Sergei Filin, artistic director of Russia's Bolshoi Ballet, speaks to journalists as he leaves a hospital in Moscow February 4, 2013.

MOSCOW | Thu Feb 14, 2013 2:25pm EST

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Principal dancer Artem Ovcharenko seems to defy gravity as he glides through the air, then lands silently with a flourish of his arm during a rehearsal at Russia's revered Bolshoi Theater.

Other dancers spin through the air behind him, a few warm up at the side and two ballerinas walk on their toes while Viktor Barykin, the repetiteur or dance coach, barks instructions.

"One, two, three. One, two, three - up! That's not bad," Barykin shouts into a microphone from a seat perched on the front of the stage, taking a male dancer through his steps.

On the surface, it is business as usual at one of the world's great theaters as the dancers prepare for a performance of Yuri Possokhov's contemporary ballet "Classical Symphony".

But dance has also, for some, become a way to escape a drama behind the scenes that has had more twists than many an on-stage plot in the month since a masked attacker threw acid in the face of Sergei Filin, the Bolshoi Ballet's artistic director.

Intrigue and misfortune are nothing new to an institution whose name translates at The Grand Theatre: it has burnt down three times since being built in 1776 under Catherine the Great and was also bombed in World War Two.

But the dancers are now struggling to come to terms with the brutality of the January 17 attack, which has left Filin fighting for his sight and the Bolshoi battling to mend a reputation tarnished by rumors of rivalries, resentments and intrigues.

"It affects some people more, the ones who are more emotional, but on stage you forget everything, you cut yourself off. That's what I do because I can't let it affect me," Ovcharenko, 26, said during a break in the rehearsal.

Ovcharenko, a rising star at the Bolshoi since joining in 2007, embodies the motto that the show must go on.

He says the rigors of a work day that often lasts from 10 a.m. until 10 p.m. leave dancers little time to dwell on the attack. With more roles available than in the past because the Bolshoi now performs more often, there is less reason for envy.

But although he says morale has not been affected, the troupe has clearly been shaken by the attack and by a public row it provoked between the Bolshoi's general director, Anatoly Iksanov, and Nikolai Tsiskaridze, a veteran lead dancer.

"Some people came up with hypotheses, some started suspecting people ... I say 'Forget it, and get back to work'," Ovcharenko said. "I just want peace at the theatre."

POLICE INVESTIGATION

But these are not peaceful times at the Bolshoi. It is hard for dancers to put the attack out of their minds when police are milling around at rehearsals, asking questions, and now treat some of the troupe as suspects.

"Having all these people backstage and in our classes is a bit different," said Joy Womack, the first American to graduate from the Bolshoi Ballet's main training program. Her words are not without a touch of understatement.

She does not conceal that competition for roles and for influence over productions is intense at the Bolshoi and says people with different artistic visions "will butt heads"; but, in that, she sees it as not unusual in the ballet world.

"The Bolshoi is certainly filled with histories and little skeletons packed away in the cupboard," the Californian added. "But every organization is like that."

Like Ovcharenko, she is trying to forget the attack through her dancing, including as a swan in Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake". But if her personal drive and ambition are anything to go by, it is no surprise that the Bolshoi is as competitive as it is.

"I have crazy goals. That's how I got here in the first place," she said, promising to show she can achieve what others had said was impossible. "It's just a matter of how much you want it and how much time you are prepared to put into it."

Scandal has long been endemic behind the cream-colored, eight-columned facade close to Red Square which reopened to great fanfare in 2011 after a $700-million, six-year renovation that restored the theatre's opulent tsarist beginnings, doused its interior in gold-leaf and introduced cutting-edge acoustics.

The theatre's history is laced with tales of tricks to put off rivals: needles left in costumes; crushed glass in ballet shoes; an alarm clock timed to go off during a particularly intense dance sequence; even a dead cat thrown on stage.

Management of the theatre has also seen controversy: in 1995, the departure of the artistic director sparked a wildcat strike by dancers, in turn prompting jeering and foot-stamping from an angry audience that had paid to see "Romeo and Juliet".

In 2003, world media had a field day when Bolshoi bosses tried to fire ballerina Anastasia Volochkova for being too heavy. And in 2011, deputy ballet director Gennady Yanin - then seen as a candidate for the artistic director post - quit after pornographic images of him appeared on the Internet.

Dirty tricks are far from unheard of throughout public life in post-Soviet Russia. But never before has a member of the Bolshoi Theatre had sulfuric acid thrown in his face.

IDENTIFYING ATTACKER

Filin, 42, says he thinks he knows who was behind the attack and that it may be linked to his work as artistic director, but he has named no names in public and police have made no arrest.

One of his predecessors, Alexei Ratmansky, said it was no coincidence that Filin had been attacked and described an atmosphere of intrigue and passion, ticket speculators and half-crazed fans ready to cut the throats of an idol's rivals.

Events since the attack have unfolded like a page-turning whodunit, with the motives still a subject of speculation and no shortage of theories and possible clues.

Complicating matters is the fact that Filin says he had his car tires slashed and emails hacked in the two weeks before the attack, and had received repeated nuisance calls from someone who stayed silent when he answered.

Was it artistic rivalry? Filin is at odds with some of his colleagues over the direction the ballet is heading in, and his role gives him the power to make or break dancers' careers.

Could it be connected to power struggles behind the scenes? Filin's job is much coveted and he has seen off rivals for his position, which he secured in 2011. Such is its importance that a group of cultural figures wrote to President Vladimir Putin last November demanding Filin be replaced by Tsiskaridze.

Was it a nasty twist to a love affair? Some sources close to the Bolshoi have sought to suggest in the media that the attack was a personal matter and nothing to do with his work.

Could there be commercial reasons? The Bolshoi has been criticized over the profusion of touts who sell tickets at vastly inflated prices. The company's policy has long been to sell some tickets cheaply so that not only the wealthy attend - but some fall into the wrong hands for resale.

While some scalpers are small-time, the prices and prestige of the renovated Bolshoi, favored by Muscovites keen to flaunt their new-found wealth, may well be attracting organized crime.

MANY TWISTS

Since the attack, a production of Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" has been cancelled due to Filin's absence; a ballerina has said she is afraid to return to Russia from Canada because of a blackmailer; and the long-running row between dancer Tsiskaridze, 39, and veteran manager Iksanov, 60, has worsened.

The two gave interviews to a Russian magazine, Snob, in which they traded blame for the bad atmosphere at the Bolshoi and drew attention to the bitterness behind the scenes. Tsiskaridze then called on the management to resign.

"There is one person in the Bolshoi company who is constantly dissatisfied with whatever the Bolshoi management is doing for the past 12 years," said Bolshoi spokeswoman Katya Novikova. Tsiskaridze criticized the renovation of the Bolshoi under Iksanov, who has denied it was tainted by corruption.

Novikova said Iksanov and Tsiskaridze were not on speaking terms and that lawyers were looking carefully at the allegations Tsiskaridze had made. She doubted they would ever make up because they had been rivals for the general manager role.

Tsiskaridze declined an interview with Reuters but says he is the victim of a witch-hunt and describes the atmosphere as like "back in the days of Josef Stalin", the Soviet dictator who sent millions of opponents to their death or to labor camps.

Tsiskaridze has condemned the acid attack on Filin, a fellow dancer with whom he worked for many years and sometimes shared a dressing room. For all his battles with management, many in the troupe speak highly of the Georgian-born Tsiskaridze and Womack smiled as she described his "jokes and wonderful sarcasm".

Doctors say Filin is likely to recover his sight and work again. The Bolshoi, a symbol of Russian culture that has come through difficult times before in both Soviet and tsarist eras, is also sure to recover - but damage has been done.

"There have long been power struggles but never before was there such criminality and harm done," said Tatiana Kuznetsova, a ballet critic for Kommersant newspaper. "The image is fading."

For the dancers, the overwhelming response is to focus on their dancing to show their appreciation of Filin, whose daily instructions are passed on by Galina Stepanenko, a former principal dancer who has become the acting artistic director.

"When you fall you can only go up. There is nowhere lower to go," Ovcharenko said before going back to finish his rehearsal. "For us, the artists, this is the best way to support our boss, to be on stage and perform well, so that we don't upset him."

(Editing by Alastair Macdonald)

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1 of 5. A visitor to the Justice and Police Museum looks at paintings that are part of the exhibition titled ''Wicked Women'' in Sydney February 13, 2013. The paintings in award-winning Australian artist Rosemary Valadon’s latest exhibition, ''Wicked Women,'' feature femmes fatale in the style of classic film noir movie posters and pulp fiction covers but the faces are of prominent Australian women. The models for the 17 oil paintings in the exhibition include journalists, lawyers, a crown prosecutor, designers, actresses and three female staff members at Sydney's Justice and Police Museum, where the exhibition is being held. Picture taken February 13, 2013.

SYDNEY | Fri Feb 15, 2013 3:59pm EST

SYDNEY (Reuters) - A buxom woman in a low-cut red dress brandishes a pistol, her finger poised to pull the trigger, but a closer look at the painting reveals the woman is model-turned-novelist Tara Moss.

In another painting a woman in a red beret and tight yellow, slit skirt with one hand on her hip and the other holding a cigarette is in fact one of Australia's senior crown prosecutors, Margaret Cunneen.

The paintings in award-winning Australian artist Rosemary Valadon's latest exhibition, "Wicked Women," feature femmes fatale in the style of classic film noir movie posters and pulp fiction covers but the faces are of prominent Australian women.

The models for the 17 oil paintings in the exhibition include journalists, lawyers, a crown prosecutor, designers, actresses and three female staff members at Sydney's Justice and Police Museum, where the exhibition is being held.

"I think that Rosemary was particularly interested in the ideas around women's sexual 'wickedness,' and that was part of what she was interested in exploring," curator Nerida Campbell told Reuters.

The paintings by Valadon took two years to complete and use bold colors and strong lines that produce an almost 3D effect in some cases.

While some of the models had time for multiple sittings, others had as little as half an hour for Valadon to make a quick sketch. Replicas were made of original guns and weapons displayed at the museum for the women to use as they posed.

One room is devoted to the paintings themselves, while the other features sketches. A recording of Valadon's voice leads visitors through her creative process, from photography and modeling to sketching in charcoals and pencil, and ultimately the finished work.

The models relished the chance to show another side to their character, at least for a couple of days.

""Wicked Women" is an exciting series of works because it explores the perception of hot-blooded women in an era when women were expected to be more demure and compliant than they are today," said senior crown prosecutor Margaret Cunneen.

"These women, in my view, were portrayed as sassy, sexy and impulsive to the point of dangerousness. I think the work evokes a passionate, gutsy and high-spirited woman who has been strengthened, through hardship, to ultimate resilience."

The public response to the exhibition, which runs until late May, has been good, Campbell said, drawing viewers whose interest ranges from the painting style to simple curiosity about the famous women themselves.

"I think what people find interesting is what Rosemary wanted to do -- subvert the stereotypes and allow modern, independent strong women to imprint their personality on these more sexist original works," she said.

(Reporting by Pauline Askin, editing by Elaine Lies and Belinda Goldsmith)

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1 of 2. A research worker of the Ural Federal University inspects a fragment of a material substance in Yekaterinburg, the province of Sverdlovsk capital in the Ural Mountains, February 18, 2013. Scientists, representing the Ural Federal University, announced on Monday they managed to find elements of the meteorite in the district of the Cherbakul Lake near Chelyabinsk which was later confirmed during a research analysis at a laboratory, according to local media. A meteorite streaked across the sky and exploded over central Russia on Friday, raining fireballs over a vast area and causing a shock wave that smashed windows, damaged buildings and injured 1,200 people.

MOSCOW | Mon Feb 18, 2013 6:14am EST

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A meteor that exploded over Russia's Ural mountains and sent fireballs blazing to earth has set off a rush to find fragments of the space rock which hunters hope could fetch thousands of dollars a piece.

Friday's blast and ensuing shockwave shattered windows, injured almost 1,200 people and caused about $33 million worth of damage, said local authorities.

It also started a "meteorite rush" around the industrial city of Chelyabinsk, 1,500 km (950 miles) east of Moscow, where groups of people have started combing through the snow and ice.

One amateur space enthusiast estimated chunks could be worth anything up to 66,000 roubles ($2,200) per gram - more than 40 times the current cost of gold.

"The price is hard to say yet ... The fewer meteorites that are recovered, the higher their price," said Dmitry Kachkalin, a member of the Russian Society of Amateur Meteorite Lovers. Meteorites are parts of a meteor that have fallen to earth.

Scientists at the Urals Federal University were the first to announce a significant find - 53 small, stony, black objects around Lake Chebarkul, near Chelyabinsk, which tests confirmed were small meteorites.

The fragments were only 0.5 to 1 cm (0.2 to 0.4 inches) across but the scientists said larger pieces may have crashed into the lake, where a crater in the ice about eight meters (26 feet) wide opened up after Friday's explosion.

"We just completed tests and confirm that the pieces of matter found by our experts around Lake Chebarkul are really meteorites," said Viktor Grokhovsky, a scientist with the Urals Federal University and the Russian Academy of Sciences.

"These are classified as ordinary chondrites, or stony meteorites, with an iron content of about 10 percent," he told RIA news agency.

He did not say whether the fragments had told his team anything about the origins of the meteor, which the U.S. space agency NASA estimated was 55 feet across before entering Earth's atmosphere and weighed about 10,000 tons.

The main fireball streaked across the sky at a speed of about 30 km (19 miles) per second, according to Russian space agency Roscosmos, before crashing into the snowy wastes.

TREASURE HUNTERS

More than 20,000 people took part in search and clean-up operations at the weekend in and around Chelyabinsk, which is in the heart of a region packed with industrial military plants.

Many other people were in the area just hoping to find a meteorite after what was described by scientists as a once-in-a-century event.

Residents of a village near Chelyabinsk searched the snowy streets, collecting stones they hoped would prove to be the real thing. But not all were ready to sell.

"I will keep it. Why sell it? I didn't have a rich lifestyle before, so why start now?" a woman in a pink woolen hat and winter jacket, clutching a small black pebble, told state television Rossiya-24.

The Internet filled quickly with advertisements from eager hunters hoping to sell what they said were meteorites - some for as little as 1,000 roubles ($33.18).

The authenticity of the items was hard to ascertain.

One seller of a large, silver-hued rock wrote in an advertisement on the portal Avito.ru: "Selling an unusual rock. It may be a piece of meteorite, it may be a bit of a UFO, it may be a piece of a rocket!"

($1 = 30.1365 Russian roubles)

(Additional reporting by Ludmila Danilova and Gabriela Baczinska, Writing by Alissa de Carbonnel, Editing by Timothy Heritage and Andrew Heavens)

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U.S. President Barack Obama speaks about strengthening the economy for the middle class and measures to combat gun violence during a visit to Hyde Park Academy in Chicago, Illinois February 15, 2013.

CHICAGO | Fri Feb 15, 2013 9:59pm EST

CHICAGO (Reuters) - President Barack Obama acknowledged on Friday that he wished his father had been a bigger part of his life as he argued that stronger families are just as important as gun control in reducing crime and violence in poverty-stricken neighborhoods.

Obama returned to his old home neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago with a different take on his gun control message - that it will require an improved home environment for children to reduce the possibility that they will one day resort to violence.

To do that, he said, will require better economic conditions for low- and middle-class Americans, one reason he wants to raise the hourly minimum wage from $7.25 to $9, a proposal he offered in his State of the Union speech on Tuesday.

Obama, the son of a black Kenyan father and a white mother from Kansas, was raised largely by his mother and grandparents in Hawaii. His father, Barack Obama Sr., divorced Obama's mother when the president was two years old, and he was the central figure in Obama's memoir, "Dreams from My Father."

Pointing to a group of teenage boys with whom he had met privately before delivering a speech, Obama said he had not been much different than them.

"Don't get me wrong," he said in the address to high school students at Hyde Park Academy. "As the son of a single mom, who gave everything she had to raise me with the help of my grandparents, I turned out okay."

"But at the same time, I wish I'd have had a father who was around and involved," he told the mainly black audience of about 700.

Obama worked as a community organizer in the South Side of Chicago but had a more privileged background than many of the children he addressed on Friday.

Chicago has suffered a surge in gang-related violence and is one of the most violent cities in America. Obama's visit comes a week after his wife, Michelle, attended the funeral in the city of 15-year-old honor student Hadiya Pendleton, who was shot dead a week after participating in the presidential inauguration.

At the start of his second term in office, Obama wants Congress to approve a series of tighter gun controls like requiring background checks for all firearms purchasers and banning assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition clips.

But as he made clear in Chicago it will take improvements in the home environment for children to keep them off the streets and that this will require help from parents, teachers and clergy.

"When a child opens fire on another child, there is a hole in that child's heart that government can't fill," Obama said.

In too many areas, "it can feel like the future only extends to the next street corner or the outskirts of town...There are entire neighborhoods where they don't see an example of somebody succeeding," he said.

Corey Stevens, 17, a high school senior, was one of the students who got to meet with Obama before his speech.

"I think that he needed to come back here and get the message to the people up close and personal and let them know that this needs to stop," said Stevens, who wants to go into law enforcement.

Hadiya Pendleton's father, Nathaniel Pendleton, who was in the audience, had a message for those who have been following his family's tragedy in the news -- get involved.

"You never expect this tragedy to knock on your door... But there are preventative measures," Pendleton told Reuters. "So let's try to prevent it instead of waiting for it to happen."

Father Michael Pfleger, a Catholic priest known for his activism against gun violence, agreed with Obama that gun laws alone won't solve the problem.

"We have to look in our urban communities and realize that we have a lack of good schools, lack of employment, abundance of poverty, abundance of folks coming back out of penal institutions with records," Pfleger said. "Until we deal with all those issues, you create the perfect storm for violence."

(Writing by Steve Holland; Additional reporting by Renita D. Young; Editing by Alistair Ball, Mary Wisniewski, David Brunnstrom and Carol Bishopric)

(This story was corrected to read, "...or the outskirts of town..." instead of "...of the outskirts of town...")

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Demonstrators carry a replica of a pipeline during a march against the Keystone XL pipeline in Washington, February 17, 2013.

WASHINGTON | Sun Feb 17, 2013 6:37pm EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Thousands of protesters gathered on the Washington's National Mall on Sunday calling on President Barack Obama to reject the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline proposal and honor his inaugural pledge to act on climate change.

Organizers of the "Forward on Climate" event estimated that 35,000 people from 30 states turned out in cold, blustery conditions for what they said was the biggest climate rally in U.S. history. Police did not verify the crowd size.

Protesters also marched around the nearby White House, chanting "Keystone pipeline? Shut it down." Among the celebrities on hand were actresses Rosario Dawson and Evangeline Lilly, and hedge fund manager and environmentalist Tom Steyer.

The event came days after a bipartisan group of U.S. senators made the latest call for Obama to approve the $5.3 billion pipeline, seen by many as an engine for job growth and another step toward energy independence.

A new poll by Harris Interactive showed 69 percent of respondents said they support construction of the pipeline, with only 17 percent saying they oppose it.

One of Sunday's main organizers, climate activist Bill McKibben, said that approving the pipeline, which would transport crude oil from the oil sands of northern Alberta to refineries and ports in Texas, would be akin to lighting a "carbon bomb" that could cause irreparable harm to the climate.

"For 25 years our government has basically ignored the climate crisis: now people in large numbers are finally demanding they get to work," said McKibben, founder of the environmental group 350.org.

Other major organizing groups on Sunday included the Sierra Club and the Hip-Hop Caucus.

The proposed TransCanada Corp project has been pending for 4-1/2 years. A revised route through Nebraska, which would avoid crossing sensitive ecological zones and aquifers, was approved by that state's governor last month.

Backers of Keystone, which would transport 830,000 barrels of oil per day, say it would provide thousands of jobs in the United States and increase North American energy security.

Environmentalists oppose the pipeline because the oil sands extraction process is carbon intensive, and say the oil extracted is dirtier than traditional crude oil.

Van Jones, Obama's former green jobs adviser, said if the president approved the pipeline just weeks after pledging to act on climate change, it would overshadow other actions Obama takes to reduce pollution.

"There is nothing else you can do if you let that pipeline go through. It doesn't matter what you do on smog rules and automobile rules - you've already given the whole game way," said Jones, who is president of Rebuild the Dream, a non-government organization.

Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, the lone member of Congress to speak at the rally, told Reuters Obama risked creating a "credibility gap" if he approved the pipeline.

"He would have to roll out a very complete and very strong package to offset something that on its own is described by government scientist as ‘game-over' on climate," he said.

Still, some of Obama's core constituents favor the pipeline, including the labor union AFL-CIO's building and construction unit, which sees the potential for job creation for its members, and certain Democratic lawmakers.

In January, nine Democratic senators joined 44 Republicans in urging the president to approve Keystone XL.

(Reporting By Valerie Volcovici; editing by Ros Krasny and Mohammad Zargham)

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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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Thu Feb 14, 2013 11:26am EST

n">(Reuters) - Inventors based in the United States led the world in nanotechnology patent applications and grants in 2012, according to a new study by law firm McDermott Will & Emery.

Nanotechnology involves manipulating matter that's measured at the tiny "nanometer" length level. The diameter of a human hair is between 40,000 and 60,000 nanometers, said Valerie Moore, a patent agent and one of the authors of the study.

Nanotechnology patents come into play in everything from aerospace to medicine to energy, the study noted. For example, the technology can be used to incorporate antibacterial material into wound dressings, to increase the strength of car parts while decreasing their weight, and to enhance paint colors.

U.S.-based inventors accounted for 54 percent of the nanotechnology patent applications and grants reviewed in the study, followed by South Korea with 7.8 percent, Japan with 7.1 percent, Germany with 6.2 percent and China with 4.9 percent.

The study also looked at the geographic location of the owner of the nanotechnology patents and proposed patents. If an inventor works in the Silicon Valley office of South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co, for instance, the U.S. is home to the invention, but the South Korean employer might own the patent.

McDermott's intellectual property practice includes more than 200 attorneys and patent agents, and is one of the top ten law firms for nanotech patent and applications filings, according to information provided by the firm.

McDermott partner Carey Jordan noted that the percentage of patents issued to U.S.-based entities is not quite as high as the 54 percent of nanopatents with U.S.-based inventors. About 45 percent of the nanotechnology patents in the study were assigned to U.S.-based entities.

The study examined published U.S. patent applications, patents granted by the U.S. Patent and Trade Office, and published international patent applications that had the term "nano" in the claims, title, or abstract. Nanopatent applications were included to best quantify innovation occurring in nanotech, the study's authors said.

The number of nanotechnology patents has grown continuously since the early 2000s, the study said. Between 2007 and 2012 the total number of U.S. patent applications, U.S. granted patents and published international patent applications grew from about 14,250 to almost 18,900.

The United States, the European Union, as well as Japan and South Korea, have increased funding for nanotechnology education and research since 2000, the study said.

Computer and electronics companies garnered the most patents, with International Business Machines Corp and Samsung topping the list. The fields of chemistry and biological sciences, which include medicine and agriculture, were next in terms of the number of nanotechnology patents.

Other leaders in technology patent innovation include the University of California, Xerox Corp, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and 3M Co.

(Reporting By Erin Geiger Smith; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

(This story was corrected to fix dateline and name of law firm in the first paragraph)

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Deputy National Security Adviser John Brennan testifies before a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on his nomination to be the Director of the CIA, on Capitol Hill in Washington, February 7, 2013.

WASHINGTON | Fri Feb 15, 2013 6:59pm EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's pick for CIA director, John Brennan, promised senators who will vote on his nomination more openness about U.S. counter-terrorism programs, saying the closely guarded number of civilian casualties from drone strikes should be made public, according to his written responses to questions released on Friday.

Brennan was questioned sharply by Democrats and Republicans alike during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on his nomination last week.

Along with harsh interrogation techniques, Brennan was questioned about drone strikes against terrorism suspects in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and elsewhere. These strikes have increased under Obama and included the killing in Yemen of a U.S.-born cleric suspected of ties to al Qaeda and his U.S.-born son.

The U.S. government, without releasing numbers, has sought to portray civilian deaths from these strikes as minimal. But other organizations which collect data on these attacks put the number of civilians killed in the hundreds.

"I believe that, to the extent that U.S. national security interests can be protected, the U.S. government should make public the overall numbers of civilian deaths resulting from U.S. strikes targeting al Qaeda," Brennan wrote in response to a question from Senator Dianne Feinstein, the committee chairwoman.

"In those rare instances in which civilians have been killed" reviews are conducted and, if appropriate, condolence payments are provided to the families, he wrote.

Such casualties from drone strikes have created profound anger among civilian populations overseas and severe tension between the United States and Pakistan and Afghanistan.

During last week's hearing, Feinstein said she had been trying to speak publicly about the "very low number of civilian casualties" and to verify that number each year has "typically been in the single digits." However, she said she was told she could not divulge the actual numbers because they were classified.

The New America Foundation said the number of civilians killed by U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan was 261-305 from 2004 to 2013. (here).

A former intelligence official said the reason for the discrepancy between the U.S. government's apparently lower figures on civilian deaths and those collected by other organizations may be due to what is counted as a civilian death.

The government assumes "military-aged" males in the proximity of a drone strike are combatants unless it finds out otherwise, the former official said.

Asked whether the government could carry out drone strikes inside the United States, Brennan replied: "This administration has not carried out drone strikes inside the United States and has no intention of doing so."

U.S. legal authorities have not limited the geographic scope to a war zone for using force against al Qaeda and its affiliates, he noted, adding: "This does not mean, however, that we use military force whenever or wherever we want."

YEMEN LEAK PROBE

On another topic, Brennan said he had been advised by the Justice Department that he is a witness in, and not a target of, a criminal investigation into media leaks last year about the disruption of an underwear bomb plot by al Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen. He said he had spoken to investigators, but been advised they have no plans to speak with him again.

Brennan said the Justice Department had provided his lawyer with a transcript of a conference call about the plot which he held last May 7 with former counter-terrorism officials who serve as TV news analysts.

At his confirmation hearing, Brennan confirmed the accuracy of a report by Reuters that during the conference call, he told the pundits that the alleged plot was never a real threat because the U.S. had "inside control" over it. But he vigorously disputed that he had leaked classified information.

Within hours, one of the analysts on the call appeared on TV saying that the U.S. government was implying that it had "somebody on the inside" of the alleged plot "who wasn't going to let it happen." News reports then proliferated saying the U.S. or its allies had succeeded in planting an informant inside al Qaeda's Yemen branch.

Brennan said in his written responses that he had given a transcript of his conference call with the pundits to the committee. Congressional officials said the Obama administration had requested that it be kept confidential, even though Brennan testified that nothing he told the pundits was classified.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for a copy of the transcript.

The committee's vote on Brennan's nomination has been delayed until after a congressional recess next week.

(Additional reporting by Mark Hosenball. Editing by Warren Strobel and Christopher Wilson)

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1 of 4. The United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas-V rocket with the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) spacecraft onboard is seen as it launches at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, February 11, 2013.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida | Mon Feb 11, 2013 4:26pm EST

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - - A new satellite to keep tabs on Earth's changing landscape rocketed into orbit on Monday, ensuring continuation of a 40-year-old photo archive documenting urban sprawl, glacial melting, natural disasters and other environmental shifts.

The eighth and most sophisticated Landsat spacecraft blasted off at 1:02 p.m. EST (1802 GMT) aboard an unmanned Atlas 5 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The launch was broadcast on NASA Television.

The so-called Landsat Data Continuity Mission, or LDCM, will join the sole operational 14-year-old Landsat 7 spacecraft in providing visible and infrared images from an orbital perch 438 miles above Earth.

The satellites circle the planet every 99 minutes, relaying pictures showing details down to about the size of a baseball diamond.

The images, which are distributed at no charge, are used by federal, state and local governments and planning boards worldwide to monitor crops, assess damage from fires, floods and other natural disasters as well as to track coastlines, glaciers and other areas impacted by global warming.

"LDCM will continue to describe the human impact on Earth and the impact of Earth on humanity, which is vital for accommodating 7 billion people on our planet," project manager Ken Schwer, with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, told reporters during a preflight press conference.

Monitoring food production, for example, is essential to sustaining Earth's growing population, added Thomas Loveland, a senior scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey, which is partnered with NASA on the Landsat program.

"Our federal programs that map the type and extent of crops needed to understand what the food supply will be and the impact on the market will benefit greatly from this," Loveland said.

Landsat's commercial customers include Google, which uses the images in its popular virtual Google Earth program, and the insurance industry which, for example, taps Landsat data to assess risk exposure to wildfires in the western United States and gauge crop production.

The Landsat program has been providing imagery since the first satellite's launch in 1972. LDCM was built by Orbital Sciences Corp.

Once operational, the satellite, which cost NASA $855 million, is expected to relay 400 images per day to ground stations in South Dakota, Alaska and Norway.

The Atlas rocket is manufactured and launched by United Launch Alliance, a joint partnership of Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

(Editing by Paul Simao)

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WASHINGTON | Sun Feb 17, 2013 5:11pm EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Lawmakers complained on Sunday that President Barack Obama had failed to protect Iranian dissidents from persecution by Tehran following a deadly attack on their camp near Baghdad, and urged they be allowed back to their long-time base in Iraq.

A congressional delegation led by Dana Rohrabacher, chairman of the Republican-controlled House subcommittee on Europe, said that the Obama administration should not have backed the movement of members of Iranian dissident group Mujahadin-e-Khalq, or MEK, to a place where they would not be safe.

At least five people were killed in a February 9 rocket attack on their base in the former U.S. military compound "Camp Liberty" in the western part of the Iraqi capital. The attack was condemned by the United Nations.

"It was unethical for the United States to have endorsed the relocation of the people whom we promised to protect to Camp Liberty, where we knew they would not have proper protection, just because it wants to please Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and the ruling mullahs of Iran," the delegation said in statement after meeting Iranian dissident leaders in Paris.

The MEK, which calls for the overthrow of Iran's clerical rulers and fought alongside the forces of former Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, was relocated last year from its long-time Iraqi home in exile at Camp Ashraf.

The MEK is no longer welcome in Iraq under the Shi'ite Muslim-led government, which came to power after U.S.-led forces invaded and toppled Saddam in 2003.

But some U.S. politicians view it as a potential opposition force to replace Tehran's rulers and have taken up their cause in Washington. The congressional delegation issued its statement after meeting with Maryam Rajavi, who heads the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).

"Iran needs regime change and the MEK can help bring it about," the congressional delegation said, sharply criticizing the U.N. mission in Iraq for failing to grant more MEK members in Camp Liberty the status of refugees.

"The U.S. Government, the Secretary General of the United Nations, and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees should give top priority to resolving the security situation of the residents of Camp Liberty - which can be ensured by their return to Camp Ashraf."

(Reporting By Alister Bull; Editing by Philip Barbara)

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