Obama calls on Iran to give back downed US drone (AP)

WASHINGTON ? The Obama administration has delivered a formal request to Iran for the return of a U.S. surveillance drone captured by Iranian armed forces, but said it is not hopeful that Iran will comply.

President Barack Obama said Monday that the U.S. wants the top-secret aircraft back. "We have asked for it back. We'll see how the Iranians respond," Obama said during a White House news conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Monday.

In an interview broadcast live Monday night on Venezuelan state television, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said nothing to suggest his country would grant the U.S. request.

"The Americans have perhaps decided to give us this spy plane," Ahmadinejad said. "We now have control of this plane."

Speaking through an interpreter, Ahmadinejad said: "There are people here who have been able to control this spy plane, who can surely analyze this plane's system also. ... In any case, now we have this spy plane."

On Tuesday, a semi-official Iranian news agency said authorities have shrugged off the U.S. request. Defense Minister Gen. Ahmad Vahidi said the United States should apologize for invading Iranian air space instead of asking for the return of the unmanned aircraft.

Obama wouldn't comment on what the Iranians might learn from studying the downed aircraft. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said it's difficult to know "just frankly how much they're going to be able to get from having obtained those parts."

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Panetta said they're not optimistic about getting the drone back because of recent Iranian behavior that Clinton said indicated "that the path that Iran seems to be going down is a dangerous one for themselves and the region."

"We submitted a formal request for the return of our lost equipment as we would in any situation to any government around the world," Clinton told reporters at a State Department news conference with British Foreign Secretary William Hague.

"Given Iran's behavior to date we do not expect them to comply but we are dealing with all of these provocations and concerning actions taken by Iran in close concert with our closest allies and partners," she said.

Panetta said the request to return the drone was appropriate. "I don't expect that that will happen," he said. "But I think it's important to make that request."

Neither Obama nor Clinton would provide details of the drone request, but diplomatic exchanges between Washington to Tehran are often handled by Switzerland, which represents U.S. interests in Iran. The State Department said Monday that the Swiss ambassador to Iran met with Iranian foreign ministry officials last week but refused to say what they discussed.

Iran TV reported earlier Monday that Iranian experts were in the final stages of recovering data from the RQ-170 Sentinel, which went down in Iran earlier this month. Tehran has cited the capture as a victory for Iran and displayed the nearly intact drone on state TV. U.S. officials say the aircraft malfunctioned and was not brought down by Iran.

Despite the incident, Clinton said the administration and its allies would continue to push Iran to engage over its nuclear program while at the same time increasing pressure on the regime with new, enhanced sanctions.

"We obviously believe strongly in a diplomatic approach. We want to see the Iranians engage and, as you know, we have attempted to bring about that engagement over the course of the last three-plus years. It has not proven effective, but we are not giving up on it," she said.

Standing beside Clinton, Hague agreed.

"We're not giving up on engagement with Iran, but on a number of occasions Iran has behaved in a way in recent weeks and months which has intensified confrontation with the rest of the world," he said. "We have seen an increasing predilection for dangerous and illegal adventures on the part of at least parts of the Iranian regime."

Clinton and Hague referred to the storming of British diplomatic compounds in Tehran, allegations that Iran tried to arrange the assassination of the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Iran's ongoing support for militant groups and its continued defiance of demands to prove its nuclear program is peaceful.

___

Associated Press writer Ian James in Venezuela contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/obama/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111213/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_obama_downed_drone

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Creativity Linked to Rule Bending

60-Second Science | Mind & Brain

People who scored high on standard tests for creativity were also more likely to be willing to cheat for personal gain. Sophie Bushwick reports

December 5, 2011?|

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Why do cheaters cheat? Perhaps because they can think up original ways to avoid work: a new study finds that creativity is tied to a willingness to cheat. The work is in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. [Francesca Gino and Dan Ariely, "The dark side of creativity: Original thinkers can be more dishonest"]

The teacher hands back copies of a multiple-choice test where you circled your answers. She then tells you to transfer your answers to a sheet where you fill in circles next to each answer. But your copy of the test includes her marks for the correct answers. If you were paid per correct answer, would you fill in the bubbles with your answers or the right ones?

The researchers used a variety of tests like this one to determine if the study?s participants were willing to cheat. In addition to integrity tests, the subjects underwent standard psychological evaluations to measure their creativity. The researchers found a significant correlation between innovative minds and a willingness to bend the rules for personal gain. Now, intelligence alone did not indicate dishonesty. But it may be creativity that puts the art in a con artist.

?Sophie Bushwick

[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=4d5ee2866effc78e8db5f57c4cf9f048

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Syria agrees to Arab observers under conditions (AP)

DAMASCUS, Syria ? Syria said Monday it would agree to allow Arab League observers into the country as part of a plan to end almost nine months of bloodshed, but placed a number of conditions, including the cancellation of deeply embarrassing economic sanctions.

Arab League chief Nabil Elaraby swiftly rebuffed Damascus' demands, and the Syrian opposition accused President Bashar Assad's regime of wasting time and trying to trick Arab leaders into reversing punitive measures against Damascus.

"Any announcements made by the Syrian regime while the military crackdown continuous has for us zero credibility," said Bassma Kodmani, a spokeswoman for the Syrian National Council, an opposition umbrella group.

Syria has already failed to meet several Arab League ultimatums to end the crackdown which the U.N. says has killed more than 4,000 people since the uprising against Assad erupted in March.

Damascus' failure to meet a Nov. 25 deadline to allow in observers drew Arab League sanctions, including a ban on dealings with the country's central bank and a freeze on government assets. The bloc also imposed a travel ban on 19 Syrian officials, including Assad's younger brother Maher, who is believed to be in command of much of the crackdown, as well as Cabinet ministers, intelligence chiefs and security officers.

The sanctions dealt a big blow to a regime that sees itself as a powerhouse of Arab nationalism.

Combined with sanctions from the United States, the European Union and Turkey, the Arab League's penalties are expected to inflict significant damage on Syria's economy and may undercut the regime's authority.

Damascus remains defiant, however, and has shown few signs of easing its crackdown. Activists said security forces killed at least 12 people Monday, most of them in the restive central province of Homs. And the military conducted large-scale military exercises over the weekend that appeared to be designed as a warning to the international community not to interfere in the Syrian crisis.

Arab leaders had given Syria a new deadline of Sunday to respond to the League's plan to end the crisis, calling for the regime to halt attacks on protesters, pull tanks out of cities, release political prisoners and allow journalists, rights groups and observers into the country.

Syria's Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem sent a letter Sunday to the Arab League chief in which he "responded positively" to the bloc's request to send observers to the country, ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi said.

But Syria's approval was coupled with significant conditions: The Arab League would have to immediately drop sanctions and agree to amendments ? a condition that League officials have previously rejected.

Makdissi also said Syria is insisting that the protocol be signed in Damascus rather than at the League's headquarters in Cairo. He added al-Moallem's message contained some "minor amendments that won't affect the essence of the plan."

But Elaraby said the letter contains "new components which we have not heard of earlier," and told reporters in Cairo that Syria's agreeing to sign the deal will not lead to the immediate lifting of punitive measures.

"These sanctions are in force until another decision is adopted by the Arab foreign ministers," he said.

He said the new Syrian conditions are being "discussed now with the Arab foreign ministers" and that nothing has been decided yet.

Kodmani, the Paris-based spokeswoman for the opposition Syrian National Council, said Damascus was trying to "embarrass" the Arab League, adding there was absolutely no justification for lifting the sanctions within the current crackdown.

On Monday, the New-York based Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the detention of U.S.-born blogger and press freedom campaigner Razan Ghazzawi, and called on Syrian authorities to immediately release her. Ghazzawi was arrested Sunday at the border while on her way to Jordan, according to a statement by the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression where she worked.

Despite Syria's growing isolation and sanctions, Assad is still in control and has a number of powerful allies that give him the means to push back against outside pressure, although Washington and its allies have shown little appetite for intervening in another Arab nation in turmoil as they did in Libya.

Syria wouldn't have to look far for prime targets to strike, sharing a border with U.S.-backed Israel and NATO-member Turkey.

The weekend maneuvers in Syria appeared to be designed to send this message.

The military exercises, which included missile tests and ground and air operations, were meant to test "the capabilities and the readiness of missile systems to respond to any possible aggression," state-run TV said. Syrian Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi said "the maneuvers were routine and planned earlier."

Syria is known to have surface-to-surface missiles such as Scuds, capable of hitting deep inside its archenemy Israel.

State-run news agency SANA quoted Defense Minister Dawoud Rajha as telling the forces that participated in the maneuvers "to be in full readiness to carry out any orders give to them."

___

Associated Press Writer Maamoun Youssef in Cairo, Egypt and Bassem Mroue in Beirut, Lebanon contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111205/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_syria

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White House Threatens Veto Of Indefinite Detention Bill

WASHINGTON -- Accusing the Senate of "political micromanagement" of national security, the White House Friday stood by its threat to veto a defense bill over controversial military detention provisions.

The National Defense Authorization Act passed Thursday by the Senate contains a section that spells out the military's power to detain Americans indefinitely without trial and mandates military detention for some terrorism suspects.

The White House warned last month that senior advisers would recommend a veto, saying the detainee provisions could restrict the ability of law enforcement to combat terrorism and "make the job of preventing terrorist attacks more difficult."

It also contended that rather than clarifying the rules, the bill was adding uncertainty to the difficult legal landscape around detentions. Civil libertarians and many senators opposed to the detainee section charged that the bill was trampling Americans' basic rights to due process.

The Senate sought to sooth the objections Thursday night by adding an amendment that says the provision will not affect current law on detainees.

It won almost unanimous passage in the Senate, but the compromise was not sufficient for the White House.

"Republican and Democratic administrations... have said that the language in this bill would jeopardize our national security by restricting flexibility in our fight against al Qaeda," spokesman Jay Carney said in his daily briefing Friday. "By ignoring these nonpartisan recommendations -- including the recommendations of the secretary of defense, the director of the FBI, the director of national Intelligence and the attorney general -- the Senate has unfortunately engaged in a little political micromanagement at the expense of sensible national security policies.

"So our position has not changed," Carney added. "Any bill that challenges or constrains the president's critical authorities to collect intelligence, incapacitate dangerous terrorists and protect the nation would prompt his senior advisers to recommend a veto."

A former Bush administration official echoed Carney.

"I sympathize with what the sponsors are trying to do," said John Bellinger, a partner at the law firm Arnold and Porter who served as legal adviser to the State Department and the National Security Council. "But these provisions go far beyond anything the Bush administration either did, or would have tolerated."

Bellinger was referring specifically to the two sections in the bill that mandate military detention and heavily restrict where and how terrorism detainees must be imprisoned, as well as rules for moving them.

"Those are the kind of micromanagement of the president's military and law enforcement authority that the Bush administration opposed adamantly... particularly when it came to prosecuting the war with al Qaeda," Bellinger said.

Bellinger also warned that the detainee provision could threaten the ability of U.S. officials to get cooperation from allies who are likely to object to indefinite detentions, and could therefore be unwilling to provide information that leads to people being captured.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee who managed the bill, was traveling and could not be reached for comment.

MIchael McAuliff covers Congress and politics for The Huffington Post. Talk to him on Facebook.

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/02/white-house-veto-indefinite-detention_n_1126399.html

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Road out of Afghanistan: On the ground with US troops in potential final push

The recent battle for the Kajaki Valley in Helmand Province, which ended with few casualties and Taliban fighters in flight, may mark the last major operation for US troops in Afghanistan.

Kajaki Valley, Afghanistan

A group of marines huddles around the top enlisted marine in their unit, who had come to visit newly established US patrol bases throughout the Kajaki Valley in Helmand Province.

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A week earlier, they had been part of a force of 600 marines and several Afghan Army and police units who flooded the valley. Though US forces have made progress throughout Helmand during the past year, Kajaki had remained one of the last major areas still under Taliban control.

Now, with several US Marine and Afghan military bases established in the valley and little resistance from the Taliban, the Helmand operation appears to have been more successful than many marines had expected.

Looking to inspire a platoon that had three men medevacked during the initial assault and had been living outdoors without tents or cots since the operation began, the 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment's Sgt. Maj. Larry Harrington tells the group of assembled marines, "It started for me in Kandahar in 2001, and now I'm seeing the end of it."

While the insurgency continues, the war is indeed nearing its end for the marines in Helmand and for other International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) units elsewhere in the nation. With all the surge forces scheduled to leave Afghanistan by the end of next summer, and troop levels expected to keep falling from there, this operation is quite possibly the last major US Marine offensive designed to gain and hold new ground for the rest of the war.

"From my perspective, it's the last piece of real estate that ISAF forces are going to really clear," says Marine Maj. Gen. John Toolan, the ISAF commander in the southwest region of Afghanistan.

This ending battle echoed many that had come before, with the US overrunning its foe, the Taliban choosing to flee more often than fight. But a big question lingers over the durability of the gains. Marines express optimism that the lessons learned over the decade-long war will help them stabilize the area and hand it over to the Afghan government.

A decade of war in deadliest province

There are some 140,000 international forces in Afghanistan, a little less than 100,000 are American. US and international troops came here more than a decade ago following the Sept. 11 attacks, when the ruling Taliban regime refused to hand over Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Since then the war has grown into a large nation-building effort with the United States alone investing more than $70 billion on development projects designed to strengthen Afghanistan's government and social institutions. Meanwhile, some 1,843 US and 970 international service members have lost their lives here. Another 14,342 have been injured.

Throughout the Afghan war, the south ? Helmand in particular ? has seen the most fighting. More than 795 international troops have been killed in Helmand, more than in any other province and nearly twice as many as in Kandahar, the second-most deadly province.

There are about 30,000 foreign forces in Helmand, equivalent to about one-third of the US force in Afghanistan. The area has been the primary responsibility of US Marines and British troops.

But will the improvements hold?

Although there are numerous indications that international forces have made progress in Helmand, there are just as many questions among locals about how long these improvements will last.

A report released by the New America Foundation in October found that while locals in Helmand say the Taliban are weaker now compared with 12 months ago, 49 percent of the population say they believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. Nearly three-quarters of those surveyed in Helmand and Kandahar say that violence will lead to a civil war after international troops withdraw in 2014.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/world/~3/ImbdA7Mg-bE/Road-out-of-Afghanistan-On-the-ground-with-US-troops-in-potential-final-push

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Alien Planet Is Rolling Over, Forcing 4 Others to Do Same (SPACE.com)

A huge alien planet turns super-slow somersaults as it hurtles through space, dragging its four sibling planets along for the topsy-turvy ride, a new study suggests.

The giant exoplanet, known as 55 Cancri d, gets tugged by a faraway companion star as it orbits its own parent star. As a result, the planet performs a flip over the course of millions of years, and the other four planets in the system follow suit, researchers said.

"It kind of shepherds along the other planets," study lead author Nathan Kaib, of Queen's University in Canada, told SPACE.com.

Widely swinging planet

Located about 40 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cancer (the Crab), the 55 Cancri system contains two stars, one with five planets in a seemingly stable orbit. ?The other star is almost 1,100 times as far away from them as the sun is from Earth, but it still affects them. The effect is not on the planets' orbits but on their axes. [Gallery: The Strangest Alien Planets]

The axis of a planet runs through its center; the planet spins around it each day. The axes of most planets tend to line up more or less with the axis of their star. Most planets change the angle, or precess, slightly over time, but only a few swing significantly.

55 Cancri d is one of the swingers.

Kaib and his team ran more than 450 computer simulations of the 55 Cancri system, taking into account the influence of the companion star. The researchers decided that the spin axis of 55 Cancri d probably flips completely upside-down after millions of years. The planet's north pole finds itself pointed in the direction the south pole once claimed.

Even more intriguing, the planet, which is about four times the size of Jupiter, causes the smaller bodies in the system to swing with it.

The influence of the companion star was probably overlooked until now because it is so distant, Kaib explained.

"Other studies looking at the effect of binary stars on planets tend to focus on tighter binaries," he said.

Closer companions make for unstable orbits, but the 55 Cancri system showed no obvious sign of orbital disruption.

"This planetary system looks very well ordered," Kaib said.

Exactly how long it takes the planets to swing from top to bottom depends on the time it takes the two stars to circle one another. Unfortunately, that's tough to nail down, researchers said.

Kaib and his team modeled a variety of paths for the two stars and found that most of them resulted in severe axis shifts for all five planets.

The research was published in the December issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Observational follow-up

In its solar system, 55 Cancri d is the most distant of the five planets from their sun ? a little farther than the distance between Jupiter and the sun. Three others are packed into orbits closer than Mercury is to the sun.

The closest of the five, the dense planet 55 Cancri e, completes the orbit of its sun in less than 18 hours. From Earth's viewpoint, the tiny planet passes directly in front of its parent star, which is expected to allow astronomers to measure a number of properties, including the angle of its spin orbit.

At about 8.5 times the mass of Earth, 55 Cancri e would be the smallest planet on which astronomers have detected a spin angle.

Kaib says that he spoke with several other observers experienced in determining the angle for extrasolar planets, and they are confident that it's possible to calculate the spin axis angle of 55 Cancri e.

But Kaib cautions that the observational evidence may not be conclusive. The simulations model the star as a perfect sphere, but like most rotating bodies, it probably contains a bulge around its equator. The tidal forces from this bulge could act to erase evidence of the tipping of the orbital axis.

Astronomers compare the axis of the planets to the axis of the star to calculate just how much the planets have tipped.

"As the planets precess, they could drag the star along with it," Kaib said.

The orbital inclination of the star would then increase along with those of the planets, so the whole system could wind up on its head.

Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/space/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/space/20111201/sc_space/alienplanetisrollingoverforcing4otherstodosame

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Facebook Gowalla Acquisition: Facebook Reportedly Acquires Location-Based Startup Gowalla

Facebook has reportedly acquired location-based social service Gowalla, an unnamed source close to the company told CNN Money on Friday evening.

When asked for comment, a Facebook spokesperson wrote, "We don't comment on rumors and speculation." A Gowalla rep was not immediately available.

Gowalla in September announced that it had redesigned its mobile app and planned to shift focus away from "check-ins" and toward user-generated place recommendations.

"We wanted to go back to our passion, which is inspiring people to visit new places and visit the world through the eyes of someone they trust," Gowalla CEO Josh Williams told The Huffington Post's Bianca Bosker in September. "I think the check-in industry is going to be doing interesting things around loyalty rewards and daily deals, but that's something entirely separate from what we're trying to solve."

Gowalla, currently based in Austin, Texas, has faced steep competition from mobile check-in service Foursquare, which launched alongside Gowalla in 2009 at Austin's SXSW conference, as well as from daily deals giant Groupon and relative newcomer Google Offers.

In August 2010, Facebook debuted Places, its own location-based deals feature. The feature failed to take off, and almost exactly a year later, the social announced plans to kill off the project.

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, during an interview on Wednesday with Business Insider Editor-in-Chief Henry Blodget, shed some light on the axing of Places. According to a live tweet from Business Insider's Silicon Valley Insider feed, Sandberg said the following about Places: "We put i tout there [sic]. It didn't get pickup. We're ruthless. We took it back."

CNN Money reports that the bulk of Gowalla's talent will move to Facebook HQ in Palo Alto. "The team will work on Facebook's Timeline feature, which launched at this year's F8 conference and is gradually rolling out to Facebook's 800 million members," writes CNN Money. (The Timeline is a revamped profile view that places emphasis on media content.)

The acquisition of Gowalla would fill a gap in Facebook's services that the social network has neen unable to close on its own.

TechCrunch points out that "it would make perfect sense for Facebook to start featuring location checkins and photos tagged with GPS coordinates into Timeline stories."

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/02/facebook-gowalla-acquisition_n_1126734.html

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