Danny Puff

By Fred Thornhill

TORONTO (Reuters) - Canada got a taste of international panda diplomacy on Monday with the arrival of two "Very Important Pandas" at the start of a 10-year loan to two Canadian zoos.

Speaking as the two giant pandas arrived in Toronto from China, Chinese Ambassador Zhang Junsai - who gave the animals the VIP designation - noted that when he started his posting in Canada two years ago, he was greeted only by the Canadian director of protocol.

But the panda pair, Er Shun, 5, and Da Mao, 4, merited a personal welcome from Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who reached an agreement on the panda loan during a visit to China last year.

"I am very delighted to officially welcome to Canada ... a pair of China's national treasures," Harper said at the airport.

"China wants to be known for other than economic prowess," Gordon Houlden, director of the China Institute at the University of Alberta, told CTV television. "This helps serve that purpose."

Officials hope that Er Shun, who is female, and Da Mao, who is male, will mate during their five years in Toronto and five subsequent years in Calgary, Alberta, to produce the first Canadian-born panda cubs.

Any cubs would be the property of China, staying with Er Shun at least until they are one year old, and eventually going back to China - thus allowing the Chinese to maintain a virtual monopoly over the supply of giant pandas.

China has frequently loaned pandas to foreign zoos, in deals that can be lucrative to both sides. Fees paid by the host countries help fund panda research in China, but the zoos hope to recoup that and more in extra visitors.

Other costs include the vast quantities of bamboo that the two pandas will eat - they spend 10 to 16 hours a day eating 14 to 20 kg (31 to 44 lbs) of bamboo.

FedEx Corp, which flew the pandas to Canada from China, will fly in 600 to 900 kg (1,320 to 1,980 pounds) of bamboo each week from the Memphis Zoo in Tennessee because "pandas are picky eaters," it said.

(Writing by Randall Palmer; Editing by Sandra Maler)

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TORONTO (Reuters) - BlackBerry stock fell nearly 4 percent on Monday after Goldman Sachs cut its rating, citing a disappointing U.S. launch for the smartphone maker's new touchscreen device that went on sale in the United States on Friday.

"Our retail checks at over 20 store locations since March 22, including at AT&T, Best Buy, and RadioShack, revealed a surprising lack of marketing support and poor positioning of the product," Goldman Sachs analyst Simona Jankowski said in a note to clients on Monday.

Jankowski also said advertising of the product launch was limited.

"As a result, despite the product itself being relatively well received by sales associates and online reviews, sell-through at most locations was less than 10 per day," said Jankowski.

The brokerage firm cut its rating on shares of BlackBerry to "neutral" from "buy."

BlackBerry shares were down 3.9 percent at $14.33 in trading before the morning bell in the United States.

(Reporting by Euan Rocha; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

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NEW YORK (AP) The Video Music Awards are taking a road trip to Brooklyn.

MTV's showcase awards show is traditionally held in Los Angeles or Manhattan.

This year the show will be held Aug. 25 at the new Barclays Center, home of the New York Nets and the recent Rolling Stones and Jay-Z multi-night concerts.

MTV will celebrate 30 years of the VMAs this year. From Kanye West and Taylor Swift to the Madonna-Britney Spears-Christina Aguilera kiss, the show has become known more for its pop culture moments than the winners of its signature moonman trophies.

The VMAs were last held in New York in 2009 and have been in Los Angeles since.

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Online:

http://mtv.com

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BRUSSELS (AP) Feel like having chocolate at Easter in Belgium? Well, send a letter and really lick that chocolate-flavored postal stamp.

The Belgian post office released 538,000 stamps on Monday that have pictures of chocolate on the front but the essence of cacao oil in the glue at the back for taste and in the ink for smell.

Belgian stamp collector Marie-Claire Verstichel said while the taste was a bit disappointing, "they smell good."

Easter is the season for chocolate in Belgium with Easter eggs and bunnies all over supermarkets and speciality stores.

A set of five stamps costs 6.2 euros ($8) but might leave a customer hungry for more.

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By John Tilak

TORONTO (Reuters) - Canada's main stock index fell to 1-1/2 week low on Monday as a euro zone bailout deal appeared to defuse the Cyprus debt crisis and took the safe-haven shine off bullion prices, sending gold-mining shares lower.

The market was further weakened by a decline in shares of BlackBerry after Goldman Sachs cut its rating on the stock, citing a disappointing U.S. launch for the smartphone maker's new touchscreen device.

Cyprus clinched a last-ditch deal with international lenders to shut down its second-largest bank and inflict heavy losses on uninsured depositors, including wealthy Russians, in return for a 10 billion euro ($13 billion) bailout.

The move is expected to prevent a default and banking meltdown on the island.

"Any closure in a situation like this is welcome," said Philip Petursson, managing director, portfolio advisory group, at Manulife Asset Management. "It provides reassurance that deals are getting done."

However, the weakness in gold shares pulled the Toronto Stock Exchange's S&P/TSX composite index down 18.53 points, or 0.15 percent, to 12,738.82. The index touched 12,734.35, its lowest point since March 14. Six of the 10 main sectors on the index were higher.

The materials sector, which includes mining stocks, was down 1.3 percent, with gold stocks slipping 1.8 percent. The price of the precious metal slumped to a 10-week low as investor appetite for safe haven assets fell sharply after the Cyprus deal.

"I'm not a gold bull," Petursson said. "Gold today has priced in a lot of inflation and a lot of risk that may not materialize in the market over the near term."

"We can see more downside than upside," he added.

Goldcorp Inc lost 2 percent to C$33.64, and Barrick Gold Corp fell 1.3 percent to C$29.62. The index's gold sector is down about 16 percent since the start of the year.

BlackBerry dropped 4 percent to C$14.59, causing a 1.2 percent decline in the information technology sector.

Encouraged by the Cyprus deal, financials, the index's weightiest sector, advanced 0.2 percent, with Toronto-Dominion Bank

climbing 0.4 percent to C$84.32. (Editing by Peter Galloway)

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By Gennady Fyodorov

SOCHI, Russia (Reuters) - While Moscow digs itself out of a huge snow storm that hit the Russian capital in the last few days, organizers of the Winter Olympics are worried a lack of white powder could become a problem next February.

Unseasonably warm temperatures this winter in Sochi have forced local organizers to store some 450,000 cubic meters of snow in the nearby Caucasus Mountains that surround this sub-tropical Black Sea resort.

"We've prepared seven separate areas for snow storage high up in the mountains," Sergei Bachin, general director of Roza Khutor, a ski resort in Krasnaya Polyana that will host Alpine skiing, snowboarding and freestyle Olympic competition, told Reuters.

"I want to assure all the competitors that there won't be any shortage of snow next February even if we encounter even warmer temperatures next year," he said.

"We're storing such huge amounts of snow just in case."

The snow will be covered with a "special thermo seal", to protect it from melting during the summer, Bachin said.

"We expect that about 140,000 (cubic meters) will melt away but we'll still have more than 300,000 cubic meters of snow available for next year," he predicted, saying the storage will cost his company an extra $11 million.

Nevertheless, Sochi 2014 chief Dmitry Chernyshenko has stated on several occasions that the weather has become a bigger problem for the organizers, who are frantically trying to finish all the construction projects on time, than security or the infrastructure.

Bachin, however, assured that Krasnaya Polyana, once a sleepy mountain village, about 70 kilometers from central Sochi, would be ready to host all the outdoor Olympic events next February rain or shine.

"Of the 76 Olympic test events scheduled in Krasnaya Polyana this winter a great majority had been completed and only a handful have been called off because of bad weather," he said.

"I think we've passed the test as the last major event of the season was held this weekend in nearby Laura complex."

Usually, Krasnaya Polyana has the opposite problem - too much snow and the risk of avalanches, Bachin said.

"This was a very odd winter. Even locals don't remember when was the last time they had such warm days in the mountains. It's highly unlikely we'll see the same kind of weather next year," he added.

(Editing by Alison Wildey)

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LONDON (AP) Britain's Prince Harry is returning to the United States but this time he's skipping Las Vegas.

The 28-year-old prince will travel to the U.S. east coast as well as Denver and Colorado Springs, Colorado, to support veterans' charities and get in a bit of polo.

Harry, a longtime supporter of charities that rehabilitate war veterans, will attend several events at the 2013 Warrior Games, a competition between British and American veteran athletes.

"Prince Harry wants to highlight once again the extraordinary commitment and sacrifice of our injured servicemen and women," said Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, Harry's private secretary.

Harry recently spent 20 weeks in Afghanistan as co-pilot gunner on an Apache attack helicopter.

His May 9-15 visit will include trips to Arlington National Cemetery, Walter Reed National Medical Center and an exhibition on Capitol Hill about land mine clearance, a favorite subject of his late mother, Princess Diana. He will also visit areas in New Jersey hard hit by Hurricane Sandy.

Harry will also play in the Sentebale Polo Cup in Greenwich, Connecticut. Sentebale which means "forget-me-not" is a charity founded by Harry and Lesotho's Prince Seeiso that helps children struggling with poverty in the tiny southern African country.

On his last U.S. visit, the third-in-line to the British throne stormed into the headlines last year when he was caught frolicking in the nude with a woman after an alleged game of strip billiards in his Las Vegas hotel room.

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KIEV, Ukraine (AP) Residents of the Ukrainian capital suspect the city is trying to pull a fast one on them about its efforts to clean up from a paralyzing blizzard.

A photo that appeared on the Kiev administration's website Sunday after a snowfall of 20 inches (50 centimeters) shows three snowplows clearing a street.

The trouble is the street is actually in Moscow.

Russia's ITAR-Tass news agency said Monday that it was an agency photo taken last November and retouched to remove the name of the snowplows' Russian operator.

Kiev city administration spokeswoman Kateryna Baranova said the photo was a "regrettable technical mistake" but didn't elaborate.

The photo was removed from the site, but not before some frame grabs of it were posted on Facebook, prompting comments such as "shame."

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SEOUL (Reuters) - Forget "Hail to the Chief". In North Korea, the army sing their leader's praises with a chorus of "We Will Defend General Kim Jong-un at the Cost of Our Lives", or the catchy accordion and tap-dance tune, "The Naval Port in the Evening".

Kim, the third of his line to rule North Korea, praised musical instruments made by the North's 1.2 million-strong army on Sunday, state news agency KCNA reported.

Tensions have risen on the Korean peninsula since new U.N. sanctions were imposed after the North carried out its third nuclear test in February. Pyongyang has threatened to destroy the United States with nuclear weapons, bomb its Pacific bases and shell South Korea in response.

Putting aside rising rhetoric, Kim inspected guitars and drums made by the army and said it was important to make quality instruments so soldiers could "spend their worthwhile days in the army full of militant optimism and joy", KCNA said.

Kim, "Supreme Commander" of the North's armed forces, also inspected overcoats for pupils at the country's top military schools and suggested style improvements, KCNA reported.

According to independent observers, North Korea's huge military, believed to be the world's fourth largest, spend most of their time in activities such as manufacturing or fishing for crabs because drills are far too expensive for the impoverished country and they need to feed themselves.

Kim's field guidance follows the example set by his late father, Kim Jong-il, who gave advice to factories and farmers as well as the army.

Kim Jong-un, 30, still has some way to go in emulating his father's reported accomplishments.

His father's feats, according to KCNA, included inventing the oungum, a banjo-like musical instrument that is "widely popular" in North Korea, and scoring 11 holes-in-one in a single round of golf.

(Reporting by Somang Yang; Editing by Paul Tait)

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Visitors to the Museum of Modern Art in New York had the chance to see an unusual performance on Saturday: Oscar-winning actress Tilda Swinton sleeping in a glass box.

For a performance piece call "The Maybe," Swinton wore a light blue shirt, dark blue pants and shoes while lying on white bedding with eyeglasses beside her.

"Living artist, glass, steel, mattress, pillow, linen, water, and spectacles," a description card said.

First performed in London in 1995, the performance piece will be repeated periodically throughout this year, museum spokeswoman Margaret Doyle said.

"The nature of the concept is that it not be announced in advance, nor publicized by the museum," Doyle said.

Swinton, 52, won an Oscar for best supporting actress in the 2007 film "Michael Clayton." Other credits include the title role in "Julia," "Burn After Reading" and "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button."

(Reporting by Corrie MacLaggan and Daniel Trotta; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

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