1 of 3. Taking advantage of a weightless environment onboard the Earth-orbiting International Space Station, Expedition 34 Flight Engineer Chris Hadfield of the Canadian Space Agency juggles some tomatoes, which he probably considers to be among the more delicious components of a recent ''package'' that arrived from Earth, in this Handout photo courtesy of NASA, taken March 3, 2013.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida | Wed Mar 13, 2013 9:01pm EDT

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield took the helm of the International Space Station on Wednesday, only the second time in the outpost's 12-year history that command has been turned over to someone who is not American or Russian.

"It's a huge honor and a privilege for me, but also for all the people at the Canadian Space Agency and for my entire country," Hadfield, 53, said during a change of command ceremony aboard the station broadcast on NASA Television.

"Thank you very much for giving me the keys to the family car," Hadfield told outgoing station commander Kevin Ford, who is due to depart on Thursday along with Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin.

"We're going to put some miles on it, but we'll bring it back in good shape," Hadfield said.

Ford, Novitskiy and Tarelkin have been aboard the station, a $100 billion research laboratory that flies about 250 miles above Earth, since October.

Command of the station, a project of 15 nations that has been permanently staffed since November 2000, normally rotates between primary partners United States and Russia.

But in May 2009, Belgian astronaut Frank De Winne became the first station commander from the European Space Agency.

Hadfield, a veteran of two space shuttle missions, is the station's first Canadian commander.

Hadfield will be part of a three-man skeleton crew until NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin arrive later this month.

Hadfield, astronaut Thomas Marshburn and cosmonaut Roman Romanenko have been aboard the station since December 21. They are due to return to Earth on May 13.

Among Hadfield's first duties as commander is overseeing the packing and release of the visiting Space Exploration Technologies' Dragon cargo capsule. The capsule, making a second resupply run for NASA, is due to depart the station on March 25.

Hadfield has taken to Twitter to share his experiences in orbit with short messages and pictures dispatched several times a day. His followers now number more than 512,000.

"My heartfelt congratulations to Commander Hadfield and his family on what is an important milestone for all Canadians," Canada's Industry Minister Christian Paradis said in a statement.

(Editing by Kevin Gray and Phil Berlowitz)

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People walk toward the U.S. Capitol in Washington March 4, 2013.

WASHINGTON | Fri Mar 15, 2013 5:26pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A bipartisan group in the House of Representatives is close to completing work on a comprehensive immigration reform bill that would include a pathway to citizenship for 11 million illegal immigrants living in the United States, according to congressional aides.

Two of the aides confirmed on Friday that the negotiators were still trying to agree on the issue of how to handle temporary laborers coming into the United States.

House Speaker John Boehner, a Republican, was briefed on Friday on the legislation, which congressional aides described as being nearly complete. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi received a briefing on Thursday, said one senior Democratic aide.

Michael Steel, a spokesman for Boehner, said: "The speaker had a good talk with the Republicans in the bipartisan immigration reform group. They've made real progress on a tough issue." He said the group would continue to work on the measure.

Boehner's office would not comment on details of the bipartisan group's work.

The back-to-back briefings for Pelosi and Boehner were "to let them know they were close to a finished product," said one House aide with knowledge of the issue.

In the Senate, a bipartisan group also neared completion of its own broad immigration bill, said senators and Senate aides.

Andrea Zuniga DiBitetto, a lobbyist for the AFL-CIO labor federation, said, "We're confident that a deal is going to be reached."

Leading senators have said the goal is to introduce a bill by early April. If things go as planned, the legislation could be ready for Senate floor debate by June or July.

Proponents in the House hope to pass their version of a bill this year.

A comprehensive reform bill, if it comes together, would aim to further toughen border security, deal with the millions living illegally in the United States and develop a way to streamline the future legal flow of immigrants, including temporary workers.

Prospects for legislation got a major boost last November, when Hispanic-Americans voted overwhelmingly to re-elect Democratic President Barack Obama.

The election results jolted Republicans, many of whom had taken a hard-line stance against any immigration reforms other than securing the southwestern border with Mexico and luring more skilled workers from abroad for U.S. high-tech firms facing labor shortages.

Although most Republicans say they now want to see some sort of immigration bill enacted this year, many are still hesitant about, or opposed, to giving 11 million illegal immigrants a special pathway to citizenship, arguing that would reward them for breaking the law and encourage a new wave of illegal border crossings.

TOUGHEST CHALLENGE

Among the toughest issues the group of eight senators has wrestled with, more so even than a path toward citizenship, involves maids, waitresses and other low-paid foreign workers.

The group, which includes Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio, a potential 2016 presidential candidate, is trying to create a system allowing businesses to hire more low-skilled workers to fill shortages, but only after they show that they cannot find Americans to take the jobs.

In the past two weeks, the senators have submitted proposals to the AFL-CIO, the biggest labor group, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the largest business group. But those two groups remain deeply divided.

Talks "have been difficult," Randel Johnson, the chamber's senior vice president of labor and immigration, told reporters on Friday. "What is the overall cap of the (temporary visa) program is an issue," he said.

The chamber wants 400,000 visas a year. The AFL-CIO wants to cap visas in "very low five figures," said Johnson.

The chamber and the AFL-CIO had agreed that a new temporary worker program, which unions previously opposed on grounds it exploits workers, would eventually let some of the immigrants earn U.S. citizenship.

Johnson could not say how many of the temporary workers would be allowed to earn citizenship, except to say they would have to meet certain criteria such as having no criminal record.

That also is the case for the 11 million undocumented people in the United States, according to the Senate initiative outlined in late January.

Under the Senate measure, they would have to have clean criminal records, pay back taxes and a penalty and learn to speak English. In practice, it could take up to 15 years for someone to earn citizenship. But they would not live under the threat of deportation.

The group has discussed creation of a commission, perhaps within the Labor Department, to oversee the annual admission of low-skilled foreign workers. It would consider factors including the jobless rate in specific sectors, such as those that employ hotel and restaurant workers.

(Additional reporting by Rachelle Younglai; Editing by Fred Barbash and Peter Cooney)

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Dr. James Watson, co-discoverer of the DNA helix and father of the Human Genome Project, became the first human to receive the data encompassing his personal genome sequence at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston in this May 31, 2007 file photo.

NEW YORK | Wed Jan 9, 2013 6:34am EST

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A day after an exhaustive national report on cancer found the United States is making only slow progress against the disease, one of the country's most iconic - and iconoclastic - scientists weighed in on "the war against cancer." And he does not like what he sees.

James Watson, co-discoverer of the double helix structure of DNA, lit into targets large and small. On government officials who oversee cancer research, he wrote in a paper published on Tuesday in the journal Open Biology, "We now have no general of influence, much less power ... leading our country's War on Cancer."

On the $100 million U.S. project to determine the DNA changes that drive nine forms of cancer: It is "not likely to produce the truly breakthrough drugs that we now so desperately need," Watson argued. On the idea that antioxidants such as those in colorful berries fight cancer: "The time has come to seriously ask whether antioxidant use much more likely causes than prevents cancer."

That Watson's impassioned plea came on the heels of the annual cancer report was coincidental. He worked on the paper for months, and it represents the culmination of decades of thinking about the subject. Watson, 84, taught a course on cancer at Harvard University in 1959, three years before he shared the Nobel Prize in medicine for his role in discovering the double helix, which opened the door to understanding the role of genetics in disease.

Other cancer luminaries gave Watson's paper mixed reviews.

"There are a lot of interesting ideas in it, some of them sustainable by existing evidence, others that simply conflict with well-documented findings," said one eminent cancer biologist who asked not to be identified so as not to offend Watson. "As is often the case, he's stirring the pot, most likely in a very productive way."

There is wide agreement, however, that current approaches are not yielding the progress they promised. Much of the decline in cancer mortality in the United States, for instance, reflects the fact that fewer people are smoking, not the benefits of clever new therapies.

GENETIC HOPES

"The great hope of the modern targeted approach was that with DNA sequencing we would be able to find what specific genes, when mutated, caused each cancer," said molecular biologist Mark Ptashne of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. The next step was to design a drug to block the runaway proliferation the mutation caused.

But almost none of the resulting treatments cures cancer. "These new therapies work for just a few months," Watson told Reuters in a rare interview. "And we have nothing for major cancers such as the lung, colon and breast that have become metastatic."

The main reason drugs that target genetic glitches are not cures is that cancer cells have a work-around. If one biochemical pathway to growth and proliferation is blocked by a drug such as AstraZeneca's Iressa or Genentech's Tarceva for non-small-cell lung cancer, said cancer biologist Robert Weinberg of MIT, the cancer cells activate a different, equally effective pathway.

That is why Watson advocates a different approach: targeting features that all cancer cells, especially those in metastatic cancers, have in common.

One such commonality is oxygen radicals. Those forms of oxygen rip apart other components of cells, such as DNA. That is why antioxidants, which have become near-ubiquitous additives in grocery foods from snack bars to soda, are thought to be healthful: they mop up damaging oxygen radicals.

That simple picture becomes more complicated, however, once cancer is present. Radiation therapy and many chemotherapies kill cancer cells by generating oxygen radicals, which trigger cell suicide. If a cancer patient is binging on berries and other antioxidants, it can actually keep therapies from working, Watson proposed.

"Everyone thought antioxidants were great," he said. "But I'm saying they can prevent us from killing cancer cells."

'ANTI-ANTIOXIDANTS'

Research backs him up. A number of studies have shown that taking antioxidants such as vitamin E do not reduce the risk of cancer but can actually increase it, and can even shorten life. But drugs that block antioxidants - "anti-antioxidants" - might make even existing cancer drugs more effective.

Anything that keeps cancer cells full of oxygen radicals "is likely an important component of any effective treatment," said cancer biologist Robert Benezra of Sloan-Kettering.

Watson's anti-antioxidant stance includes one historical irony. The first high-profile proponent of eating lots of antioxidants (specifically, vitamin C) was biochemist Linus Pauling, who died in 1994 at age 93. Watson and his lab mate, Francis Crick, famously beat Pauling to the discovery of the double helix in 1953.

One elusive but promising target, Watson said, is a protein in cells called Myc. It controls more than 1,000 other molecules inside cells, including many involved in cancer. Studies suggest that turning off Myc causes cancer cells to self-destruct in a process called apoptosis.

"The notion that targeting Myc will cure cancer has been around for a long time," said cancer biologist Hans-Guido Wendel of Sloan-Kettering. "Blocking production of Myc is an interesting line of investigation. I think there's promise in that."

Targeting Myc, however, has been a backwater of drug development. "Personalized medicine" that targets a patient's specific cancer-causing mutation attracts the lion's share of research dollars.

"The biggest obstacle" to a true war against cancer, Watson wrote, may be "the inherently conservative nature of today's cancer research establishments." As long as that's so, "curing cancer will always be 10 or 20 years away."

(Reporting by Sharon Begley; Editing by Jilian Mincer and Peter Cooney)

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The logo of ArcelorMittal company is seen at the entrance of its headquarters in Luxembourg in this picture taken on November 20, 2012.

BRUSSELS | Fri Dec 21, 2012 8:09am EST

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - ArcelorMittal (ISPA.AS), the world's biggest steelmaker, is to write down the value of its European business by $4.3 billion, underscoring gloom about prospects for the region's recession-hit manufacturers.

The group, formed in 2006 when India-born Lakshmi Mittal's steel business bought European peer Arcelor for $33 billion, said on Friday demand had fallen about 8 percent in Europe this year and there was no sign of a quick recovery.

As a result, it will write down the goodwill - the value of intangible assets such as brands rather than physical assets such as machinery - of its European operations by 87 percent.

"It is negative, but it should not really be a big surprise that the book value of its European business was too high," said a London-based analyst who asked not to be named.

ArcelorMittal shares were down 2.7 percent at 12.85 euros at 8 a.m. ET, one of the biggest falls by a European blue-chip stock .FTEU3 and reversing gains made earlier this week.

Credit agency Fitch cut ArcelorMittal's long-term issuer default rating to BB+, just below investment grade, due to the challenging outlook for Western European steel markets in 2013.

The $500-billion-a-year steel industry, a gauge of the global economy, has slowed sharply this year as a moderation in China's economic growth has compounded weak demand from austerity-ravaged Europe.

The World Steel Association in October forecast steel demand would rise 2.1 percent in 2012, down from 6.2 percent in 2011. It had forecast 3.6 percent growth in April.

Last month, Moody's cut the company's senior unsecured notes to Ba1 from Baa3, joining Standard & Poor's in rating ArcelorMittal one notch below investment grade.

Other steelmakers are hurting too. Earlier this month, Germany group ThyssenKrupp (TKAG.DE) posted a full-year net loss of 4.7 billion euros ($6.2 billion).

WEAK POINT

Europe is a particular weak point, as austerity drives aimed at tackling a sovereign debt crisis have cut demand for cars and construction - steel's largest markets. Euro zone manufacturing has contracted for 17 straight months.

ArcelorMittal, which makes about 6-7 percent of the world's steel, said demand in Europe had fallen 29 percent since 2007 when the financial crisis started.

It highlighted better trends in the United States where, it said, demand was up 8 percent this year and is now 10 percent lower than in 2007.

ArcelorMittal, whose output is more than double that of its nearest rival, has already announced the closure of blast furnaces in Belgium and France, with other operations temporarily idled due to overcapacity.

The write-down represents over a third of ArcelorMittal's overall goodwill of $12.5 billion as of end-2012. The group, around 40-percent owned by the Mittal family, took on $6.6 billion goodwill when it bought Arcelor.

It said the write-down would be a non-cash charge in fourth-quarter results and would not affect net debt or core profit.

Before the write-down, analysts had, on average, forecast the group would make $529.5 million net profit this year, and $7.1 billion core profit, according to StarMine.

(Additional reporting by Philip Blenkinsop; Editing by Mark Potter and Dan Lalor)

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Cast member Michael C. Hall attends a panel for ''Dexter'' during the Showtime television portion of the Television Critics Association Summer press tour in Beverly Hills, California July 30, 2012.

LOS ANGELES | Mon Oct 8, 2012 4:54pm EDT

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - "Dexter" star Michael C. Hall has always been attracted to cutting-edge projects, so it's no surprise to see the actor who plays the blood spatter analyst/serial killer pop up in the edgy, dark comedy Web series "Ruth & Erica".

Starring "ER's" Maura Tierney as a lonely middle-aged woman trying to deal with her increasingly frail parents, the 13-episode show debuted on WIGS, YouTube's No. 1 channel for scripted drama, last month.

Hall, who won a Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild award for his role on "Dexter" and who previously appeared in "Six Feet Under," joins the "Ruth & Erica" cast on Wednesday as Tierney's loser, ex-drug addict realtor and would-be boyfriend.

Hall, 41, spoke with Reuters about switching gears for a new comedic role, the new season of "Dexter," and foot tattoos.

Q: This is not your usual TV show - was that the appeal?

A: "Absolutely. The format is unique and you can tell the story in much briefer sketches than in series TV. Each one is just five to seven minutes long, and I did three of them. And then there's the amazing cast, the fact that it won't take over your life for five or more years if it's successful like a network show, and the writing (by "Party of Five"'s Amy Lippman) was so strong and compelling."

Q: The loser realtor is another juicy role for you. How much of you is there in him?

A: (Laughs) "I'm not as organized or fastidious as maybe the average person, and I can certainly relate to his general dishevelment. And after playing someone as remarkably capable as Dexter, it's nice to play someone who's anything but."

Q: Your character's beard is a nice touch. Whose idea was that?

A: "I just happened to have one when they called me about this, and Amy and I just decided it really fit the character."

Q: Despite all the humor, the WIGS show tackles some serious issues - aging parents, illness, healthcare.

A: "Exactly, it tackles those baby boomer fears about getting older and our parents getting sick and how we adjust to that. And my character, like the others, feels the wheel of his life turning in a way that makes him realize that when you lose your parents, you're next."

Q: Have you gone through a similar situation in real life?

A: "My mother's still alive but my father passed away when I was still quite young. She's thankfully in very good health, but you do feel a sense of the finite time that remains for them, and then the finite time you have left. The show did make me think, and I feel very thankful for the relationship I have with my mother."

Q: Is doing an Internet show like this very different from a network or cable show?

A: "Not really. It's pretty much the same process and we moved at a comparable pace - but with a smaller crew. I'd definitely do it again."

Q: It's season 7 for "Dexter," and there's quite a situation now between Dexter and his sister Debra, who's onto his secrets. Has that re-energized the show?

A: "It really has, and we all feel so excited about it now the playing field has fundamentally changed. All the relationships have also changed as a result, and to have that happen this late in a series is almost unheard of."

Q: So what can fans expect?

A: "You'll see both of them negotiate this new information being out there. And I've heard that if there's any major theme in this new season, it's to do with love - its meaning, its nature, familial love, romantic love, all kinds of love."

Q: You excel at playing these wild characters. What's the wildest thing you've done recently?

A: (Laughs) "I got a tattoo on my foot. It looks like a mixture of a doodle and the map to an alien planet. That was pretty crazy!"

Q: How painful was it?

A: "Just painful enough." (Editing by Chris Michaud and Kenneth Barry)

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