1 of 5. Giant Panda cub Xiao Liwi is shown for the first time on public display after the section of the exhibit frequented by the five-month old bear was opened to the public at the San Diego Zoo in San Diego, California, January 10, 2013. The bear was born on July 29, 2012 from mother Bai Yun.

SAN DIEGO | Thu Jan 10, 2013 5:14pm EST

SAN DIEGO (Reuters) - Xiao Liwu, the newest surviving giant panda born in captivity in the United States, made his public debut on Thursday at the San Diego Zoo by shunning the media but shining for the public.

During an hour-long, pre-opening introduction to the media and zoo volunteers, the 6-month-old, 16-pound male cub rolled in mud and hay, ignoring visitors, then climbed into a moat at the edge of the enclosure and fell asleep on his face.

He woke up once the public arrived and poured on the charm, climbing a tree and posing for photos.

Giant pandas are endangered, and experts estimate there are fewer than 1,600 in the wild, all in the mountain forests of central China.

Xiao Liwu (pronounced zhai lee-woo), which means little gift, was born on July 29 to Bai Yun, the zoo's 21-year-old, 223-pound adult female panda. He is her sixth cub, one of five with mate Gao Gao. Her first cub resulted from artificial insemination.

"He's shy and very loving," said Kay Ferguson, the zoo's panda narrator. "He's inquisitive and he likes to play with balls. He's very different from Bai Yun's other five cubs."

Despite stormy weather and cool temperatures, hundreds of panda fans lined up for the two-hour viewing. Previous glimpses of the cub and its mother were restricted to observations through the zoo's PandaCam.

Bai Yun is one of only two captive pandas worldwide to give birth at age 20, relatively old for pandas. Fewer than a dozen pandas have been born at U.S. zoos, including a female cub that died at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., in September, making Bai Yun the most prolific breeder in captivity outside China.

Bai Yun mostly ignored the baby during the public display. She chomped on bamboo, taking a break only to get a drink of water while the cub played in a nearby tree.

"With the first cub or two, she was very attentive, but the last, she doesn't worry about them at all," said Vivian Kiss, a panda fan. "You just want to pick him up and hold him."

The cub, roughly the size of a stick of butter when first born, is still nursing and does not yet eat solid food, Ferguson said. "She'll nurse him until he's 18 months old, until she gets so grouchy she kicks him out," Ferguson said.

(Reporting by Marty Graham; Editing by Steve Gorman)

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Snow blows across US Highway 218 as near whiteout conditions begin in Waterloo, Iowa, December 20, 2012.

CHICAGO | Fri Dec 21, 2012 9:04am EST

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The first major snow storm of winter did little to ease the worst drought in more than 50 years in the crop growing Central Plains and Midwest, while snarling traffic and hampering feeding and transportation of livestock.

MDA EarthSat Weather meteorologist Kyle Tapley said six to 12 inches or more snow fell from Nebraska into Wisconsin during the past two days, the equivalent of about 0.50 inch to 1.00 inch of rain, that will help ease but not eliminate drought worries.

Tapley said roughly 10 inches of moisture or rainfall would be needed in a large portion of the Plains and Midwest to break the drought of 2012 that trimmed crop production and sapped soil moisture reserves.

"The snow put a small dent in the drought and I don't see any moisture for next week," Tapley said.

Commodity Weather Group (CWG) said the snow favored Wisconsin, far eastern Iowa, far northwestern Illinois and west-central Michigan on Thursday with better than a foot of snow in Wisconsin.

"Another storm over the weekend into early next week will bring rain to the Delta and Southeast and a chance for snow near the Ohio River Valley," said CWG meteorologist Joel Widenor.

Widenor said prospects for more rain or snow in the southern Plains hard red winter wheat producing states were more limited on Friday.

But there could be some light rain or snow in the area on Tuesday but "this would provide only limited additional drought relief," Widenor said.

Winterkill threats for wheat and frost threats for Florida citrus are still limited, despite cooling the next two weeks, according to CWG's advisory on Friday.

(Reporting By Sam Nelson; Editing by Grant McCool)

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United States Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice speaks with Reuters at the B'Nai Torah Congregation in Boca Raton, Florida, in this May 10, 2012 file photo.

NEW YORK | Thu Dec 20, 2012 3:36pm EST

NEW YORK (Reuters) - With any hopes for replacing Hillary Clinton as the top U.S. diplomat dashed, Susan Rice told the annual U.N. Correspondents Association dinner "there's nowhere in the world I'd rather be tonight" - speaking against a backdrop of the State Department.

In a rare lighthearted moment, Rice made fun of her ill-fated appearance on several Sunday morning television shows in September that sparked anger among Republicans. On those shows she suggested that street protests, and not militants, were behind a September 11 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, in which four Americans were killed, including the U.S. envoy.

Her television remarks turned out to be incorrect and Republican critics accused Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, of misleading the American public. She defended herself by saying her remarks had been cleared by U.S. intelligence agencies beforehand.

"My talking points for this evening have been provided to me and fully cleared by the intelligence community, so how could this possibly go wrong?" Rice told a New York audience of 540 on Wednesday that included Hollywood actor and former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon.

Rice withdrew her candidacy for the post of secretary of state last week, saying the Senate confirmation hearings would have been overly contentious.

The 48-year-old diplomat, who has a reputation for bluntness and caustic language during closed-door negotiations of the U.N. Security Council, also made fun of her diplomatic dust-ups with Russian envoy Vitaly Churkin, who has criticized her vocabulary.

To have a dig at Churkin, she recalled the oft-ridiculed remark of former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin that she could see Russia from Alaska.

"Day after day, I engage in highly substantive, highly technical negotiations with my colleagues here at the U.N., like the Russians," Rice said. "As a matter of fact, I can see the Russian mission from my house."

(Reporting By Louis Charbonneau and Michelle Nichols; Editing by Vicki Allen)

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