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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The departure of U.S. actress Leah Remini from the Church of Scientology this week raised new questions about the relationship top leaders assume with their high-profile Hollywood members and their ability to retain them.

The New York Post, which first reported Remini's defection on Thursday, said the actress chose to leave after "being subjected to years of 'interrogations' and 'thought modification' for questioning leader David Miscavige's rule," citing an unnamed source.

Remini, 43, best known for her role as Carrie Heffernan in the CBS comedy "King of Queens," released a statement thanking supporters on Thursday, but both she and her representatives declined to comment on her reasons for leaving the church.

It was not possible to independently confirm Miscavige's role in Remini's departure.

The Church of Scientology had no comment on Remini leaving the movement but said the allegations against Miscavige and the characterization of interrogations were "categorically false."

Miscavige, 53, who became the church's leader in 1987, refocused Scientology as a celebrity-friendly religion that depended on the name recognition and deep pockets of Hollywood stars, said Janet Reitman, the author of "Inside Scientology: The Story of America's Most Secretive Religion."

"Celebrities are treated better than any other human being with that organization," she said. "They are the kings and queens of Scientology."

But Remini's departure suggests that celebrities are feeling uncomfortable in the church, especially if leadership is putting them through what Scientology calls security checks, an intense confessional, Reitman said.

"That used to be something the church was careful not to do," the author added. "They would do anything they could to make them comfortable because they needed them."

A SUPPORTER LOST

Scientology, which was founded in 1954 by science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, has attracted several Hollywood stars including Tom Cruise and John Travolta.

It believes that humans are immortal beings whose experience extends beyond one lifetime, but critics of the church describe it as a cult that harasses people who try and quit, a criticism the movement rejects.

Former Scientologist Nancy Many, who was involved with the church's celebrity circle for more than two decades and left Scientology in 1996, is a fierce critic and believes Miscavige's power with celebrities is waning.

The New York Post linked Remini's falling out with the church to the 2006 wedding of Cruise and Katie Holmes, when Remini reportedly asked about Miscavige's wife, who was not present.

"Leah asked about David's wife and came under an unbelievable torrent of attack on her, an attack and inquisition," Many told Reuters.

Mike Rinder, a former church spokesman who writes a blog, said Remini got tired of being told what to do.

"As a result, the church has lost one of its most effective supporters - both in the public relations arena and their bank balances," he wrote in a blog post.

Departures from the church have become the trend in recent years, said Reitman.

Well-known names to have left the church recently have been Oscar-winning director Paul Haggis, actor Jason Beghe and Holmes, who left the church after her divorce from Cruise last year.

In Reitman's view, change from within the church is nearly impossible because the church has yet to reform despite the recent spate of celebrities breaking ranks.

"They're just going to continue on as they've been continuing on," Reitman said. "If they were to truly want to rebound, I think they would have to lose their leadership."

(Editing by Mary Milliken and Eric Walsh)

The newwas recorded by American astronaut Karen Nyberg, one of six space travelers now living on the International Space Station. She posted it on YouTube and Twitter Tuesday (July 9), in what is the latest astronaut video to show what it is like to live in space.

"I've had a lot of people ask me how I wash my hair in space, and I thought I'd show you how I do it," Nyberg, how has longish hair, explained in the video, as her locks floated around her. []

On Earth, washing your hair is a simple act of standing under a shower and lathering shampoo on your melon. But there's no shower on the space station, and even if there were the water wouldn't fall down it would spray everywhere in weightless blobs.

According to Nyberg, there are some must-have tools she relies on to wash her hair: a small pouch of warm water, a bottle of no-rinse shampoo, a towel and a comb.

"What I like to do is start by putting some hot water, squirting it onto my scalp. And I have a mirror so I can kind of watch what I'm doing," Nyberg said as a . "Sometimes the water gets away from you and you try and catch as much as you can. Then I just work the water up through to the ends of my hair."

It sounds simple, but in the video Nyberg is careful to keep her hair in a manageable position, combing it out above her head until it looks like it's standing straight up a 'do that would defy gravity on Earth. Then it's time for shampoo, which Nyberg adds to her hair just like the water, from the scalp up.

"Sometimes I'll take my comb and help work it all the way to the ends. Then I like to take my towel while I have the shampoo in there and work it," Nyberg said while demonstrating the technique. "Because without standing under running water, you kind of need to use the towel a little bit to help get some of the dirt out."

After that, Nyberg adds a bit more water she's found that a touch more water helps, despite the no-rinse part of her no-rinse shampoo.

"It actually feels kind of squeaky clean right now," Nyberg said. The same towel used to work the shampoo into her hair can be used to dry it in order to conserve precious supplies, Nyberg added.

Then, it's time for space age tech to kick in.

"And now as my hair dries, as the water evaporates from my hair, it will become humidity in the air, and our air conditioning system will collect that into condensate," Nyberg said. "It won't be long and our water processing system will turn that into drinking water."

One last run through with a comb ensures no snags or snarls, she added.

"While it dries, I just let it stay free. I don't put it back into a ponytail while it's drying," Nyberg said. "And that is how I wash my hair in space on the International Space Station."

Astronautis a flight engineer on the Expedition 36 crew living aboard the space station. She launched into space in late May and will spend nearly half a year in orbit before returning to Earth in November.

Nyberg's hair-washing demonstration is the latest in a series of astronaut video how-to guides for life in space. Earlier this year, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded several video demonstrations of daily life in orbit, including , how to brush your teeth, and .

Theis currently home to a crew of astronauts and cosmonauts representing the United States, Russia and Europe. In addition to Nyberg, the crew includes American Chris Cassidy, Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency, and Russian cosmonauts Alexader Misurkin, Pavel Vinogradov and Fyodor Yurchikhin.

Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow himandFollow us ,and . Original article on .

Lamm, from the self-storage search engine , crafted chilling illustrations that depict how  could have Venice, San Diego and many other metropolitan cities gasping for air.

With the help ofsea level rise maps and flood formulas, Lamm used data to create realistic images of American towns completely submerged in seawater. He started with stock photos of a city and cross-referenced their location to topography maps. Lamm then implemented a formula that determined what that city would look like using elevation, tide and sea level forecasts.

By illustrating what sea level rise will look like in real life, Lamm tells , I'm hoping to make our rising oceans a bigger issue on peoples' minds.

forecasts that the Earths temperature will rise by between three and seven more degrees Fahrenheit by 2100. Since climbing temperatures mean melting polar ice caps and rising seas, thepredicts that the sea level is expected to rise between two and seven feet by the centurys end.

So what are we waiting for? If we go with the flow and let climate change swell, our greatest cities could be in deep water. 

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The bull run at San Fermin - made famous by Ernest Hemingway in his novel "The Sun Also Rises" - is one of hundreds in Spain every year and attracts large numbers of foreign visitors.

Local authorities said a 19-year-old Spaniard was being treated in hospital and was in a "very serious" condition. A 28-year-old man from Ireland had suffered chest trauma although his injuries were not thought to be as serious, they said.

At least 23 people were being treated in hospital, medical officials said. A 35-year-old man American was gored in the buttocks by a bull during the run, while an 18-year-old from Spain was gored in the armpit in the scrum at the bullring gate.

The sheer number of runners trying to enter the ring had forced shut a door that was usually left open. Runners and bulls were trapped together in the bottleneck for almost two minutes.

Three men were gored during Friday's run, including an American tourist who had to have his spleen removed.

The Pamplona run takes place at 8 a.m. (2:00 a.m. EDT) every morning for one week in July. Saturday's run lasted 4 minutes and 15 seconds. Sunday is the last day.

Goring happens from time to time but stampedes are rare and only 14 have died in the last 100 years in the San Fermin run - a festival that that dates from the 13th century.

Runners dress all in white with red neckerchiefs and many spectators stay up drinking all night in bars beforehand.

The bulls are usually killed by bullfighters in the ring.

(Reporting by Susana Vera and Clare Kane; Editing by Louise Ireland)

BOSTON (Reuters) - The annual Def Con hacking convention has asked the U.S. federal government to stay away this year for the first time in its 21-year history, saying Edward Snowden's revelations have made some in the community uncomfortable about its presence.

"It would be best for everyone involved if the Feds call a 'time-out' and not attend Def Con this year," conference founder Jeff Moss said in an announcement posted Wednesday night on the convention's website.

An irreverent crowd of more than 15,000 hackers, researchers, corporate security experts, privacy advocates, artists and others are expected to attend the Las Vegas convention, which begins on August 2.

Moss, who is an advisor on cyber security to the Department of Homeland Security, told Reuters it was "a tough call," but he believed the Def Con community needs time to make sense of recent revelations about U.S. surveillance programs.

"The community is digesting things that the Feds have had a decade to understand and come to terms with," said Moss, who is known as The Dark Tangent in hacking circles. "A little bit of time and distance can be a healthy thing, especially when emotions are running high."

He said the move was designed to defuse tension.

"We are not going on a witch hunt or checking IDs and kicking people out," he said.

The conference has attracted officials from agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigations, Secret Service and all branches of the military.

Last year, four-star General Keith Alexander, head of the NSA, was a keynote speaker at the event, which is the world's largest annual hacking conference.

The audience was respectful, gave modest applause and also asked about secret government snooping. Alexander adamantly denied the NSA has dossiers on millions of Americans, as some former employees had suggested before the Snowden case.

"The people who would say we are doing that should know better," Alexander said. "That is absolute nonsense."

Alexander is scheduled to speak in Las Vegas on July 31 at Black Hat, a smaller, two-day hacking conference that Moss also founded, but sold almost eight years ago. It costs about $2,000 to attend Black Hat, which attracts a more corporate crowd than the $180 Def Con.

Black Hat General Manager Trey Ford said that the NSA has confirmed that Alexander will speak at his conference, which is owned by UBM Plc, a global media company. Security will be heightened and Alexander will take questions from the audience, Ford said.

An NSA spokeswoman confirmed Alexander would attend, but did not elaborate or comment on Def Con's request that the Federal government not attend.

The government had previously always been welcome at Def Con, where hard core hackers have held tongue-in-cheek "spot the Fed" contests to identify government officials who often stick out in the colorful crowd.

Moss says he invited them the first year because he believed they would come anyway. They politely declined, then showed up incognito, he said. They have attended every year since and Moss said he has developed many friends among them.

"We created an environment where the Feds felt they could come and it wasn't hostile," Moss said in an interview a year ago. "We could ask them questions and they wanted to ask the hackers about new techniques."

Some federal officials have even worked among the motley crew of Def Con volunteers who run the conference and walk around wearing T-Shirts that identify them as "goons."

It has also become a fertile venue for recruiting. The U.S. military, intelligence agencies and law enforcement typically compete with corporations to find new talent at Def Con.

The Department of Homeland Security and FBI declined comment. Pentagon officials could not be reached

(Editing by Susan Fenton and Andre Grenon)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Huawei Technologies, Nokia Corp and ZTE Corp did not violate cell phone patents owned by InterDigital Inc, a judge at the International Trade Commission said in a preliminary decision on Friday.

The ITC's final decision in the case is expected to be issued in October.

InterDigital, which buys and licenses patents, had accused the companies of violating seven patents used to make 3G wireless devices. The patents cover conservation of power and ensuring the right data goes to the right recipient, among other technology.

LG Electronics had been named in the original complaint but settled with InterDigital.

InterDigital asked the ITC to ban the U.S. sale of the three companies' 3G wireless mobile devices. While much of the world is moving to 4G, 3G remains broadly in use.

The ITC, a quasi-judicial federal agency, is a popular venue for patent fights because its docket moves fairly quickly and it can order a sales ban for any device which infringes a patent.

(Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by David Gregorio)

The online blueprints for a fully functional 3D-printed gun have disappeared faster than a speeding bullet.

On Wednesday, the State Department ordered the company that posted the schematics, Defense Distributed, to remove them from the web. (Watch a Defense Distributed video explaining the gun above.) According to the State Department, publicly posting the instructions may have violated the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which governs the "transfer of, and access to" certain weapons and their technical details. By posting the files to the web where anyone in the world could download them, the company may have inadvertently violated those export restrictions.

"Please note that disclosing (including oral or visual disclosure) or transferring technical data to a foreign person, whether in the United States or abroad, is considered an export," the State Department  in a letter.

However, the State Department did not say that the instructions must remain offline for good. Rather, the department asked that Defense Distributed file the necessary paperwork for the government to determine if the blueprints are, in fact, a violation of ITAR. In the meantime, State wrote, the company "should treat the above technical data as ITAR-controlled."

That letter came just two days after Defense Distributed, through its open-source printing project DEFCAD, posted the instructions for its "Liberator" handgun to the Internet. In just three days, the instructions had already been downloaded more than 

Here's how it works, :

Fifteen of the gun's 16 pieces are constructed on the $8,000 Stratasys Dimension SST 3D printer, Forbes said. The final piece is a common nail, used as a firing pin, that can be found in a hardware store. []

And indeed, by Thursday evening, the webpage to download the instructions had been updated with the : "This file has been removed from public access at the request of the US Department of Defense Trade Controls. Until further notice, the United States government claims control of the information."

Still, the federal order does not mean all copies of the blueprints have been be wiped from the web. The instructions have been posted to the file-sharing sites Pirate Bay and Mega, among others, meaning they're still available for download.

Wilson, who claims to have been inspired by anarchist writings, himself made that point in an , saying he thought he would ultimately be free from the government's oversight.

"I still think we win in the end," he said. "Because the files are all over the Internet, the Pirate Bay has it to think this can be stopped in any meaningful way is to misunderstand what the future of distributive technologies is about."

Lawmakers at the state and federal level have already moved to ban printable firearms.

In California, Democratic state Senator Leland Yee said in athat he would soon introduce a bill to ban weapons that "are invisible to metal detectors and that can be easily made without a background check." At the federal level, Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) have likewise called for legislation to ban such firearms.

"A terrorist, someone who's mentally ill, a spousal abuser, a felon can essentially open a gun factory in their garage," Schumer

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Kanye didn't care about satisfying radio with his latest album.

Neither does Jay-Z.

"Magna Carta Holy Grail," the rapper's 12th album, doesn't have the pop or mainstream appeal his past records have offered. The 16-track set, mostly helmed by Timbaland, is full of robust and moody hip-hop beats that maintain a nice groove, but don't expect any booming anthems or party jams here. Like Kanye, there isn't a single or music video ahead of the album's release, which comes out officially on Sunday though up to 1 million Samsung mobile phone users were able to download the album for free on July Fourth.

With the exception of rapping about fatherhood and infant daughter Blue Ivy, lyrically, "Magna Carta" doesn't tell us anything new about the superstar. We all know how he rose from selling drugs in the Brooklyn projects to become arguably the most important rapper of all-time, his multiplatinum feats, his awards, and the benefits of having a superstar wife Beyonce at his side.

But while Jay-Z continues to make headlines away from music, this album treads familiar ground, which makes the album dare we say it? average.

He'll remind you a couple times that Samsung bought 1 million copies of the record and gave it away three days early on songs like "Somewhere In America." There's similar flavor lyrically on "Tom Ford," with its freaky beats, and the bumping "Picasso Baby," where Beyonce gets a shout-out: "Sleeping every night next to Mona Lisa, the modern version, with better features."

It's when he talks about the other lady in his life, his 1-year-old daughter, where we see a rare side of the typically braggadocio rapper.

"Now I got tattoos on my body, psycho (expletive) in my lobby, I got haters in the paper, photos shoots with paparazzi, can't even take my daughter for a walk," he raps on "Holy Grail," a collaboration with Justin Timberlake. It's revealing, and especially special coming from the often-unfazed Jay-Z.

While Timberlake works well with Hova, his collaborations with Beyonce and Frank Ocean on "Part II (On the Run)" and "Ocean" rely too much on the R&B singers. There are other big names on the album, like Rick Ross, Pharrell and Nas, but "Magna Carta," it isn't designed like albums in the past. There are no catchy hooks to grab you in. The most excitement about the album hasn't been generated from the music, but it's promotion plan Jay-Z announced the album in a commercial during the NBA Finals and launched a series of videos explaining the recording process and songs. He's continuing to create new blueprints to debut his music. That should be congratulated, but the songs on "Magna Carta" don't boom like his business plan.

"Knock me to my knees about a million times, uncle said I'll never sell a million records, I sold a million records like a million times," he raps on "Crown."

Yes, you've defied the odds, but we want a little more from the king.

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Follow Mesfin Fekadu on Twitter: twitter.com/MusicMesfin

Founded in 1999 by an Israeli businessman and a professor of computer science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mobileye sold its 1 millionth driver assistance system last year. It has said it expects to sell 2 million more in 2013.

The Amsterdam-based company said the five equity investments totaled about $400 million. The figures provided by the company imply that the five investors collectively acquired roughly a 27 percent stake in Mobileye.

Mobileye did not name the buyers and sellers of the equity, but said some of the largest U.S.-based global institutional asset managers and a leading Chinese government-affiliated financial investor were among the investors who bought into the company.

A person familiar with the matter disclosed the names of these five new investors on condition of anonymity because their identities have been kept confidential. They are BlackRock Inc , Fidelity Investments, Wellington Management Co, car rental company Enterprise Holdings Inc and China's Sailing Capital Management, the person said.

Mobileye's collision-warning systems, sold to suppliers and automakers for a little more than $100 each, are an option for customers in car brands including Volvo AB , Ford Motor Coand Hyundai Corp .

Starting in 2014, Mobileye's products will be a standard feature on many cars because of new regulations that will require driver-assistance systems for cars to receive five-star safety ratings.

Mobileye's systems include a camera mounted on the windshield that takes pictures of what is in front of the driver. A chip, manufactured by STMicroelectronics , processes the images and in real-time issues audio-visual warnings to drivers on a small device on the dashboard.

Among the warnings are those for collision if another car is too close and if the car is in danger of hitting a pedestrian. The system automatically brakes before impact.

The transaction, in which Goldman Sachs & Coand Morgan Stanleyserved as the placement agents, is expected to close in August, Mobileye said.

(Reporting by Greg Roumeliotis in New York; Editing by Jan Paschal)