MONACO (Reuters) - Lewis Hamilton made his point and Roscoe, his pampered pet bulldog, promptly proved him right at the Monaco Grand Prix on Wednesday.

Positioning, the 2008 Formula One world champion told British reporters gathered round him in the Mercedes harbourside motorhome, is everything in Monaco.

The Briton was referring to the special skills required to win the most glamorous and glittering race on the calendar but Roscoe demonstrated that positioning was important in other ways as well.

Nestled with his head on Hamilton's lap, the puppy stretched out comfortably on the bench alongside and started to snore - loudly.

"He was out late last night," said Hamilton, smiling as he completely lost the thread of the conversation amid general laughter.

"He does it all the time. When I go to bed, he sits next to the bed or on it, and that's how he snores."

Hamilton - who has a colorful new helmet for Monaco with a cartoon of himself, Roscoe and American pop singer girlfriend Nicole Scherzinger together in a car - could also be sitting pretty this weekend if Mercedes can repeat their qualifying form of the past three races.

The team are chasing their fourth pole position in a row, with Hamilton's German team mate Nico Rosberg looking for a hat-trick.

In Spain earlier this month, the pair swept the front row but struggled with the tires in the race. Hamilton went from second to 12th and was lapped but Monaco is kinder on the tires and far harder for drivers to overtake.

"Positioning is everything here and if we can get on the front row then that will put us in good stead for the race," said Hamilton.

"In 2007 I was in second and I couldn't get past Fernando (Alonso). Last year no-one could get past (Mark) Webber, it was just a train, so you can create a train here.

"The best chance is when you get on pole position. (Spain) was my best chance to get a win and we didn't do it. This is another chance, another opportunity to do that."

HUGE REACTION

Mercedes were mystified after Barcelona about why their tires lost performance so quickly, with the team looking at everything from procedures to how the drivers handled the tires. Hamilton was optimistic that progress had been made.

"There has been a huge reaction from the guys to the result. Everyone is working as hard as they can to improve and understand the tires," he said.

"We still need to experiment, to try different pressures, different temperatures and all those kind of things. We just find the right path ourselves and hopefully we will find that sooner rather than later."

Hamilton has had two third places in five races, already much better than many had predicted when he left McLaren at the end of last season for a team struggling to be competitive.

However, such had been Mercedes' improvement that it came as a real shock to struggle so much in the first race back in Europe after the long haul rounds in Asia and the Middle East.

"We were on a bit of a high," he said. "To see us then go back that far was definitely a huge surprise and put us on the back foot a little...but I feel positive about this weekend, I'm re-energized, refocused and ready for another challenge.

"Spain could easily be repeated if we get it wrong, although I don't think it's going to happen because we have learned, and we are learning and improving. We went a direction in the last race with the car and tires that didn't help.

"The problems we had in the previous races weren't too big, so we have taken a step back and gone in a different direction."

(Editing by Mark Meadows)

This month, tuber processing giant J.R. Simplot Co. asked the U.S. government to approve five varieties of biotech potatoes. They're engineered not to develop ugly black bruises. McDonald's, which gets many of its fries from Simplot, rejects those. They're also designed to have less of a natural but potentially cancer-causing neurotoxin, acrylamide.

Much has changed in 12 years, according to the Boise-based company.

Unlike transgenic varieties Monsanto commercialized in the 1990s using genes from synthetic bacteria to kill insect pests, Simplot's new "Innate"-brand potatoes use only potato genes.

Haven Baker, Simplot's Yale- and Harvard University-trained vice-president of plant sciences, said his scientists journeyed inside the vegetable's genome to "silence" unwanted attributes, while making sure it remained 100 percent potato.

"You'll never get as much beneficial effect from traditional plant breeding," he said. "And it'll take twice as long."

Those in the industry remember Monsanto's ill-fated foray and say Simplot's major challenge in avoiding a similar fate is ensuring its product is acceptable among growers, processors and, ultimately, people eating it.

"Unless your customers are prepared to embrace this product, it's not going to be successful," said Frank Muir, president of the Idaho Potato Commission that represents Idaho's $3 billion industry. His group, whose website currently boasts Idaho potatoes aren't genetically engineered, hasn't weighed in on Simplot's endeavor.

But Muir does think the company is making the right moves: Reaching out to the industry, as well as consumers who may eventually buy Innate potatoes as big, un-bruised bakers or golden fries. "They're taking all the appropriate steps."

As the USDA and Food and Drug Administration embark on vetting Simplot's potatoes, the agencies are nearing completion of a similar review of a genetically engineered apple created by a Canadian company, Okanagan Specialty Fruits, to resist browning when cut.

The apple industry has opposed Okanagan's "Arctic" apple, on grounds it could create marketing headaches for growers of unmodified apples. Christian Schlect, the Northwest Horticultural Council president, said he hopes the potatoes go to market first.

"We'd just as soon the potato people take the initial foray on marketing this technology, and we'll follow their experience," he said.

In fact, the two products, should they win the government's blessing, could hit customers about the same time, 2015 or 2016.

Baker said with Simplot's new potatoes, growers would earn more money with less wastage from bruising, something that can affect up to 5 percent of their harvest. Additionally, the spuds are designed to produce acrylamide levels so low they skirt California's strict, voter-mandated cancer labels on french fries and potato chips, he said.

McDonald's didn't return a call seeking comment about the tubers. A big Simplot processing rival, ConAgra, says its potatoes are not genetically engineered.

Twelve years on, St. Louis-based Monsanto remains tight lipped about jettisoning its "New Leaf" potatoes engineered, among other things, to kill Colorado potato beetles. That was a business decision "not influenced by any negative reaction to genetically-modified organisms," spokeswoman Carly Scaduto said.

But experts say plunging interest including from Simplot, which told farmers in Idaho and North Dakota in 2000 to quit planting New Leaf potatoes after restaurants like McDonald's banished them from their fryers drove the spuds from the fields. Monsanto's biotech potatoes, planted on 55,000 acres in North America in 1996, disappeared by 2002.

Joe Guenther, a University of Idaho professor of agricultural economics, in 2011 won funding from Simplot to survey potato industry players about re-introducing genetically engineered potatoes into the food chain. His conclusion: It could succeed, provided potatoes were modified with potato genes, not foreign microorganisms that in the 1990s spawned terms like "frankenfood."

"The Monsanto product crossed that species line," Guenther said. "The exciting thing about the Simplot product is, it stays within the potato species."

Another thing Guenther's 2011 report said would help was backing from an environmental group, something that remains a scarce commodity. Groups worried about corporations commandeering potato genes a decade ago remain no less alarmed.

Bill Freese, science policy analyst with Washington, D.C.-based Center for Food Safety, said Simplot's potatoes join a litany of other genetically engineered crops that don't face rigorous-enough USDA or FDA testing.

While Simplot's Baker said 20 field trials demonstrate Innate potatoes exhibit characteristics virtually identical to their unmodified cousins, Freese painted a darker picture: Genetic engineering is a noisy, unpredictable process, where the best-intentionedgenome tinkering could be accompanied by unforeseen effects on human health and the environment.

Freese said the absence of long-term animal feeding trials and labeling requirements is also cause for worry, since potatoes are staple crops people eat directly. Freese predicted Innate potatoes will fail, just like Monsanto's did.

"The question is why do they continue to so miscalculate public perception?" he said. "The biotech approach is to change the food on a genetic level in quite frankly risky ways with inadequate regulation to adapt a crop to an industrial food system that's really unhealthy in so many ways."

Simplot's Baker pointed to, among other sources, the FDA, which says genetically-engineered foods it reviews meets the same safety requirements as those from traditionally-bred plants. "The nutrients and allergens are no different from conventional potatoes," he said.

The Washington, D.C.-based National Potato Commission, representing 45,000 U.S. growers, learned of Simplot's plans several months ago. Chief Executive Officer John Keeling said it supports scientific advancements to improve potatoes, but has advised Simplot to avoid past mistakes.

For instance, some Monsanto tubers found their way into Japan, where they weren't approved. After that, Japan-bound U.S. potatoes had to be tested, he said.

"If some parts of the marketplace are saying they don't want Innate technology and others want it, you've got to be able to address both of those issues." Keeling said. "Simplot seems to have taken to heart the thoughts that we had."

Simplot is seeking approval in Japan, as well as Canada, Mexico and South Korea.

Resident Lindiwe Mngomezulu allows curiosity-seekers to get a close-up look at the non-venomous snakes she keeps in her home, and she drapes them over tourists' shoulders for a small fee. She and her 19-year-old daughter, Nolwandle Duma, started raising snakes three years ago after going to see a snake show and coming away impressed.

Mngomezulu, 55, has two albino pythons, a Burmese python, a boa constrictor, an anaconda and a corn snake. It costs about $30 a week to feed them. She and Duma also own a bearded dragon lizard and two spiders.

They show off their snakes in their Vilakazi Street home, where tourists and local schoolchildren have become regulars. Mngomezulu said many have since overcome their fear of reptiles, which she described as harmless if handled with care. She urged people not to think of snakes as a menace.

"People are killing snakes every day," Mngomezulu said. "That's not right."

Her smallest snake, the corn snake, measures 1.2 meters (3.9 feet). The Burmese python is 3 meters (9.8 feet) long and, at 30 kilograms (66 pounds), is her heaviest snake.

Mngomezulu said her goal is to expand her snake show beyond Soweto. She is awaiting a permit that would allow her to take her snakes to non-residential areas and hopes money raised can help her to buy more snakes and get formal training from a recognized association. She is registered with the West Rand Herpetological Association, a local club for reptile lovers.

Andre Lourens, the association's chairman, said Mngomezulu's show has been instrumental in dispelling the false notion that all snakes are dangerous.

"They are no more dangerous than any dogs running down the streets, if you take into consideration the amount of dog bites here in South Africa or number of people hit by lightning," Lourens said.

Duma is saving money for university, where she plans to study zoology or psychology. She said she hopes her experience interacting with the reptiles and educating people about them could lead to a long-term career working with animals.

Representative Bachmann, who had run campaign ads as recently as last week, is facing several investigations concerning alleged financial impropriety in her 2012 presidential campaign and was rumored to be considering retirement after a bruising reelection fight in 2012.

She announced her decision to leave the House after her current term in aon her campaign website early Wednesday morning.

Ive always strived to be first and foremost a public servant, and do what is best for the people never acquiesce to being a political servant, Bachmann said in the video. Theres a difference.

The problem for Bachmann is and always was that her congressional career was more of the latter than the former.

Love her or hate her, there is Michele Bachmann the candidate, and then there is Michele Bachmann the national media personality, wrote the Cook Political Report, describing her close reelection race in 2008. The candidate can come across to 6th [Congressional District] voters as polished, down-home, and cheerful. The media personality can sometimes come across to a national audience as extreme, abrasive, and even incendiary. Both personas are fiercely conservative, but on occasion, the second has become the enemy of the first.

In her video, nearly nine minutes long, Bachmann speaks of some Minnesota-centric goals for the remainder of her term trying to reopen an airport in her suburban Twin Cities district, for example. But the message is also full of discussion about political pursuits that achieved little legislative success but got millions of YouTube hits.

In 2013, for example, she was the main sponsor of the bill to fully repeal s health-care reform law, the s passionate and most quixotic quest. When the House voted to do so two weeks ago, it was the third time Republicans put on record their intent to rip out the entire sprawling legislation. (At a conservative gathering earlier this year, Bachmann argued that the law was literally killing scores of Americans.)

That measure was the first Bachmann-led legislation to clear the House in her four terms in office.

Bachmann's legacy will likely be found in her short-lived 2012 presidential campaign (she won the Iowa straw poll and knocked fellow Minnesotan Tim Pawlenty, a former governor, out of the race, before her campaign stumbled) and in her long list of off-key public statements.

Delivering the tea party response to President Obamas 2011 State of the Union address, Bachmann compared the nations debt crisis with the World War II war effort, ominously alluding to the need to beat back a totalitarian aggressor. In her farewell video, she denounced several midlevel members of the Obama administration as terrorist sympathizers and accused the administration of allowing, and perhaps even for encouraging the IRS targeting of conservative nonprofit groups for extra tax scrutiny.

I will continue to work vehemently and robustly to fight back against what most in the other party want to do to transform our country into becoming ... a nation that our Founders would hardly even recognize today, Bachmann said.

Then there were her garden-variety slips. She once waxed poetic in New Hampshire about being in the state where the Revolutionary War began (the first shots were fired in Massachusetts), swore once that Lady Liberty and [former vice presidential pick] Sarah Palin were lit by the same torch, and once disclosed potentially classified information about Pakistans nuclear program, which she had learned as part of her work on the House Intelligence Committee, during a presidential debate.

In Wednesdays video, Bachmann made a circuitous connection between her trip to the funeral of Britain's late former prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, and the need to repeal the financial regulatory law known as Dodd-Frank.

Bachmann was little known before the rise of the tea party and the GOPs thundering success in the 2010 midterms, but she seized the movements momentum on , founding the Tea Party Caucus and becoming a prodigious fundraiser. Bachmann has some $2 million in the bank already in 2013, a massive amount for a House member at this point in the election cycle.

But the 2012 election was less kind to some of the boldest flame-throwers of 2010, as fellow tea party stalwart Rep. Allen West (R) of Florida was deposed in a nasty contest and Bachmann was reelected by a slim margin of 4,300 votes.

Neither a tough reelection contest nor investigations by the FBI and the Federal Election Commission into alleged impropriety in her presidential campaign were reasons for stepping aside, she avowed in the video.

Does her departure strengthen Democrats' chances of picking up this House seat? No, wroteof the Rothenberg Political Report earlier this month, arguing Bachmann's retirement could actually dash Democrats' hopes.

Bachmanns near-loss to Minnesota hotelier Jim Graves who in 2012 got little help from the nationalbut who has received a shot of party attention this time showed that the congresswomans penchant for controversy was wearing thin, even in Minnesota's ruby-red Sixth District. (Mitt Romney carried it by 15 percentage points over Mr. Obama.)

While Bachmann spent her political career as a partisan, she showed flashes of a more accommodating side within the Minnesota delegation on Capitol Hill.

For the past three years, she whipped up a hotdish (a Minnesota speciality of casserole that is served, and this is key, in a Pyrex dish) for the state congressional contingents annual hotdish cook-off. During the past two, she spent the event bantering with her colleagues and putting good-natured pressure on the bipartisan panel of judges.

But Bachmann came up short in 2011 and 2012, missing even an honorable mention. In 2013, she namedafter her newly redrawn congressional district. (Minnesota Sen. Al Franken (D), also up for reelection in 2014, called his entry Willmar Stew.)

In 2013, too, Bachmann couldnt break through, and Rep. Tim Walz (D) took home the top prize.

But she may not be done yet.

My future is full, it is limitless, and my passions forwill remain, Bachmann said in the video. There is no future option or opportunity, whether directly in the political arena or otherwise, that I wont be giving serious consideration.

Related stories

Become a part of the Monitor community

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Director Baz Luhrmann brought "The Great Gatsby" home on Wednesday for its Australian premiere, with box-office success for the Sydney-produced film bolstering hopes for the resurgence of the local film industry.

The film, set in 1920s New York and starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby, is one of several international productions recently lured to Australia by federal government tax breaks and grants.

The ambitious third adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "great American novel" debuted at the Cannes Film Festival last week and has so far raked in $23.4 million, putting it in third place at the U.S. weekend box office behind "Star Trek into Darkness" and "Iron Man 3.

"We can take America's finest book and make a movie here in Australia," Luhrmann told reporters on the red carpet at the premiere. "I think this is our home. The crew, the actors, the state the government, everyone stood behind it."

A strong Aussie dollar made Australia an unpopular location for international film makers in recent years, but the government subsidies are burnishing its appeal.

"The Wolverine", starring Australian actor Hugh Jackman, recently completed filming in Sydney, while cameras are due to start rolling next on the Walt Disney Studios production of "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea".

The last big productions filmed in Australia before that were the Matrix Trilogy and "Mission: Impossible II" in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Luhrmann's wife Catherine Martin created from scratch the sets that evoke 1920s New York in Sydney's Fox Studios.

Locations around New South Wales serve as backdrops, while the picturesque town of Mount Wilson in the Blue Mountains, 100 km (60 miles) west of Sydney, stood in for Long Island.

"The Great Gatsby", which also stars Carey Mulligan and Tobey Maguire, has polarized critics but Luhrmann shrugged off the negative reviews.

"Fitzgerald was heavily criticized when he wrote the book. He was buying copies before he died just to make up his sales," Luhrmann said.

"Last week he sold more books than he ever did in his life and if that's because of the film then I'm all right with that."

(Writing by Elaine Lies and Jane Wardell; Editing by Miral Fahmy)

It will be the second time the Emmy Award-winning performer, who stars in the television series "How I Met Your Mother," will host the live broadcast from the Nokia Theater in Los Angeles on September 22.

"Four years ago, Neil was an amazing Emmy host and we are excited to have him back," Bruce Rosenblum, the Television Academy chairman and CEO, said in a statement. "Neil is an extremely gifted and inventive performer, and we look forward to seeing what he has in store this year."

Harris, a popular entertainment awards show host, said he "couldn't be more honored and excited" to host the Emmy Awards.

He is also hosting the Tony Awards, which honor the best of Broadway, from Radio City Music Hall in New York next month. It will be his fourth stint at the Tony Awards.

The actor is a three-time Emmy Award winner for his guest roles on "Glee" and as host of the 2009 and 2011 Tony Awards.

(Reporting by Patricia Reaney; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

A powerful new ultraviolet laser that fires into the night sky is helping scientists take their most detailed look yet at a distant star cluster.

A team of astronomers at the Southern Astrophysical Research (SOAR) telescope and the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in Chile used an instrument called SOAR Adaptive Module, or simply SAM, to peer deep inside the crowded NGC 6496 cluster to understand how itsevolved.

The researchers measured the color and brightness of over 7,000 stars in NGC 6496, and determined that the star cluster is 10.5 billion years old and 32,600 light years away from Earth the most exact measurement yet of the star cluster's key parameters. []

The study also suggests that NGC 6496s stars have a much higher proportion of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium than most clusters of its kind. The research will be detailed in an upcoming edition of the Astronomical Journal.

Star clusterscome in two types: globular clusters, which are home to hundreds of thousands of gravitationally bound and very ancient stars, many of them nearly 10 billion years old; and open star clusters, which are normally very young and contain only a few hundred stars.

NGC 6496 is a globular cluster. According to study team member Andrea Kunder of CTIO, such clusters are "some of the most interesting objects in the Milky Way, because they are so old, and also because they are some of the few visible objects in the galactic halo."

The galactic halo extends beyond the visible part of a galaxy and is composed mainly of , which cannot be observed directly, researchers said.

"Just like archaeologists use fossils to reconstruct the history of the Earth, astronomers use globular clusters to reconstruct the history of the galaxy," Kunder said. "There are only about 150 globular clusters known in the , so each of these globular clusters is an important tracer of the galactic halo and the formation of the Milky Way Galaxy."

NGC 6496 lies on the other side of Milky Way's center, so when you look at it from Earth, you have to peer through a lot of gas and dust. That is why during previous ground-based observations it was tricky to measure with certainty its basic parameters, such as its distance from the Earth and precise age, said study team member Luciano Fraga from the National Astrophysics Laboratory (LNA) in Brazil.In 2003 the cluster had been studied with the Hubble Space Telescope, and the new observations using SAM have made it possible to improve the original measurements.

It took a decade to develop and build SAM, at a cost of $4.5 million. And on its very first use it already helped to improve the image quality from observations.

"Quite honestly, this cluster was chosen because it was visible in the night sky when SAM was being commissioned. We needed a target to observe, and this cluster was up at the right time. We also knew that it hadn't been studied very extensively, so we thought we could contribute to a further understanding of the properties of this cluster," Kunder said.

Twinkling artificial stars

SAM is a type of a Laser Guide Star (LSG) a powerful laser that creates an . It is used as a reference star to help astronomers get a better image of the celestial object they wish to observe.

Most skywatchers are likely used to seeing stars twinkle. That twinkling appears because of the turbulence of the Earth's atmosphere. The atmospheric interference can make the image of a distant celestial object eyed with a ground-based telescope blurry. This fuzziness is especially unwelcome when looking at star clusters, where stars are close together and several stars may appear as one big one.

To sharpen the images, astronomers have to correct for atmospheric turbulence. To do so, they need to measure the blurring of a bright reference star in the vicinity of the object being observed. Telescopes with a so-called deformable mirror are then adjusted to cancel out the atmospheric distortion. This is called "," and makes it possible to achieve an image quality that is similar to that of telescopes in space. []

But natural stars are not always available to act as a reference. According to astronomers only about 1 percent of stars are bright enough to be used for adaptive optics. So in the vast majority of cases, they need to create a star from scratch by using lasers.

However, the wavelength of the laser has to be close to the wavelength observed by the telescope. On some major telescopes, such as the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at Paranal Observatory in Chile, astronomers use a powerful near-infraredat an altitude of about 90km, which allows them to make observations in the infrared range.

SAM, the new instrument, shoots an ultraviolet laser to the "ground layer" of the atmosphere at about 10km above sea level. That helps to guide the adaptive optics of telescopes working at visible wavelength. It is also cheaper to use, and covers a wider field of view (3 arc minutes).

Kunder said with its sharper images, the system made it possible to see that objects previously appearing as single bright stars were actually groups of two, three or even four stars.

"Stars that were otherwise compromised by light smearing out from the atmosphere were sharpened, allowing us to observe more stars with better precision," she added. "We could therefore peer into the heart of the cluster without worrying about the smearing out of light from the high density of stars in the very center of the cluster."

Editor's Note: This story was updated to correct an error in a press release describing the technology. The instrument is located at theSouthernAstrophysical Research (SOAR) telescope, not theSouthern Observatory for Astrophysical Research (SOAR), as was orignally stated.

Follow us ,and . Original article on .

Nelsons will be the leading U.S. symphony's youngest conductor in more than a century when he begins the 2013-14 season as "music director designate." He will assume the full title of music director for the 2014-15 season.

"Sought after by the top orchestras and opera houses of the world, Maestro Nelsons, at age 34, is already considered one of the most brilliant conductors of our time," said Chairman of the BSO Board of Trustees Ted Kelly in a press release.

Nelsons, who is currently conducting the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in the United Kingdom, said in the release that his appointment to the BSO marked "one of the highest achievements a conductor could hope for in his lifetime."

The Boston Symphony has been without a permanent music director since 2011, when Levine - one of the leading forces in U.S. classical music for the last four decades - left after seven seasons because of back problems and other health issues.

Levine, who also serves as music director of the Metropolitan Opera in New York, is due to return Sunday to the podium in New York, where he will conduct excerpts from Wagner's Lohengrin and Schubert's "Great" Symphony.

Nelsons is scheduled to make his first official appearance at the head of the orchestra in Boston in October, leading Wagner's Siegfried Idyll, Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 25 in C, and Brahms's Symphony No. 3.

(Writing by Richard Valdmanis; Editing by Scott Malone and Gunna Dickson)

An irate fan threw a set of dentures at coach Ricardo Caruso Lombardi during Monday's 3-1 home defeat by Belgrano that left Argentinos bottom of the "Final" championship standings.

The result pushed the club where Diego Maradona started his professional career closer to the bottom three places in the relegation table based on teams' average points over three seasons.

Conspiracy theories have circulated that club president Luis Segura has made a deal with AFA President Julio Grondona for Argentinos to go down instead of big guns Independiente.

Grondona was president of Independiente, who are one of Argentina's 'Big Five' and have never been relegated, before he became AFA chief in 1979.

"I'm not going to put up with being insulted and attacked," said Segura of his resignation from his post as vice chairman of the AFA's executive committee.

"I presented my resignation as vice president of AFA and I think that answers those who doubted about a pact with Grondona," Segura told reporters.

Independiente are in the bottom three of the relegation standings who go down at the end of the season in June. Argentinos are the lowest team outside the drop zone.

The teams have had contrasting form in their last five matches with Independiente picking up 10 points and Argentinos losing all their games. There are five matches left.

Caruso Lombardi said: "If we have to go (down) we'll do it with our head held high. They'll have to take this team away in an ambulance."

(Reporting by Rex Gowar; Editing by Peter Rutherford)