1 of 4. The Korea Space Launch Vehicle-1 (KSLV-1) or Naro, South Korea's space rocket is launched on the launch pad at Naro Space Centre in Goheung, about 485 km (301 miles) south of Seoul January 30, 2013 in this picture taken by Yonhap.

SEOUL | Wed Jan 30, 2013 12:38pm EST

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea launched its first space rocket carrying a science satellite on Wednesday amid heightened regional tensions, caused in part, by North Korea's successful launch of its own rocket last month.

It was South Korea's third attempt to launch a civilian rocket to send a satellite in orbit in the past four years and came after two previous launches were aborted at the eleventh hour last year due to technical glitches.

The launch vehicle, named Naro, lifted off from South Korea's space center on the south coast and successfully went through stage separation before entering orbit, officials at the mission control said. Previous launches failed within minutes.

South Korea's rocket program has angered neighbor North Korea, which says it is unjust for it to be singled out for U.N. sanctions for launching long-range rockets as part of its space program to put a satellite into orbit.

North Korea's test in December showed it had the capacity to deliver a rocket that could travel 10,000 km (6,200 miles), potentially putting San Francisco in range, according to an intelligence assessment by South Korea.

However, it is not believed to have the technology to deliver a nuclear warhead capable of hitting the continental United States.

The test in December was considered a success, at least partially, by demonstrating an ability to put an object in space.

But the satellite, as claimed by the North, is not believed to be functioning.

South Korea is already far behind regional rivals China and Japan in the effort to build space rockets to put satellites into orbit and has relied on other countries, including Russia, to launch them.

Launch attempts in 2009 and 2010 ended in failure.

The first stage booster of the South Korean rocket was built by Russia. South Korea has produced several satellites and has relied on other countries to put them in orbit.

South Korea wants to build a rocket on its own by 2018 and eventually send a probe to the moon.

(Reporting by Jack Kim; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)

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A species of South African dung beetle is seen in this undated handout photo from University of the Witwatersrand released January 25, 2013.

JOHANNESBURG | Fri Jan 25, 2013 10:45am EST

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - A species of South African dung beetle has been shown to use the Milky Way to navigate, making it the only known animal that turns to the galactic spray of stars across the night sky for direction.

Researchers have known for several years that the inch-long insects use the sun or moon as fixed points to ensure they keep rolling dung balls in a straight line - the quickest way of getting away from other beetles at the dung heap.

But scientists have puzzled over how the beetles, which perform an orientation dance on top of their dung balls before setting off, achieve a straight line on moonless nights.

To prove the Milky Way theory, scientists at Johannesburg's Wits University took beetles into the university planetarium to see how they fared with a normal night sky, and then one devoid of the Milky Way.

"The dung beetles don't care which direction they're going in. They just need to get away from the bun fight at the poo pile," Wits professor Marcus Byrne said. "But when we turned off the Milky Way, the beetles got lost."

And on cloudy nights without a moon or stars?

"They probably just stay at home," Byrne said.

(Reporting by Ed Cropley, editing by Paul Casciato)

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NEW YORK | Fri Jan 11, 2013 9:02am EST

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The complexity of modern markets means there are bound to be more events such as the systems error that led to hundreds of thousands of trades being executed improperly on BATS Global Markets over the past four years, the head of the No. 3 U.S. equities exchange said on Thursday.

A coding problem led to over 440,000 transactions being executed at prices that were not the best available, in violation of U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission rules.

The SEC's enforcement and trading and markets divisions are investigating the issue, said a person with knowledge of the matter. The person, who was not authorized to speak with the media, added that BATS' self-reporting of the problem would likely work in the exchange's favor.

It is possible that other such problems could be found as the exchange proactively seeks them out, Joe Ratterman, chief executive of BATS, said in an interview.

"There is going to be, between real-time dynamic systems, extreme edge case scenarios where things don't happen as you would expect," he said.

The trades in question made up 0.003 percent of the around 12.1 billion trades on BATS options and equities markets over the past four years and were executed within the expected range of outcomes of both the exchange and its customers, making the problem very difficult to discover, he added.

On Friday, in a routine self-audit of BATS' data, an operations person found an execution that looked improper and, after further research, noticed a pattern. The error has been occurring since BATS became an exchange in 2008 and cost BATS' customers a total of $420,361.

THE LATEST TECHNOLOGICAL FOUL-UP

"This is merely the latest in a series of technological foul-ups and demands regulatory attention, and a game plan to deal with getting a better handle on assessing technology and how markets are functioning," former SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt told Reuters.

High profile glitches in the past year include the attempted market debut of Lenexa, Kansas-based BATS in March, when a software error caused the company to take the extremely rare step of withdrawing its initial public offering of shares.

Technology errors also led to the botched Facebook Inc IPO on Nasdaq OMX in May and the trading error that nearly sank Knight Capital Markets in August.

The SEC routinely reviews such matters with the exchanges, said spokesman John Nester.

In 2011, the agency sanctioned No. 4 U.S. equities exchange Direct Edge for weak internal controls that led to millions of dollars in trading losses and a systems outage. Last year, NYSE Euronext paid $5 million to settle charges it gave certain customers "an improper head start" on trading information due to software issues and compliance failures.

In an interview on Wednesday with Reuters, outgoing SEC enforcement director Robert Khuzami said there is still much unfinished business for the enforcement division in the area of market structure.

"The new area that obviously is of concern has to do with platform trading and market abuse issues around high-frequency trading, algorithmic trading, market structure participants," he said. "We need more and better transparency into what is going on so we can determine to extent to which there are abuses that are occurring."

CYNICAL VIEW

As the complexity of automated trading systems has increased, it has become very difficult to effectively debug their code, said Larry Harris, professor of finance and business economics at the Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California.

The vast number of exchange order types, together with a long list of complicated regulatory rules, makes it is nearly impossible to test for all possible scenarios, he said.

"Dependence on computers is no defense for failures of business systems," he added.

Ratterman, a founding employee of BATS, who has led the company since June 2007, said that taking a "cynical view" of the soundness of the markets is not a bad thing, as it holds the market players to account.

"Because it is a real-time, dynamic system, we will continue to go in with the attitude that it is our job to find stuff, not that it is our job to prove that nothing is broken," he said.

Ratterman said BATS is working with is customers on the issue of compensation and will discuss it with the SEC. In all, 119 firms were impacted, although 74 of them would have a claim of less than $100 over the four years, he said.

BATS' U.S. equity market share on Thursday was 12.42 percent, up from its month-to-date average of 11.87 percent.

(Reporting By John McCrank.; Additional reporting by Sarah N. Lynch and Andre Grenon)

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ORLANDO, Florida | Wed Jan 30, 2013 10:35am EST

ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - Americans may be turning away from the hard sciences at universities, but they are increasingly showing up at "science cafes" in local bars and restaurants to listen to scientific talks over a drink or a meal.

Want a beer with that biology? Or perhaps a burger with the works to complement the theory of everything?

Science cafes have sprouted in almost every state including a tapas restaurant near downtown Orlando where Sean Walsh, 27, a graphic designer, describes himself and his friends as some of the laymen in the crowd.

"We just want to learn and whatever we take in, we take in. But we're also socializing and having a nice time," said Walsh, who a drank beer, ate Tater Tots and learned a little about asteroids and radiation at two recent events.

Others in the crowd come with scientific credentials to hear particular scientists lecture on a narrowly focused field of interest.

But the typical participant brings at least some college-level education or at least a lively curiosity, said Edward Haddad, executive director of the Florida Academy of Sciences, which helped start up Orlando's original cafe and organizes the events.

"You're going to engage the (National Public Radio) crowd very easily here," said Linda Walters, a marine conservation biologist from the University of Central Florida who has lectured twice at the Orlando-area science cafes.

Haddad said the current national push to increase the number of U.S. graduates in science, technology, engineering and math, or the STEM fields, is driving up the number of science cafes.

In Orlando, an Orange County STEM Council consisting of business, government and educational leaders recently asked Haddad to help two interested parties launch new science cafes in the downtown library and in a large new town development.

The U.S. science cafe movement grew out of Cafe Scientifique in the United Kingdom. The first Cafe Scientifique popped up in Leeds in 1998 as a regularly scheduled event where all interested parties could participate in informal forums about the latest in science and technology.

Traditionally held in pubs and restaurants, the Cafe Scientifique would start as a short lecture, followed by a short break to re-fill glasses, and then an open discussion, according to the organization's website.

The American movement of independent cafes is loosely organized at the sciencecafe.org website created by public broadcaster WGBH's NOVA science program. Haddad said NOVA several years ago provided a few hundred dollars of seed money to groups around the country that wanted to start a cafe.

However, anyone with a venue, a speaker and a marketing plan can start one. On the sciencecafe.org website, an interactive map shows the location of cafes across the United States and around the globe from Islamabad, Pakistan, to Antwerp, Belgium, to the Hawaiian islands.

Some cafes have cropped up in bookstores, theaters and high school campuses.

In Viera, Florida, about 60 mostly retirees regularly pack a pizzeria to hear speakers from the well-regarded Brevard Zoo or NASA's nearby Kennedy Space Center. In Daytona Beach, scientists from the internationally known Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University draw standing-room-only crowds at a local coffee shop.

Haddad said his hope for the cafes is to engage the public and generate excitement about the STEM fields that might filter down to the next generation.

"My feeling is STEM begins at home, with students who are being brought up by parents or relatives who have some interest in science and may encourage them to do that," Haddad said.

Attending a cafe does not guarantee a speaker as engaging as the popular host of television programs Bill Nye the Science Guy, as Walsh learned when he got lost in the extensive jargon of one lecture.

"I don't know that every scientist is gifted with the ability to work a crowd as well as deliver a lecture on targeted radiation therapy for tumors," said Walsh. "If you can find one that hits both those things, they should have their own television show."

(Editing by Kevin Gray and Kenneth Barry)

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Microsoft Corp CEO Steve Ballmer displays a Nokia Lumia 920 featuring Windows Phone 8 during an event in San Francisco, California October 29, 2012.

HELSINKI | Thu Jan 10, 2013 3:15pm EST

HELSINKI (Reuters) - Nokia said strong sales of Lumia smartphones helped its mobile phone business achieve underlying profitability in the fourth quarter, raising hopes the struggling handset maker may be past the worst.

The Finnish company, which has been losing market share to Samsung and Apple, said the better-than-expected result was also helped by cost cuts, a stronger-than-expected performance from its Nokia Siemens Networks unit and 50 million euros ($65.2 million) in patent royalties.

The surprise announcement lifted the shares to nine-month highs and eased pressure on Chief Executive Stephen Elop, who has been trying to prove his February 2011 decision to switch to Microsoft Windows software was the right one.

Elop was seen to be running out of time after saying that the transition would take two years. Success of the high-end Lumia smartphones has been considered crucial for the company's survival, and investors had said Elop would need to quit or change strategy if sales did not pick up by early 2013.

"We're very pleased with the Lumia response," Elop told analysts, although he added that sales of the latest 920 models, which use the new Windows Phone 8 software, had been constrained by a shortage of supplies.

Nokia estimated fourth-quarter operating margin in its mobile phone business was between break-even to 2 percent. It previously forecast the margin to be around minus 6 percent.

Official results, including more details on its profit and cash position, are due on January 24.

Fourth-quarter net sales in devices and services were about 3.9 billion euros ($5.09 billion), Nokia said. It sold a total of 86.3 million devices. Smartphones accounted for 6.6 million units, of which 4.4 million were the Windows-based Lumia handsets.

Nokia shares rose 10.8 percent to 3.32 euros as some investors cheered the rare positive announcement from Nokia and traders scrambled to cover their short positions.

Nokia had 17 percent of shares out on loan, according to Markit data, making it one of the most "shorted" stocks in Europe.

STILL NEED EVIDENCE

The company said that conditions remained tough despite the stronger-than-expected fourth quarter, and forecast its margin to be around minus 2 percent in the first quarter of this year.

"We continue to operate in a competitive environment with limited visibility," Elop said.

Some analysts were skeptical about the success of the Lumia strategy. Nokia would not say how many of the Lumias it sold were the newest models rather than the heavily discounted ones launched earlier.

Many also noted Lumias sold in the fourth quarter still make up a small portion of global smartphone sales in the same period, estimated at over 200 million.

"4.4 million Lumias sold is not yet a promise of a turnaround," said Inderes analyst Mikael Rautanen, who had just downgraded the shares to "sell" on Tuesday.

Bernstein analyst Pierre Ferragu said he was still negative about the shares, rating them "underperform".

"Last year, in order to sustain Lumia volumes, Nokia had to cut prices very rapidly, driving gross margins close to zero. We believe this will repeat this year," he said.

Redeye analyst Greger Johansson said it was too early to call it a turnaround.

"They will have to prove a lot more until you can say that," he said. "I'm not still convinced that they are going to manage to succeed with those new smartphones. They have to sell a lot more in volumes until you can say that."

($1 = 0.7667 euros)

(Additional reporting by Terhi Kinnunen and Sudip Kar-Gupta; Editing by David Goodman and Sophie Walker)

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1 of 7. The space shuttle Columbia lifts off from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, reflected in salt marsh swamps surrounding the pad in this file photo from January 16, 2003. February 1, 2013 marks the 10th anniversary since the orbiter broke apart in the skies over Texas, killing the crew of seven astronauts. Columbia broke up as it re-entered the atmosphere because of damage to the leading edge of the left wing.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida | Thu Jan 31, 2013 6:55pm EST

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Space shuttle Columbia's flying days came to an abrupt and tragic end on February 1, 2003, when a broken wing gave way, dooming the seven astronauts aboard.

Although Columbia now lies in pieces, its mission is not over.

The recovered wreckage, painstakingly retrieved from Texas and Louisiana for months after the accident, was preserved for a unique archive and education program at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

"I can talk about safety, but once I open those doors and folks enter into the room, it becomes a different conversation," said Michael Ciannilli, who oversees NASA's Columbia Research and Preservation Office. "When you come face to face with Columbia in the room, it becomes real. It becomes extremely real."

Ten years ago, Columbia was on its 28th mission, a rare research initiative in the midst of International Space Station construction flights.

The crew included the first astronaut from Israel, Ilan Ramon, and six Americans - commander Richard Husband, pilot William McCool, flight engineer Kalpana Chawla, payload commander Michael Anderson and flight surgeons David Brown and Laurel Clark.

After 16 days in space, the shuttle was gliding back to Florida for landing when it broke apart due to wing damage that had unknowingly occurred during launch.

Accident investigators determined that a chunk of insulating foam from the shuttle's fuel tank had fallen off 81 seconds after liftoff and hit a carbon composite wing panel that turned out to be unexpectedly fragile. The breach proved fatal.

NASA had no idea falling foam debris, a common occurrence during shuttle launches, could do so much damage.

"One of the most important things that came from Columbia is to really learn to listen to your hardware. It's talking to you," Ciannilli said.

Pieces of Columbia's heat shield, including wing panels and protective thermal tiles, are among the most requested items for study from the archive.

Upon request, NASA lends specific components to researchers and educational institutes for analysis. In addition to NASA field centers and aerospace companies, program participants include Caterpillar, the Colorado School of Mines and Ohio State University.

By understanding the dynamics of flight and how specific parts of Columbia were impacted, the hope is engineers will be able to design safer ships in the future.

The collection includes more than 84,000 individual pieces, most of which are cataloged and boxed. A handful of materials and structures - a tire, a wing panel, pieces of tile - are on display in the front part of a 7,000-square-foot room inside the Vehicle Assembly Building where the archive is housed.

"Sometimes I walk into the room, especially if I'm alone, and it comes back, some of the emotions, some of the feeling, some of the memories," Ciannilli said. "I lived the recovery operation in Texas, so you have these moments where you flash back."

"Some days are a little bit more introspective and difficult, but I really counter that with the fact that I've seen so much good come out of it. Every single tour engages in a conversation about safety," he said.

The Vehicle Assembly Building was once used to piece together space shuttles for flight, but it, like most of the Kennedy Space Center, is in the midst of a transition following the end of the shuttle program in 2011.

Only Columbia remains at the space center. Sisterships Discovery and Endeavour were relocated to museums, and Atlantis was transferred to Kennedy Space Center's privately operated visitors complex.

"We teach the story, show the effects of the accident and show the fixes that we put into place," Ciannilli said. "Columbia's mission was a mission of education and research. We try to continue that in their name."

(Editing by Kevin Gray, Leslie Adler)

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n">(Reuters) - Xerox Corp said Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri will leave the company in February to join Apple Inc as corporate controller.

Xerox, which also said it was on track to meet its fourth-quarter forecast of adjusted earnings of 28 cents to 30 cents per share, said it had begun an external search for a new CFO.

Maestri will be with Xerox through the end of February to help manage the transition.

He joined Xerox as CFO in February 2011 after serving as CFO of Nokia Siemens Networks from 2008. He also worked with General Motors Corp.

Maestri took home $3.3 million as compensation for 2011, according to a regulatory filing.

He replaces Betsy Rafael who retired from Apple in October.

Xerox's margins have been pressured due to investments in its services business that handles anything from toll systems to Medicare and brings in more than half its revenue.

The company said in October it would take restructuring charges as large companies tightened budgets and government had less funding for projects.

Xerox shares were up 1.5 percent before the bell, after closing at $7.29 on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday.

(Reporting by Sruthi Ramakrishnan in Bangalore; Editing by Supriya Kurane)

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MOSCOW | Fri Feb 1, 2013 3:53am EST

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A rocket carrying a communications satellite suffered engine trouble and plunged into the Pacific Ocean shortly after launch on Friday, Russian news agencies reported.

The unsuccessful launch of the Intelsat-27 satellite was one of several setbacks for Russia's space program in recent years, including failed satellite launches and an unsuccessful mission to study the Mars moon Phobos.

The Zenit-3SL rocket carrying the satellite suffered engine failure shortly after liftoff, state-run Itar-Tass reported, citing a Russian space industry source. The rocket is a joint production of Ukrainian and Russian companies, it said.

Intelsat-27 was to provide services for media, government and other customers in the Americas and Europe, according to the website of Luxembourg-based Intelsat.

Russia is increasing space spending and plans to send a probe to the moon in 2015, but its celebrations in 2011 of the 50th anniversary of the Soviet achievement of putting the first man in space were marred by several botched satellite launches.

(Writing by Steve Gutterman)

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Visitors play with Microsoft's Xbox 360 consoles at the Tokyo Game Show in Chiba, east of Tokyo, September 15, 2011. The game show goes on till September 18.

SAN FRANCISCO | Thu Jan 10, 2013 1:01pm EST

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp said on Thursday it hired technology entrepreneur Blake Krikorian to help run its Interactive Entertainment Business as the world's largest software company plans bigger things for its Xbox gaming console.

Krikorian will be corporate vice president for the Interactive Entertainment Business, reporting to Marc Whitten, chief product officer for the division, Microsoft added.

The appointment follows Microsoft's recent acquisition of Krikorian's company, id8 Group R2 Studios, which had developed an application that allows users to control home heating and lighting systems from smartphones.

Microsoft is trying to transform Xbox from a gaming device into a broader service that controls most aspects of home entertainment, including music, movies, TV and sports.

"We look forward to his contribution to our team as Xbox continues to evolve and transform the games and entertainment landscape," Whitten said in a statement.

Krikorian's Sling Media - which was sold to EchoStar Communications in 2007 - made the Slingbox device for watching TV over the Internet.

Krikorian resigned from Amazon.com Inc's board in late December after about a year and a half as a director at the company, the Internet's largest retailer.

(Reporting By Alistair Barr; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

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1 of 2. A still image from an undated video footage released on January 28, 2013 by Iran's state-run English language Press TV shows a monkey that was launched into space. Iran said on Monday it had launched the live monkey into space, seeking to show off missile delivery systems that are alarming to the West given Tehran's parallel advances in nuclear technology.

DUBAI | Mon Jan 28, 2013 7:30pm EST

DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran said on Monday it had launched a live monkey into space, seeking to show off missile systems that have alarmed the West because the technology could potentially be used to deliver a nuclear warhead.

The Defense Ministry announced the launch as world powers sought to agree a date and venue with Iran for resuming talks to resolve a standoff with the West over Tehran's contested nuclear program before it degenerates into a new Middle East war.

Efforts to nail down a new meeting have failed repeatedly and the powers fear Iran is exploiting the diplomatic vacuum to hone the means to produce nuclear weapons.

The Islamic Republic denies seeking weapons capability and says it seeks only electricity from its uranium enrichment so it can export more of its considerable oil wealth.

The powers have proposed new talks in February, a spokesman for the European Union's foreign policy chief said on Monday, hours after Russia urged all concerned to "stop behaving like children" and commit to a meeting.

Iran earlier in the day denied media reports of a major explosion at one of its most sensitive, underground enrichment plants, describing them as Western propaganda designed to influence the nuclear talks.

The Defence Ministry said the space launch of the monkey coincided "with the days of" the Prophet Mohammad's birthday, which was last week, but gave no date, according to a statement carried by the official news agency IRNA.

The launch was "another giant step" in space technology and biological research "which is the monopoly of a few countries", the statement said.

The small grey monkey was pictured strapped into a padded seat and being loaded into the Kavoshgar rocket dubbed "Pishgam" (Pioneer) which state media said reached a height of more than 120 km (75 miles).

"This shipment returned safely to Earth with the anticipated speed along with the live organism," Defence Minister Ahmad Vahidi told the semi-official Fars news agency. "The launch of Kavoshgar and its retrieval is the first step towards sending humans into space in the next phase."

There was no independent confirmation of the launch.

SIGNIFICANT FEAT

In Washington, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters she could not confirm whether Iran had successfully sent a monkey into space or conducted any launch at all, saying that if it had done so "it's a serious concern."

Nuland said such a launch would violate U.N. Security Council Resolution 1929, whose text bars Iran from "any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using ballistic missile technology."

The West worries that long-range ballistic technology used to propel Iranian satellites into orbit could be put to use dispatching nuclear warheads to a target.

Bruno Gruselle of France's Foundation for Strategic Research said that if the monkey launch report were true it would suggest a "quite significant" engineering feat by Iran.

"If you can show that you are able to protect a vehicle of this sort from re-entry, then you can probably protect a military warhead and make it survive the high temperatures and high pressures of re-entering," Gruselle said.

The monkey launch would be similar to sending up a satellite weighing some 2,000 kg (4,400 pounds), he said. Success would suggest a capacity to deploy a surface-to-surface missile with a range of a few thousand kilometers (miles).

Michael Elleman, a missile expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies think-tank, said Iran had demonstrated "no new military or strategic capability" with the launch.

"Nonetheless, Iran has an ambitious space exploration program that includes the goal of placing a human in space in the next five or so years and a human-inhabited orbital capsule by the end of the decade," Elleman said. "Today's achievement is one step toward the goal, albeit a small one."

The Islamic Republic announced plans in 2011 to send a monkey into space, but that attempt was reported to have failed.

Nuclear-weapons capability requires three components - enough fissile material such as highly enriched uranium, a reliable weapons device miniaturized to fit into a missile cone, and an effective delivery system, such as a ballistic missile that can grow out of a space launch program.

Iran's efforts to develop and test ballistic missiles and build a space launch capability have contributed to Israeli calls for pre-emptive strikes on Iranian nuclear sites and billions of dollars of U.S. ballistic missile defence spending.

MANOEUVRING OVER NEXT TALKS

A spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said the powers had offered a February meeting to Iran, after a proposal to meet at the end of January was refused.

"Iran did not accept our offer to go to Istanbul on January 28 and 29 and so we have offered new dates in February. We have continued to offer dates since December. We are disappointed the Iranians have not yet agreed," Michael Mann reporters.

He said Iranian negotiators had imposed new conditions for resuming talks and that EU powers were concerned this might be a stalling tactic. The last in a sporadic series of fruitless talks was held last June.

Iranian officials deny blame for the delays and say Western countries squandered opportunities for meetings by waiting until after the U.S. presidential election in November.

"We have always said that we are ready to negotiate until a result is reached and we have never broken off discussions," IRNA quoted Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi as saying.

Salehi has suggested holding the next round in Cairo but said the powers wanted another venue. He also said that Sweden, Kazakhstan and Switzerland had offered to host the talks.

In Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a news conference: "We are ready to meet at any location as soon as possible. We believe the essence of our talks is far more important (than the site), and we hope that common sense will prevail and we will stop behaving like little children."

Ashton is overseeing diplomatic contacts on behalf of the powers hoping to persuade Tehran to stop higher-grade uranium enrichment and accept stricter U.N. inspections in return for civilian nuclear cooperation and relief from U.N. sanctions.

IRAN DENIES FORDOW BLAST

Reuters has been unable to verify reports since Friday of an explosion early last week at the underground Fordow bunker that some Israeli and Western media said wrought heavy damage.

"The false news of an explosion at Fordow is Western propaganda ahead of nuclear negotiations to influence their process and outcome," IRNA quoted deputy Iranian nuclear energy agency chief Saeed Shamseddin Bar Broudi as saying.

In late 2011 the plant at Fordow began producing uranium enriched to 20 percent fissile purity, well above the 3.5 percent level normally needed for nuclear power stations.

While such higher-grade enrichment remains nominally far below the 90 percent level required for an atomic bomb, nuclear proliferation experts say the 20 percent threshold represents the bulk of the time and effort involved in yielding weapons-grade material - if that were Iran's goal.

Tehran says its enhanced enrichment is to make fuel for a research reactor that produces isotopes for medical care.

Diplomats in Vienna, where the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency is based, said on Monday they had no knowledge of any incident at Fordow but were looking into the reports.

"I have heard and seen various reports but am unable to authenticate them," a senior diplomat in Vienna told Reuters.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, which regularly inspects declared Iranian nuclear sites including Fordow, had no immediate comment on the issue.

Iran has accused Israel and the United States of trying to sabotage its nuclear program with cyber attacks and assassinations of its nuclear scientists. Washington has denied any role in the killings while Israel has declined to comment.

(Additional reporting by William Maclean and Marcus George in Dubai, Justyna Pawlak in Brussels, Fredrik Dahl in Vienna; Writing by Mark Heinrich; Editing by Robin Pomeroy, Jon Hemming and Cynthia Osterman)

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