LONDON (Reuters) - Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling secretly posed as a retired military policeman to write a crime novel that has been hailed as one of the best debut detective stories in years.

Rowling wrote "The Cuckoo's Calling" under the name Robert Galbraith and kept up the pretence that it was the work of a married father of two and former undercover investigator.

Her cover was blown when the Sunday Times newspaper became suspicious that such an assured piece of writing could have been created by a first-time novelist. An investigation uncovered that Rowling was the real author.

"I had hoped to keep this secret a little longer because being Robert Galbraith has been such a liberating experience," the 47-year-old said. "It has been wonderful to publish without hype or expectation, and pure pleasure to get feedback under a different name."

Her publisher Little, Brown had promoted the book as a "classic crime novel in the tradition of P.D. James and Ruth Rendell". The protagonist, Cormoran Strike, is a troubled war veteran with physical and psychological wounds.

The plot follows Strike's investigation into the death of a model in Mayfair, an upmarket district of London.

One reviewer described it as a "scintillating debut novel", while another called it "astonishingly mature".

The novel had sold around 1,500 copies in hardback. However, in the hours after Rowling was named as its author, it shot up the bestseller charts. It was listed as the third biggest seller on Amazon.co.uk on Sunday, having entered the top 100 only the day before.

The Sunday Times said Rowling has already written the second Cormoran Strike novel and it is due to be published next year.

After selling millions of Harry Potter books, Rowling released her first adult novel, "The Casual Vacancy", last year to mixed reviews.

(Editing by Mark Heinrich)

More from The Week:

 -  - 

Abandoning his suit jacket under a sweltering sun at Georgetown University, Obama issued a dire warning about the environment: Temperatures are rising, sea level is climbing, the Arctic ice is melting and the world is doing far too little to stop it. Obama said the price for inaction includes lost lives and homes and hundreds of billions of dollars.

"As a president, as a father and as an American, I'm here to say we need to act," Obama said. "I refuse to condemn your generation and future generations to a planet that's beyond fixing."

At the core of Obama's plan are new controls on new and existing power plants that emit carbon dioxide heat-trapping gases blamed for global warming. The program also will boost renewable energy production on federal lands, increase efficiency standards and prepare communities to deal with higher temperatures. Obama called for the U.S. to be a global leader in the search for solutions.

But Obama's campaign will face extensive obstacles, including a complicated, lengthy process of implementation and the likelihood that the limits on power plants will be challenged in court. Likewise, the instantaneous political opposition that met his plan made clear the difficulty the president will face in seeking broad support.

"There will be legal challenges. No question about that," former EPA Administrator Christie Whitman said in an interview. "It's a program that's largely executive. He doesn't need Congress. What that does, of course, is make them (Congress) madder."

Obama also offered a rare insight into his deliberations on whether to approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline, deeming it in America's interests only if it doesn't worsen carbon pollution. Obama has faced intense political pressure from supporters and opponents of the 1,200-mile pipeline from Canada to Texas.

Declaring the scientific debate over climate change and its causes obsolete, Obama mocked those who deny that humans are contributing to the warming of the planet.

"We don't have time for a meeting of the flat-earth society," Obama said.

Obama's announcement followed years of inaction by Congress to combat climate change. A first-term effort by Obama to use a market-based approach called cap-and-trade to lower emissions failed, and in February a newly re-elected Obama issued lawmakers an ultimatum in his State of the Union: "If Congress won't act soon to protect future generations, I will."

Four months later, impatient environmental activists reveled in the news that Obama was finally taking matters into his own hands, announcing a series of steps that don't require congressional approval.

"This is the change we have been waiting for," said Michael Brune, who runs the Sierra Club, an environmental group. "Today, President Obama has shown he is keeping his word to future generations."

Republicans on both sides of the Capitol dubbed Obama's plan a continuation of his "war on coal" and "war on jobs." The National Association of Manufacturers claimed Obama's proposals would drive up costs. Republican Rep. Shelley Moore Capito of the coal-heavy state of West Virginia slammed what she called Obama's "tyrannical efforts to bankrupt the coal industry."

"The federal government should leave us the hell alone," said Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, whose agency handles Texas' environment and energy markets.

Even industry groups that have been friendly to Obama and supportive of his climate goals, such as the Edison Electric Institute, which represents power plants, signaled their apprehension by calling for "achievable compliance limits and deadlines."

Obama said the same arguments have been used in the past when the U.S. has taken other steps to protect the environment.

"That's what they said every time," Obama said. "And every time, they've been wrong."

Obama broke his relative silence on Keystone XL, explicitly linking the project to global warming for the first time in a clear overture to environmental activists who want the pipeline nixed. The pipeline would carry carbon-intensive oil from Canadian tar sands to the Texas Gulf Coast refineries and has sparked an intense partisan fight.

"Our national interest would be served only if this project does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution," Obama said.

The White House indicated Obama was referring to overall, net emissions that take into account what would happen under alternative scenarios. A State Department report this year said other methods to transport the oil like shipping it on trains could yield even higher emissions.

"The standard the president set today should lead to speedy approval of the Keystone pipeline," said Brendan Buck, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.

Announcing he will allow more renewable energy projects on public lands, Obama set a goal to power the equivalent of 6 million homes by 2020 from sources like wind and solar, effectively doubling the current capacity. The set of actions also includes a new set of fuel efficiency standards for heavy-duty trucks, more aggressive efficiency targets for buildings and appliances, and $8 billion in federal loan guarantees to spur innovation.

By far the most sweeping element and the one likely to cause the most consternation is new limits on carbon dioxide pollution from power plants.

The administration has already proposed rules for new coal-fired plants, but they have been delayed amid industry concerns about the cost. A presidential memorandum Obama issued Tuesday directs the EPA to revise and reissue the new plant rules by September, then finalize them "in a timely fashion."

The key prize for environmental groups comes in Obama's instruction that the EPA propose rules for the nation's existing plants by June 2014, then finalize them by June 2015 and implement them by June 2016 just as the presidential campaign to replace Obama will be in full swing.

Rather than issue a specific, uniform standard that plants must meet, the EPA will work with states, power sector leaders and other parties to develop plans that meet the needs of individual states and also achieve the objective of reducing emissions.

___

Associated Press writers Matthew Daly and Jim Kuhnhenn in Washington and Ramit Plushnick-Masti in Houston, contributed to this report.

___

Reach Josh Lederman on Twitter at http://twitter.com/joshledermanAP

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - NBC has given an eight-episode order to the game show "Wall of Fame," which will test families' knowledge of pop-culture trivia.

NBC alternative and late night programming president Paul Telegdy announced the pick-up Thursday, saying "Wall of Fame" will offer "something for everyone."

"Wall of Fame" will give one family the opportunity to win money if they can answer pop trivia questions correctly - and if they can guess which members of the show's celebrity "Wall of Fame" delivered the correct answers to the same questions.

The celebrity's answers will "sometimes surprise you, sometimes impress you, but they will always make viewers laugh," NBC said in a release.

The series will be produced by Endemol USA, which produced NBC's Howie Mandel-hosted game show "Deal or No Deal."

Karlyn Tilley, a spokeswoman for the Golden Fire Department, tells The Denver Post (http://bit.ly/10EYRgW ) the man was climbing with his two adult children while using technical gear at a popular cliff about 20 miles west of Denver. She says he fell at about 1 p.m. Saturday.

About a dozen climbers who were nearby helped with the rescue and brought the man off the mountain within an hour of the fall.

Tilley says the man was unresponsive and not breathing when paramedics arrived.

___

Information from: The Denver Post, http://www.denverpost.com

Andy Murray made it possible Sunday, winning his country's hallowed tennis tournament to become the first British man in 77 years to raise the trophy at the All England Club.

Yes, this was history, and Murray's 6-4, 7-5, 6-4 victory over top-seeded Novak Djokovic was a fitting close to nearly eight decades of British frustration in its own backyard: A straight-setter, yes, but a hard-fought, 3-hour, 9-minute affair filled with long, punishing rallies and a final game that may have felt like another 77 years, with Murray squandering three match points before finally putting it away after four deuces.

Certainly, the endgame must have felt like torture to the 15,000 watching on Centre Court, the thousands more watching on a big-screen TV on the grounds and, of course, the millions of British watching on TV.

"Imagine playing it," Murray said in his on-court interview.

But he closed it out on this cloudless, 80-degree day on tennis' most famous court. He put his name beside that of Fred Perry, the last British man to win Wimbledon, back in 1936.

Those words don't have to be written again.

"He's someone that I've obviously never met, but is quite relevant in my career really," Murray said.

The second-seeded Murray beat the best in Djokovic top-ranked and a six-time Grand Slam tournament winner known for both a mental and physical fitness built to handle what he faced Sunday: A crowd full of overheated partisans rooting against him, to say nothing of Murray himself.

"The atmosphere was incredible for him. For me, not so much, but this is what I expected," Djokovic said.

Since falling to Roger Federer in the final last year, Murray had shed some baggage by winning the Olympic gold medal on Centre Court, then following that with his first Grand Slam title at the U.S. Open.

The U.S. Open win ended a 76-year drought for the British in the Grand Slams.

This one? Even sweeter.

"The pinnacle of tennis," Murray called the Wimbledon win. "I worked so hard in that last game, the hardest few points I ever played in my life."

When he finally wrapped it up, he let his racket fall to the turf, took his hat off and pumped his fist toward the crowd. Later, he climbed to the guest box where his girlfriend, Kim Sears, and his coach, Ivan Lendl, were among those sweating this one out.

Born a week apart in May 1987 Djokovic in Belgrade when it was part of Yugoslavia, and Murray in Glasgow, Scotland these top two players came up together through the elite junior-tennis ranks and are now building the best tennis rivalry of the 2010s. This was their third meeting in the last four Grand Slam finals and all have been riveting affairs. Murray won a five-setter at the U.S. Open; Djokovic won in four at Australia; and this time, a three-setter at Wimbledon that felt like something more.

Djokovic went up a break in both the second and third sets and, both times, appeared to have wrested at least a bit of control and quieted a crowd that included Prime Minister David Cameron.

But Murray dug his way out both times. In the second set, he set up break point with a sharply angled forehand that Djokovic couldn't handle, and the Serb responded with a double-fault, one of four on the day.

In the third set, Murray lost four straight games to fall behind 4-2, but got the break back and eventually closed it out by winning the last four games as the roars from every corner of Centre Court grew louder.

"The atmosphere today was different to what I've experienced in the past," Murray said. "It was different to last year's final, for sure. And then, the end of the match, that was incredibly loud, very noisy. I've been saying it all week, but it does make a difference. Especially in a match as tough as that one, where it's extremely hot, brutal, long rallies, tough games. They help you get through it."

Trailing 5-4 in the third, Djokovic rushed out to the court after the break a man who seemingly wanted to get it over with. Murray quickly went ahead 40-0 and it looked like it was time to cue the Duke of Kent for the trophy presentation.

But the next few minutes felt like forever. Djokovic saved the first three championship points, then had three break opportunities of his own. Couldn't convert any. Then, finally, Murray put it away when Djokovic rifled a backhand into the net. A few minutes later, the 26-year-old Murray, was kissing the trophy.

How might things have progressed if Djokovic had pulled out that game?

"I don't know," was all he offered.

Djokovic came into the match on the heels of a 4-hour, 43-minute semifinal victory over Juan Martin del Potro in similarly parched conditions on Friday. He conceded that match took a lot out of him but "I've been in these situations before. I felt OK."

Indeed, he rarely wears out, but Murray and the linesmen combined for a one-two punch, and punctured the 2011 Wimbledon champion's typically calm, almost robotic, demeanor.

Murray's withering groundstrokes and his patience from behind the line helped him take the first set. Then slowly, Djokovic shifted his strategy, mixing in drop shots with frequent trips to the net neither of which are considered his specialty. He won 30 of 52 trips to the net, compared to 26 for 37 for his opponent.

"I wasn't patient enough in the moments when I should have been," Djokovic said.

The impatience resulted in 40 unforced errors against 31 winners an uncommonly average ratio for the world's top-ranked player compared to 36 winners and 21 unforced errors by Murray.

Meanwhile, Djokovic found himself in what, at times, felt like an ongoing dialogue with chair umpire Mohamed Lahyani, as a number of close calls went against him. Djokovic had used up all three of his second-set challenges by the middle of the eighth game. At the end of that game, after another close call on the baseline went against him, Djokovic raised his hands toward the heavens, showing another trace of frustration that rarely hits him.

Murray, meanwhile, kept his cool through it all, even if the sweat that drenched his Wimbledon-white shirt made it nearly see-through at times.

In addition to the trophy, Murray earned 1.6 million pounds ($2.4 million) and got that long-awaited invitation to the black-tie champion's dinner, set for later Sunday night.

"It was a privilege to watch @Andy_Murray making history at #Wimbledon, and making Britain proud," tweeted the Prime Minister.

Indeed, on this day, the hoorahs were coming from every corner of the kingdom.

"I can confirm," a Buckingham Palace spokeswoman said, "that the Queen has sent a private message to Andy Murray following his Wimbledon victory."

Apple and other technology companies such as Amazon.com Inc and Microsoft Corp, that build and run computer server farms have come under criticism for their high consumption of electricity and other resources.

These data centers cater to an explosion in Internet traffic, streaming content through mobile devices and hosting of services to corporations.

The new solar farm will provide power to Sierra Pacific Power Co's electric grid that serves Apple's data center and when completed will generate about hours 43.5 million kilowatt of clean energy a year, Apple said in a statement.

Apple already runs its largest data center in the U.S. on solar power. The center in Maiden, North Carolina produces 167 million kilowatt hours, the power equivalent of 17,600 homes for one year, from a 100-acre solar farm and fuel cell installations provided by Silicon Valley startup Bloom Energy.

(Reporting by Avik Das in Bangalore and Poornima Gupta in San Francisco; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)

The study may help explain why black women have higher rates of breast cancer at young ages and a worse chance of survival.

Doctors say these patients should be offered genetic counseling and may want to consider more frequent screening and prevention options, which can range from hormone-blocking pills to breast removal, as Jolie chose to do.

"We were surprised at our results," said the study leader, Dr. Jane Churpek, a cancer specialist at the University of Chicago. Too few black women have been included in genetic studies in the past and most have not looked for mutations to the degree this one did, "so we just don't have a good sense" of how much risk there is, she said.

Churpek gave results of the study Monday at an American Society of Clinical Oncology conference in Chicago. The researchers include Mary-Claire King, the University of Washington scientist who discovered the first breast cancer predisposition gene, BRCA1.

Jolie revealed a few weeks ago that she carries a defective BRCA1 gene, giving her up to an 87 percent risk of developing breast cancer and up to a 54 percent risk for ovarian cancer. The actress's mother had breast cancer and died of ovarian cancer, and her maternal grandmother also had ovarian cancer. An aunt recently died of breast cancer.

Children of someone with a BRCA mutation have a 50 percent chance of inheriting it.

In the U.S., about 5 to 10 percent of breast cancers are thought to be due to bad BRCA genes. Among breast cancer patients, BRCA mutations are carried by 5 percent of whites and 12 percent of Eastern European (Ashkenazi) Jews. The rates in other groups are not as well known.

The study involved 249 black breast cancer patients from Chicago area hospitals. Many had breast cancer at a young age, and half had a family history of the disease.

They were given complete gene sequencing for all 18 known breast cancer risk genes rather than the usual tests that just look for a few specific mutations in BRCA genes.

Gene flaws were found in 56, or 22 percent, of study participants; 46 of them involved BRCA1 or BRCA2 and the rest were less commonly mutated genes.

Harmful mutations were found in 30 percent of black women with "triple-negative breast cancer" tumors whose growth is not fueled by estrogen, progesterone or the gene that the drug Herceptin targets. Doctors have long known that these harder-to-treat cases are more common in black women.

The National Cancer Institute, the Breast Cancer Research Foundation and Komen for the Cure paid for the study.

It included many younger women and those with a family history of cancer, and they are known to have higher rates of gene mutations that raise risk, said Rebecca Nagy, a genetics counselor at Ohio State University and president of the National Society of Genetic Counselors.

Still, "it has always stumped us" to see black families with lots of breast cancer but no mutations that can be found in ordinary testing for BRCA genes, she said.

That was the situation for Alicia Cook, 44, a Chicago woman whose grandmother died of breast cancer, mother died of ovarian cancer and two sisters have had breast cancer. When she was first diagnosed with breast cancer nearly 10 years ago, a test for BRCA mutations was negative.

Doctors said, "I'm sure there's something going on genetically" but they didn't have the tools to find it, Cook said.

Last year, she had a recurrence and a sister who was diagnosed with the disease learned she carried a BRCA1 mutation. Cook was retested for the same mutation and found to have it. Now she is telling her relatives in hopes that more of them will seek genetic counseling and be aware of their risk.

"You don't want to put people in fear, but knowledge is power," she said.

___

Online:

Breast cancer: http://www.cancer.net/cancer-types/breast-cancer

and http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/risk/brca

___

Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

"Recent FOMC (Federal Open Market Committee) decisions have met with a substantial rise in Treasury yields, and I have suggested that a possible justification for the rise in yields is increased optimism concerning future U.S. macroeconomic performance," said St. Louis Federal Reserve President James Bullard in prepared remarks.

"However, given recent forecasting performance, we should be careful in using an optimistic forecast to justify current policy decisions. A more prudent approach would be to wait to see if better macroeconomic outcomes materialize in the months and quarters ahead," he told a monetary policy conference here.

Bullard voted against the Fed's decision after a meeting of the FOMC on June 18-19 to deputize Chairman Ben Bernanke to explain during a post-meeting press conference that the policy-setting committee expects to begin scaling back bond buying later this year, if the economy grows as expected.

Yields on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note have risen by almost a full percentage point since then, to around 2.60 percent, even though the Fed decided in the meeting to keep buying bonds at an $85 billion monthly pace.

Bullard, who also dissented in June because he was concerned that inflation had fallen further beneath the Fed's 2 percent target, emphasized the sizeable nature of the market move "even though the Committee has not actually changed any policy settings at this point."

(Reporting by Jonathan Spicer, writing by Alister Bull; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

President Jacob Zuma visited Mandela on Thursday and said the anti-apartheid hero continues to respond to treatment.

Mandela, 94, was hospitalized June 8 with a recurring lung infection. His hospitalization has generated an outpouring of love and support from around the world.

Mandela spent 27 years in the prison under white racist rule. He was released in 1990 and became South Africa's first democratically elected president in 1994.