Facing the infamous island-green on No. 17 for the first time in competition, Castro left a 9-iron within a foot of the hole. On the daunting 18th, he hit 4-iron to a foot. When his day was over, Castro was in the record book with Greg Norman and Fred Couples for lowest score on the Stadium Course.

"I hit it close a lot," said Castro, making it sound as easy as it looked.

Sawgrass finally made sense to McIlroy, too.

The two-time major champion had never made the cut or even broken par at The Players Championship, but the 24-year-old figured it out on a gorgeous morning by dialing it back off the tee and letting his iron play take over. McIlroy never came seriously close to a bogey on his way to a 66, leaving him tied with Zach Johnson.

McIlroy didn't hit driver once on the front nine, including the par-5 ninth. He made up his mind during practice that he gets into more trouble trying to reach the green in two, so he is playing short and relying on his wedge. He still made par on No. 9, but he stuck to his strategy.

"When you hit the shots, it seems very simple," McIlroy said. "I had a lot of good shots out there, lot of iron shots that were 12, 15 feet away from the pin and I got myself a lot of looks for birdies. I adopted maybe more of a conservative strategy off the tee this year. But once you put your ball in the fairway that means you can be more aggressive into the greens. So it sort of balances itself out."

Among those playing in the afternoon were Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Vijay Singh, who is under more scrutiny than ever. Singh shook the tournament on Wednesday when he filed a lawsuit against the PGA Tour for what he said was a rush to judgment in trying to suspend him for an anti-doping violation. Singh sued just one week after the tour dropped its case.

One man standing in the bleachers around the first tee was wearing deer antlers. Singh confirmed using deer antler spray, which led to the tour's investigation.

Masters champion Adam Scott didn't miss a beat from his last competitive round, a rainy Sunday at Augusta National. He missed only two fairways and two greens in a tidy round of 69. His only disappointment was not getting introduced as the Masters champion.

Scott and McIlroy were joined by Steve Stricker, who made six birdies and never once had honors on the tee Stricker and McIlroy made birdies on the same six holes. Stricker wound up with a 67, along with Hunter Mahan and Casey Wittenberg.

Henrik Stenson was among those at 68.

The Stadium Course has rarely been this vulnerable, with barely a trace of wind and some pins in bowls that allowed for good looks at birdie. Half the 72 players in the morning broke par.

But the punishment is never far away, as Scott Stallings discovered. He opened with five straight birdies to get everyone's attention, but after going out in 31, Stallings gave most of it back with a bogey, double bogey and a triple bogey on the 16th when he hit two balls into the water. He shot 40 on the back for a 71.

"It just goes to show about the golf course and really how volatile it is," Stallings said.

Castro hasn't discovered that yet. This was a day when everything went right.

He made three birdies early in his round on the back until making his tap-in birdies on the 17th and 18th. Then, he hit 3-iron into 3 feet on the par-5 second hole for an eagle and was 7-under through 11 holes. On the fourth, he hit his approach inside 2 feet for another birdie, and then he hit wedge to 18 inches on the sixth.

Castro had a birdie putt just outside 12 feet to break the course record, but missed it.

After his eagle on the second hole his 11th of the round Castro was reminded of a game he plays to try to birdie every other hole.

"When I eagled, I was like, 'Oh, now I'm 7 (under) through 11, so that's keeping ahead of that 50 percent mark.' But this is a different golf course," he said. "The golf course is much harder than most of the other times I've kind of taken that attitude."

Couples shot his 63 in 1992 in the third round. Norman opened with a 63 in 1994 when he went on to shatter the tournament record at 24-under 264. Castro put himself in good company, two players in the World Golf Hall of Fame, and two winners of The Players Championship. Not bad for a 27-year-old in only his second year on the PGA Tour.

Castro is not well known even in golf circles. His mother grew up in Peru and moved to America as a teenager along with her sister, Jenny Lidback, who played the LPGA Tour. He toiled in the minor leagues for five years after getting his industrial engineering degree at Georgia Tech.

And he's in the record book at The Players Championship. Sawgrass is rarely in short supply of surprises.

"It gets proven out here every week," Castro said. "Derek Ernst won last week in his eighth event and no one ever heard of him. There are a lot of good players out here."

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Veteran basketball player Jason Collins announced on Monday that he was gay, smashing through one of the final frontiers in U.S. sports with a frank personal statement and winning warm praise as a groundbreaker.

Collins, a 12-year player in the National Basketball Association (NBA), became the first active athlete from any of the four major U.S. men's professional sports leagues to come out publicly as gay.

He was quickly enveloped in a wave of support from the White House to tennis player Martina Navratilova, a pioneer for gay athletes in sport.

Collins is not a well-known sports star but is now likely to become famous for his stance. He revealed the secret he had harbored for years in a first-person account published in Sports Illustrated, saying he had gradually become frustrated with having to keep silent on his sexuality.

"I'm a 34-year-old NBA center," his essay began. "I'm black. And I'm gay."

Collins said he had considered coming out years ago but it was the Boston Marathon bombings this month that convinced him not to wait any more for a perfect moment to come out.

"I wish I wasn't the kid in the classroom raising his hand and saying, 'I'm different.' said Collins, who played last season with the Boston Celtics and then the Washington Wizards and is currently a free agent. "If I had my way, someone else would have already done this. Nobody has, which is why I'm raising my hand."

Players, administrators and some politicians applauded him for taking a stance. Some hailed it as a landmark day in American civil rights, perhaps as important as when Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball.

President Barack Obama, a big fan of the NBA who regularly plays pickup basketball with his friends, called Collins to express his support, a White House official said.

"I can certainly tell you that here at the White House we view that as another example of the progress that has been made and the evolution that has been taking place in this country, and commend him for his courage, and support him in his - in this effort and hope that his fans and his team support him going forward," said White House spokesman Jay Carney.

DEBATE OVER GAY RIGHTS

Collins' move came at a time of shifting attitudes toward gay rights in the United States, where polls show public opinion is fast moving toward greater acceptance, although a core of social conservatives oppose such change.

Some in sports declined to join the chorus of voices in support of Collins. Sportswriter Chris Broussard, speaking on ESPN television, grouped homosexual acts with adultery and premarital sex, saying he believed this was "walking in open rebellion to God."

In the coming months, the Supreme Court will rule on whether to strike down parts of a federal law that defines marriage as the union between a man and a woman. In 2011, the military repealed a ban on openly gay soldiers.

"Jason's announcement today is an important moment for professional sports and in the history of the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) community," former U.S. president Bill Clinton said in a statement.

NBA commissioner David Stern said he was proud of Collins for taking a brave stance.

"Jason has been a widely respected player and teammate throughout his career and we are proud he has assumed the leadership mantle on this very important issue," Stern said.

In a country where it is no longer news for politicians and entertainers to be openly gay, there had been questions over the lack of an openly gay player in the big four men's professional leagues: the National Basketball Association, the National Football League, the National Hockey League and Major League Baseball.

Sports, which helped play a key role in changing public opinion on racial discrimination, had come to seem out of step with much of the rest of American society.

Collins, who has played with six different teams during his 12 years in the NBA, said he never had any grand plans to be the first openly gay player, but events off the basketball court persuaded him to come out.

He was inspired by last year's gay pride parade in Boston, he said, but delayed making an announcement due to a desire to protect his team, waiting until the end of the regular 2012-2013 season ended. Collins was also prompted by the April 15 Boston Marathon bombings which killed three people and wounded more than 200, he said.

"The recent Boston Marathon bombing reinforced the notion that I shouldn't wait for the circumstances of my coming out to be perfect," he wrote in Sports Illustrated. "Things can change in an instant, so why not live truthfully?

PRAISE FLOODS IN

Kobe Bryant, one of the NBA's greatest players, was fined $100,000 in 2011 for a homophobic slur. On Monday, he was among the first of dozens of active players who took to social media to applaud Collins.

"Proud of @jasoncollins34. Don't suffocate who u r because of the ignorance of others," Bryant tweeted.

Two-time NBA Most Valuable Player Steve Nash tweeted: "The time has come. Maximum respect."

There are openly gay players in many top professional leagues in other countries in the world as well as smaller leagues in North America and individual sports.

Navratilova, the tennis star who also became a champion for gay rights, said Collins would feel like a burden had been lifted from him.

"Hey Jason Collins-you are now an activist!!! And trust me, you will sleep a lot better now - freedom is a sweet feeling indeed!," she tweeted.

Other gay athletes, including former NBA center John Amaechi, had waited until their retirement to divulge their sexuality publicly, but there was a growing sense that times were changing.

Earlier this year, the American soccer player Robbie Rogers outed himself, although he had just retired. And Brittney Griner, one of the country's top women's basketball players, said she too was gay.

But there were still no currently playing, openly gay athletes from the four biggest men's leagues.

The question came into sharp focus this year around the National Football League (NFL), usually viewed as the most macho of America's pro sports.

In the days leading up to this year's Super Bowl in New Orleans in February, San Francisco 49ers cornerback Chris Culliver told reporters he would not welcome a gay teammate into the locker room.

He later retracted his comments but reports later emerged of NFL teams asking college players about their sexuality at a scouting session in February.

This prompted the New York State attorney general to send a letter to the NFL, urging the league to take action and adopt a formal policy on discrimination over sexual orientation.

High-profile NFL players, most notably Chris Kluwe and Brendon Ayanbadejo, began advocating for gay rights, and suggested there were a handful of players ready to come out once someone had taken the first step.

"All of us have huge admiration for what Jason is doing," said Patrick Burke, co-founder of equal rights advocacy group You Can Play.

"Jason's courage in stepping forward with his personal story will provide athletes and fans with a new role model."

(Editing by Frances Kerry and Tim Dobbyn)

TOKYO (Reuters) - Asian shares rose to their highest in nearly two years on Wednesday, as strong Chinese trade data added to positive sentiment already fed by record highs in global equities overnight.

European stock markets were seen firmer, with financial spreadbetters predicting London's FTSE 100, Paris's CAC-40 and Frankfurt's DAX would open up as much as 0.2 percent. Germany's benchmark DAX equity index ended at a record high on Tuesday.

U.S. stock futures were steady to suggest a calm Wall Street open after the Standard & Poor's 500 Index hit an intraday record high and the Dow Jones industrial average closed above 15,000 for the first time the day before.

Investors are seeing better returns from equities than bonds, which have been hit by interest rate cuts by major central banks, with the Reserve Bank of Australia becoming the latest to do so on Tuesday.

"The RBA is just playing catch-up," said Evan Lucas, a market strategist at IG in Melbourne, noting central banks' moves around the globe. "The major benefactors of this cut will be risk stocks as income-plays flopped on the move."

MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan added 0.8 percent to its highest since August 2011, driven by a 1 percent gain in Australian shares to a new peak since July 2008. Hong Kong shares rose 0.6 percent.

"The global monetary easing is in full flight, and this will continue to push money managers into the most compelling asset out there - equities," Chris Weston, chief market strategist at IG markets, said in a note to clients.

After last Friday's upbeat U.S. monthly nonfarm payrolls and this week's German industrial orders showing unexpected strength, China followed suit on Wednesday with better-than-expected trade numbers for April, further cementing the positive mood.

China's exports and imports grew more than expected in April from a year earlier, possibly easing some of the concerns about weakness in the recovery of the world's second-largest economy and top consumer of many commodities following a run of below-par data in recent weeks.

However, doubts remained over the strength of real demand in China and the accuracy of the figures, with some analysts suspecting exporters may have overstated their business to sneak funds into the country and avoid capital restrictions.

Separately, as the country struggles to keep rising capital inflows at bay, dealers said China's central bank may be preparing to change the way it manages monetary policy by reintroducing bills as a liquidity management tool for the first time since 2011.

The Australian dollar reached its intraday high of $1.0193 after the data from China, its biggest export market.

Japanese stocks again outperformed their regional peers, scaling a fresh five-year high. The Nikkei stock average climbed as much as 1.7 percent to its highest since June 2008.

Nikkei has surged more than 65 percent since mid-November, when Prime Minister Shinzo Abe began promising expansionary monetary and fiscal policies to revive the economy during his election campaign. As part of the policy mix known as the "Abenomics," the Bank of Japan last month pledged to double monetary base to achieve a 2 percent inflation in two years.

"Economic indicators have yet to show clear impact from Abenomics. That said, investors appear ready to give new policies the benefit of the doubt for a few more months," Morgan Stanley said in a research.

TOUGH TIMES FOR GOLD

Global equities, particularly in the United States, have remained robust despite the recent signs of a patchy recovery in world growth, mainly helped by major central banks pursuing accommodative monetary policy.

A successful bond sale in Portugal also supported the upbeat mood as it indicated the country is on track to exit its bailout, bolstering views that the euro zone crisis is abating even as debt problems in the region remain far from resolved.

Gold has taken a beating in this environment. Spot gold was up 0.1 percent at $1,453.89 an ounce, after losing over 1 percent on Tuesday as holdings on gold-backed exchange-traded funds fell to their weakest since early 2009.

"The continuing outflow of gold ETFs is symbolic. Money is returning to 'normal' financial assets such as stocks, suggesting the super-cycle of a commodities boom is over and tough times lie ahead, especially for metals," said Bob Takai, general manager of Sumitomo Corp's energy division in Tokyo.

"Commodities prices will be determined more by normal supply and demand balances than speculative money flows," he said, adding that a downtrend in commodities prices will hurt resources-reliant economies.

The euro rose 0.1 percent to $1.3093 against the dollar. The U.S. currency eased 0.1 percent to 98.95 yen.

U.S. crude futures inched up 0.1 percent to $95.72 a barrel but Brent inched down 0.1 percent to $104.28.

Worcester funeral home director Peter Stefan said none of the 120 grave offers from the U.S. and Canada, have worked out because, when he calls officials of the cities or towns involved, nobody wants the body.

Stefan also said that, despite the request by Tsarnaev's mother, he doesn't think Russia will take the body. He said he made calls to Russia, but that it was hard to get anyone to respond. He said he is working on other arrangements, but declined to be more specific.

Meanwhile, a friend of the surviving suspect in the bombings was released from federal custody Monday amid a swell of support from family and friends, but was under strict house arrest and only allowed to leave his home to meet with lawyers and for true emergencies. Also, the administrator of the One Fund Boston released the protocol for payouts of the fund, with the families of those who lost loved ones and individuals who suffered double amputations or permanent brain damage in the bombings receiving the highest payments.

The question of where Tamerlan Tsarnaev will be buried dragged on for another day Monday, and the issue seemed far from resolved.

Stefan said he made follow-up calls on all the grave offers, but faced the same result each time.

"It's not only Massachusetts that doesn't want him," Stefan said. "Nobody wants him. And all these people who have donated graves, I've made some calls and said to somebody in the cities and towns where the graves were, 'Hey, we would like to bury the guy there that was part of the marathon bombing.'"

He said the response was often the same: "You're not gonna do that here."

He said he received an offer from a Texas truck driver who didn't want anybody to know that the body would be in the plot he'd be donating, but the outcome was the same.

Stefan said he plans to ask for a burial in the city of Cambridge, where Tsarnaev lived. Cambridge has asked him not to do so.

Cambridge City Manager Robert Healy urged the Tsarnaev family not to make a request.

"The difficult and stressful efforts of the citizens of the City of Cambridge to return to a peaceful life would be adversely impacted by the turmoil, protests, and wide spread media presence at such an interment," Healy said in a statement Sunday.

Stefan said he does not regret taking on the body.

"We're just burying a dead body," he said late Monday. "We're not buying a cause. We're not doing anything else. ... The guy is a terrorist, whatever he is. Still dead."

The founder of the organization that built Colorado's largest mosque, Sheikh Abu-Omar Almubarac, operating independently, is offering to bury Tsarnaev in the Denver area. He didn't say where he would bury the body. Stefan said he was not aware of that offer, but said he might pursue it.

If Russia refuses to accept the body, Cambridge may be forced to take it, said Wake Forest University professor Tanya Marsh, an expert in U.S. law on the disposal of human remains.

Massachusetts law requires every community to provide a suitable place to bury its residents, she said. Cambridge's appeal to the family not to ask it to bury the body is likely a way to set up its defense if the family goes to court to try to force the burial, Marsh said.

Such a case would be unprecedented in Massachusetts, she said. She added that even in a country that's had its share of notorious accused killers, this kind of opposition to a burial is unheard of and is exposing holes in the law, Marsh said.

"It's a mess," she said. "We're really sort of in uncharted territory."

Gov. Deval Patrick said the question of what to do with the body is a "family issue" that should not be decided by the state or federal government. He said family members had "options" and he hoped they would make a decision soon.

He declined to say whether he thought it would be appropriate for the body to be buried in Massachusetts.

"We showed the world in the immediate aftermath of the attacks what a civilization looks like, and I'm proud of what we showed, and I think we continue to do that by stepping back and let the family make their decisions," the governor told reporters.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev's uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, of Montgomery Village, Md., and three of his friends met with Stefan on Sunday to wash and shroud Tsarnaev's body according to Muslim tradition.

Stefan confirmed Monday night that the body had been prepared for burial at any moment.

Tsarni told reporters that he is arranging for Tsarnaev's burial because religion and tradition call for his nephew to be buried. He would like him buried in Massachusetts because he's lived in the state for the last decade, he said.

"I'm dealing with logistics. A dead person must be buried," he said.

As the fate of the body remained unclear, Robel Phillipos, a friend of bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was released on $100,000 bond while he awaits trial for allegedly lying to federal investigators probing the April 15 bombings.

Phillipos, 19, who was a student at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth with Tsarnaev, was charged last week with lying to investigators about visiting Tsarnaev's dorm room three days after the bombings. He faces up to eight years in prison if convicted.

Prosecutors initially asked that Phillipos be held while he awaits trial, arguing that he poses a serious flight risk.

But prosecutors and Phillipos' lawyers agreed in a joint motion filed Monday that Phillipos could be released under strict conditions, including home confinement, monitoring with an electronic bracelet and a $100,000 secured bond.

Magistrate Judge Marianne Bowler agreed to the request during a hearing Monday, saying he would be under "strict house arrest," and only allowed to leave his home to meet with his lawyer and for true emergencies.

"We are confident that in the end we will be able to clear his name," defense attorney Derege Demissie said.

Assistant U.S .Attorney John Capin said documents filed over the weekend by Phillipos' defense, including many affidavits showing support from family and friends, might be viewed as indirectly questioning the government's case against Phillipos.

"The government stands by its allegations," Capin said.

Defense attorney Susan Church described Phillipos as a well-liked, honor roll student with many friends and supporters. At least 50 relatives, friends and other supporters attended the court hearing.

Church emphasized that Phillipos is not accused of helping Tsarnaev and his brother plan or carry out the bombings.

"At no time did Robel have any prior knowledge of this marathon bombing," she said.

Two other friends were charged with conspiring to obstruct justice by taking a backpack with fireworks and a laptop from Tsarnaev's dorm room. All four had studied at UMass Dartmouth.

In letters filed in court, friends and family members urged the court to release Phillipos on bail, describing him as peaceful and non-violent.

"I was shocked and stunned when I heard the news of his arrest. I could not control my tears," wrote Zewditu Alemu, his aunt. "I do not believe that my beloved Robel crosses the line intentionally to support or assist such a horrendous act against us the people of the USA. By nature he does not like violence. He loves peaceful environment."

Later Monday, the administrator of a compensation fund outlined a draft protocol for payments from The One Fund Boston, which was created to help people injured in the twin blasts.

Kenneth Feinberg spoke Monday evening at a Town Hall meeting at the Boston Public Library, near the blast site, and said the families of those who lost loved ones and individuals who suffered double amputations or permanent brain damage would receive the highest category of payment.

Those who received physical injuries and suffered the amputation of a limb will be the next highest priority. The fund has raised $28 million to date.

The Tsarnaev brothers are accused of carrying out the bombings using pressure cookers packed with explosives, nails, ball bearings and metal shards. The attack killed three people and injured more than 260 others near the marathon's finish line.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured and remains in a prison hospital. He has been charged with using a weapon of mass destruction and faces a potential death sentence if convicted.

The state medical examiner ruled that Tsarnaev died from gunshot wounds and blunt trauma to his head and torso, and authorities have said his brother ran him over in a chaotic getaway attempt.

Tsarni has denounced the acts his nephews are accused of committing and said they brought shame to the family and the entire Chechen ethnicity. The brothers are ethnic Chechens from Russia who came to the United States about a decade ago with their parents. Both parents returned to Dagestan last year.

___

Associated Press writers Bob Salsberg in New Bedford, Jay Lindsay in Boston and Rodrique Ngowi in Worcester contributed to this report.

Biden is questioning what Republicans don't understand about the U.S. and the people who built the country and fought to defend it.

He says the one thing all Democrats have in common is an absolute commitment to the middle class.

Biden spoke Friday night at an annual fundraising dinner for the South Carolina Democratic Party.

He says he knows his appearance will generate buzz about whether he's getting ready for a presidential run. South Carolina usually holds one of the first primary contests and is a frequent stop for potential candidates.

But Biden says he came to South Carolina to support Democratic congressman James Clyburn.

TULSA, Oklahoma (Reuters) - There was no doubt in Nora Guthrie's mind where the final repository of her famous musician father's legacy would be.

The Woody Guthrie Center opened on Saturday in Tulsa, allowing visitors to see the folk singer's handwritten lyrics to "This Land Is Your Land" and thousands of other lyric sheets, letters, postcards, artwork, photos, manuscripts and journals.

Guthrie was born in Okemah, Oklahoma, about 60 miles from Tulsa, in 1912 and spent his early years there. He gained fame in the 1930s for ballads that drew attention to the plight of Dust Bowl refugees, migrant farmworkers and others dispossessed by the hard times of the Great Depression.

Guthrie's papers were stored in boxes for decades following his death from Huntington's disease in 1967, just after interest in his life and work had been rekindled by Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul and Mary, and others during the 1960s folk music revival.

It was not until the early 1990s that Nora Guthrie started poking through the boxes that her mother, Guthrie's second wife, had carefully packaged.

She recalled pulling out the lyric sheet to "This Land Is Your Land" and asking an archivist what she should do to protect it. A cup of coffee was nearby, Nora Guthrie said, and the archivist carefully placed it and the lyrics a safe distance apart before explaining some of the basic points of archival storage.

The decision to move the archives from New York City to Oklahoma came about a decade ago. The Guthrie family had lost track of where Woody's mother, who died of Huntington's disease in 1930, was buried but rediscovered it in Oklahoma while a touring exhibit on the singer's life was visiting the state.

Family and friends gathered at the grave site, where Nora Guthrie said she was overcome with a feeling that her grandmother was telling her, "Thanks for bringing my boy back to me."

"It was a very powerful experience," she said. "There was some kind of strong pull to bring Woody back to Oklahoma. That was the catalyst."

GUTHRIE'S EX-WIFE

The George Kaiser Family Foundation in Tulsa bought the archives two years ago and agreed to transform a brick warehouse into the Woody Guthrie Center.

On Friday, before the center was opened to the public, one of its first visitors was Guthrie's first wife, Mary Jennings Boyle, 96, of Riverside, California. Sitting in her wheelchair, she watched a multi-media presentation that depicted her marriage to Guthrie after they had met in the Texas panhandle town of Pampa.

She had no objections to be being part of a museum exhibit and said her memories remain fond despite Guthrie's wanderlust, which left her at home with their three kids.

"Our life was not like the normal life," she said. "It just wasn't in him to do that ... Woody wasn't one for doing what most people do."

Bob Santelli, executive director of the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles, calls Guthrie "one of the most important American songwriters."

"His relevancy today is as rich and vibrant today as when he was crisscrossing America writing songs about it," he said.

A variety of recording artists have been invited to browse the Guthrie archives to set his unpublished lyrics to their own music.

"That has never been done before," said Tiffany Colannino, the center's archivist. "Archives traditionally have been a repository for preservation."

The center also features a theater and a classroom for educational programs, but Guthrie's leftist political views will not be pushed on anyone, said Deana McCloud, an English teacher who has been hired as the center's executive director.

McCloud said students who come from tough economic circumstances can find inspiration from Guthrie, who grew up amid the poverty of the 1930s Dust Bowl, "but still had power because of his creativity."

"We're not trying to tell kids what to think," McCloud said. "We're just encouraging them to think."

(This story was fixed to correct spelling of Tiffany Colannino in paragraph 17)

(Editing By Brendan O'Brien, Greg McCune and Bill Trott)

"Fame:Psy", which went on sale in the United States and South Korea on Wednesday, focuses mainly on what went into making "Gangnam Style," which catapulted the sunglassed singer with the garish jackets to global fame and became YouTube's most popular song ever with more than 1.5 billion hits.

"Has he fallen from the sky? Has he risen from the earth?" the comic begins, with illustrations showing Psy - in the suits he made famous in "Gangnam Style" and striking poses from his "Horse Riding Dance" - descending from heaven and bursting through the earth.

"It was the end of summer, 2012, when a little-known Asian rapper put his music video on YouTube. It exploded in popularity," continues the 26-page tale, from U.S. publisher Bluewater Productions and South Korean firm "able".

"His stubby build and dynamic stage presence caught people's eyes. Psy's not your typical pop star".

In similarly breathless prose the comic covers the decade of Psy's pre-Gangnam career in Korea, the origins of the video and the dance, and the fame that followed, including scenes of a delighted Psy teaching U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon his dance and performing for U.S. President Barack Obama.

The comic, which also touches on the less happy parts of Psy's past such as being charged with possession of marijuana in 2002, includes a guide that shows readers how to do Psy's dance themselves.

It ends with the release of Psy's second video, "Gentleman", last month. The video has racked up nearly 260 million YouTube hits after smashing the previous record of first-day views for songs, and hit fifth place on the Billboard Hot 100 last week.

(Reporting by Elaine Lies; Editing by Paul Tait)

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Brussels and Washington are the two great lobbying capitals of the world, where campaigners talk themselves hoarse trying to shift the political dial.

Some of them have had the fortune to recruit British director and screenwriter Richard Curtis, whose powers of persuasion move hearts as well as minds.

Known for his romantic comedies, such as "Four Weddings and a Funeral" and "Notting Hill", Curtis has turned his hand to a didactic tragedy - "Mary and Martha" - being screened across the globe to coincide with world malaria day on April 25.

"You could take a simple story and take it straight into the heart of politics," he told a Brussels audience of lobbyists, politicians and representatives of the European Commission.

"Mary and Martha" tells the story of two mothers, one American (played by Hilary Swank), one British (played by Brenda Blethyn), who lose their sons to malaria then lobby Washington politicians to try to prevent other mothers losing their children too.

For the developed world, theirs is an exceptional tragedy. In Africa, death from malaria is a daily occurrence. The continent accounts for the vast majority of the well over half a million annual deaths from a preventable and treatable disease.

Curtis, who wrote the screenplay, is appalled that a quirk of geography can be so unjust.

"If 650,000 children in Europe were going to die this year of one disease - if it were only 6,000 - everything would be stopped to do something," he said. "I can't understand why this tiny bit of geography should make it not matter."

Brussels says it is listening.

European Development Commissioner Andris Piebalgs met Curtis and said the European Commission would honor a pledge of 330 million euros ($430 million) for the Global Fund, set up by world leaders to tackle malaria, AIDS and tuberculosis.

But after the current funding period, 2011-2013, there might be "a lower budget than expected", Piebalgs said in a speech.

Over the coming weeks, EU member states and parliament are likely to freeze development spending - meaning a real-term cut - when they sign off on a seven-year financing plan for 2014-20 agreed after lengthy and difficult talks.

Curtis has a long track record in combining worthy causes with making people laugh. He helped to found British charity Comic Relief, set up in response to famine in Ethiopia in 1985.

Comic Relief, uses humor to raise funds to tackle poverty and social injustice and Curtis told his Brussels audience his foray into tragic script-writing did not mean he had given up on comedy.

"I have been getting more reflective as I get older, but I hope I have a couple of jokes in me too," he said.

($1 = 0.7674 euros)

(Additional reporting by Charlie Dunmore, editing by Paul Casciato)

"My head bangs every time I lay down," the 87-year-old actor posted on his Twitter account. "I've had every test come back that I'm perfectly healthy. Anybody got any ideas?"

Bob Palmer, a spokesman for Van Dyke, said Thursday that he's undergoing tests for "cranial throbbing" that's causing him to lose sleep. The sensation occurs when Van Dyke lies down, and scans and other tests have yet to yield a diagnosis, Palmer said.

Van Dyke drew a number of responses to his tweet for help Wednesday, including questions about what's been done so far for the problem he described as stubborn.

"It has been going on for 7 years. I've had every test you can think of," he replied, including an MRI and spinal tap.

Van Dyke has a strong constitution and is otherwise OK, but the "fatigue factor has become acute," Palmer said. Until he receives a diagnosis and treatment plan he's been advised not to fly, and is resting at his Malibu home.

He was to accept an award next week from New York's 92nd Street Y but canceled the trip.

Van Dyke's credits include "The Dick Van Dyke Show" and "Diagnosis Murder."