European Space Agency scientists think that there was and could even still be life on Mars and want a new European mission to the red planet to take samples, a conference heard in Noordwijk, The Netherlands heard on Friday, February 25, 2005.

MOSCOW | Thu Mar 14, 2013 3:37pm EDT

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Europe and Russia signed a deal on Thursday for a joint Mars mission which will bore beneath the Red Planet's surface for soil samples they hope will solve the mystery of whether there is life beyond Earth.

Europe's space agency had hoped to work with NASA on the two-spacecraft ExoMars mission but turned to the Russians after the U.S. agency pulled out due to budget shortfalls.

The announcement comes amid heightened excitement over the search for life on the planet in our solar system most like Earth after scientists said analysis from NASA's own mission rover, Curiosity, showed Mars had the right ingredients for life.

European scientists say the two-stage mission, with the two craft to be launched in 2016 and 2018, will pave the way for what NASA has described as the "Holy Grail" of Mars exploration: a separate mission to return dirt samples from the Red Planet.

"Curiosity learnt us a little bit, ExoMars will bring us a step further, but bringing back those samples to Earth you can do 10 to 100 times more analysis," Rolf de Groot, head of the European Space Agency's (ESA) Robotic Exploration Coordination Office, told Reuters.

"That is a goal of everybody who works on Mars exploration."

The Europe-Russia mission hopes to take scientists beyond NASA's finding that the surface of Earth's neighboring planet had the right mix of elements to sustain life, by drilling 2 meters (6 feet) below its radiation-hit surface for samples.

"NASA is also drilling, but two centimeters deep," de Groot said, referring to the ongoing Curiosity mission. "It's a completely different story."

"ExoMars, by drilling 2 meters into the ground, might hope to identify really the big molecules because that would be a direct indication of the presence of life or that life once existed on Mars."

He said the ESA's Mars rover would also be equipped with a much more advanced laboratory than Curiosity has, so would be able to carry out more detailed analysis.

RUSSIAN ROCKETS

Russian Space Agency Roskosmos will provide the rockets to launch the ExoMars - short for Exobiology on Mars - mission and will also design the descent module and surface platform.

Europe turned to Russia after NASA left the $1.3 billion project in February 2012, citing a budget crunch. The ESA and Roskosmos agreed to cooperate last April, but talks to work out the details dragged on for nearly a year.

"This event was a long time in the making and took a great deal of collaboration," Roskosmos head Vladimir Popovkin said after signing the deal with ESA Director Jean-Jacques Dordain in Paris.

Russia's involvement in the ambitious mission could boost the status of its once-pioneering space agency after a litany of costly and embarrassing failures.

The delays in agreeing the mission hinged on the extent of Russia's participation, according to Russian space experts who said Moscow had seemed to reach its goal of full partnership.

"The agreement implies that Russian scientists and engineers will become full-fledged participants in all the international scientific and technical groups," Roskosmos said in a statement.

What was to be Russia's first deep space mission in more than two decades - the Phobos-Grunt mission to scoop up soil samples from Mars - was among five botched launches that damaged Moscow's reputation as a reliable launch partner.

European governments have so far committed 850 million euros to the mission. The funding cap has been set at 1 billion euros ($1.3 billion) but delays and changes to the scientific aspects of the project are expected to drive up the price tag.

Even though NASA pulled out, it will still provide radio communications equipment, an important organics experiment and engineering and mission support.

The United States also plans to follow up its Curiosity rover with an identical probe, to launch in 2020. It has not yet decided if it will cache samples for a future return to Earth.

The U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2011 ranked a Mars sample return mission as its top priority in planetary science for the next decade. The long-term goal of the U.S. human space program is to land astronauts on Mars in the 2030s.

(Additional reporting by Irene Klotz; Editing by Pravin Char)

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The Luna-Glob in an undated illustration.

MOSCOW | Tue Jan 15, 2013 2:56pm EST

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia will resume a long-dormant quest to explore the moon by sending an unmanned probe there in 2015, the head of the space agency was quoted as saying on Tuesday.

The craft, called Luna-Glob, or Moon-Globe, will be carried by the first rocket to blast off from a new facility that Russia is building in its far eastern Amur region, Roskosmos director Vladimir Popovkin said, according to the Interfax news agency.

"We will begin our exploration of the moon from there," he said of the new space centre that will decrease Russia's reliance of the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the ex-Soviet nation Kazakhstan, which it leases.

Russian space officials have said Luna-Glob would consist of an orbital module and a probe that would land on the moon and beam back information about samples it takes from the surface.

The Soviet Union got a jump on the United States in the Cold War space race, sending a probe to the moon in 1959 and putting the first person into space in 1961. But the United States first put a man on the moon in 1969 and Russia has not done so.

The last successful Soviet launch of a unmanned probe to the moon was in the 1970s, and Russia has suffered setbacks in its space program in recent years, including bungled satellite launches and the failure of a Mars probe in 2011.

A successful rocket launch on Tuesday put three military satellites in orbit, the Defense Ministry said.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev approved a plan last month to spend 2.1 trillion roubles ($70 billion) on space industry development in 2013-2020, to pursue projects to explore the moon and Mars, among other things.

(Writing by Steve Gutterman; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

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Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov speaks during a news briefing in the main building of Foreign Ministry in Moscow, December 15, 2008.

MOSCOW | Fri Jan 11, 2013 9:15am EST

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Moscow is alarmed that no date or venue has been agreed for a new round of talks between global powers and Iran over Tehran's nuclear programme, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Friday.

Iran, which denies Western accusations it is seeking to develop a capability to make nuclear weapons, said last week it had agreed to resume talks in January with six powers. But Ryabkov said there was no final agreement on a date or venue.

"This alarms us, because the pause has dragged on," the Interfax news agency quoted Ryabkov, the Russian negotiator, as saying. "As a nation and a member of the 'group of six' we are working actively to find a solution."

There was no breakthrough in three rounds of talks since April 2012 and Israel has stepped up talk of pre-emptive attacks on Iranian nuclear sites, lending urgency to diplomacy.

Western diplomatic sources said on Friday that Iran has yet to respond to a proposal to hold a new round of talks next week with the six nations - the United States, France, Britain, China, Russia and Germany.

Global powers, particularly in the West, want to rein in Iran's uranium enrichment work. Tehran says it is refining uranium for peaceful ends only but enrichment yields material that can be used to make nuclear bombs if processed further.

(Writing by Steve Gutterman; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

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JAIPUR, India | Thu Jan 24, 2013 9:33am EST

JAIPUR, India (Reuters) - Two authors who had books banned in their home countries featured prominently in the list of 10 nominees for the 2013 Man Booker International Prize, the judging panel said on Thursday.

Chinese author Yan Lianke and Russia's Vladimir Sorokin stood out from a list of nominees from nine different countries in the running for the 60,000 pound ($95,000) prize for global writers whose fiction is written in or translated into English.

"These are writers who we have found ourselves enduringly grateful to, who we will re-read," said Christopher Ricks, chairman of the five-man judging panel, at the Jaipur Literature Festival in India where the list was released.

"They write in ways that are astonishingly different."

Around 150 authors were considered for the prize, which will be awarded on May 22 in London, Ricks added.

Marie NDiaye, from France, is the youngest ever nominee for the prize, at 45, and joins Peter Stamm, Switzerland's first nominee, on the list.

The United States has two nominees, Lydia Davis and Marilynne Robinson, the only writer this year to have been shortlisted for the prize in the past.

Canadian Josip Novakovich, Israeli Aharon Appelfeld, Indian U.R. Ananthamurthy and Intizar Husain from Pakistan complete the list of nominees.

The Man Booker International Prize is awarded every two years to a living author who has published fiction either originally in English or whose work is generally available in translation in the English language.

The judging panel for the Man Booker International Prize 2013 consists of the scholar and literary critic, Christopher Ricks; author and essayist, Elif Batuman; writer and broadcaster, Aminatta Forna; novelist, Yiyun Li and author and academic, Tim Parks.

Philip Roth won the prize in 2011, Alice Munro in 2009, Chinua Achebe in 2007 and Ismail Kadaré won the inaugural prize in 2005. In addition, there is a separate award for translation and, if applicable, the winner may choose a translator of his or her work into English to receive a prize of 15,000 pounds.

The Man Booker International Prize is significantly different from the annual Man Booker Prize in that it highlights one writer's continued creativity, development and overall contribution to fiction on the world stage.

The 2012 Man Booker prize was won by British author Hilary Mantel for "Bring Up the Bodies", the second novel in her ongoing trilogy set in the court of Henry VIII. She also won in 2009 for the first novel of the series "Wolf Hall".

(Editing by Paul Casciato)

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MOSCOW | Thu Dec 27, 2012 2:43pm EST

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The country that oversaw the launch of the world's first artificial satellite hopes to regain some of its former glory with a big boost in space spending announced by Russia on Thursday after a series of failures.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev approved a plan to spend 2.1 trillion roubles ($68.71 billion) on developing Russia's space industry from 2013 to 2020, state-run RIA news agency reported.

"The programme will enable our country to effectively participate in forward-looking projects, such as the International Space Station (ISS), the study of the Moon, Mars and other celestial bodies in the solar system," Medvedev was quoted as saying.

Despite the launch by the former Soviet Union of Sputnik 1 in 1957, triggering the Cold War space race, Russia's space programme has suffered a series of humiliating setbacks in the past year.

These have mostly involved unmanned missions such as satellite launches, that industry veterans blame on a decade of crimped budgets and a brain drain.

Russia budgeted about 100 billion roubles ($3.3 billion) for space programmes annually in 2010 and 2011, far less than the yearly average of the amount Medvedev announced, but he said some of the money would come from outside the state budget.

The failure of a workhorse Proton rocket after launch in August caused the multimillion-dollar loss of an Indonesian and a Russian satellite. A similar problem caused the loss of a $265 million communications satellite last year.

Medvedev criticized the state of the industry in August, saying problems were costing Russia prestige and money.

Since the retirement of its space shuttle fleet last year, U.S. space agency NASA has been relying on Russia to take astronauts to the ISS at a cost of $60 million each, and plans to continue until its own new craft is developed in 2017.

($1 = 30.5645 Russian roubles)

(Reporting By Nastassia Astrasheuskaya; Editing by Michael Roddy)

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Orphan children play in their bedroom at an orphanage in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, December 19, 2012.

MOSCOW | Wed Dec 26, 2012 9:06pm EST

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Family Christmas cards and smiling snapshots of children sent by their adoptive American parents fill Galina Sigayeva's office in Russia's second city St Petersburg.

Many of them were crippled by illness and in desperate need of medical care before her agency helped organise their adoption into U.S. families, she recalls.

Children's rights campaigners say children like these will suffer most if President Vladimir Putin approves a law barring American adoptions that has been rubber-stamped by Russian lawmakers. The act retaliates against a new U.S. law that will punish Russians accused of human rights violations.

Critics of the bill say Russian orphanages are woefully overcrowded and the fate of vulnerable children should not be used as a bargaining chip in a bilateral feud.

"These children are not even offered to foreigners until they get a certain number of (adoption) refusals from Russians," said Sigayeva, a neatly styled brunette who heads the New Hope Christian Services Adoption Agency.

"These are children with complicated diagnoses, really complicated. They are very ill children."

She smiled as she flipped through photos of children embraced by their adoptive parents, playing with family pets and enjoying presents and other trappings of holiday cheer.

"What surprises me is that here they all look so healthy, so fantastic, but you should see what they look like when they are taken from here," Sigayeva said.

"Some had to be carried to the border. We had a girl with hepatitis whom we helped from the emergency room."

Both sides in the heated debate surrounding the bill agree Russia's orphanage system is overwhelmed, riddled with corruption and most failing to place children in families.

More than 650,000 children are considered orphans in Russia - though some were rejected by their parents or taken from dysfunctional homes. Of that total, 110,000 lived in state institutions in 2011, according to the Ministry of Science and Education.

By contrast, in the United States - which has more than twice Russia's population - about 58,280 children were living in group homes and institutions last year, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Adoptions by Russian families remain modest, with some 7,400 adoptions in 2011 compared with 3,400 adoptions of Russian children by families abroad.

Russian politicians say it is an embarrassment that the country cannot care for its own, and supporters of the measure argue it will help stimulate reform and domestic adoptions.

"Foreign adoption is a result of the state and society's lack of attention to orphans ... It is, if you will, a result of our indifference," Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev told officials at a ruling party congress last week.

American families adopt more Russian children - 956 last year - than those of any other country. Of the children adopted by Americans in 2011, 9 percent - or 89 - were disabled, according to official Russian figures.

Opponents of the legislation, who include senior officials such as Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, say politicking should not deprive orphans of this chance at better life.

"Russia is not able to provide for all its orphans," Boris Altshuler, director of the Moscow-based Rights of the Child advocacy group, said. "Although 1,000 is a small fraction - it was a help."

Deputy Prime Minister Olga Golodets has said the ban would violate international treaties on child rights, and the Kremlin's own human rights council called it unconstitutional.

"AMERICAN ROULETTE"

The ban responds to a U.S. law known as the Magnitsky Act, which punishes Russians suspected of being involved in the death in custody of anti-graft lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in 2009, and of other human rights violations, by barring them from entering the United States.

In a pointed echo of the Magnitsky Act, Russia's legislation is named the Dima Yakovlev law, after a Russian-born toddler who died of heat stroke after his American adoptive father left him locked in a sweltering car.

His death and that of 19 other Russian-born children in the hands of U.S. citizens in the last decade has helped drive support for the bill and for tougher adoption rules in a deal with the United States in June.

"It's American roulette," said Pavel Astakhov, Russia's Children's Rights Commissioner and a supporter of the ban.

"One handicapped girl from Russia got lucky. She was Jessica Long - a Paralympic champion. Another did not. She was Masha Allen ... who was raped by her paedophile adoptive father."

DISABLED CHILDREN

If Putin signs it into law, the ban will come into force on January 1, most immediately affecting the fate of children whose adoption is in the works.

The placement of 46 children with American families will be cancelled, Astakhov told the Interfax news agency on Wednesday.

"There is terrible irony in the fact that America's decision to speak out against human rights violations may cause the Russian government to deny many thousands of Russian orphans the possibility to grow up in loving, adoptive families," said Chuck Johnson, president of National Council For Adoption, a non-profit advocacy group based in Alexandria, Virginia.

Sigayeva, of the New Hope Christian Services Adoption Agency, said a six-month halt on American adoptions until a new bilateral deal entered force in November showed how it would aggravate problems in Russia's strained child-protection system.

"Hospitals were overwhelmed. There was no room in orphanages or hospitals for children whom their parents had rejected. So what's next then?" said Sigayeva, whose agency has helped place some 200 children in American families since 1992.

Advocates who work with disabled children say a reform proposal drafted by Astakhov ignores their plight. They say it calls for a reduction in the number of institutions caring for children with disabilities without explaining how they will find foster homes and medical care.

"No concrete measures are being suggested. Nothing exists but a lot of children's pain, which will only increase now," said Sergei Koloskov, a campaigner for children with Down's Syndrome.

"They are being left parentless in addition to being ill."

(Additional reporting by Alexander Chizhenok in St. Petersburg and Corrie MacLaggan in Austin, Texas; Writing by Alissa de Carbonnel; Editing by Douglas Busvine and Peter Graff)

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1 of 9. Syria's President Bashar al-Assad (R) meets International peace envoy for Syria Lakhdar Brahimi in Damascus December 24, 2012 in this handout photograph released by Syria's national news agency SANA.

BEIRUT | Thu Dec 27, 2012 2:52am EST

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad sent a senior diplomat to Moscow on Wednesday to discuss proposals to end the conflict convulsing his country made by international envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, Syrian and Lebanese sources said.

Brahimi, who saw Assad on Monday and is planning to hold a series of meetings with Syrian officials and dissidents in Damascus this week, is trying to broker a peaceful transfer of power, but has disclosed little about how this might be done.

More than 44,000 Syrians have been killed in a revolt against four decades of Assad family rule, a conflict that began with peaceful protests but which has descended into civil war.

Past peace efforts have floundered, with world powers divided over what has become an increasingly sectarian struggle between mostly Sunni Muslim rebels and Assad's security forces, drawn primarily from his Shi'ite-rooted Alawite minority.

Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Makdad flew to Moscow to discuss the details of the talks with Brahimi, said a Syrian security source, who would not say if a deal was in the works.

However, a Lebanese official close to Damascus said Makdad had been sent to seek Russian advice on a possible agreement.

He said Syrian officials were upbeat after talks with Brahimi, the U.N.-Arab League envoy, who met Foreign Minister Walid Moualem on Tuesday a day after his session with Assad, but who has not outlined his ideas in public.

"There is a new mood now and something good is happening," the official said, asking not to be named. He gave no details.

Russia, which has given Assad diplomatic and military aid to help him weather the 21-month-old uprising, has said it is not protecting him, but has fiercely criticized any foreign backing for rebels and, with China, has blocked U.N. Security Council action on Syria.

"ASSAD CANNOT STAY"

A Russian Foreign Ministry source said Makdad and an aide would meet Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Mikhail Bogdanov, the Kremlin's special envoy for Middle East affairs, on Thursday, but did not disclose the nature of the talks.

On Saturday, Lavrov said Syria's civil war had reached a stalemate, saying international efforts to get Assad to quit would fail. Bogdanov had earlier acknowledged that Syrian rebels were gaining ground and might win.

Given the scale of the bloodshed and destruction, Assad's opponents insist the Syrian president must go.

Moaz Alkhatib, head of the internationally-recognized Syrian National Coalition opposition, has criticized any notion of a transitional government in which Assad would stay on as a figurehead president stripped of real powers.

Comments on Alkhatib's Facebook page on Monday suggested that the opposition believed this was one of Brahimi's ideas.

"The government and its president cannot stay in power, with or without their powers," Alkhatib wrote, saying his Coalition had told Brahimi it rejected any such solution.

While Brahimi was working to bridge the vast gaps between Assad and his foes, fighting raged across the country and a senior Syrian military officer defected to the rebels.

Syrian army shelling killed about 20 people, at least eight of them children, in the northern province of Raqqa, a video posted by opposition campaigners showed.

The video, published by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, showed rows of blood-stained bodies laid out on blankets. The sound of crying relatives could be heard in the background.

The shelling hit the province's al-Qahtania village, but it was unclear when the attack had occurred.

STRATEGIC BASE

Rebels relaunched their assault on the Wadi Deif military base in the northwestern province of Idlib, in a battle for a major army compound and fuel storage and distribution point.

Activist Ahmed Kaddour said rebels were firing mortars and had attacked the base with a vehicle rigged with explosives.

The British-based Observatory, which uses a network of contacts in Syria to monitor the conflict, said a rebel commander was among several people killed in Wednesday's fighting, which it said was among the heaviest for months.

The military used artillery and air strikes to try to hold back rebels assaulting Wadi Deif and the town of Morek in Hama province further south. In one air raid, several rockets fell near a field hospital in the town of Saraqeb, in Idlib province, wounding several people, the Observatory said.

As violence has intensified in recent weeks, daily death tolls have climbed. The Observatory reported at least 190 had been killed across the country on Tuesday alone.

The head of Syria's military police changed sides and declared allegiance to the anti-Assad revolt.

"I am General Abdelaziz Jassim al-Shalal, head of the military police. I have defected because of the deviation of the army from its primary duty of protecting the country and its transformation into gangs of killing and destruction," the officer said in a video published on YouTube.

A Syrian security source confirmed the defection, but said Shalal was near retirement and had only defected to "play hero".

Syrian Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim al-Shaar left Lebanon for Damascus after being treated in Beirut for wounds sustained in a rebel bomb attack this month.

(Additional reporting by Laila Bassam; Writing by Alistair Lyon; Editing by Andrew Osborn)

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MOSCOW | Sat Dec 22, 2012 6:34am EST

A Russian Foreign Ministry statement named the victims and said the "tragic occurrence" in the African nation on Friday underscored the need to provide security for U.N. peacekeeping missions.

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