Benitez demands more after Chelsea smash eight

LONDON (Reuters) - Rafael Benitez was still scribbling notes towards the end of Chelsea's 8-0 rout of Aston Villa on Sunday and after the game, the Spaniard said there was plenty of room for improvement.
As Chelsea made it 13 goals from two games since returning empty-handed from a 12,000-mile (19,312-kilometre) round trip to Japan for the Club World Cup a week ago, Benitez demanded even more from his players.
"I can see the team improving with the little things we wanted to improve," said Chelsea's interim manager after his team climbed to third in the English Premier League.
"But we can still improve some things. I say that after winning by eight."
Striker Fernando Torres, rediscovering the killer instinct he showed under Benitez at Liverpool, opening the scoring with a thumping header in the third minute at Stamford Bridge.
The goals kept flowing, Frank Lampard marking his 500th Premier League start with a sweetly struck fourth and Brazilian Ramires netting twice in an early Christmas stuffing of Villa.
"The players have been really focused since I arrived," Benitez, whose appointment angered Chelsea fans following last month's sacking of Roberto Di Matteo, said.
"They knew they had a new manager and they had to perform. We have to try to adjust things in every training session but I was impressed with the way we played.
"From day one, they were keen to learn and to improve," added the Spaniard, whose meticulous attention to detail are beginning to reap dividends for the Blues.
"Chelsea were a top side before I came here. They still are. You can see the team has confidence in themselves. They believe, they have good movement and they create chances."
Becoming the first holders to exit the Champions League at the group stage and then failing to compensate for it by lifting the Club World Cup, the pressure had been on Benitez.
Chelsea still trail Premier League pace-setters Manchester United by 11 points, and Manchester City by seven, albeit with a game in hand.
But Benitez, who has tinkered with his side to good effect since their gruelling trip to the Far East, believes Chelsea can climb back into the title race.
"Now we have to sustain this run and it will be easier for me to say we can compete," the Spaniard added.
Many of Chelsea's players had said while in Japan that having time away from the bearpit of the Premier League to work with and adapt to Benitez's style would bring its rewards.
"To win is always special, but the mentality of the players was good," said Benitez, game-by-game beginning to look the part in his official Chelsea suit.
Credited by the players for making the team more compact defensively, against a Villa side woefully out of their depth, Chelsea's attacking football was at times breath-taking.
"Even after we scored our sixth goal, we kept pushing forward for more," purred Benitez. "We had the balance we are looking for."

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Soccer-Van Persie has made same impact as Cantona, says Ferguson

MANCHESTER, England, Dec 24 (Reuters) - Robin van Persie's impact at Manchester United has been similar to the stunning transformation brought about by the signing of Eric Cantona, according to manager Alex Ferguson.
Dutch striker Van Persie has scored 15 goals since signing from Arsenal, drawing comparisons with Frenchman Cantona whose arrival at Old Trafford was the catalyst for United to win the league title for the first time in 26 years.
"I reckon here at Manchester United we got our Christmas present early - right at the start of the season in fact when Robin van Persie arrived at Old Trafford," Ferguson has written in the programme for Wednesday's home game against Newcastle United.
"I am reluctant to subscribe to the cult of an individual because I firmly believe the essence of a successful football team depends on teamwork, and neither are we a one-man team, but sometimes there really is a situation where you are lucky enough to find the last piece of the jigsaw."
Cantona was signed from Leeds United for 1.2 million pounds ($1.94 million) in 1992 with Ferguson's team languishing in eighth place in the table.
But he galvanised the side with his flair and a regular supply of goals, his arrogance and charisma inspiring a team who went on to win the 1993 title by 10 points, the first of Ferguson's 12 Premier League crowns.
"We did it when we brought Eric Cantona to Old Trafford where he proved to be the right player at the right club at the right time," Ferguson said.
"He became the catalyst and springboard for our surge to success.
"It doesn't have to be signing someone for a record fee. Cristiano Ronaldo was not a record buy either but he certainly made a difference as he prospered with us to the extent that he came to be regarded by a lot of people as the world's best player," added Ferguson.
Van Persie has formed a prolific attacking partnership with Wayne Rooney which has lifted United four points clear at the top of the Premier League and on course for a 20th English title.
They lost out to neighbours Manchester City on goal difference last season after the teams finished level on points at the end of the 38-match campaign.

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Soccer-Inter defender Chivu snubs calls for Romania return

BUCHAREST, Dec 24 (Reuters) - Inter Milan defender Cristian Chivu has refused to come out of international retirement to help Romania in next year's 2014 World Cup qualifiers.
"I was clear and concise two years ago and I do not know why every time I have to repeat the same thing," Chivu, capped 75 times by the Balkan country, told local media on Monday.
The versatile 32-year-old defender, who joined Inter from AS Roma for a reported fee of 16 million euros ($21.08 million) in 2007, quit the national team in May last year, saying that age and injuries were behind his decision.
This month, however, Romania coach Victor Piturca said he was planning to meet Chivu in Milan before Christmas or at the beginning of 2013, to try to persuade him to end his international exile.
"I miss the national team but I will not return," Chivu added. "The team can do without me, I liked how they played in Turkey (when Romania beat Turkey 1-0 in a world qualifier in October)."
Chivu has just recovered from a toe injury and played in Inter's 2-0 win over Verona in a Coppa Italia last-16 match on Tuesday and the 1-1 draw with Genoa on Saturday, his only appearances this season.
Romania are third in World Cup qualifying Group D with nine points from four matches, three behind leaders the Netherlands.
The Balkan side, who have not qualified for the World Cup finals since 1998, will resume their campaign in March with a much-anticipated visit to second-placed neighbours Hungary, who also have nine points.

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Van Persie has made same impact as Cantona, says Ferguson

MANCHESTER, England (Reuters) - Robin van Persie's impact at Manchester United has been similar to the stunning transformation brought about by the signing of Eric Cantona, according to manager Alex Ferguson.
Dutch striker Van Persie has scored 15 goals since signing from Arsenal, drawing comparisons with Frenchman Cantona whose arrival at Old Trafford was the catalyst for United to win the league title for the first time in 26 years.
"I reckon here at Manchester United we got our Christmas present early - right at the start of the season in fact when Robin van Persie arrived at Old Trafford," Ferguson has written in the programme for Wednesday's home game against Newcastle United.
"I am reluctant to subscribe to the cult of an individual because I firmly believe the essence of a successful football team depends on teamwork, and neither are we a one-man team, but sometimes there really is a situation where you are lucky enough to find the last piece of the jigsaw."
Cantona was signed from Leeds United for 1.2 million pounds in 1992 with Ferguson's team languishing in eighth place in the table.
But he galvanised the side with his flair and a regular supply of goals, his arrogance and charisma inspiring a team who went on to win the 1993 title by 10 points, the first of Ferguson's 12 Premier League crowns.
"We did it when we brought Eric Cantona to Old Trafford where he proved to be the right player at the right club at the right time," Ferguson said.
"He became the catalyst and springboard for our surge to success.
"It doesn't have to be signing someone for a record fee. Cristiano Ronaldo was not a record buy either but he certainly made a difference as he prospered with us to the extent that he came to be regarded by a lot of people as the world's best player," added Ferguson.
Van Persie has formed a prolific attacking partnership with Wayne Rooney which has lifted United four points clear at the top of the Premier League and on course for a 20th English title.
They lost out to neighbours Manchester City on goal difference last season after the teams finished level on points at the end of the 38-match campaign.

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Soccer-Wiesinger and Reutershahn take over at Nuremberg

Michael Wiesinger and Armin Reutershahn were appointed joint coaches of struggling Nuremberg on Monday following Dieter Hecking's decision to take over at Bundesliga rivals VfL Wolfsburg at the weekend.
Wiesinger, 39, who has been working with the club's youth academy for a year and a half, and Reutershahn, 52, an assistant under Hecking, will take the reins for the second half of the season.
"In Michael Wiesinger and Armin Reutershahn we have two coaches from our own ranks that enjoy a great amount of trust and acceptance," sporting director Martin Bader said on Nuremberg's website (www.fcn.de).
Nuremberg are fifth from bottom in the table after drawing 1-1 at Werder Bremen on Dec. 16, their final match before the mid-season break.

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In Mexico, New Agers hope Dec. 21 brings new era

Doomsday hour is here, at least in much of the world, and so still are we.
According to legend, the ancient Mayans' long-count calendar ends at midnight Thursday, ushering in the end of the world.
Didn't happen.
"This is not the end of the world. This is the beginning of the new world," Star Johnsen-Moser, an American seer, said at a gathering of hundreds of spiritualists at a convention center in the Yucatan city of Merida, an hour and a half from the Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza.
"It is most important that we hold a positive, beautiful reality for ourselves and our planet. ... Fear is out of place."
As the appointed time came and went in several parts of the world, there was no sign of the apocalypse.
Indeed, the social network Imgur posted photos of clocks turning midnight in the Asia-Pacific region with messages such as: "The world has not ended. Sincerely, New Zealand."
In Merida, the celebration of the cosmic dawn opened inauspiciously, with a fumbling of the sacred fire meant to honor the calendar's conclusion.
Gabriel Lemus, the white-haired guardian of the flame, burned his finger on the kindling and later had to scoop up a burning log that fell from the ceremonial brazier onto the stage.
Still, Lemus was convinced that it was a good start, as he was joined by about 1,000 other shamans, seers, stargazers, crystal enthusiasts, yogis, sufis and swamis.
"It is a cosmic dawn," Lemus declared. "We will recover the ability to communicate telepathically and levitate objects ... like our ancestors did."
Celebrants later held their arms in the air in a salute to the Thursday morning sun.
"The galactic bridge has been established," intoned spiritual leader Alberto Arribalzaga. "At this moment, spirals of light are entering the center of your head ... generating powerful vortexes that cover the planet."
Despite all the ritual and banter, few here actually believed the world would end Friday; the summit was scheduled to run through Sunday. Instead, participants said they were here to celebrate the birth of a new age.
A Mexican Indian seer who calls himself Ac Tah, and who has traveled around Mexico erecting small pyramids he calls "neurological circuits," said he holds high hopes for Friday.
"We are preparing ourselves to receive a huge magnetic field straight from the center of the galaxy," he said.
Terry Kvasnik, 32, a stunt man from Manchester, England, said his motto for the day was "be in love, don't be in fear." As to which ceremony he would attend on Friday, he said with a smile, "I'm going to be in the happiest place I can."
At dozens of booths set up in the convention hall, visitors could have their auras photographed with "Chi" light, get a shamanic cleansing or buy sandals, herbs and whole-grain baked goods. Cleansing usually involves having copal incense waved around one's body.
Visitors could also learn the art of "healing drumming" with a Mexican Otomi Indian master, Dabadi Thaayroyadi, who said his slender hand-held drums are made with prayers embedded inside. The drums emit "an intelligent energy" that can heal emotional, physical and social ailments, he said.
During the opening ceremony, participants chanted mantras to the blazing Yucatan sun, which quickly burned the fair-skinned crowd.
Violeta Simarro, a secretary from Perpignan, France, taking shelter under an awning, noted that the new age won't necessarily be easy.
"It will be a little difficult at first, because the world will need a complete 'nettoyage' (cleansing), because there are so many bad things," she said.
Not all seers endorsed the celebration. Mexico's self-styled "brujo mayor," or chief soothsayer, Antonio Vazquez Alba, warned followers to stay away from gatherings on Friday. "We have to beware of mass psychosis" that could lead to stampedes or "mass suicides, of the kind we've seen before," he said.
"If you get 1,000 people in one spot and somebody yells 'Fire!' watch out," Vazquez Alba said. "The best thing is to stay at home, at work, in school, and at some point do a relaxation exercise."
Others saw the gathering as a model for the coming age.
Participants from Asian, North American, South American and European shamanistic traditions mingled amiably with the Mexican hosts.
"This is the beginning of a change in priorities and perceptions. We are all one," said Esther Romo, a Mexico City businesswoman who works in art promotion and galleries. "No limits, no boundaries, no nationalities, just fusion."
Gabriel Romero, a Los-Angeles based practitioner of crystal skull channeling, was so sure it wasn't the end of the world that he planned a welcome ceremony for the new age at dawn on Saturday, when he would erect a stele, a stone monument used by the Mayans to commemorate important dates or events.
The Maya, who invented an amazingly accurate calendar almost 2,000 years ago, measured time in 394-year periods known as baktuns. Some anthropologists believe the 13th baktun ends Dec. 21. Still, archaeologists have uncovered Mayan glyphs that refer to dates far, far in the future, long beyond Dec. 21.
Yucatan Gov. Rolando Zapata, whose state is home to Mexico's largest Mayan population and has benefited from a boom in tourism, said he, too, felt the good vibes.
"We believe that the beginning of a new baktun means the beginning of a new era, and we're receiving it with great optimism," Zapata said.
He said thousands of tourists and spiritualists are expected for Friday's once-in-5,125-years event. "All the flights to the city are completely full," Zapata said.
The Yucatan state government has even invited a scientist to speak about the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, to debunk the idea it could produce world-ending rogue particles, a concept popularized by author Steve Alten in his recent book "Phobos, Mayan Fear."
Alten suggests the rogue particles — "tiny black holes" — could unleash earthquakes that might cause a huge tsunami, but acknowledges that linking such events to Dec. 21 "is author's license."
"It's science fiction theory, I'm a science fiction writer," he told The Associated Press.
The European Organization for Nuclear Research, however, has listed a number of odd subatomic phenomena — "magnetic monopoles," ''vacuum bubbles" and "strangelets" — that could play a role in the next apocalypse scare.
All of it amused Deyanira de Alvarez, a tourist from Mexico City, as she snapped a photo of the countdown clock mounted in the Merida international airport showing just over two days left to "the galactic alignment."
"My grandmother says that people have been talking about (the world ending) ever since she was a little girl," De Alvarez said. "And look, grandma is still here.

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Mexico's Maya heartland awaits dawn of new era

 In the darkness before dawn Friday, spiritualists prepared white clothes, drums, conch shells and incense ahead of the sunrise they believe will herald the birth of a new and better age as a vast, 5,125-year cycle in the Mayan calendar comes to an end.
No one was quite sure at what time the Mayas' 13th Baktun would officially end on this Dec. 21. Some think it already ended at midnight Thursday. Others looked to Friday's dawn here in the Maya heartland. Some had later times in mind.
"Wait until the dawn on the 22nd; that is when we Maya will speak," Nobel Peace Prize laureate Rigoberta Menchu said earlier in Guatemala, another Maya area.
Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History even suggested that historical calculations to synchronize the Mayan and Western calendars might be off a few days. It said the Mayan Long Count calendar cycle might not really end until Sunday.
Whatever the details, the chance to welcome a new time seemed to be the main concern among celebrants drawn to the Yucatan peninsula.
Many people who came to Yucatan for the occasion were already calling it "a new sun" and "a new era."
"The galactic bridge has been established," announced spiritual leader Alberto Arribalzaga at a "galactic connection" ceremony Thursday in Merida. "The cosmos is going to take us to a higher level of vibration ... where humanity is in glory, in joy,"
What nobody was calling it is the end of the world, as some people in recent years have interpreted the meaning of the end of the 13th Baktun — despite the insistence of archeologists and the Maya themselves it meant no such thing.
"We'll still have to pay taxes next year," said Gabriel Romero, a Los Angeles-based spiritualist who uses crystal skulls in his ceremonies.
If the chanting and dancing of a crystal skull ceremony held Thursday weren't end fears of an apocalypse, scientists chimed in, too.
Bill Leith, the U.S. Geological Survey's senior science adviser for earthquake and geologic hazards, said that by late Thursday, absolutely nothing out of the ordinary had been detected in seismic activities, solar flares, volcanos or the Earth's geomagnetic field.
"It's a fairly unremarkable day on planet Earth today, and in the last few days," Leith said. "There are no major eruptions going on."
There had been about 120 small earthquakes and a moderate temblor in Japan, he said. "That's very much a normal day."
Still, there were some who wouldn't truly feel safe until the sun sets Friday over the pyramids in Yucatan peninsula, the heartland of the Maya.
Mexico's best-known seer, Antonio Vazquez Alba, known as "El Brujo Mayor," said he had received emails containing rumors that a mass suicide might be planned in Argentina.
He said he was sure that human nature represented the only threat Friday. "Nature isn't going to do us any harm, but we can do damage to ourselves," he said.
Authorities worried about overcrowding and possible stampedes during celebrations Friday at Mayan ruin sites like Chichen Itza and Uxmal, both about 1 1/2 hours from Merida, the Yucatan state capital. Special police and guard details were assigned to the pyramids.
As Friday's dawn began sweeping around the globe, there was no sign of an apocalypse.
Indeed, the social network Imgur posted photos of clocks turning midnight in the Asia-Pacific region with messages such as: "The world has not ended. Sincerely, New Zealand."
Average residents of the Yucatan, where the Mayas invented the 394-year calendar cycles known as baktuns, the 13th of which ends Friday, were pretty upbeat about the day.
Yucatan Gov. Rolando Zapata said he felt growing good vibes.
"We believe that the beginning of a new baktun means the beginning of a new era, and we're receiving it with great optimism," Zapata said.
Even before the baktun's end, hundreds of spiritualists from Asian, North American, South American and European shamanistic traditions mingled amiably with the Mexican hosts at a convention center in Merida on Thursday.
Dozens of booths offered people the chance to have their auras photographed with "Chi" light, get a shamanic cleansing or buy sandals, herbs and whole-grain baked goods.
"This is the beginning of a change in priorities and perceptions. We are all one," said Esther Romo, a Mexico City businesswoman who works in art promotion and galleries. "No limits, no boundaries, no nationalities, just fusion.

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Puerto Rican TV show faces scrutiny amid outcry

A TV station in Puerto Rico that broadcasts a popular news and gossip show featuring a puppet has announced that the program will now be prerecorded.
Joe Ramos, president of WAPA TV, told reporters late Thursday that the SuperXclusivo show will be taped two hours before it is broadcast. The announcement follows a recent outcry over comments that the controversial puppet, known as La Comay, made about a man who was brutally killed.
More than 73,800 people have joined an online Facebook page demanding that the show be taken off the air. The page was created on Dec. 4, the same day that La Comay commented on the Nov. 30 killing of publicist Jose Enrique Gomez Saladin. Police say the publicist was carjacked, forced to take out money from an ATM and then set on fire and beaten to death.
Police said the carjacking occurred in the northern town of Caguas, on a street known for its drugs and prostitutes. La Comay, played by comedian Antulio "Kobbo" Santarrosa, questioned what Gomez was doing on that street and whether he "was asking for this" by being there.
A swift outcry followed, and several companies withdrew their sponsorship of the program, which has previously drawn the ire of many for its sensationalist style and derogatory comments about women and gays.
On Friday, several community leaders rejected Ramos' announcement, saying it wasn't enough and that they didn't believe it would happen.
"They've made similar proposals in the past, and after a couple of weeks, nothing changed," said Pedro Julio Serrano, spokesman for the U.S.-based National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. "We'll continue fighting until SuperXclusivo is canceled.

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Court strikes down Costa Rica in-vitro ban

A Costa Rican ban on in-vitro fertilization has been struck down by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in a decision that reproductive health groups said could lead to greater access to abortion and some contraception in other Latin American countries.
The court said in a ruling late Thursday that a long-standing Costa Rican guarantee of protection for every human embryo violated the reproductive freedom of infertile couples because it prohibited them from using in-vitro fertilization, which often involves the disposal of embryos not implanted in a patient's uterus.
The court said that governments cannot give embryos and fetuses absolute protection under the American Convention on Human Rights. The Costa Rican government said it will comply with the court's decision and move to allow in-vitro fertilization.
The advocacy groups said they believed they now would be able to successfully challenge bans such as the total prohibition of abortion in El Salvador, Honduras, the Dominican Republic and Chile, which are based in part on the assertion of total protection of life for embryos and fetuses.
"This is a wonderful day for reproductive rights," said Alejandra Cardenas, a lawyer for the U.S.-based Center for Reproductive Rights, which filed briefs in the case.
Oriester Rojas said he was forced to travel outside Costa Rica with his wife to get in-vitro treatment and told reporters, "I hope that from now on everyone who's been affected by this can have the opportunity to turn their dreams of being fathers and mothers into reality."
Advocacy groups said most important was language about a guarantee of the right to life included in the American Convention on Human Rights, a binding treaty ratified by most countries in the Western Hemisphere and overseen by the Costa Rica-based rights court.
The article declares that the right to life "shall be protected by law and, in general, from the moment of conception."
The six-judge panel said in its ruling that "it is possible to conclude from the words 'in general' that the law's protection of life under said provision is not absolute, but rather gradual and incremental according to the development of life."
Cardenas said that a new case challenging, for example, a total ban on abortion would have to follow the standard that protections for fetuses are not absolute.
"They are always subjected to exceptions and must be proportional and incremental," she said.
Costa Rican Attorney General Ana Lorena Brenes told reporters, "We don't agree with it, but that doesn't mean that the country won't respect the judges' decision."
In-vitro fertilization was introduced to Costa Rica in 1996 by a doctor who helped couples give birth to 15 babies over four years. It provoked strong opposition from conservative groups and the Roman Catholic Church, which campaigned against the technique because it led to the disposal of fertilized eggs.
In 2001, 18 people brought a complaint before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights after Costa Rica became the only Latin American country to bar in-vitro fertilization.
Costa Rican couples with enough money traveled to clinics in Panama, where hundreds of Costa Rican babies were born with the technique. One of the arguments the plaintiffs made before the Inter-American commission was that the ban was a form of discrimination against poorer families.
The human-rights commission ruled against Costa Rica and in 2010, after the failure of a congressional reform, the Inter-American Court on Human Rights took up the case, hearing testimony from both sides before issuing its binding ruling.
The regional court not only struck down the ban Thursday but said it was requiring Costa Rica to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation to the complainants and pay for in-vitro fertilization for low-income couples through its social security system.
The United States is one of 12 countries that have either not ratified the American Convention on Human Rights or have pulled out of it due to objections that it violates their national sovereignty.

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Mexico's Maya heartland greets dawn of new era

Dec. 21 started out as the prophetic day some had believed would usher in the fiery end of the world. By Friday afternoon, it had become more comic than cosmic, the punch line of countless Facebook posts and at least several dozen T-shirts.
At the ruins of the ancient Mayan city of Chichen Itza, thousands chanted, danced and otherwise frolicked around ceremonial fires and pyramids to mark the conclusion of a vast, 5,125-year cycle in the Mayan calendar.
The doomsayers who had predicted apocalypse were nowhere to be seen. Instead, people showed up in T-shirts reading "The End of the World: I Was There."
Vendors eager to sell their ceramic handicrafts and wooden masks called out to passing visitors, "Buy something before the world ends."
And on Twitter, (hash)EndoftheWorld had become one of the day's most popular hash tags.
For the masses in the ruins, Dec. 21 sparked celebration of what they saw as the birth of a new and better age. It was also inspiration for massive clouds of patchouli and marijuana smoke and a chorus of conch calls at the break of dawn.
The official crowd count stood at 20,000 as of mid-afternoon, with people continuing to arrive. That surpassed the count on an average day but not as many as have gathered at the ruins during equinoxes.
The boisterous gathering Friday included Buddhists, pagan nature worshippers, druids and followers of Aztec and Maya religious traditions. Some kneeled in attitudes of prayer, some seated with arms outstretched in positions of meditation, all facing El Castillo, the massive main pyramid.
Ceremonies were being held at different sides of the pyramid, including one led by a music group that belted out American blues and reggae-inspired chants. Others involved yelping and shouting, and drumming and dance, such as one ceremony led by spiritual master Ollin Yolotzin.
"The world was never going to end, this was an invention of the mass media," said Yolotzin, who leads the Aztec ritual dance group Cuautli-balam. "It is going to be a good era. ... We are going to be better."
Ivan Gutierrez, a 37-year-old artist who lives in the nearby village, stood before the pyramid and blew a low, sonorous blast on a conch horn. "It has already arrived, we are already in it," he said of the new era. "We are in a frequency of love, we are in a new vibration."
But it was unclear how long the love would last: A security guard quickly came over and asked him to stop blowing his conch shell, enforcing the ruin site's ban on holding ceremonies without previous permits.
Similar rites greeted the new era in neighboring Guatemala, where Mayan spiritual leaders burned offerings and families danced in celebration. Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina and Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla attended an official ceremony in the department of Peten, along with thousands of revelers and artists.
At an indigenous South American summer solstice festival in Bolivia, President Evo Morales arrived on a wooden raft to lead a festival that made offerings to Pachamama, Mother Earth, on a small island in the middle of Lake Titicaca.
The leftist leader and 3,000 others, including politicians, indigenous shamans and activists of all stripes, didn't ponder the end of the world, just the death of the capitalist system, which Morales told the crowd had already happened amid "a global financial, political and moral crisis."
"The human community is in danger because of climatic reasons, which are related to the accumulation of wealth by some countries and social groups," he told the crowd. "We need to change the belief that having more is living better."
Despite all the pomp, no one is certain the period known as the Mayas' 13th Baktun officially ended Friday. Some think it may have happened at midnight. Others looked to Friday's dawn here in the Maya heartland. Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History even suggested historical calculations to synchronize the Mayan and Western calendars might be off a few days. It said the Mayan Long Count calendar cycle might not really end until Sunday.
One thing, however, became clear to many by Friday afternoon: The world had not yet ended.
John Hoopes, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Kansas, was at the ruins, using the opportunity to talk about how myths are created.
"You don't have to go to the far corners of the earth to look for exotic things, you've got them right here," he noted.
End-of-the-world paranoia, however, has spread globally despite the insistence of archeologists and the Maya themselves that the date meant no such thing.
Dozens of schools in Michigan canceled classes this week amid rumors of violence tied to the date. In France, people expecting doomsday were looking expectantly to a mountain in the Pyrenees where they believe a hidden spaceship was waiting to spirit them away. And in China, government authorities were cracking down on a fringe Christian group spreading rumors about the world's end, while preaching that Jesus had reappeared as a woman in central China.
Gabriel Romero, a Los Angeles-based spiritualist who uses crystal skulls in his ceremonies, had no such illusions as he greeted the dawn at Chichen Itza.
"We'll still have to pay taxes next year," he said.
As if to put the final nail in the coffin of such rumors, Bob McMillan of the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory confirmed Friday that no large asteroids are predicted to hit anytime soon.
And Bill Leith, a senior science adviser at the U.S. Geological Survey, noted that as far as quakes, tsunamis and solar storms for the rest of the day, "we don't have any evidence that anything is imminent."
Still, there were some who wouldn't truly feel safe until the sun sets Friday over the pyramids in the Yucatan peninsula, the heartland of the Maya.
Mexico's best-known seer, Antonio Vazquez Alba, known as "El Brujo Mayor," said he had received emails with rumors that a mass suicide might be planned in Argentina. He said he was sure that human nature represented the only threat Friday.
"Nature isn't going to do us any harm, but we can do damage to ourselves," he said.
Authorities worried about overcrowding and possible stampedes during celebrations Friday at Mayan sites such as Chichen Itza and Uxmal, both about 1 1/2 hours from Merida, the Yucatan state capital. Special police and guard details were assigned to the pyramids.
Yucatan Gov. Rolando Zapata said he for one felt the growing good vibes, and not just because his state was raking in loads of revenue from the thousands of celebrants flooding in.
"We believe that the beginning of a new baktun means the beginning of a new era, and we're receiving it with great optimism," Zapata said.

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