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Former world number one Rory McIlroy ended a tumultuous week by firing a six-under-par 66 in the final round to score a fairytale victory in the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth on Sunday. The Northern Irishman, who broke up with tennis-playing fiancee class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Caroline Wozniacki a few days ago, finished with a 14-under total of 274 after a remarkable day of ebbing and flowing at the European Tour's flagship event. Ireland's Shane Lowry carded a 68 to take second place on 275 while Dane Thomas Bjorn, who went into the last round holding a five-stroke lead, ballooned to a 75 and had to be content with a share of third spot alongside twice former winner Luke Donald (70). On a topsy-turvy day of glorious sunshine during which the swirling winds and tricky pin positions caused the lead to constantly change hands, it was McIlroy who held his nerve the best. A succession of long putts were holed by the leading players and Donald twice chipped i

Ryan Hunter-Reay became the first American in eight years to win the Indianapolis 500 on Sunday and denied hard-charging Brazilian Helio Castroneves a record-equaling fourth victory at the Brickyard. Billed as "The Greatest Spectacle in Racing," the Indy 500 lived up to the hype with a heart-stopping finish as Hunter-Reay beat Castroneves to the checkered by less than a car length to become the first American winner since Sam Hornish in 2006. "I've been watching this race since I was in diapers sitting on the floor ... I'm thrilled," said Hunter-Reay after chugging from the traditional quart of cold milk in Victory Lane. "This is American history this race, an American tradition." Staged on the U.S. Memorial Day holiday weekend, the Indy 500 may indeed be a uniquely American event but it had taken on an international flair with only two homegrown drivers reaching Victory Lane since 1998. Hunter-Reay, who started the race well back on the 33-c

A Russian rocket carrying a $275 million telecommunications satellite failed and burned up shortly after launch on Friday, the latest in a series of setbacks for Russia's once-pioneering space industry. _0"> It was the second failure for Russia's workhorse Proton-M rocket in less than a year, and the second time that it had failed to deliver a European satellite intended to provide advanced telecoms and Internet access to remote parts of class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Russia , after the last one crashed shortly after launch in 2011. Friday's unmanned mission went awry when the engine on the third stage of the Proton-M booster rocket failed, Oleg Ostapenko, head of the Russian space agency Roskosmos, told Russian news agencies. He said the precise cause was unknown. The failure occurred at an altitude of 160 km (100 miles), about nine minutes after the early-morning lift-off from the Russian-leased Baikonur facility in Kazakhstan. The state-run RIA qu

Visitors to the high class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Arctic can now walk in the footsteps of great polar explorers like Roald Amundsen and send messages from the telegraph station that was first to receive news of the North Pole's conquest nearly 90 years ago. _0"> class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Norway has renovated Amundsen's telegraph station at Ny-Aalesund, the world's northernmost permanent settlement on the remote Svalbard archipelago, and tourists, arriving mostly on cruise ships, will from next week be able to use it to send electronic messages around the world. Amundsen, the first to reach the South Pole in 1911, had his sights on the North Pole but settled for class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Antarctica when American Robert Peary beat him to the top of the world. When credible doubts later emerged about Peary's feat Amundsen took up the quest again. In 1926, along with Italian airship designer Umberto Nobile, he sailed

It's not exactly small at 30 feet long (9 meters), but you might want to call this newly identified dinosaur the littlest giant. Scientists in class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Argentina on Wednesday announced the discovery of the fossilized remains of a unique member of the famous long-necked, plant-munching dinosaurs known as sauropods, the largest land creatures in Earth's history. The dinosaur, named Leinkupal laticauda, may be the smallest of the sauropod family called diplodocids, typified by the well-known Diplodocus, which lived in North America, they said. It also is the first of them found in South America. It lived about 140 million years ago, millions of years after scientists had previously thought diplodocids had disappeared, according to Argentine paleontologist Pablo Gallina, one of the researchers. "Finding Leinkupal was incredibly exciting since we never though it possible. A diplodocid in South America is as strange as finding a T. rex in

The U.S. government on Thursday took steps to allow limited exceptions to its broad prohibition on the commercial trade in elephant ivory, exempting certain older musical instruments with ivory components as well as ivory in museum and art exhibitions. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe said in a statement the "common-sense adjustments" were made after the agency listened to "very real concerns" lodged since the near-total elephant ivory ban announced in February. The ban was designed to combat wildlife trafficking that threatens African elephants and other species with extinction. Ashe signed an order that allows musicians to transport internationally certain musical instruments containing African elephant ivory. The order also allows for the import of certain museum and art specimens not intended for sale. Fish and Wildlife Service officials said the owners of such items had to prove they were legally acquired before the date in 1976, when Afr

The U.S. government's class="mandelbrot_refrag"> medical research agency is taking steps to erase sex bias in pivotal biomedical studies that pave the way for human clinical trials, saying scientists too often favor male over female laboratory animals and cells. A new requirement announced on Wednesday by the National Institutes of Health for researchers applying for NIH funding is likely to have a big influence because the agency is one of the world's top financial backers of biomedical studies, spending about $30 billion annually. Beginning October 1, researchers seeking NIH grants must report their plans for balancing male and female cells and animals in preclinical studies, with only "rigorously defined exceptions." The NIH also plans to train grant recipients and its own staff on designing studies without sex bias. "Our goal is to transform how science is done," wrote NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins and Dr. Janine Clayton, direct

People in heavily populated Pacific and Indian Ocean coastal regions beyond the tropics should take heed, U.S. scientists said on Wednesday, because tropical cyclones increasingly are packing their biggest punch farther from the equator. Over the past 30 years, the location where these powerful storms reach their maximum intensity has shifted away from the equator and toward the poles in both the northern and southern hemispheres at a rate of about 35 miles (56 km) per decade, they said. That amounts to half a degree of latitude per decade. The trend may be linked to factors that have contributed to global climate change including human activities like the burning of fossils fuels, the researchers said. The scientists documented the greatest migration in tropical cyclones in the northern and southern Pacific and south Indian Oceans. This march away from the equator was not seen in the Atlantic, although class="mandelbrot_refrag"> hurricanes have registered increases

NASA plans to revive its planet-hunting Kepler space telescope for a new mission after a positioning system problem sidelined the observatory last year, officials said on Friday. The telescope was launched in 2009 to search for Earth-sized planets suitably positioned around their parent stars for liquid water, a condition believed necessary for life. Kepler scientists are still analyzing data to find a true Earth analog but already have added 962 confirmations and 3,845 candidates to the list of 1,713 planets discovered beyond the solar system. Kepler’s steady gaze was broken last year when it lost the second of four positioning wheels. Three are needed for precision pointing. "Good news from NASA HQ," Kepler deputy project manager Charlie Sobeck wrote in a status report posted on the Kepler website. "The two-wheel operation mode of the Kepler spacecraft ... has been approved." The first observations of the new campaign, called K2, are scheduled to begin on M

A Dragon cargo ship owned by California-based Space Exploration Technologies ended a 28-day stay at the International Space Station on Sunday, parachuting into the Pacific Ocean. Space Station commander Steven Swanson used a robotic crane to release the Dragon capsule, built and operated by the company more commonly known as SpaceX, at 9:26 a.m. ET (1326 GMT) as the two vehicles soared in orbit 266 miles (428 km) above Earth. "Thanks to everybody who worked this Dragon mission. It went very well," Swanson radioed to flight directors at NASA's Mission Control Center in Houston after Dragon left the station's orbit. About five and a half hours later, the capsule made a parachute descent into the Pacific, splashing down about 300 miles (482 km) west of Mexico’s Baja California peninsula. “Splashdown is confirmed! Welcome home, Dragon,” SpaceX posted on Twitter. The capsule returned with more than 3,500 pounds (1,586 kg) of science samples for analysis on Earth, al

Tel Aviv University and Tsinghua University of Beijing will inaugurate on Tuesday a $300 million joint center for innovative research and education to be funded by government and private enterprise. _0"> The XIN center, meaning new in Chinese, will seek to develop solutions for pressing problems in areas such as water, energy, the environment and medicine. It will also focus on fields enjoying growth in both countries, such as nanotechnology. The center will operate concurrently at both universities and bring together top scientists and students from both campuses. Almost a third of the $300 million has been raised, Tel Aviv University President Joseph Klafter told a news conference on Monday. Tsinghua President Jining Chen said that while his university has collaborations with many academic institutions around the world, "in terms of class="mandelbrot_refrag"> innovation this (in Israel) is the leading one". XIN ventures will be backed, among oth

He leaves the toilet seat up, prefers old Japanese monster movies to romantic comedies and fancies mixed martial arts over ballet. So what do you have in common with your husband? More than you may think. People tend to choose spouses who have similar DNA, according to scientists who reported on Monday the results of a study exploring the genetic resemblance of married couples. The researchers examined the genetic blueprints of 825 U.S. married couples and found a significant preference for a spouse with DNA similarities across the entire human genome.   true       The study compared this affinity for husbands or wives with similar DNA makeup to the well-established and strong tendency of people to marry mates with similar educational levels. The researchers found that the preference for a genetically similar spouse was about a third as strong as the preference for a spouse with comparable education. The 1,650 people studied in the research were non-Hispanic, white men and women

A joint venture of class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Lockheed Martin Corp and class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Boeing Co on Monday said its rocket launch costs were far lower than claimed by its rival, privately-held Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, which is suing the U.S. government for shutting it out of the lucrative rocket launch class="mandelbrot_refrag"> business . United Launch Alliance President Michael Gass told reporters at a space conference in Colorado that his company was providing rocket launches to the U.S. Air Force and other customers for an average cost of $225 million per launch, far less than the $460 million amount cited by SpaceX. He said the price of each lighter-weight rocket launch was around $164 million in a 36-unit block buy that is being challenged by SpaceX. He also said ULA could provide additional lighter-weight launches for under $100 million, about the same price that SpaceX says its rocket launches will cos

Worldwide spending on satellites, launches and support services increased to $314 billion in 2013, up 4 percent from 2012, even though the U.S. government reduced its own space spending, an industry association reported this week. Commercial space activity, including rocket launches to fly cargo to the International Space Station, fueled most of the growth, the report by the U.S. Space Foundation said. “Fifty-seven years after the launch of the first satellite, the space industry is rapidly evolving,” said the foundation's annual Space Report, released on Monday. “It is clear that space technology continues to become more accessible each year to a wider variety of end-users in an increasing number of countries,” it said. “The outlook for the space sector is very bright in the years to come.” Globally, commercial revenues and government spending on space projects totaled $314 billion -- $12 billion than the $302 billion spent in 2012, the report showed. Commercial

Climate change is threatening U.S. landmarks from the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor to the César Chávez National Monument in Keene, California with floods, rising sea levels and fires, scientists said on Tuesday. National Landmarks at Risk, a report published by the Union of Concerned Scientists, highlighted more than two dozen sites that potentially face serious class="mandelbrot_refrag"> natural disasters . They include Boston's historic districts, the Harriet Tubman National Monument in Maryland and an array of NASA sites including the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. "The imminent risks to these sites and the artifacts they contain threaten to pull apart the quilt that tells the story of the nation's heritage and history," Adam Markham, director of climate impacts at the union, a non-profit organization for science advocacy in Washington D.C. and the study's co-author, said in a statement. The report is not slated fo

The U.S. Air Force is working as fast as it can to certify the ability of privately held Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, to compete for work launching military and intelligence satellites into orbit, a top general said on Tuesday. General William Shelton, who heads the Air Force Space Command, said SpaceX was likely to achieve certification in December or January, but the process could not be accelerated given the complex issues that still needed to be addressed. "It's very difficult to pick up the pace on that," Shelton told reporters after a speech at a space conference hosted by the Space Foundation. In addition to certifying SpaceX's three launches, the Air Force was also looking at the firm's financial and auditing systems and manufacturing processes, he said. SpaceX last month sued the Air Force for excluding it from a multibillion-dollar 36-launch contract awarded to United Launch Alliance (ULA), a joint venture of the two biggest U.S. weapo

The human placenta, the organ that nourishes a developing baby, is not the pristine place some experts had assumed. Researchers said on Wednesday they have identified a relatively small but thriving group of microbes that inhabit the placenta alongside human cells in a finding that may point to new ways of spotting women at risk for pre-term births. There were clear differences in the makeup of placental microbes, or microbiome, in women who had premature babies compared with those who delivered full-term babies, said Dr. James Versalovic, a professor at Baylor College of Medicine and head of pathology at Texas Children's Hospital in Houston. Versalovic said this knowledge could lead to diagnostic tests to forecast which women may be at risk for pre-term birth and help obstetricians manage those pregnancies in new ways. Scientists have known that microorganisms routinely reside in large numbers in certain parts of the human body such as the gut, which is naturally awash with

A Florida scientist studying simple sea animals called comb jellies has found the road map to a new form of brain development that could lead to treatments for Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases. "There is more than one way to make a brain," University of Florida researcher Leonid Moroz, who led an international research team, told Reuters. Moroz said his research, published on Wednesday in a report in the magazine Nature, also places comb jelly-like creatures on the first branch of the animal kingdom's "tree of life," replacing and bumping up sponge-like species from the bottom rung of evolutionary progression. Moroz said that finding should lead to a reclassification of the animal kingdom's "tree of life" and reshape two centuries of zoological thought. Comb jellies are different from common jellyfish. Moroz said his team found that comb jellies' molecular makeup and the way they developed was radical

A cross between a sleek cat and a wide-eyed teddy bear that lives in Andean cloud forests and an eyeless snail that lives in darkness 900-plus meters (3,000 feet) below ground in Croatia rank among the top 10 new species discovered last year, scientists announced on Thursday. The list, assembled annually since 2008, is intended to draw attention to the fact that researchers continue to discover new species. Nearly 18,000 were identified in 2013, adding to the 2 million known to science. An international committee of taxonomists and other experts, assembled by the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, selects the top 10. The list is released in time for the May 23 birthday of Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778), the Swedish botanist considered the founder of modern taxonomy. Scientists believe nature holds another 10 million undiscovered species, from single-celled organisms to mammals, and worry that thousands are becoming extinct faster than they are being identified, said

An unmanned Atlas 5 rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Thursday with a classified satellite for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office. Five minutes after the 9:09 a.m. EDT/13:09 GMT launch, rocket manufacturer United Launch Alliance (ULA), a partnership of Lockheed Martin and class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Boeing , shut down its live webcast under a prearranged news blackout ordered by the U.S. military. While the mission unfolds under a veil of secrecy, the future of the Atlas 5 launcher is getting wide public view. Potential rival Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) filed a lawsuit last month to attempt to end ULA’s exclusive right to sell launch services to the U.S. military. In its lawsuit, SpaceX also questioned whether the Atlas rocket’s Russian-made RD-180 engine violated economic sanctions that the United States imposed to punish class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Russia for its annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peni

NASA unveiled its "global selfie" on Thursday, a mosaic of more than 36,000 pictures uploaded to social media showing people and places around the world in commemoration of Earth Day, the U.S. space agency said. _0"> NASA asked people on April 22, Earth Day, to upload pictures tagged with #GlobalSelfie to social media sites like class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Facebook , Twitter and Instagram. Users on every continent and 113 countries or regions - including class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Antarctica , class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Yemen and class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Peru - joined in. After weeks of collecting and curating the more than 50,000 submissions, the so-called "global selfie" was released. "We were overwhelmed to see people participate from so many countries. We're very grateful that people took the time to celebrate our home planet together, and we look forward to everyone doing their par

Scientists seeking a vaccine against malaria, which kills a child every minute in Africa, have developed a promising new approach intended to imprison the disease-causing parasites inside the red blood cells they infect. The researchers said on Thursday an experimental vaccine based on this idea protected mice in five trials and will be tested on lab monkeys beginning in the next four to six weeks. Dr. Jonathan Kurtis, director of Rhode Island Hospital's Center for International Health Research, said if the monkey trials go well, a so-called Phase I clinical trial testing the vaccine in a small group of people could begin within a year and a half. Using blood samples and epidemiological data collected from hundreds of children in Tanzania, where malaria is endemic, by Drs. Patrick Duffy and Michal Fried of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the researchers pinpointed a protein, dubbed PfSEA-1, that the parasites need in order to escape from inside red blood cells they in

They might be the odd couple of the bird world. Scientists on Thursday identified the closest relative of New Zealand's famed kiwi, a shy chicken-sized flightless bird, as the elephant bird of Madagascar, a flightless giant that was 10 feet (3 meters) tall and went extinct a few centuries ago. The surprising findings, based on DNA extracted from the bones of two elephant bird species, force a re-evaluation of the ancestry of the group of flightless birds called ratites that reside in the world's southern continents, they added. The group, which boasts some of the world's largest birds, includes emus and cassowaries in class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Australia , rheas in South America, ostriches in Africa and kiwis in New Zealand. Ratites that have disappeared in recent centuries include the moa of New Zealand and the elephant bird. The researchers compared elephant bird DNA to the other birds and saw a close genetic link to the kiwi despite obvious differenc

Earth will travel through a fresh stream of comet dust early Saturday, possibly creating a gallery of shooting stars for night-time sky-watchers, astronomers said on Friday. Predictions call for more than 200 meteors per hour hitting the planet's atmosphere during the peak hours of 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. EDT (0600 to 0800 GMT). North America will be in prime position for the celestial show, scientists said. Weather permitting, the meteors – remnants from the recently discovered Comet 209P/LINEAR – will appear to be coming from the direction of the northern constellation Camelopardalis. “We’re going right smack in the middle of these (comet) dust trails and the meteors are going to be pretty slow,” University of Arizona astronomer Carl Hergenrother said in a NASA interview. “It’s going to look almost like slow-moving fireworks, instead of the usual shooting stars,” he added. Earth will be crossing 2009P/LINEAR’s trail for the first time since the comet’s discovery in 2004

An asteroid that exploded last year over Chelyabinsk, class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Russia , leaving more than 1,000 people injured by flying glass and debris, collided with another asteroid before hitting Earth, new research by scientists shows. Analysis of a mineral called jadeite that was embedded in fragments recovered after the explosion show that the asteroid's parent body struck a larger asteroid at a relative speed of some 3,000 mph (4,800 kph). "This impact might have separated the Chelyabinsk asteroid from its parent body and delivered it to the Earth," lead researcher Shin Ozawa, with the University of Tohoku in class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Japan , wrote in a paper published this week in the journal Scientific Reports. The discovery is expected to give scientists more insight into how an asteroid may end up on a collision course with Earth. Scientists suspect the collision happened about 290 million years ago. Most of the 65-foot (2

A group of citizen scientists can take over a 36-year-old decommissioned robotic space probe that will fly by the Earth in August, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said on Wednesday. Launched in 1978, the International Sun/Earth Explorer-3 (ISEE-3) spacecraft studied how the stream of charged particles flowing from the sun, the so-called solar wind, interacts with Earth’s magnetic field. After completing its primary mission, the probe was given a new name, the International Comet Explorer, and new targets to study, including the famed Comet Halley as it passed by Earth in March 1986. A third assignment to investigate powerful solar storms, known as coronal mass ejections, followed until 1997, when NASA deactivated the spacecraft. In August, the satellite’s graveyard orbit around the sun will bring it back by Earth, a feat of physics that caught the eye of an ad hoc group of citizen scientists. Last month, the team launched a successful crowd-funding project to r

U.S. Republicans claimed victory on Thursday after the Internal Revenue Service said it will delay and rewrite proposed rules for tax-exempt, social welfare groups that were at the heart of the agency's a political controversy last year. _0"> "This proposed rule was wrong from the start," said Republican Representative Dave Camp, chairman of the tax-writing committee in the House of Representatives. "Hopefully the IRS and the Obama Administration will think twice before ever trying to go down this path again," he said in a statement. Since the rules were introduced in November 2013, Republicans have tried to stop them from being finalized. The proposed rules would limit the political activities of social welfare groups that fall under Section 501(c)(4) of the U.S. tax code. The IRS had not been expected to finalize the rules this year. The IRS has been inundated with a historic number of demands for changes to the rules, prompting the need to over

Lawmakers in Congress headed toward a showdown over Pentagon spending on Thursday after the House and Senate advanced competing versions of the annual defense policy bill that differ on everything from spending priorities to closing Guantanamo. The House of Representatives voted 325-98 to pass a 2015 National Defense Authorization Act that rejected the Pentagon's bid to cut long-term costs by reducing military pay raises and eliminating planes, ships and bases. Hours later the Senate Armed Services Committee unveiled its version of the same legislation, approving a Pentagon proposal to offer smaller military pay hikes, lay up 11 Navy cruisers for long-term maintenance and reorganize the Army helicopter fleet. The Senate and House plans differed on how to pay for proposed changes to the Pentagon budget, with the House reducing funds for keeping the military combat-ready while the Senate panel sought to avoid that. "We didn't fund programs by cutting into readiness, as

The U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday approved a plan that would add $100 million to the U.S. military budget to start work on a new U.S. rocket engine and eliminate reliance on a Russian-made engine used to lift big government satellites into orbit. _0"> The House Armed Services Committee included a similar provision in its defense authorization bill earlier this month. Tensions with class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Russia have sparked growing concerns about the use of Russian-made RD-180 engines by the United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Boeing Co and class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Lockheed Martin Corp that is responsible for launching U.S. military and spy satellites into space.   true       ULA uses the Russian-made engines in one type of rocket, the Atlas, but not in another, the Delta. A high-ranking Russian official recently threatened to end sales of the Russian rocket engines for

The U.S. Senate on Thursday confirmed the nomination of David Barron as a federal appeals court judge following controversy over a memorandum he wrote for the Obama administration authorizing drone strikes against U.S. citizens. _0"> Barron's nomination was approved by 53-45 the day after senators cleared an important procedural hurdle and voted to limit debate on his nomination for the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which reviews cases from lower federal courts in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Puerto Rico. Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky failed on Wednesday to get the chamber to delay votes until the Obama administration releases a memo Barron wrote in 2010 laying the groundwork for a 2011 drone attack in class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Yemen that killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen who was an al Qaeda leader. The Justice Department is expected to make the memo public after classified information is redacted. White Hou

President class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Barack Obama on Thursday urged Democrats to vote in November elections, saying the chance to pass immigration reform is at risk if Republicans gain control of both houses of Congress. _0"> "We have a congenital defect to not vote in midterm elections," he said at a fundraising reception for Democratic Senate candidates. "The midterm comes and we fall asleep." Democrats hold a 55-45 seat majority in the Senate, but many analysts give the Republicans an even chance of picking up the six seats they would need to seize control of the chamber. The Republican majority in the House of Representatives is not considered to be in play. Obama was using an overnight stop in his adopted hometown to attend two fundraisers organized by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Tickets for the events, where he was joined by Illinois Senator Dick Durbin and Colorado Senator Michael Bennet, the DSCC chairman, cost b

President class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Barack Obama will shuffle his cabinet on Friday, nominating San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro as secretary of housing and urban development and naming outgoing HUD chief Shaun Donovan as his new budget director, a White House official said on Thursday night. The switch brings a high-profile Latino leader who is a rising star in Democratic politics into the Obama administration and moves a long-serving Cabinet member into the president's inner circle at the Office of Management and Budget. Obama was set to make the announcement at 3:35 p.m. ET at the White House, flanked by Castro and Donovan, the White House official said.   true       "The President is thrilled that Secretary Donovan will take on this next role and believes that Mayor Castro is the right person to build on his critical work at HUD based on his work in San Antonio," the White House official said in a statement. Donovan will take over from Sylvia Math