A bee collects nectar from a sunflower on a field near the northern Swiss town Leibstadt July 9, 2012.

BRUSSELS | Fri Mar 15, 2013 1:50pm EDT

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - EU governments failed to agree a ban on three widely used pesticides linked to the decline of honeybees on Friday, but the European Commission could force one through by the summer unless member states agree a compromise.

A sharp fall in bee populations around the world, partly due to a phenomenon known as colony collapse disorder, has fuelled concerns over the impact of widespread use of pesticides, notably the neonicotinoids class.

Syngeta and Bayer, leading global producers of neonicotinoids, say the harmful effects on bees is unproven and that a ban would cost the EU economy billions.

But campaign groups and some scientists accuse governments of caving into pressure from the agribusiness lobby.

Under EU rules, member states now have two months to reach a compromise or the Commission will be free to adopt the proposal.

"Forcing through the ban is one of the options available to us but first we need to reflect politically on the best way to proceed," said EU health spokesman Frederic Vincent.

The Commission, which could also try to get a majority for a compromise proposal, put forward the restrictions in January after the EU's food safety watchdog EFSA said neonicotinoids posed an acute risk to honeybee health.

However, the survey found no link between use of the pesticides and the specific problem of colony collapse.

Bees and other insects are crucial in pollinating most crops in Europe but neonicotinoids are used on more than 8 million hectares to boost yields of rapeseed, wheat and other staples.

The proposal would ban neonicotinoids on all crops except winter cereals and plants not attractive to bees, such as sugar beet. It would apply from July 1, 2013, ensuring this spring's maize sowing is unaffected, with a review after two years.

BEE-KILLERS

Sources close to the discussions said 13 EU governments favored a ban and nine voted against. Britain, Germany and three other states abstained.

"We are pleased that EU member states did not support the European Commission's shamefully political proposal," said John Atkin, chief operating officer for Swiss firm Syngeta.

"Restricting the use of this vital crop protection technology will do nothing to help improve bee health," his statement added.

While few deny that neonicotinoids can be harmful to bees, there are conflicting scientific opinions on the actual threat they pose under normal growing conditions.

"Of course they can kill bees, they are insecticides; but whether they actually do this, or whether sub-lethal effects occur and damage the colonies on any important scale, has not been proven," said Lin Field, head of biological chemistry at Britain's Rothamsted Research centre.

Some point to habitat decline and disease-carrying parasites such as the Varroa mite as the chief cause of bee deaths.

But David Goulson, professor of biological sciences at the University of Stirling in Scotland, said there was clear evidence feeding on treated crops was likely to cause bees significant harm.

"Yet politicians choose to ignore all of this. Presumably their opinions were swayed by the spurious claims that restricting use of these insecticides will cause vast economic losses to farming," he said.

A Syngenta and Bayer funded study showed a blanket ban on treating seeds with neonicotinoids would cut EU net wheat exports by 16 percent and lead to a 57 percent rise in maize imports, costing the EU economy 4.5 billion euros per year.

Separately, researchers have put the financial contribution of insect pollinators to the EU farming sector at 22 billion euros ($28.5 billion) a year, and 153 billion euros globally.

Campaign group Avaaz, which has collected more than 2.5 million signatures on a petition for the European Union to ban the products, accused governments of ignoring public opinion.

"Today, Germany and Britain have caved in to the industry lobby and refused to ban bee-killing pesticides," Avaaz campaigner Iain Keith said in a statement.

(Additional reporting by Mike Hogan in Hamburg, Katharina Bart in Zurich and Kate Kelland in London; Editing by Jon Boyle)

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NEW YORK | Fri Feb 8, 2013 5:17pm EST

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Paintings from the private collection of U.S. singer Andy Williams, amassed over six decades, could fetch more than $30 million when they are sold at auction in May, Christie's said on Friday.

Works by Willem de Kooning and Richard Diebenkorn are expected to be the top sellers of the portion of the collection that will be auctioned at Christie's Post-War & Contemporary Art sale on May 15-16.

De Kooning's 1984 "Untitled XVII" and Diebenkorn's 1976 "Ocean Park #92" are expected to sell for about $5 million each.

"Williams' highly personal choices in Post War and Contemporary artworks reflect the dynamic energy of New York and Los Angeles in the 50s and 60s," Robert Manley, an international director at Christie's, said in a statement.

Christie's described de Kooning's "Untitled XVII" as a masterpiece of his final years of painting.

"The lyrical 1984 work demonstrates the artist's supreme confidence at the height of his fame, after six decades of painting," the auction house said.

Williams, best known for his rendition of the song "Moon River," died in September at the age of 84. The paintings in the collection are from his two homes and his Moon River Theater in Branson, Missouri.

Williams was first interested in Modern Art and had purchased works by Picasso, Paul Klee and Henry Moore before turning to the other painters.

Picasso's 1927 painting "Figure Feminine Sur la Plage," from Williams' collection, will be up for sale during Christie's Impressionist & Modern Art sale in New York on May 8-9.

"He had the exceptional ability to recognize quality in every category that he turned his attention to - a rare gift among collectors," Manley said about Williams.

The remainder of the collection will be sold this year in sales in New York, London and Paris.

(Reporting by Noreen O'Donnell; Editing by Patricia Reaney and Eric Beech)

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Polar bear cub Anori (R) shakes water off at the zoo in Wuppertal June 6, 2012. Anori was born on January 4, 2012.

OSLO | Thu Feb 14, 2013 2:06pm EST

OSLO (Reuters) - A thaw of sea ice floating on the Arctic Ocean last year sent extra plant food to exotic creatures on the deep sea floor in a shift that might leave polar bears hungry at the surface, scientists said on Thursday.

The study, using robot submarines down to 4,400 metres (14,400 ft) deep, could be a glimpse of radical changes for life in the sunless depths of the Arctic Ocean after ice thinned and shrank to cover a record low area in September 2012.

Scientists found large amounts of algae growing on the underside of the ice last year, apparently because more light was getting through as it thinned in a trend blamed on global warming, according to the study in the journal Science.

Much of the algae, of a type that forms strands up to a meter (3 ft) long, then sank to the seabed where they were food for brittle stars, which are related to starfish, and tube-like sea cucumbers that grow up to about 5 cms (2 inches) long.

"For surface life it could be bad news, for the deep sea floor it could be a feast," Antje Boetius, of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Germany and lead author of the study made on the research vessel Polarstern.

If the algae keep taking scarce nutrients from surface waters to the sea floor in coming years, then "the food for fish and eventually for the polar bear will be totally diminished," Boetius said.

In the Arctic food chain, fish eat algae, seals eat fish and polar bears eat seals.

"We were totally surprised that there were all these clumps of sea ice algae on the sea floor," she said. Scientists saw no fish there but many sea cucumbers were bloated with algae food.

On average, the scientists found that the amount of algae on the seabed worked out at 9.0 grams of carbon per square meter(0.03 oz per sq foot), nine times the amount measured in the 1990s in a sign of changes as the ice receded.

CARBON BURIAL

Boetius said algae were making a small contribution to getting rid of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas in the atmosphere emitted by burning fossil fuels, by burying it on the seabed.

"But it's too small to make a large difference," she said of the findings in Science, which is run by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

"Arctic climate models predict a further decline in the sea ice cover, toward a largely ice-free Arctic in coming decades", according to the scientists, from German, Dutch and Russian research institutes.

Ice has thinned to about a meter (3 ft) thick on much of the Arctic Ocean from perhaps five in recent decades, letting through more light in the May to August summer growing season.

Boetius said most studies of the Arctic relied on satellite measurements rather than observations under the ice.

"This study gives us some evidence that a system can change from the surface to the deep sea," she said. Some fish stocks are moving polewards because of climate change but their advance may be stopped by a lack of nutrients.

The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the global average. White sea ice reflects sunlight and as it recedes it exposes water that is a darker color and soaks up more of the sun's heat, accelerating the thaw.

(editing by Michael Holden)

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A company logo of Dell is seen on the cover of its laptop at a Dell outlet in Hong Kong October October 21, 2009.

NEW YORK | Fri Feb 1, 2013 2:22am EST

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Dell Inc is nearing an agreement to sell itself to a buyout consortium led by its founder and Chief Executive Michael Dell and private equity firm Silver Lake Partners, possibly announcing a deal as soon as Monday, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Michael Dell is expected to take majority ownership of the world's third-largest personal computer maker, which currently has a market value of $23 billion, while Silver Lake and Microsoft Corp would become minority investors, a third person familiar with the matter said.

The final price the group is expected to pay Dell shareholders could not be immediately learned. The deal would mark the largest leveraged buyout since the global financial crisis.

The transaction is set to be finalized over the weekend but the buyout consortium is working on last-minute details and the timetable could still slip, the people cautioned, asking not to be named because the matter is not public.

The investment group, which held negotiations with Dell's camp in New York on Thursday, has secured up to $15 billion of debt financing to take Dell private from four investment banks -- Barclays, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse and RBC Capital, people familiar with the matter said.

Barclays is also advising Silver Lake on the transaction, along with Perella Weinberg Partners, said two of the people. JPMorgan Chase & Co is advising Dell.

Representatives for Dell, Microsoft and Barclays declined to comment. Silver Lake and Perella Weinberg could not be immediately reached for comment.

As part of the transaction, Michael Dell will contribute his existing stake of almost 16 percent in the company toward gaining majority ownership, sources close to the matter have said.

Going private would allow Dell, which has been trying to become a one-stop shop for corporate technology needs as the PC market shrinks, to conduct that difficult makeover away from public scrutiny.

Dell has formed a special committee of its independent directors and hired Evercore Partners Inc to assess whether the company is getting the best deal for shareholders and not one that is just in the best interest of Michael Dell, several people familiar with the matter have told Reuters previously.

(Additional reporting by Poornima Gupta in San Francisco and Bill Rigby in Seattle; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)

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LONDON | Thu Jan 31, 2013 4:21am EST

LONDON (Reuters) - Growing palm oil trees to make biofuels could be accelerating the effects of climate change, new research showed on Wednesday, adding further weight to claims the crop is not environmentally sustainable.

In a paper published in the journal Nature, an international team of scientists examined how the deforestation of peat swamps in Malaysia to make way for palm oil trees is releasing carbon which has been locked away for thousands of years.

Microbes then penetrate the carbon and the harmful greenhouse gas carbon dioxide is released, which is thought to be the biggest contributor to global warming.

Unsustainable methods of growing crop-based biofuels have come under fire as environmentalists question the emissions savings they make, the agricultural land they occupy and whether the growth of certain crops contribute to deforestation.

More than 80 percent of palm oil is grown in Indonesia and Malaysia. According to some estimates, an area the size of Greece is cleared every year for palm oil plantations.

As governments and companies look to biofuels to provide a low-carbon alternative to fossil fuels in transport, the industry has expanded rapidly.

Palm oil is especially attractive because it is cheaper than rapeseed oil and soybean oil for biodiesel.

However, leaked European Union data has shown palm oil biodiesel to be more polluting than conventional gasoline when the effects of deforestation and peatlands degradation is taken into account.

In their study, the research team measured water channels in palm oil plantations in the Malaysian peninsular which were originally peatland swamp forest.

They found ancient carbon came from deep in the soil, then broke down and dissolved into nearby streams and rivers as deforestation occurred.

"We have known for some time that in South East Asia oil palm plantations were a major threat to biodiversity (..) and that the drainage could release huge amounts of carbon dioxide during the fires seen there in recent years," said Chris Freeman, one of the authors of the report and an environmental scientist at the University of Bangor in Wales.

"But this discovery of a 'hidden' new source of problems in the waters draining these peatlands is a reminder that these fragile ecosystems really are in need of conservation," he added.

There are approximately 28,000 sq km of industrial plantations in Malaysia, Sumatra and Borneo and there are even more planned, making them a major contributor to peat swamp deforestation in the region, the paper said.

"Our results are yet another reminder that when we disturb intact peat swamps and convert them to industrial biofuel plantations, we risk adding to the very problem that we are trying to solve," said Freeman.

The research team included scientists from the British universities of Leicester and Bangor, the Open University, the Met Office Hadley Centre, the Natural Environment Research Council Radiocarbon Facility in Scotland, the University of Palangka Raya in Indonesia and water research institute Deltares in the Netherlands.

(This story has been refiled to add Open University in last paragraph)

(Editing by James Jukwey)

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U.S. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) arrives to speak to the media on the ''fiscal cliff'' on Capitol Hill in Washington, December 21, 2012.

WASHINGTON | Sun Dec 23, 2012 10:01am EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - So what now?

The U.S. House of Representatives' rejection of a bill to raise taxes on just 0.18 percent of Americans - those making more than $1 million a year - has raised questions about the Republican-led chamber's ability to approve any plan to avert the looming "fiscal cliff."

Unless President Barack Obama and the U.S. Congress can forge a deal during the Christmas and New Year's holiday season, the largest economy in the world could be thrust back into a recession because of the steep tax increases and spending cuts that are due to begin in January.

The threat of across-the-board government spending cuts and tax increases - about $600 billion worth - was intended to shock the Democratic-led White House and Senate and the Republican-led House into moving past their many differences to approve a plan that would bring tax relief to most Americans and curb runaway federal spending.

For weeks, Obama and House Speaker John Boehner, the top Republican in Congress, have struggled to find a compromise.

But after a glimmer of hope that a deal was close early this week, Boehner - apparently under pressure from anti-tax House Republicans aligned with the conservative Tea Party movement - pressed the "pause" button on negotiations. He then tried to push a backup plan through the House late on Thursday, only to see his fellow Republicans kill it.

Where do Obama and Congress go from here? Here are some possible scenarios.

* Obama and Boehner go back into their secret negotiations.

Before Boehner started touting his failed "Plan B" to boost taxes on those who make more than $1 million, he and Obama were moving closer together on a plan to raise taxes on certain high-income Americans and cut spending. They could pick up where they left off and quickly cut a deal to bridge the gap.

But a compromise with possibly $1 trillion in new taxes and $1 trillion in new, long-term spending cuts could be a tough sell for both Republicans and Democrats in Congress.

Boehner would have to persuade enough Republicans on the idea of tax increases. Obama, meanwhile, would have to get Democrats in Congress to back cuts to some social safety net programs such as Social Security pensions and Medicare and Medicaid health insurance for the elderly and poor. House Republicans appear to be the tougher sell.

* A huge drop in the stock market sends a loud message to Washington politicians to stop arguing and cut a quick but meaningful deal.

That is what happened in late September 2008, after Congress rejected a massive financial bailout package despite warnings by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson of an economic collapse if the bill failed.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged more than 700 points and Congress quickly reversed course, approving the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program just days later.

The "fiscal cliff" may not be as dramatic a situation, but the tax increases and cuts in federal spending could deal a stiff blow to the economy.

* No deal happens in the dwindling days of 2012 and the U.S. government jumps off the fiscal cliff - at least temporarily.

On January 1, income taxes would go up on just about everyone. During the first week of January, Congress could scramble and get a quick deal on taxes and the $109 billion in automatic spending cuts that most lawmakers want to avoid.

Why could they reach a deal in January if they fail in December?

The reason would be that once taxes go up, it would be easier to allow a few of those increases to remain in place - mostly on the wealthy - and repeal those that would hit middle- and lower-income taxpayers.

Such a scenario would mean that no member of Congress technically would have to vote for a tax increase on anyone - taxes would have risen automatically - and the only votes would be to decrease tax rates for most Americans back to their 2012 levels.

* No deal occurs for another six weeks or so.

If Congress does not raise the nation's debt limit, by mid-February the Treasury Department likely would exhaust its ability to borrow. That would put the nation at risk of defaulting on its debt.

Republicans have withheld their approval of the debt-limit increase as leverage to try to get the kind of "fiscal cliff" solution they want: Fewer increases in spending and taxes, and more cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

This is the strategy they employed in mid-2011 during the last fight over the debt limit, which is about $16.4 trillion.

Republicans wrung spending cuts out of Democrats in return for new borrowing authority, but paid a political price. Global financial markets were rocked by the long uncertainty brought on by the standoff in Congress, one ratings agency downgraded U.S. credit standing and Republicans saw their public approval ratings sink.

* Boehner decides on a gutsy move: Call a House vote on a bill that would raise tax rates for families with net annual incomes above $250,000, exactly what Obama has sought.

The plan could pass the House with strong Democratic support and some Republican votes. As soon as it passed, the House likely would leave town for the rest of the year without addressing other Obama priorities such as increasing the government's debt limit.

* A partial deal is struck at any point.

Congress could pass a plan that would put off most of the income tax increases that are due in January, or extend some other expiring tax breaks - namely one to prevent middle-class taxpayers from being subject to higher tax rates aimed at the wealthy under the alternative minimum tax.

* Stock markets do not tank and Washington politicians conclude that the "fiscal cliff" is not such a bad thing.

Under this scenario, Congress and the White House could continue sniping at each other throughout 2013 and 2014 as they try to revamp tax policy and impose long-term spending cuts.

(Editing by David Lindsey and Will Dunham)

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A Christmas wreath is covered with snow on West 4th Street in Waterloo, Iowa, December 20, 2012.

BUFFALO, New York | Sat Dec 22, 2012 4:56pm EST

BUFFALO, New York (Reuters) - Powerful winds and snow whipped parts of the eastern United States on Saturday, carrying the promise of a white Christmas while threatening to cause problems for the many Americans traveling for the holidays, meteorologists said.

The storm moving in from the Midwest was sending strong winds into the mid-Atlantic states and southern New England. It buried parts of Iowa, Nebraska and Wisconsin in more than a foot of snow earlier this week.

The high winds threatened to delay flights at busy airports in New York, Philadelphia and Washington, meteorologists said.

Due to the winds, departing flights were delayed at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey and at Washington Dulles International Airport, the Federal Aviation Administration said.

More than 87 million Americans are expected to travel 50 miles or more away from home over the holidays, the travel and auto group AAA has forecast. Nearly nine out of 10 will be on the roads, it said.

Residents in and around Buffalo, New York, awoke on Saturday to 4 to 6 inches of snow - the season's first significant accumulation in the notoriously snowbound region.

Typically, the area would have roughly a foot of snow by the Christmas holidays, but there has been little or nothing this year.

"There was something missing," Mayor Rob Ortt of North Tonawanda, New York, just north of Buffalo, said of judging the city's holiday lighting contest in the past week. "I think this was the first year there was no snow, not even a dusting."

"Everyone thinks of us as a place where snow is, and you relish it at Christmas time," he said, adding, "When we have snow around St. Patrick's Day, that's when people get annoyed."

The National Weather Service predicted a few more inches of snow for the Buffalo region on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

A new storm could bring snow as well to the central Appalachians, northern mid-Atlantic and southern New England on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, Accuweather.com said.

Residents of Harrisburg and Scranton, Pennsylvania eastward to Hartford, Connecticut, and Boston could expect a white Christmas, it said.

"It could be a white Christmas after all in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, New England and other areas across the nation," said Alex Sosnowski, Accuweather senior meteorologist.

New York City is likely to see a mix of snow and rain, he said.

RELIEF FOR SKI RESORT OPERATORS

Several inches of snow fell on Saturday in parts of western Pennsylvania. In central New York, snowfall of up to an inch an hour at times was predicted by the National Weather Service.

Ski resort operators in western New York greeted the snow with relief and said the cold air was making conditions ideal for snowmaking.

"It hurts not to be open yet," said Andy Minier, ski racing coordinator at Kissing Bridge ski area, about 30 miles south of Buffalo.

On Saturday, high winds were buffeting the New York City metropolitan area, eastern Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey, the National Weather Service said.

It predicted hazardous conditions due to winds for upstate New York, northwestern Connecticut, southern Vermont and western Massachusetts.

Wintry air blowing off the eastern Great Lakes was causing icy conditions in western and northern Pennsylvania, upstate New York and West Virginia as well, Accuweather said.

On the Gulf Coast, meteorologists say, dangerous thunderstorms and tornadoes are expected on Christmas Day.

The affected areas are likely to be southeastern Texas, central and southern Louisiana, southern Mississippi, southern Alabama and the Florida Panhandle, Accuweather said. Cities in those areas include Houston; Baton Rouge and New Orleans in Louisiana; Gulfport, Mississippi; Montgomery and Mobile in Alabama; and Pensacola, Florida; it said.

(Additional Reporting and writing by Ellen Wulfhorst, Editing by Mohammad Zargham)

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Hakan Tale (R), listens to Joseph Sant, a lawyer at Staten Island Legal Services, as Sant explains the latest round of paper work from Chase Bank regarding a denied loan modification application for Tale's mortgage, in Staten Island, New York, December 9, 2011.

NEW YORK | Sat Oct 13, 2012 9:00am EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The TV and radio ads make it all seem so easy. Walk into a lender's office, refinance your home loan at a rock-bottom rate, and walk out with a lower monthly payment.

Here's a little tip: It's not so easy.

If you know the pitfalls, you can at least prepare for them - and perhaps chart a wiser course. A few issues that could have your application earmarked for the ‘Rejected' pile:

1. Heightened credit score demands

If you're refinancing, that means you've successfully secured a home loan already. But since then, lenders have started to demand near-pristine credit scores. "Now to get access to the lowest rates, you need a FICO score above 740," says Keith Gumbinger, VP of mortgage information site HSH.com.

Not quite the perfect score of 850, but still quite challenging to achieve. Credit scorer FICO does not break out the average number for refi applicants, but the national average is 690 -- well below what will get you prime lending rates.

2. Low appraisal

While interest rates have gone down, so have U.S. home values. The average home value dropped a third from the start of 2007 to the start of 2012, according to housing analytics firm Fiserv. For refinancing, that's a problem.

Chicago's Jesse Raub and his wife have owned a home for about three years, and recently started the refi process. But then the appraisal came in low.

"Beware that the appraised value of your home may not be what you think it should be," says Raub, 27, who's a trainer and educator for Intelligentsia Coffee. "Our new mortgage amount was close to the total value of the home - which required us to get mortgage insurance as well."

3. A home equity line of credit

You may have forgotten that you once took out a home equity line of credit. You may have not even touched a penny of it. But it could still derail a refi, because it means another lender has a claim on the value of the home.

"If you're refinancing your first mortgage, the lender of the home-equity line has to agree to that," says Mike Fratantoni, vice president of research for the Washington, D.C.-based Mortgage Bankers Association.

Essentially, that lender needs to sign off on being second in line, and agree that the primary mortgage will always be paid off first (in the event of a foreclosure, for instance). "There may be fees associated with that, and so a home-equity line of credit is one more thing that could make a refi more difficult."

4. Condo or co-op troubles

If lenders are going to fork over hundreds of thousands of dollars, they don't want any issues to make them nervous. And when the property is subject to decisions of an unpredictable board of directors, that can make them nervous.

"Any number of issues might trip you up," says Gumbinger. "If the building finances aren't in good shape, or if the insurance isn't paid up, or if there are any units in foreclosure, or if there are any lawsuits against the condo association, or if the building is comprised largely of renters. All kinds of fun stuff can arise."

5. Timeliness requirements

Banks want to see the most up-to-date financial information possible before they sign off on a mortgage. But they also have a tendency to ask for document after document after document regarding your financial situation. If the refi process has ballooned to 60 or even 90 days, but they require documents from the last 30 days, that could put you on a carousel of paperwork straight from the ninth circle of hell.

So get out your yoga mat, breathe deeply, and have a mantra ready. You're going to need lots of patience. "Expect the worst," advises Erin Lantz, director of the mortgage marketplace for real estate site Zillow.com. "If you come to terms with that at the beginning, it will remove the stress later on."

(Follow us @ReutersMoney or here Editing by Beth Pinsker Gladstone)

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Mon Oct 8, 2012 2:22pm EDT

n">(Reuters) - Judy Garland's blue-and-white pinafore from the beloved classic "The Wizard of Oz" is going up for auction, where it is expected to sell for more than a half a million dollars, auctioneers said on Monday.

The outfit, consisting of the gingham dress and white puffy-sleeved blouse, which Garland wore throughout the 1939 film, will be sold next month at Julien's Auctions in Beverly Hills, the auction house said in a statement.

Julien's estimated the outfit would sell for between $400,000 and $600,000, but similarly iconic Hollywood costumes have fetched many times the pre-sale expectations in recent years.

President Darren Julien told Reuters the dress, by MGM's famous costume designer, Adrian, had not been offered for sale, nor even publicly seen, since MGM costume designer Kent Warner sold it at Christie's in 1981.

"It's one of those key pieces that I'm sure collectors all over the world are going to be after," said pop culture expert Laura Woolley of the Collector's Lab, an appraisal service for collectors, museums and other institutions, in a YouTube clip posted by Julien's.

"This is one piece that everybody recognizes instantly," she said of the dress prominently featured in the Technicolor musical, which is still hugely popular with both children and adults nearly 75 years after it was made.

Another of Garland's dresses used in test shots for the film soared to nearly $1 million at auction last year, its $910,000 price more than 10 times the $60,000 to $80,000 estimate.

At the same sale of costumes from film star Debbie Reynolds' collection, which took in nearly $23 million, Marilyn Monroe's iconic "subway dress" from 1955 movie "The Seven Year Itch" sold for $4.6 million, or $5.5 million including commission and tax.

The "Wizard of Oz" dress will go on public exhibition at Julien's in Beverly Hills from November 5-8 ahead of the two-day auction.

Other Hollywood memorabilia on offer at the November 9-10 sale include the white strapless Edith Head gown worn by Elizabeth Taylor in "A Place in the Sun," which is estimated at $20,000 to $30,000, and a Cecil Beaton triptych of Marilyn Monroe, which hung in Monroe's New York apartment, estimated at $35,000 to $40,000.

(Reporting by Chris Michaud in New York, editing by Jill Serjeant and Andre Grenon)

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