldn't be attacked and try to hit a lot of fairways, so you have to have a lot of control on your second shot," said Westwood.

"I enjoy that kind of golf. It's very rewarding if you play well."

Westwood, a brilliant ball-striker, has been one of world's most consistent big tournament players but has yet to win a major championship despite frequently contending.

He has three top 10s in the U.S. Open the last five years, including two third-place finishes and three top 10s in the last four Masters, including a tie for third and a runner-up showing.

Westwood has also been runner-up (2010) and tied for third (2009) in the last four British Opens and tied for third (2009) and eighth (2011) in the PGA Championship.

Often his short game has held him back.

That is why he took special pleasure in kick-starting his second round on the Stadium Course by pitching in for eagle on the par-five 11th, his second hole of the day.

He followed that with two birdies and was on his way.

"It's a big momentum thing if you pitch in. That's what's been missing from my game over the last couple years almost, having a few breaks," said Westwood.

"But I've worked hard on my short game, and I'm obviously getting it on line a little bit more than I used to do."

Westwood began his first round with 14 pars, patiently waiting for his chances despite a course record-tying 63 posted in the morning by little-known American Roberto Castro.

"Obviously you're under a little bit of pressure when you see nine-under on the board and you haven't shot yet," Westwood said. "But then again, you know there are good scores out there.

"So I played well through the first 14 holes, it just wouldn't happen for me.

"It's just a case of being patient. I was rewarded, a couple of nice shots at 15. I made birdie. Made a birdie at 16, and made a nice birdie at the last into 18 from about six feet."

He maintained the same approach on Friday and got better results.

"I played pretty much how I played yesterday, very solid, hit a lot of fairways, hit a lot of greens. I haven't made a bogey yet this week," said Westwood.

Westwood, who showed his more daring side by deciding to grow a goatee after going a week without shaving after cutting his nose, lip and chin after diving into his swimming pool, said the success of other mature golfers had boosted his confidence.

"It's just a number, I don't feel any different," he said. "I'm prepared to keep working as hard as I've always worked.

"So many people play well now in their 40s. It's not just one person, there are loads of people. Phil (Mickelson) still plays great, (Angel) Cabrera nearly won the Masters, Darren (Clarke) and Ernie (Els) won the last two Opens after 40, too.

"I think the way that players look after themselves a little bit more now with probably the exception of Darren - he'll like me for that - we can play a lot longer."

(Editing by Frank Pingue)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top Republican in Congress demanded on Thursday that the Obama administration release emails about its handling of last year's deadly attack in Libya, after a dramatic congressional hearing breathed life into the party's accusations of negligence and cover-up.

U.S. House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner called on the White House to order the State Department to make public more internal emails sent after the killings in Benghazi of the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans.

Boehner's remarks kept up pressure a day after the hearing - dismissed by Democrats as mostly partisan posturing - won front-page headlines following months of Republican accusations that Washington failed to respond quickly enough to the assault by suspected Islamist militants on the U.S. mission in Benghazi.

"Last November, the president said he was 'happy to cooperate in any way Congress wants,'" Boehner told a news conference. "This is his chance."

Republican critics believe the emails could reveal evidence that the administration initially tried to play down the assault in Benghazi as stemming from spontaneous demonstrations by Libyans, as opposed to being a planned militant operation.

The emails are believed to detail senior diplomats' views of who was behind the September 11, 2012, attacks and how administration officials discussed ways to present the incident to the public.

The State Department said it had already been working with Congress to provide the emails it wants - a process complicated by secrecy rules.

Republicans have been complaining loudly about the Benghazi attack for eight months, often without much attention in the mainstream media.

The killings and their aftermath have - until this week at least - failed to inflict much political damage on President Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, who headed the State Department at the time of the attack and is considered the top Democratic prospect for the 2016 presidential race.

Clinton is clearly a major focus of Republicans' attempts to get to the heart of what they believe is a national security scandal.

Foreign Policy magazine counted 32 separate discussions mentioning Clinton during Wednesday's hearing of the House Oversight Committee. The featured witness was Gregory Hicks, a former top U.S. diplomat in Libya who gave a dramatic account of the night that Ambassador Christopher Stevens was killed.

Congressional committees have held about a dozen hearings on Benghazi and more are in the works. There are five different committees of the Republican-led House investigating Benghazi: Oversight, Intelligence, Armed Services, Foreign Affairs and Judiciary.

PLAYING POLITICS?

Chris Lehane, a veteran of congressional investigations of former President Bill Clinton's White House, said Republicans were using the hearings just to pressure the Obama administration.

"Congress using and sometimes abusing the investigative process is about as predictable as the cicadas coming to D.C., although it happens much more frequently," said Lehane, referring to an insect that emerges in huge numbers on the East Coast periodically.

The White House dismissed suggestions of a cover-up, noting that administration officials had testified at 11 congressional hearings and provided more than 25,000 pages of documents.

Republicans deny political motivation, and say any information that explains what happened in Benghazi is worthwhile.

Email traffic is central to what they say is the administration's attempt to diminish the seriousness of the assault in Benghazi at the height of the U.S. presidential election campaign.

"The story of Benghazi is that after the attack, seven weeks before an election, there was an effort by some senior people to put a political spin on this," Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "Rather than tell the story that it was a terrorist attack from the get-go because it was so close to the election."

At Wednesday's hearing, Republican Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina read what he said was an email sent by Acting Assistant Secretary of State Beth Jones on September 12 blaming the violence in Benghazi on a group affiliated with Islamist militants.

Boehner said the State Department did not let House committees keep copies of the email and urged Obama to order State to release it.

He also called for the release of emails that a House report said showed that Obama's White House and State Department were involved in rewriting "talking points" on Benghazi used by U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice to give the administration's version of events on television talk shows shortly after the attack.

Former Ambassador Thomas Pickering, who helped lead an investigation into the attack, scoffed at Republican allegations. "From my own personal perspective, it was tantamount to Pulitzer Prize-level fiction if one could find a cover-up here," Pickering said.

Lehane, a crisis communications specialist, said Clinton appeared to be shielded from accusations that she handled Benghazi badly because she was careful right after the attack not to misspeak.

"This is a basic principle of crisis management," he said. "It's a complicated world and it's a dangerous world, but the way they evaluate you is how you handle it in the aftermath. If you do it in an honest way, then you protect yourself."

(Additional reporting by Susan Cornwell, Mark Felsenthal and Paul Eckert; Editing by Alistair Bell and Peter Cooney)

The latest abduction took place Sunday, when an advisor to the area's Catholic schools, Gratien Bahati, was stopped on his way back to Rutshuru's town center. He was released after a $5,000 ransom was paid, according to the president of North Kivu Civil Society Thomas d'Acquin Muiti.

At least few other kidnap victims have been released on ransom, while others are still missing. The M23 rebel group denies being involved in the kidnappings, even though they are the only armed rebels in the area.

"We were 5 kilometers (3 miles) from Rutshuru when three armed men wearing police uniforms stopped us, and placed themselves on each side of the motorbike," said Georges Mumbere, the motorbike taxi driver who was carrying Bahati. "They called him by his name and forced him to get off and then they walked away with him in the bush," he said.

School was cancelled on Monday in Rutshuru following Bahati's abduction. Bahati was freed on Tuesday, after the ransom was paid to the kidnappers, said Muiti. The M23 said they had nothing to do with the incident.

The M23 rebels celebrated the one-year anniversary of the creation of their armed group with a ceremony in the town center earlier this week, but residents privately complained about the growing climate of fear under the rebels' rule.

"There is too much insecurity, it's even dangerous to go to school," said Asante, a 15-year-old girl dressed in the white blouse and long blue skirt that is her school's uniform. She would only give her first name, out of fear of reprisals.

Some residents blame the M23 for the spate of kidnappings.

"The abductions were carried out by men wearing police uniforms, in the M23 territory. The M23 intelligence services are excellent, they know everything that is happening in their territory and their police forces are the only ones wearing uniforms in the area, so it has to be them," said a local religious leader, who insisted on anonymity for fear of reprisal from the rebel group.

Insecurity has increased since the M23 took control of the territory in July 2012, say residents who add that simply walking outside after dark is dangerous. Many have simply gone missing, they said.

In addition to the ransoms, the population must pay taxes now to M23 and many people have lost their jobs because Congolese government services have shut down. The area is experiencing a cash shortage, making everyday life a strain for many.

The M23 rebel group gets its name from the date of a March 23, 2009 peace accord which paved the way for fighters belonging to the now-defunct rebel group, the National Congress for the People, or CNDP, to join the ranks of the regular army.It was an imperfect solution to years of conflict in the troubled east of Congo, and until 2012, the accord was more or less respected. The ex-CNDP fighters, now wearing the uniform of the regular army, continued to control access to lucrative tin, tantalum and tungsten mines, as the Congolese government largely looked the other way in the interest of maintaining peace.

But starting on April 4, 2012, they began defecting from the regular army by the hundreds, citing their bad living conditions and claiming that the terms of the three-year-old agreement was not being respected. Country watchers, including investigators with the United Nations Group of Experts, believe the defections were prompted by changes inside the army which made it more difficult for the ex-rebels to continue their control of the mining trade.

Subsequent reports by the U.N. Group of Experts revealed that the M23 rebellion is being financed and orchestrated by neighboring Rwanda and Uganda, through which the minerals are funneled. Last December the M23 fighters left their base in Rutshuru and pushed south, taking the crucial provincial capital of Goma for a few tense days, in the single-largest blow to the Congolese government in a decade.

They pulled back under intense international pressure on the rebels as well as on their alleged patron, Rwanda, which saw aid cut off from numerous European nations.

___

Associated Press writer Rukmini Callimachi contributed to this report from Dakar, Senegal.

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SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Zynga Inc's management on Wednesday pleaded for more time for its turnaround effort after the online game maker forecast a steeper-than-expected loss for the current quarter, sending its shares lower.

The embattled publisher behind games such as "FarmVille" and "Words With Friends" reported a surprise profit for its latest quarter through steep cost-cutting, but Chief Executive Mark Pincus said Zynga's business, although stabilized, may not pick up until the latter half of the year.

The company also reported a 13 percent slide in monthly figures for the number of people playing its games.

"We know that 2013 is a year of transition," Pincus told analysts on a conference call. "We continue to expect non-linear, uneven results."

On an adjusted basis, Zynga reported earnings of 1 cent per share, beating analyst expectations of a loss of 4 cents per share. But the company also projected a second-quarter loss between 3 and 5 cents per share, exceeding the 1 cent per share loss analysts had expected.

The results and Zynga's forecast sent its shares 9 percent lower to $3.05 in extended trading.

Over the past 12 months, Zynga's shares have shed two-thirds of their value while investors have watched the company struggle to keep hold of gamers who once flocked to its games on Facebook Inc's website.

"While we recognize the decline in the user base on a macro level, we have the pipeline coming down," Barry Cottle, the company's chief revenue officer, said in an interview. "That's going to happen over a period of time, not something that happens in a quarter."

The company aims to build up its business with gamers on smartphones as it loses users on PCs, but doubts remain over whether this can sustain its revenues and profits.

In recent months, Zynga and Facebook have revised their business partnership, as the game company sought to establish a more independent network even at the risk of getting less visitor traffic from the social media giant.

Over the past year, Zynga's monthly players have fallen to 253 million from 292 million, while its number of monthly paying users shrank to 2.5 million from 3.5 million, the company said.

"The stock is down because of the guidance," said Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia.

But in the long term, he added: "We continue to think that any hope for real growth for this nebulous company really depends on what it can do in real-money gaming."

REAL-MONEY POTENTIAL

In past quarters, Zynga has promised investors that it could tap into a potentially lucrative new revenue stream by launching real-money casino games around the world. The effort kicked off in the last quarter in Britain, where such games are highly regulated.

But executives on Wednesday stayed largely mum about the progress of its real-money inroads in other markets, saying that it could be at least months before Zynga could begin any meaningful operations in the United States, where real-money gambling is illegal in many states.

"We can't tell you when the regulatory environment will let us test that audience," Pincus said.

Other analysts said it was unrealistic to consider the talk about real-money gaming as anything but a long-shot for the coming years.

"They're kind of in dream mode here as they go through the process of trying to materialize the business," said Mike Hickey, an analyst at National Alliance Capital Markets.

"They started with partnering in the UK market, which is probably at least a year from ever being material."

Zynga executives blamed their eroding user base on gamers abandoning computers for mobile devices, but pledged to recapture the market once it releases its slate of mobile games due out later this year.

In the meantime, the company will continue to rely on its brand-name franchises, such as its aging but still-robust "FarmVille" series, to generate sales from both mobile and desktop users.

Executives argued that Zynga, which has been the most popular game publisher for Apple Inc's iPhone, would be better placed than rivals with its independent gaming network to generate game downloads.

"Discoverability becomes such an important factor in how apps are found," Cottle said. "If you look at challenges in mobile, it gives us a distribution advantage in the marketplace."

Still, it was unclear if the company would be able to wring as much revenue from mobile users as it had from desktop gamers, analysts said.

"The majority of their games are lower-monetizing experiences on mobile platforms," Hickey said. "Certainly they've attracted a large audience but it's hard to get much money from that audience."

The company now derives 22 percent of its revenue from its mobile platform, compared with 12 percent a year ago, but that share remains modest compared with similarly sized technology companies such as Twitter Inc, which gets more than half of its revenue from mobile users.

On Wednesday, Zynga reported revenue of $263.6 million, down 18 percent from the year-ago quarter.

For the full year, the company projected that it could be narrowly profitable.

"If we launch the right games and get the right sort of engagement, there's an opportunity that revenues will go up as well," Chief Financial Officer Mark Vranesh said. "2013 is going to be bumpy. It's going to be hard to predict."

(Reporting By Gerry Shih and Malathi Nayak; Editing by Leslie Adler, David Gregorio and Edmund Klamann)

Conte was jailed in 2005 after pleading guilty to conspiracy to distribute banned steroids and his association with Khan has been criticized by UK Anti-Doping.

However, Khan said the controversial American, who was introduced to the boxer by trainer Virgil Hunter, had passed on a lot of invaluable tips.

"The advice he's been giving me has been brilliant," Khan told the BBC's website. "I know he's had a bad background and has done things he shouldn't have.

"Virgil Hunter is my trainer and he's the one who's told me we are going to use Victor Conte as an assistant in a way, as he has a team of trainers who can teach you stuff.

"On the training methods he's brought so much good training into the game. He's introduced me to a lot of new trainers who have helped me on my running, sprinting, on my engine really, which is working my fitness, also breathing methods and telling me what to do and what not to do."

Conte was at the center of the BALCO doping program which included several high profile athletes like Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery.

A steroid specifically designed to fool testers, dubbed tetrahydrogestrinone (THG), was produced and distributed by BALCO.

Following his release from prison, Conte became an anti-drug campaigner who works with several anti-doping bodies in a bid to clean up sport.

(Editing by Greg Stutchbury)