This is the first time in American history that an unmanned aircraft has been used to assist police in making an arrest on US soil. To be precise, this is the same Predator drone that the US army uses in military missions across Afghanistan, Pakistan and any other theater of US-inspired conflict.

The drone was called to the rescue when… six cows went missing in North Dakota.

Nelson County Sheriff Kelly Janke went searching for them on the Brossart family farm, armed with a warrant. Next thing he knew, he was chased off by three armed men – Alex, Thomas and Jacob Brossart.

Next thing they knew – a mini army and a Predator B drone have been called in.

State Highway Patrol, a regional SWAT team, a bomb squad, ambulance, deputy sheriffs from three other counties and a drone arrived at the scene, reports the Los Angeles Times. The drone was on its way back to its hangar from a mission on the US-Canadian border, and since it had fuel left in its tank, the pilot agreed to send it to the farm.

The drone circled the farm while Janke and other officers watched live thermal images from the comfort of their van. Once the suspects had been spotted and it was confirmed that they were not armed, police moved in and arrests were made. A property search turned up two rifles, two shotguns, assorted bows and a samurai sword, reports the Los Angeles Times.

The missing cows have been found too.

A total of five people were arrested – Rodney Brossart, his sons Alex, Thomas and Jacob and their sister Abby. All face a total of 11 felony charges. Later they were all released on bail.

Earlier this year, Janke attended a briefing on how Customs and Border Protection drones can assist police, and when an opportunity presented itself, he called for the unmanned aircraft.

In November, the Federal Aviation Administration had been considering rules that would bring the controversial aircraft into the country.And voilà! Here they are.

According to the Department of Homeland Security’s website, the government has already been using drones domestically for several years, but mostly keeps mum on their missions, saying only that they are regularly used for “support of disaster relief efforts.”

But with missile-equipped drones causing thousands of deaths overseas, the introduction of a drone program Stateside could be detrimental to America as it would mean the government considered its own territory a war zone.

“It’s going to happen,” Dan Elwell, vice president of civil aviation at the Aerospace Industries Association, toldthe Times. “Now it’s about figuring out how to safely assimilate the technology into national airspace.”

Days after the Pentagon first denied and then admitted that it lost touch with a high-tech drone aircraft, authorities in Iran are now saying that they have the plane — and its condition is pristine.

The unmanned, robotic aircraft — a RQ170 Sentinel drone plane — disappeared last week. American authorities quickly dismissed claims that they lost the plane over Iran, only to later admit that the CIA was flying a reconnaissance mission over Afghanistan when they lost touch with the top-secret stealth drone. Soon after it was believed that communication was cut once the plane waded through the air in Iranian territory. American officials then claimed that satellite imagery showed that the drone had crashed and was beyond repair.

Officials out of Tehran, however, now say that they intercepted the craft and have it in perfect shape. For proof, Iran television has even broadcast footage of the craft.

Tehran is saying that they brought down the drone themselves with the Iranian Army’s electronic warfare unit after they caught the craft in Iran, around 140 miles from the country’s border with Afghanistan.

The Sentinel has been in the arsenal of the US military since 2009 and the Pentagon has gone to great lengths to keep its exact capabilities under wraps, though those speaking under condition of anonymity to the Los Angeles Times have revealed that among its powers is the ability to intercept cell phone transmissions and sniff out toxic chemicals from miles above the Earth’s surface, all while remaining undetected.

“It’s bad — they’ll have everything,” one official added to the Times. “It carries a variety of systems,” author Peter W. Singer tells the Times, “to its allies . . . it’s a potential gold mine.”

Given the craft’s complex technology, the interception out of Iran allowed for authorities to down the drone in what appears to be perfect condition. BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner says such supports the claim by Iran that its forces electronically hijacked the plane brought it down without a crash.

Is the hacking of the drone’s complex system a possibility for Iran? Less than two months ago, RT reported that a key-logger virus was installed on the computers at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, infecting information in the cockpits of drones. The Air Force officials on the base were not made aware of the incident until an expose in Wired’s Danger Room revealed the details.

As it so happens, the Sentinel is dispatched out of the same base. If that virus from months back was in fact perpetrated by Tehran, the United States could be the victim of cyber warfare courtesy of Iran. Such an attack has been among the Pentagon’s worries for years now, and in May the DoD formally filed paperwork that says computer sabotage from another nation counts as an act of war. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal at the time, one unnamed military official was quoted as saying, “If you shut down our power grid, maybe we will put a missile down one of your smokestacks.”

While the US investigates how they managed to lose the craft to Iran, the biggest concern for America right now is what Tehran will do with the craft. As threats grow of a potential nuclear program overseas and tensions between countries worsen, the technology of such an advanced craft in the hands of the perceived enemy — and its allies — could be detrimental to any military action the US intends on carrying out in the future — or any action dished out by Iran.

“Among the United States’ main concerns is that Iran could use an intact aircraft to examine the vulnerabilities in stealth technology and take countermeasures with its air defense systems,” reports Iran’s FARS news agency. “Another is that China or other US adversaries could help Iran extract data from the drone that would reveal its flight history, surveillance targets and other capabilities. The drone was programmed to destroy such data in the event of a malfunction, but it failed to do so.”

“The blow has been so heavy that the US officials do not still want to accept that Iran brought down the plane by a cyberattack.”

By RT

One of the world’s leading credit-rating agencies has warned that it may carry out an unprecedented mass downgrade of European countries if regional leaders fail to reach an agreement on how to solve the debt crisis in a summit later this week.

The ratings agency Standard & Poor’s on Monday placed the ratings of 15 eurozone countries, including top-rated Germany and France, on “credit watch negative,” meaning they could be downgraded within three months.

However, S&P said that it expected to conclude its review “as soon as possible” following a European Union summit on Friday at which leaders will discuss plans, drawn up by France and Germany on Monday, to tackle the eurozone crisis.

France and Germany, the eurozone’s two largest economies which currently both have an AAA-rating, quickly came out against the S&P move.

“Germany and France reaffirm that the proposals they made jointly today will reinforce the governance of the euro area in order to foster stability, competitiveness and growth,” they said in a joint statement.

“France and Germany, in full solidarity, confirm their determination to take all the necessary measures, in liaison with their partners and the European institutions to ensure the stability of the euro area.”

‘Adding urgency’

Agnes Crane, a financial columnist for the Reuters news agency in New York, told Al Jazeera that the move by S&P was a warning to the eurozone to solve their economic problems fast.

“To put this in context, the S&P warning is essentially trying to add some urgency to something that we all recognize as urgent”, Crane said.

“The reality is that this is what credit agencies do – this is our financial system. We haven’t done much to take ratings out of the system, so this is what we have to live with.

“S&P is going to have to see that the plan is ratified and then they’re going to have to take a look at the details to see whether it is credible or not,” Crane added.

Martin Hennecke, the associate director of the Tyche Group, an independent investment and financial advisory firm in Hong Kong, told Al Jazeera the forecast downgrade came as no surprise.

He explained that as early as 2005, the ratings agency issued a projection warning that France Germany and the UK were headed towards possible junk status and default.

“Now, 2010, 2011, we have the stronger eurozone countries bailing out essentially weaker eurozone countries. So the balance sheet since then of those supposedly stronger eurozone nations will only have substantially weakened,” he said.

“It’s not just losing the AAA, but actually down the road, they said we may see the national bankruptcies of Germany and France.”

S&P said it would conclude its review after the EU summit, making clear that it wanted to see political as well as financial solutions.

It highlighted “continuing disagreements among European policy makers on how to tackle the immediate market confidence crisis and, longer term, how to ensure greater economic, financial, and fiscal convergence among eurozone members”.

Of the 17 countries in the eurozone, Cyprus’ rating had already been put on credit watch negative by S&P, and Greece is rated double-C, which already denotes a high chance for default in the near term.

If the downgrade materialises, countries such as Austria, Belgium, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, and Luxembourg would likely have their rating cut by one notch. Other countries could suffer downgrades of up to two notches, S&P said.

The other two major rating agencies, Moody’s and Fitch, have already said they could soon review the ratings of top-rated eurozone countries, but they still maintain a stable outlook on them.

Hundreds of Russian opposition supporters are being held by police following overnight protests in Moscow against the results of Sunday’s parliamentary elections.

About 250 people were detained on Tuesday morning and face being held for up to 15 days, said Olga Shorina, a spokeswoman for the Solidarnost (Solidarity) activist group that organized the protest.

Several thousand people took to the streets in central Moscow late on Monday to protest against alleged fraud and voting irregularities after Vladimir Putin’s United Russia retained power, albeit with a greatly reduced share of the vote.

Police said they had arrested 300 people including Ilya Yashin, a prominent activist, and Alexei Navalny, an opposition blogger, after the protesters marched towards Lubyanka Square where the headquarters of Russia’s FSB security service is located.

Al Jazeera’s Neave Barker, reporting from the rally, said police locked down the centre of the city after several hours of violent clashes between anti-government protesters and riot police backed by interior ministry forces.

He said protesters had gathered to listen to opposition leaders but many demonstrators ended up clashing with police who had hemmed in rally participants.

‘Russia without Putin’

During the rally, organized mostly through online social networks, protesters chanted “Russia without Putin” and “Putin should be in prison.”

Navalny has won a huge online following for exposing corruption at state-owned firms and he coined the phrase, which has now been taken up by all the opposition, “swindlers and thieves” to describe United Russia.

Putin suffered his worst ever setback at the ballot box on Sunday as United Russia’s majority in the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, was sharply reduced.

United Russia obtained 238 seats in the 450-seat Duma, down sharply from the 315 seats it won in the last polls in 2007.

Its biggest opposition will be the Communist Party with 92 seats. It was followed by the A Just Russia party with 64 seats and the ultra-nationalist Liberal Democratic Party with 56 mandates. Turnout was just over 60 percent.

The United Russia only managed to win 49.35 percent of the vote, down sharply from over 64 percent in 2007.

The opposition claimed the results would have been even more dramatic in clean elections.

‘Procedual violations’

Monitors led by the OSCE said the polls were slanted in favour of United Russia and marred by “frequent procedural violations” including ballot stuffing.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton raised “serious concerns”.

Along with United Russia, three other usually pliant opposition parties won seats in the State Duma, including the Communists.

However liberal party Yabloko failed to win sufficient votes for seats and another anti-Kremlin force, the Parnas party, was not even registered for the vote.

According to police, 2,000 people showed up at the Moscow rally while Shorina said up to 10,000 attended the rally and 1,500-2,000 marched later towards the offices of the Central Election Commission.

It was the largest protest in many years and a boost for Russia’s embattled opposition which traditionally struggles to mobilize protesters in a country which lost its taste for street politics in the turbulent 90s.

Police said about 100 opposition protesters were also detained in Russia’s second city of Saint Petersburg after they tried holding an unsanctioned rally on the main Nevsky Prospekt thoroughfare on Monday for the second day in a row.

The most Earth-like planet ever discovered is circling a star 600 light years away, a key finding in an ongoing quest to learn if life exists beyond Earth, scientists have said.

The planet, called Kepler-22b, joins a list of more than 500 planets found to orbit stars beyond our solar system. It is the smallest and the best positioned to have liquid water on its surface — among the ingredients necessary for life on Earth.

“We are homing in on the true Earth-sized, habitable planets,” said San Jose State University astronomer Natalie Batalha on Monday.

Batalha is the deputy science team leader for NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope, which discovered the star.

The telescope, which was launched three years ago, is staring at about 150,000 stars in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra, looking for faint and periodic dimming as any circling planets pass by, relative to Kepler’s line of sight.

Results will be extrapolated to determine the percentage of stars in the Milky Way galaxy that harbour potentially habitable, Earth-size planets.

This is the first detection of a potentially habitable world orbiting a Sun-like star, scientists reported in findings to be published in The Astrophysical Journal.

Kepler-22b is 600 light years or roughly 6 trillion miles away.

Ground telescopes

Planets about the same distance from their parent stars as Earth take roughly a year to complete an orbit. Scientists want to see at least three transits to be able to rule out other explanations for fluctuations in a star’s light, such as small companion stars.

Results also are verified by ground and other space telescopes. Kepler-22b, which is about 2.4 times the radius of Earth, sits squarely in its star’s so-called “habitable zone,” the region where liquid water could exist on the surface. Follow-up studies are under way to determine if the planet is solid, like Earth, or more gaseous like Neptune.

Batalha said at a news conference at NASA Ames Research Center in Moffet Field, California:

“We don’t know anything about the planets between Earth-size and Neptune-size because in our solar system we have no examples of such planets. We don’t know what fraction are going to be rocky, what fraction are going to be water worlds, what fraction are ice worlds. We have no idea until we measure one and see”

If Kepler-22b has a surface and a cushion of atmosphere similar to Earth’s, it would be about 22 degrees Celsius, about the same as a spring day in Earth’s temperate zone. Among the 2,326 candidate planets found by the Kepler team, 10 are roughly Earth-size and reside in their host stars’ habitable zones.

Another team of privately funded astronomers is scanning the target stars for non-naturally occurring radio signals, part of a project known as SETI, or the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

“As soon as we find a different, a separate, an independent example of life somewhere else, we’re going to know that it’s ubiquitous throughout the universe,” said astronomer Jill Tarter, director of the SETI Institute in Mountain View.

The Kepler team is meeting for its first science conference this week.

French and German leaders say they want new agreement, with automatic punishments for states who overspend, by March.

The leaders of Germany and France have agreed on the need for a new European Union treaty to set out mechanisms for controlling budgets of eurozone members.

After talks in Paris, Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy said they wanted a new treaty by March which would include automatic punishments for governments that overspend.

Sarkozy said that the new proposals would include a modified EU treaty, ideally for all 27 EU members, but that they were also ready to draw up a treaty for the 17 Eurozone members, though this would be open to others.

The two leaders told a news conference that they would ensure “imbalances” that sparked the crisis in the Eurozone are not repeated. Sarkozy said:

“We want to make sure that the imbalances which led to the situation in the Eurozone today cannot happen again. Therefore we want a new treaty, to make clear to the peoples of Europe, members of Europe and members of the euro zone, that things cannot continue as they are.”

‘Remarkable detail’

Merkel wants eurozone states to surrender budgetary control to a European authority with veto power, which would require changing the EU treaty.

As announced, France had wanted governments to have control of imposing sanctions on member states who fail to observe budgetary rules.

Al Jazeera’s Jacky Rowland, reporting from the French capital, said that for the first time, after months of dithering, the two leaders spoke in great detail on how they would tackle the crisis.

“What was most remarkable really was the extreme detail that both Sarkozy and Merkel went into when enumerating the points” to be put in a letter which will be presented to the EU president and to individual national leaders for approval, she said.

“We’re used to these meeting ending with vague statements, not specifics. Here we had a whole list.

“I think, really, the key quote was from both … Sarkozy and Merkel where they repeated what has happened must not happen again. Very specifically what happened in Greece must not be allowed to reproduce itself,” she said.

Shares register gains

European shares briefly extended gains and bund futures fell on Monday following Merkel and Sarkozy’s talks.

At 14:43 GMT, the FTSEurofirst 300 index of top European shares was up one per cent at 995.34 points, but had gone as much as 1.2 per cent higher. The STOXX Europe 600 Banking Index was up 3.1 per cent. The Dow Jones, S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite were up between one per cent and 1.3 per cent in early trading.

German Bund futures, meanwhile, fell to a session low of 134.54 down 97 ticks on the day. It last stood down 75 ticks on the day at 134.76.

The duo, increasingly dubbed “Merkozy” as they intensify bilateral efforts to restore confidence in the battered eurozone, had held discussions over lunch, their latest attempt to fix a crisis that is threatening trigger a global financial crisis.

Mario Draghi, the chief of the European Central Bank, signaled that a Eurozone “fiscal compact” could nudge the bank to act more decisively to fight the crisis.

Eurozone opposition

Analysts cautioned that opposition in other eurozone states to a more intrusive and stringent fiscal regime could yet derail a rescue plan that has eluded eurozone leaders for two years.

Several governments, including Ireland and the Netherlands within the Eurozone and the UK within the wider European Union, oppose treaty change for domestic political reasons and fear they would not win public backing in referendums.

David Cameron, the British prime minister, said on Friday that he was not convinced treaty change was needed and that if the EU’s founding charter were reviewed he would ensure the UK’s interests were protected.

On Sunday, as countries continued to battle their debt problems, Mario Monti, Italy’s new prime minister, unveiled a $40bn package of austerity measures - increasing value added tax, reintroducing a property tax and raising the pension age.

Activists hang banner on reactor building in what they say was operation to expose weaknesses in national security.

Greenpeace activists secretly entered a French nuclear site before dawn and draped a banner reading “Coucou” and “Facile”, (meaning “Hey” and “Easy”) on its reactor containment building, to expose the vulnerability of atomic sites in the country.

Police, whom the environmental activist group immediately told of the publicity stunt, took several hours to round up nine intruders who had broken into the power plant in Nogent-sur-Seine, about 95km southeast of Paris, on Monday.

Greenpeace said the break-in aimed to show that an ongoing review of safety measures, ordered by French authorities after a tsunami ravaged Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant earlier this year, was focused too narrowly on possible natural disasters, and not human factors.

“With this nonviolent action, Greenpeace has shown how vulnerable French nuclear plants are”

Activists who tried to enter three other French nuclear sites, in a co-ordinated action on the same day, were prevented from doing so, but Greenpeace said other invaders were still holed up inside other, unspecified, nuclear sites.

‘Thorough sweep’

Authorities had launched a “thorough sweep” of all of France’s 20 nuclear power plants following Monday’s incursion, Pierre-Henry Brandet, the interior ministry spokesman said.

“We have to understand what’s behind this malfunction, notably in Nogent,” Brandet said, adding that “in the other sites security worked … the intrusions were thwarted”.

Nuclear reaction: Greenpeace activists were arrested after breaking into an atomic power station near Paris. The group said their aim was to expose the "vulnerability" of French nuclear sites.

French power company Electricite de France (EDF), which operates the site, denounced the “illegal” break-in at Nogent-sur-Seine and insisted that it did not harm security at the site.

EDF said activists’ banners were also hung on the outside of two other nuclear sites – Chinon in northwestern France and Blayais in the southwest - before they were removed.

Three other activists were driven off by security forces while trying to enter yet another plant, in southeastern Cadarache.

EDF said it had no indication of intrusions at other sites in France.

‘Risk of terrorism’

D’Intignano said the government is going to conclude in several months that French nuclear plants are safe, because it is believed that they could withstand a flood or an earthquake.

“But those aren’t the real risks for our nuclear industry,” Majnoni d’Intignano said. “It’s the risk of [an] external, non-natural attack, like the risk of terrorism.”

Speaking later by phone with the AP news agency, she urged the government to consider other risks in its review like an airplane crash, a computer virus, or chemicals explosion at a nuclear site.

“It’s a very limited review. For us, the real risks are human risks and technological risks”

Henri Guaino, a special adviser to French President Nicolas Sarkozy, called the intrusion “irresponsible,” but said, “I think we’ll have to learn some lessons.”

France, which gets about three-quarters of its electricity from nuclear power, regularly faces protests from environmental activists over shipments of nuclear waste. But, activist incursions into atomic plants are unusual.

Claude Gueant, the interior minister, has scheduled a meeting this week to launch a review of the security breach, Brandet said.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was granted on Monday the right to appeal his extradition from Britain to Sweden at the Supreme Court.

British judges said at a hearing that the Court of Appeal will not force the Supreme Court to look at the case, but will ask for it to be considered.

Swedish authorities want to question Assange over sexual assault allegations made by two former female WikiLeaks volunteers during a visit to the country last year.

Julian Assange

He dismissed the allegations as politically motivated, suggesting that he could be transferred from Sweden to the US.

The ruling may keep Assange, who has been under house arrest in the UK for one year, in the country for another year.

He now has 14 days to petition the Supreme Court to examine his case.

The United States has started evacuation from an air base in Pakistan on Sunday at the order of the Pakistani government to leave the air base before December 11, reported local Urdu TV channel Geo.

According to the report, the evacuation kicked off Sunday morning when a U.S. plane arrived at the Shamsi air base to take the U.S. personnel back.

They started loading the luggage and equipment when the plane arrived, the reported quoted unidentified sources as saying.

In order to ensure the safe evacuation, security around the air base has been beefed up, said the sources.

The Airforce mantroops leaving Shamsi Air Base

The evacuation came eight days after the Pakistani government ordered the U.S. to vacate its air base in the Shamsi area in Pakistan’s southwest Balochistan province within 15 days following a NATO cross-border air strike at two Pakistani army check posts in Mohmand tribal area near the Afghan border on Nov. 26, which killed 24 Pakistani troops and wounded 13 others.

Shamsi air base is located some 320 km southwest of Balochistan ‘s capital city Quetta. The U.S. has reportedly been using the air base since 2001 for military operations in Afghanistan and drone strikes in Pakistan’s northwest tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, a place that the U.S. side believes to be a haven for militants who often launch cross-border attacks on the NATO troops in Afghanistan.

To order the U.S. to vacate the Shamsi air base is one of the three steps taken by the Pakistani government in retaliation for the Nov. 26 NATO incident, which the Pakistani government described as a blatant violation of its sovereignty.

The other two steps include closure of two border checkpoints for NATO supplies entering Afghanistan from Pakistan and boycott of the Dec. 5 Bonn Conference on Afghan issue.

Following the decision to order the U.S. to vacate the Shamsi air base within 15 days, the UAE foreign minister paid a visit to Pakistan, persuading the Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari to reconsider the decision or to postpone the vacation deadline until NATO has completed its investigation into the November 26 incident, but the request was turned down by the Pakistani president.

Also the Drone Aircrafts have to leave

Regarding the boycott of Bonn Conference, the Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani has rejected the requests both from the German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to reconsider the boycott decision. Prior to this, the Pakistani prime minister has also rejected the request by the Afghan President Karzai to reconsider the boycott decision.

The three steps so far taken by the Pakistani government has not brought an even official apology from the U.S. and NATO apart from condolences and promise of investigation into the incident.

More steps could be taken by the Pakistani side as it has threatened to reconsider the overall arrangement with the U.S., NATO, ISAF in the fight against terrorism, said local watchers.

The Ladny patrol ship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet has left its home port of Sevastopol and headed to the Mediterranean Sea to join a group of ships of the Russian Northern and Baltic Fleets, the Russian Black Sea Fleet spokesman said on Sunday.

“The Ladny has left Sevastopol and headed for the Mediterranean. The ship’s voyage began a day ahead of the schedule due to unfavorable weather forecasts,” Capt. 1st Rank Vyacheslav Trukhachev said.

The spokesman said the ship was scheduled to make calls at the ports of Cyprus, Malta, France and Spain.

An anti-terror squad is on board the ship to ensure its safety during its passage through the Black Sea straits and during calls at foreign ports, the spokesman said.

The Russian daily Izvestia reported in late November that the frigate was scheduled to meet in the Mediterranean Sea with the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier and the Admiral Chabanenko anti-submarine ship, which would turn around the European continent from the west and enter the Mediterranean through the Strait of Gibraltar.

The daily also said that in the spring of 2012, the group of Russian naval ships would enter the Syrian port of Tartus.

Russia´s Black Sea Fleet

A source in the Russian Defense Ministry denied this information, saying the Russian aircraft carrier naval group led by the Admiral Kuznetsov did not plan to call at Syria during winter exercises in the Mediterranean Sea.

Anti-government protests in Syria started in the spring of 2011 in the country’s south and spread to other areas in the Middle East country.

Western nations have accused the Syrian authorities of brutal treatment of protesters who have been rallying against the government and President Bashar al-Assad for nine months.

UN statistics have put the death toll in the nine months’ confrontation between the opposition and the president’s loyalists at 4,000 people.