CORRECTED - Iran won't move toward nuclear weapon in 2012 - ISIS report

  By Tabassum Zakaria and Mark Hosenball | Reuters

(Corrects date of NIE report to 2007 from 2003, in paragraph 16)

Photo By � Ho New / Reuters/Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iran is unlikely to move toward building a nuclear weapon this year because it does not yet have the capability to produce enough weapon-grade uranium, a draft report by the Institute for Science and International Security said on Wednesday.

The report by the institute founded by nuclear expert David Albright offered a more temperate view of Iran's nuclear program than some of the heated rhetoric that has surfaced since the United States and its allies stepped up sanctions on Tehran.

"Iran is unlikely to decide to dash toward making nuclear weapons as long as its uranium enrichment capability remains as limited as it is today," the report said.

The United States and Iran are engaged in a war of words over sanctions, with Iran threatening to retaliate by blocking oil shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. The United States said it would not allow that to happen.

The escalating rhetoric and tensions have led to concerns about the potential for missteps between the adversaries that might spiral into a military confrontation that neither wants.

But the report, financed by a grant from the United States Institute of Peace, said Iran had not made a decision to build a nuclear bomb. The USIP is an independent, non-partisan center created by the U.S. Congress in 1984 that receives federal government funding.

"Iran is unlikely to break out in 2012, in great part because it is deterred from doing so," said the ISIS report, which has not yet been publicly released.

The report turns down the temperature, saying that sanctions and the fear of a military strike by Israel on Iran's nuclear facilities have worked as a deterrent.

The institute has advised U.S. and foreign governments about Iran's nuclear capabilities and Albright is considered a respected expert on the issue. The report tracks closely with what is known of official U.S. government assessments.

U.S. officials say Iran has not made the decision to build a nuclear weapon and that Iranian leaders haven't made the decision because they have to weigh the cost and benefits of building a nuclear weapon.

Much of what the Iranians are doing with their nuclear program has civilian uses, but they are keeping their options open, which significantly adds to the air of ambiguity, U.S. officials told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Some conservative and Israeli analysts in the past have challenged these types of assessments, asserting that Iranian nuclear efforts are sufficiently advanced that they could build a bomb in a year or less.

But according to the institute's report: "Although Iran is engaged in nuclear hedging, no evidence has emerged that the regime has decided to build nuclear weapons."

"Such a decision may be unlikely to occur until Iran is first able to augment its enrichment capability to a point where it would have the ability to make weapon-grade uranium quickly and secretly," the report obtained by Reuters said.

It added that despite a report last November by the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency alleging that Iran had made significant progress on nuclear weaponization, "Iran's essential challenge remains developing a secure capability to make enough weapon-grade uranium, likely for at least several nuclear weapons."

Some European intelligence officials have disputed a U.S. National Intelligence Estimate published in 2007 which said that Iran had stopped working on a program it had launched earlier to design and build a bomb.

The Europeans maintain that Iran never stopped research and scientific development efforts which could be bomb-related.

Tensions spiked after Iran announced earlier this month that it had begun to enrich uranium deep inside an underground facility near the holy city of Qom. The secretly built facility was publicly revealed by the United States in 2009.

AIRSTRIKES 'OVERSOLD'

Among possible policy options for halting Iran's nuclear program, one of the least likely to be successful is a military attack on its nuclear program, according to the institute's report.

Limited military options, such as airstrikes against nuclear facilities, are "oversold as to their ability to end or even significantly delay Iran's nuclear program," the report said. Limited bombing campaigns would be "unlikely to destroy Iran's main capability" to produce weapon-grade uranium, it said.

Iran has taken precautions by dispersing the centrifuges it uses for enrichment to multiple locations, has mastered the construction of centrifuges, and has probably stockpiled extra centrifuges, the institute said.

A bombing campaign that did not totally eliminate these capabilities would leave Iran "able to quickly rebuild" its nuclear program and even motivate it to set up a Manhattan Project-style crash program to build a bomb, which would only make the region more dangerous and unstable, according to the institute.

The report said that clandestine intelligence operations aimed at detecting secret Iranian nuclear activities, including the construction of new underground sites, are "vitally important." Known methods used by spy agencies include the recruitment of secret agents, cyber spying operations, overhead surveillance by satellites and drones, and bugging of equipment which Iran buys from foreign suppliers.

The report says another "well known tactic" used by Western spy agencies against Iran has been to infiltrate Iranian networks that smuggle nuclear-related equipment and supply them with plans or items which are faulty or sabotaged. The report says this tactic has helped the West to uncover at least one of Iran's secret nuclear sites and, according to official statements by the Iranians, has caused enrichment centrifuges to break.

Other more violent covert operations strategies, particularly the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists and engineers, have "serious downsides and implications," such as high risks of Iranian retaliation through militant attacks which could be directed against civilian targets. The United States has emphatically denied any involvement in the assassinations.

The report said that since thousands of specialists are involved in the Iranian nuclear program, assassinations were unlikely to be effective in slowing it down. It also warned that Iran could construe assassinations as acts of war and use them to justify retaliation.

(Editing by Eric Walsh)

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Wife of Italian Cruise Captain Calls Treatment of Husband 'Shameful'

By KEVIN DOLAK, LAMA HASAN and ANGELA ELLIS | Good Morning America

 The wife of the captain accused of abandoning the capsized Costa Concordia cruise liner off the Tuscan island of Giglio says that her husband is not the "monster" that has been portrayed in the media and that he is being made a scapegoat.

Fabiola Russo, the wife of Captain Francesco Schettino, spoke out in a cover story in Oggi, an Italian weekly magazine, which hit newsstands today. In the interview Russo says that her husband is a "maestro," and that there was a reason he was entrusted with the helm of the Concordia.

"My husband is at the center of an unprecedented global media storm," Russo said in the interview. "I cannot think of any other naval or air tragedy in which the responsible party was treated with such violence. This is a man hunt, people are looking for a scapegoat, a monster. It's shameful.

In the interview Russo, 48, also addresses claims that 52-year-old Schettino, whom the Italian press has dubbed "Captain Coward," recklessly steered the Concordia to disaster.

"He knows how to do his job, but sometimes even those who know how to do their job can make mistakes -- if he did make a mistake," she said. "He is decisive, stable and lucid. He analyzes situations, understands them and knows how to manage them."

Russo did however admit in the interview that at one point Schettino was fined for steering a boat too close to the shore.

"Our shared passion is canoeing -- to paddle together you have to be in symphony, which is what Francesco and I are," she said. "But we got fined once, because we took a little motorboat too close to the coast."

The Costa Concordia capsized on January 13 when it hit rocks near Italy's Tuscan coast. The cruise liner had 4,200 passengers onboard.

Officials said Tuesday that another body was found in the ship's wreckage, which brings the total death toll from the Costa Concordia tragedy to 16, leaving 17 victims still missing, including a Minnesota couple.

Salvage operators are now getting in position to pump fuel off of the stricken ship, bringing a crane and other equipment to the scene.

PHOTOS: Inside the Costa Concordia Cruise Ship Tragedy

Schettino, who claimed he tripped into the lifeboat and never meant to abandon the sinking ship, could face criminal charges, including manslaughter and abandoning ship. He told investigators earlier that his actions after the crash were competent and saved lives.

The CEO of the cruise line said that because Schettino did not tell them exactly what was going on in those fateful minutes after the crash, they did not send the proper response.

New transcripts leaked in the Italian press reveal a secretly recorded phone call that Schettino made from an investigators' office after his arrest. On the call, the embattled captain says that while his skill helped prevent an even worse tragedy, he feels that he is being scapegoated.

"I tried to avoid larger consequences ... but in the end I didn't manage to do it. I don't want to ever go back on a ship... I want to change my life because I don't see it ending very well," Schettino says.

The ship's chaplain said Schettino cried in his arms for 15 minutes after reaching the safety of shore.

"At around 2:30 a.m. I spoke to the captain," chaplain Raffaele Malena told the French magazine Famille Chretienne. He embraced me and cried like a child for about a quarter of an hour."

Russo told Oggi magazine that she and her husband pray for all of the victims and those still missing from the ship, and added that the ordeal has been difficult for the couple's 17-year-old daughter, who has seen the firestorm of negative press about her father.

In the interview Russo doesn't mention the mystery Moldovan woman her husband was reportedly dining with that night. That woman, who is still unnamed, claimed the captain was entertaining her at the time of the accident, and showing her photos of his daughter.

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WWII destroyer returns to SC home after repairs

  By BRUCE SMITH | Associated Press 

MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. (AP) — With the blare of air horns, cheers and a champagne toast, "The Ship That Would Not Die" returned Wednesday to its home at a maritime museum on Charleston Harbor on the South Carolina coast.

Just after sunrise, the World War II destroyer USS Laffey was towed slowly down the Cooper River to the Patriots Point Naval and Maritime Museum. It was moved more than two years ago to a dry dock so its hull could be repaired at a cost of about $9 million.

A group of about 50 people, including more than a dozen former crew members, gathered on the flight deck of another World War II vessel, the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown, to welcome the Laffey home.

"This means a lot of years of fighting to get her saved again," said Sonny Walker of Abingdon, Md., who served on the Laffey in the early 1960s. "This is the third time. The Germans tried to sink her. The Japanese tried to sink her and then she tried to sink herself sitting here. She's whipped them all and she's back again."

The Laffey, built at Maine's Bath Iron Works in 1943, got its nickname as "The Ship That Would Not Die" when it was on picket duty off Okinawa in March 1945. About 50 Japanese planes attacked and about half got through to the Laffey. The ship suffered 103 casualties when it was hit by four bombs and five kamikaze planes.

The Laffey is also the only surviving American World War II destroyer that saw action in the Atlantic, where it was part of the D-Day invasion. Now designated a national historic landmark, it was decommissioned in 1975 and brought to Patriots Point in 1981.

"It's where I spent my youth. I grew up on that ship," said 85-year-old Lee Hunt of Charleston, S.C., a member of the original crew when it was commissioned. "I went on it when I was 17 and spent my 18th birthday killing people in Germany in the invasion of France and right on into Okinawa and the Philippines and what have you. This means a lot. I spent a lot of time on that ship."

He said it was no surprise that, by 1945, the Laffey would encounter suicide attacks by Japanese aviators.

"We knew we were going to get hit. Every destroyer out there on picket duty knew they were going to be attacked," said Hunt, who said he had no time to get nervous because he was on the ship and doing what the crew was asked to do.

The renovation was paid for with a state loan, which the museum plans to repay with operating revenues.

Bringing the Laffey back is not so much about ticket sales for a museum as it is about helping preserve the nation's heritage, said Mac Burdette, the executive director of Patriots Point.

"More than ever we need reminders of what dedication and sacrifice are required if we are going to remain a free and independent nation," he said. "Can we do without the Washington Monument that is going to take millions of dollars to repair from the earthquake? No. There are some things that are just worth paying for and this is part of it."

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President Obama, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer Share Tense Tarmac Moment

  By Devin Dwyer | ABC News

Credit: Hazar N. Ghanbari / AP Photo

Longstanding tension between Republican Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and Democratic President Barack Obama flared into the public spotlight Wednesday just after Air Force One touched down in Phoenix.

Brewer, who was on the tarmac to greet Obama, hand-delivered a letter before engaging the president "intensely" for several minutes, including pointing her finger directly at him, according to Politico's Carrie Budoff Brown, acting as a pool reporter for other media outlets.

Accounts from both camps later said the terse talk focused on Brewer's book - "Scorpions for Breakfast: My Fight Against Special Interests, Liberal Media and Cynical Politicos to Secure America's Border."
The book, which was released in November, describes a June 2010 Oval Office meeting between Obama and Brewer aimed at diffusing conflicts surrounding Arizona's controversial state immigration law and the administration's immigration policy.
At the time, the White House called it a "good meeting," while Brewer's staff said it was "cordial."
But Brewer paints a much different picture in her book.
Brewer complains in "Scorpions for Breakfast" that she and her staff were treated coldly by White House aides, prevented from taking pictures in the holding room outside the Oval Office and that their cell phones and cameras were  "confiscated" by Secret Service.
"Too bad we weren't illegal aliens, or we could have sued them," she writes.
During her meeting with the president, Brewer said Obama was "condescending" and professorial, "lecturing" on his efforts to promote comprehensive immigration reform.
"It wasn't long before I realized I was hearing the president's stump speech," she said. "Only I was supposed to listen without talking. Did he care to hear the view from the actual scene at the border? Did the opinions and observations of the people of Arizona mean anything to him? I didn't think so."
"He was patronizing," she said. "Then it dawned on me: He's treating me like the cop he had over for a beer after he bad-mouthed the Cambridge police, I thought. He thinks he can humor me and then get rid of me."
Obama raised his objections to Brewer's account face-to-face with the governor Wednesday.
"He was a little disturbed about my book," Brewer told reporters after the meeting broke. "I said to him that I have all the respect in the world for the office of the president. The book is what the book is. I asked him if he read the book. He said he read the excerpt."
Obama told Brewer "that he didn't feel that I had treated him cordially," Brewer said. "I said I was sorry he felt that way but I didn't get my sentence finished.
"Anyway, we're glad he's here. I'll regroup," she added.
A senior administration official later told reporters that Obama's comments were in response to Brewer's request for another one-on-one meeting.
"The governor handed the president a letter and said she was inviting him to meet with her. The president said he'd be glad to meet with her again, but did note that after their last meeting, a cordial discussion in the Oval Office, the governor inaccurately described the meeting in her book," the official told reporters, on condition of anonymity.
Brewer, who said in her letter to Obama that she wanted to discuss "Arizona's comeback" with him, did not attend the presidential event at a Phoenix factory today. But she did make several subsequent media appearances to talk about her tarmac encounter.
In an interview with KFYI radio in Phoenix, Brewer said Obama was "somewhat thin-skinned and a little tense, to say the least."

"I was very surprised.  I was taken aback.  I really was," she said.  "I was shocked by the sternness of it all."

ABC News' Steven Portnoy contributed to this report.

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Facebook Timeline mandatory rollout: You have 7 days to scour your past

By Mike Wehner, Tecca | Today in Tech

The time to edit your online persona is now

 Facebook is the virtual home to more than 800 million active users, so any change to how the network operates is a big deal. And nothing could be bigger for the social hotspot than completely revamping everyone's front-facing profile page, and that is exactly what is happening today. Starting this morning, the new Timeline feature — that up until now has been an optional switch — is now mandatory.
The Timeline differs from the default profile pages we know and love in several ways. Now, rather than showcasing only your most recent posts, your personal front page can be scrolled back months or years at a time. Most importantly, this change can offer visitors a glimpse at your entire social networking past, all the way back to the day that you joined up. The revamp can be both a blessing and a curse for seasoned social networkers, as it can produce a bit of pleasant nostalgia, but also drag up some of your less proud public moments.
Left untouched, your Timeline may remind of you of breakups, job troubles, or even a few unfortunate party photos that you have long since buried. Depending on your settings, these black marks on your digital past could allow new followers — including friends or business associates — to see a side of you that was better kept tucked away.
Privacy is already a hot topic for Facebook users and the network's litany of sharing options can be difficult to navigate, even for the most experienced users. The company isn't oblivious to how the Timeline may drag up some unwanted past events, so a short buffer zone is in place to allow you to modify your online persona before making its new debut. You now have until Tuesday, January 31 to erase any past Facebook scars you'd prefer to hide.
The mandatory Timeline rollout will undoubtedly catch some by surprise, but you don't have to fall victim to the ghosts of past updates. Take some time to review your social networking history and don't hesitate to prune anything that you wouldn't want on the front page of a local newspaper, because as of right now, the clock is ticking. Or, of course, you could always jump ship to Google+ instead.
This article originally appeared on Tecca

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B.C. Facebook post lands man in hot water with ICBC

CBC

A Williams Lake, B.C., man who tried to defraud the Insurance Corporation of B.C. has been tripped up — by his own Facebook post.
After Corbin Joseph bragged online about the giant payoff the insurance company gave him for rolling his truck on New Year's Eve 2009, his Facebook friends turned him in to ICBC.

"A posting to that effect was brought to our attention by people who were his friends on Facebook," said ICBC spokesperson Mark Jan Vrem.
He says the accident happened while Joseph was prohibited from driving, so he convinced a friend to tell the insurance company she was the driver.
When he learned ICBC was reopening the case, Joseph took to Facebook again.
"He sent her phone texts and Facebook messages offering her apparently considerable sums of money and legal assistance if she stuck to the original story," said Jan Vrem.
ICBC policy prevents investigators from false "friending" on social networking sites, but luckily for them Joseph wasn't too finicky about his privacy settings.
Joseph has pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice. He was given a three-month conditional sentence, fined $2,000 and ordered to pay more than $18,000 back to ICBC.

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Los Angeles mayor signs porn star condom requirement

By Alex Dobuzinskis | Reuters

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Porn actors in Los Angeles will have to use condoms on the set as a condition of obtaining a film permit under a first-in-the-nation requirement quietly signed into law by the mayor, and a nearby community was considering a similar rule.
Officials in Simi Valley said on Tuesday they were mulling their own condom ordinance out of a concern adult film producers could move shop to their more suburban community, fleeing the condom requirement that Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa signed into law on Monday.
The vast majority of U.S. porn productions are based in Los Angeles. The condom requirement, aimed at preventing the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, is perhaps the city's most forceful attempt to change the way the industry operates.
Villaraigosa signed the measure, which was approved by the City Council in a highly-watched move earlier this month, on Monday, his spokesman Peter Sanders said. It goes into effect in about 40 days.
AIDS Healthcare Foundation, an advocacy group and healthcare provider that pushed Los Angeles officials to adopt the requirement, said it was the first law of its kind passed by any city in the United States.
"The tide of history here is pretty clear, and we're not going to stop," AIDS Healthcare president Michael Weinstein said.
The Los Angeles City Council earlier this month voted to approve the condom requirement, after AIDS Healthcare qualified an initiative for the ballot that would have put that question before city voters in June. City officials said that by simply adopting the ordinance themselves, they avoided having to spend $4 million to hold the vote.
SOUNDSTAGES EXEMPT
The city's condom requirement only applies to porn productions that approach the city for a permit, but officials said a permit was not required when filming in a soundstage.
A majority of porn shoots in the city are actually done in soundstages, said Diane Duke, executive director of industry trade group the Free Speech Coalition.
"The significance of this is it's government reaching into areas it doesn't belong. It's government telling us how to produce films, and it's government regulating sexual behavior between consenting adults," Duke said.
AIDS Healthcare is gathering signatures for a ballot measure that would go before Los Angeles County voters and, if approved, force porn companies to obtain health permits, which the group said would be similar to what barber shops obtain.
If that happens, it would increase the burden on porn companies, wherever they shoot in Los Angeles County, to comply with existing California workplace laws that mandate the use of condoms by porn performers, AIDS Healthcare officials said. The state law is not specifically aimed at the porn industry and is widely violated, the group has said.
Meanwhile, the industry was exploring moving productions to other localities outside of Los Angeles.
Duke said Florida and Nevada were particularly well suited to the needs of her industry, given that they have warm weather and abundant production facilities.
There are at least 1,000 porn performers in the Los Angeles area, Duke said. "I think there are many folks out there who would welcome the revenues that come with the adult entertainment industry," she said.
But Simi Valley, 35 miles northwest of Los Angeles in Ventura County, may not be one of those areas. Next Monday, the Simi Valley City Council will vote on a proposal modeled after the Los Angeles initiative that would require condoms in porn.
"There's a very real concern in this community that industry looks toward Simi Valley as an adjacent area that may not have the same restrictions that L.A. has," Simi Valley city manager Mike Sedell said.
He added that prostitution tied to the porn industry is one of Simi Valley's concerns.
(Reporting By Alex Dobuzinskis)

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Canada education sector toughest job market

Unemployed workers in Canada's educational services sector faced the toughest job market in the country in the July-September period.

Reuters

Unemployed workers in Canada's educational services sector faced the toughest job market in the country in the July-September period, according to a new Statistics Canada report on Tuesday.

For every 10 unemployed workers in education, there was just one vacancy, the agency's new data on job vacancies in the three-month period showed. The second worst sector was construction where the ratio was 5.1.

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The data is not seasonally adjusted to account for layoffs during the summer months but Statscan said the ratio had been high in the education sector for earlier months of 2011 as well.
Of the 10 largest industrial sectors, wholesale trade and health care and social assistance had the lowest ratio, meaning there were fewer job hunters competing for each position.

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Canadian businesses had, on average, 248,000 job vacancies in the period with an average ratio of unemployment to vacancies of 3.3.
The national vacancy rate, defined as the number of vacant positions divided by labor demand, was 1.7 percent.
Because Statscan released the job vacancy data for the first time, using a three-month average, there was no historical comparison available.
(Reporting By Louise Egan; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

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UAE temperature drops to freezing levels

SPRC – Tue, Jan 24, 2012

  JEDDAH: Temperatures down to freezing levels have battered parts of the UAE for the past few days because of strong northwesterly winds.

Mountainous areas saw a big dip with the UAE’s National Center for Meteorology and Seismology(NCMS) reporting a freezing low of zero degree Celsius, while coastal regions reported minimums of 13-15 degree Celsius.

The mercury is expected to dip further at night until Tuesday, according to the center.

Meteorologists recorded a low of -0.2 degrees C on the mountain range of Jebel Jais in Ras Al-Khaimah at 1.30 a.m. Sunday.

"This is due to a strong northwesterly wind which has brought cold bodyeratures to the country and rain," a meteorologist was quoted as saying in the UAE media.

Residents were also warned to stay away from the sea.

“Sea will be very rough,” the meteorologist said. "It's not really safe to swim," he said. "It's better to stay out of the sea at this time."

He said waves could rise from 5 to 8 feet height.

More clouds could gather over the northern areas of the country, according to reports.

The weekend saw some rain and more rain is expected this week with west to westerly winds ruffling the coast.

Reports said waves had reached as high as 10 feet off the coast of Abu Dhabi. The recorded forecast said the skies would remain cloudy until Wednesday, but Thursday was expected to be "mostly sunny".

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