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Germany takes home the 2014 World Cup title after a 1-0 win over Argentina on Sunday. It was a tense match that saw a lot of action but no score for more than 90 minutes of play.

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Police here believe they have quacked the code for finding followers on social media.

The 80-officer Bangor Police Department, which serves a city of about 33,000, has attracted more than 20,000 likes on its Facebook page after humorous pictures of a stuffed duck were added. The duck, dubbed "Duck of Justice" or "DOJ," appears in pictures of police cars, department members and K-9 cops, often accompanied with some pithy text about law enforcement.

"I happen to believe that police officers are a pretty humorous bunch," said the man behind the duck, Sgt. Tim Cotton, a 17-year veteran Bangor officer with a fondness for the humor of George Carlin and Jim Gaffigan. "I want to read something that at least has some humorous undertones. I wouldn't connect to a page that I didn't want to read."

Bangor is just one of many police departments nationwide discovering that using comedy on social media can help them interact with the public. One department, in 10,000-resident Brimfield Township, Ohio, has earned more than 155,000 Facebook likes for its chief's in-your-face humor about everything from methamphetamine busts to lost dogs.

Nancy Marshall, a Maine-based social media strategist who runs a public relations firm in the Maine capital of Augusta, said Bangor's site helps residents humanize the police.

"It's definitely a new way of engaging with the public," Marshall said. "I admire the Bangor police department for being bold enough to expose their humanity."

Cotton took over in April as the department's public information officer, a job that makes him responsible for the department's Facebook page. Since he started, the page's number of "likes" has shot up by more than 8,000 and hundreds of new followers came on board since Wednesday morning.

The wood duck — stuffed by a taxidermist and rescued by Cotton from a trash compactor at a district attorney's office — is a light way for the department to get residents' attention about sometimes serious matters in a crowded social media landscape, he said.

The duck has made the rounds in Bangor, appearing in a photo at Bangor Raceway with a caption that said it was "whistling 'More Than A Feeling'" because the band Boston was playing nearby. It also propped up a copy of the voluminous 2013-14 Maine criminal statutes book, reminding residents that it "will be in the office all weekend if you have any questions."

The duck also has a more serious side, appearing in profiles of new officers and a post about a lost dog.

The page has its detractors, including commenters who contend that paying Cotton to use social media isn't a wise use of public money.

Other departments' social media efforts have stumbled, such as the New York Police Department's April request for followers to post pictures of themselves with NYPD officers on Twitter with the #myNYPD hashtag. Many users instead used the hashtag to post pictures of aggressive police behavior.

The duck originally was sneaked into in social media photos, hidden in plain view in a manner similar to the popular "Kilroy Was Here" graffiti of the World War II era. The duck became the focus of photos as it became more and more popular, Cotton said. The Facebook page has since received fans from as far away as Brazil and Iran, he said.

As for the critics, Cotton says it's just water off a, well, you know.

"Policemen find their job funny no matter what people think of police," he said. "There's horrible things in police work and there's wonderful things."

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Online:

Bangor Police Department: http://on.fb.me/1lDnt6i

WASHINGTON (AP) — A string of fiery train derailments across the country has triggered a high-stakes but behind-the-scenes campaign to shape how the government responds to calls for tighter safety rules.

Billions of dollars are riding on how these rules are written, and lobbyists from the railroads, tank car manufacturers and the oil, ethanol and chemical industries have met 13 times since March with officials at the White House and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.

Their universal message: Don't make us pay for increased safety because that's another industry's problem.

The pitches illustrate why government officials, who must show that safety benefits outweigh the economic costs of rules, often struggle for years, only to produce watered-down regulations.

The Association of American Railroads, for example, is pushing for tougher safety standards for tank cars than the current, voluntary standards agreed to by industry in 2011. Railroads, though, typically don't own or lease tank cars and so wouldn't have to buy new cars or retrofit existing ones. The oil and ethanol industries that own the cars want to stick with the voluntary standards, also known as "1232" tank cars.

The railroads argue that better tank cars are needed because the kind of crude oil being produced in the oil boom Bakken region of North Dakota and Montana and in some other parts of the country is more likely to ignite if a tank car is punctured or ruptured in an accident. They want regulators to require that cars for crude have a thicker shell, an outer layer to protect from heat exposure, an outer "jacket" on top of that, and a better venting valve, among other changes.

Since 2008, there have been 10 significant derailments in the U.S. and Canada in which crude oil has spilled from ruptured tank cars, often resulting in huge fireballs. A year ago this month, a runaway train with 72 tank cars of crude en route from the Bakken to a refinery in Canada hurtled into the Quebec town of Lac-Megantic, exploded and killed 47 people.

The American Petroleum Institute, however, says Bakken crude is no different from other light, sweet crude oils and doesn't need special containers. The institute wants the government to adopt what are now the voluntary standards even though "1232" tank cars have ruptured in several accidents.

"We have billions invested in tank cars," said Bob Greco, a senior official with the American Petroleum Institute. "Every day new, modern 1232 tank cars are coming into service." By the end of next year, about 60 percent of the oil industry's 74,000 tank cars will be 1232s, each bought with the expectation that they would be in use for decades, he said.

The ethanol industry faces a similar quandary. It would cost about $3 billion to retrofit or replace the industry's 30,000 tank cars to make them tougher, said Bob Dinneen, head of the Renewable Fuels Association.

From 2006 to 2012, there were seven train derailments in which tank cars carrying ethanol ruptured. Several crashes caused spectacular fires that emergency responders were powerless to put out, including one near Cherry Valley, Illinois, that consumed a van with a family inside. A woman was killed, her husband suffered burned and their pregnant adult daughter miscarried.

The ethanol industry, including agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland, has told regulators that if tank car standards must be strengthened, the new requirements should apply only to crude oil, Dinneen said. He blamed poor communication by railroads for the Cherry Valley accident.

The chemical industry, which ships both flammable and nonflammable liquids in tank cars, has told regulators that if they propose a new tank car standard, it should be phased in, starting with oil shipments. Deadlines for chemical shipments would come later. The industry also questions whether the safety benefits justify the cost of upgrading existing tank cars to meet new standards.

Rather than new rules for tank cars, the oil and ethanol industries want regulators to turn their attention to whether railroads should do more to prevent accidents. "Keep these cars on the tracks and nobody has a problem," Dinneen said.

The government may try to do just that.

Edward Hamberger, head of the Association of American Railroads, said he is dismayed that regulators are considering lowering oil train speeds to 30 mph. Railroads already have voluntarily lowered speeds from 50 mph to 40 mph in urban areas, he said.

Lowering the speed of oil trains, some of which are 100 cars long, would slow overall freight traffic by about 10 percent and reduce the capacity of the nation's freight network by the same amount, Hamberger said. That's because 83 percent of the network is single track, with passing tracks located from 5 miles to 50 miles apart. Virtually every industry that ships freight by rail would be affected, he said, along with Amtrak, which widely uses freight tracks.

Burlington Northern-Santa Fe estimated that reducing speeds to 30 mph on just one portion of its network — its Aurora, Illinois, to Spokane, Washington, line — would cost the company $800 million.

Shippers that use a combination of trains and trucks to move products may switch to trucks, Hamberger said, putting more of those on the road.

Railroads also worry that regulators will require trains to have electronically controlled brakes that would cost the industry $12 billion to $21 billion, according to a CSX estimate.

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Follow Joan Lowy on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/AP_Joan_Lowy

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Online:

Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration: http://tinyurl.com/k6gdt5p

Association of American Railroads: http://tinyurl.com/kmk8zag

Renewable Fuels Association: http://tinyurl.com/kam9s7z

American Petroleum Institute http://www.api.org/

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — During a friendly dugout chat before a game, Hector Sanchez joked about the hazards of catching for hard-throwing San Francisco starter Tim Lincecum because of the number of balls that must be stopped in the dirt.

"Another day at the office," he said, grinning.

Sanchez uses the typical English phrase naturally these days after hours of hard work in English classes while playing in the minor leagues. He puts his improved English skills right up there with his biggest strides on the field, which include catching Lincecum's June 25 no-hitter.

Hundreds of other young Latin American players around the country are also speaking with ease, thanks to greater resources devoted to teaching English skills and other day-to-day tasks in American life as part of the transition to baseball in the U.S. All 30 major league teams now have academies in the Dominican Republic, and a handful of organizations run similar operations in Venezuela as well.

"There's no doubt it's different today than it was a generation ago for these players, with the media coverage, the impact of social media, the coverage, the television, everything," San Diego Padres manager Bud Black said. "These guys are exposed."

Sanchez's Giants say they have increased spending by 400 percent over the past decade.

"It has increased steadily each year as we have added more components to the assimilation program," said Alan Lee, Giants Director of Arizona Baseball Operations.

The Giants estimate they have helped train 325 Latin players with English skills in the last 15 years, while also providing Spanish training for those seeking to learn. Roughly 200 players have taken Spanish courses in the past four years.

Black and several other managers and GMs say there are fewer issues in which the language barrier causes their jobs to be more challenging than even five years ago. For example, most managers now make their pitching changes without the aid of an interpreter.

Some still prefer an interpreter when sending a player down to the minors or explaining certain technical aspects of a swing, pitching motion or other instruction.

"If there's something in particular that I need a player to understand and I can't have any confusion, I go through an interpreter with the player and I instruct the interpreter to tell him exactly what I say the way I say it," said Rangers manager Ron Washington, who speaks only the most basic Spanish. "I don't want your interpretation, because the way I would express it is for effect. If you change that effect, you just changed my interpretation."

Sanchez made learning English as much a part of his job as studying his pitchers and their tendencies. He had to be able to speak with the pitchers, so he took classes on the computer via Skype before and after games.

"It's not just for the position," Sanchez said. "You're in another country, a different country and this is like a challenge for you, so you have to take the challenge to survive."

While Sanchez is proving a reliable option as Buster Posey's backup in the Bay Area, the future of the franchise — Latino minor leaguers — sits in classrooms at the team's training complex in Scottsdale, Arizona, taking evening English classes as their empty practice fields are watered outside in the desert heat. The men walk past World Series logos on the walls as they arrive, a reminder of the team's championships in 2010 and '12.

The lessons include English basics, including training in how to write checks, use a bank account or mail a letter. There's even training on how to conduct a simple telephone call.

"We didn't have that. We had to learn from scratch," said 76-year-old Hall of Famer Orlando Cepeda, a Puerto Rican among the first group of Latinos playing baseball in the U.S. "(Talking) with the players, that's what I did (to learn)."

Carol Gabb is the lead English instructor for the Giants' minor leaguers. She regularly fist-bumps players throughout a session to celebrate and encourage their progress. During one class this spring, everybody sang "Happy Birthday" to work on the simple meanings behind the tune.

Players, much like school children, laugh, talk out of turn, stretch, kick off their flip flops, curl their toes when reading, make faces, or even smile sheepishly when they answer correctly and are given praise.

A few years back, this was Sanchez. And he also carved out time in his busy baseball life to take one-on-one classes. He started the sessions during his first professional season, rookie ball in 2009, but took it to another level in 2012.

"I get the opportunity to take English classes and I take advantage, and tried to learn every day," Sanchez said, his grammar still not perfect but close. "That's all about it, getting better, learning. That's how you survive in life."

Longtime Giants equipment manager Mike Murphy has nicknamed the affable catcher after actor George Clooney, and Sanchez immediately plays along by pulling off his black Giants cap and rubbing his hair — which, while far darker, is almost a spitting image of Clooney's precisely groomed 'do.

On another day this spring near the dugout, reliever Santiago Casilla used a mix of English and Spanish to ask Giants athletic trainer Dave Groeschner for medicine to help alleviate a pregame headache.

"I understand everything but it's a little bit difficult to speak it clearly. It doesn't scare me, but I understand more studying while I listen," he said.

While Seattle second baseman Robinson Cano is at ease speaking fluent English, the Dominican star regularly can be seen razzing teammates while speaking Spanish a mile a minute. Cano briefly attended high school in New Jersey.

"I went to school here, so I learned English," said Cano, who received a $240 million, 10-year contract to join the Mariners last offseason after nine years with the New York Yankees. "But it's hard speaking your second language."

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AP Photographer Matt York in Scottsdale, Arizona, contributed to this report.