Where should Snowden go? His dad, Russia, and Ecuador all weigh in.

As Edward Snowden?s father lobbies for his return to the United States, other countries are opening their arms to the former NSA contractor turned leaker.

In an interview with NBC, Lonnie Snowden expressed hopes that his son would return to the US, provided that the Justice Department plays ball. Meanwhile, Ecuador has unilaterally renounced trade agreements with the US in defiance of demands that the small South American country not accept Mr. Snowden, and Russia?s Federation Council has invited him to testify as to the extent of NSA spying on Russian citizens.

RECOMMENDED: Six countries where Edward Snowden could get asylum

For almost a week now, Snowden has been thought to be stowed away somewhere in Moscow?s Sheremetyevo airport, after having fled Hong Kong last week. Snowden is wanted by the US on charges of espionage and attempts to have him extradited have failed so far.

Snowden?s father appeared in an interview on NBC?s ?Today Show? this morning, claiming that he believes his son would willingly return to the US if certain conditions were met, reports the Canadian Broadcasting Company. Those conditions include allowing Snowden to choose the trial location, not subjecting him to a gag order, and not detaining him pre-trial.

In an effort to have these conditions met, Snowden?s father has written a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder to convey these conditions and his hopes that they would provide incentive for Snowden to return, writes the New York Daily News.

Snowden Sr., who has not spoken to his son since April, also took the opportunity to defend his son?s honor, reports Reuters:

"I love him. I would like to have the opportunity to communicate with him. I don't want to put him in peril," he said in the interview.

Snowden said he did not think his son had committed treason, even though his son broke US laws in releasing details about the federal monitoring programs.

"He has betrayed his government, but I don't believe that he's betrayed the people of the United States," he said.

THE RUSSIAN OPTION

In Russia, the Federation Council ? the Duma?s upper house ? has set up a special committee to investigate aspects of the NSA?s spying activities in Russia, and has invited Snowden to testify before them. As The Christian Science Monitor reports, the committee would like Snowden to inform it of the extent to which large Internet companies such as Google and Facebook are involved.

"We don't want to get involved in secret service conspiracies. Whatever the NSA was doing is not particularly our concern," [Sen. Ruslan] Gattarov [head of the committee] says.

At the same time, the Snowden issue has caused US relations with Ecuador to deteriorate. Snowden is currently applying for asylum in Ecuador, a decision that could take up to two months, according to The Christian Science Monitor. In response, there have been calls in the US to cut off aid to Ecuador.

Ecuador, it seems, has not taken those threats lightly, and has unilaterally broken off a preferential trade agreement with the US in order to prevent ?blackmail? over the asylum request, reports CNN:

"In the face of threats, insolence, and arrogance of certain US sectors, which have pressured to remove the preferential tariffs because of the Snowden case, Ecuador tells the world we unilaterally and irrevocably renounce the preferential tariffs," President Rafael Correa said Thursday, reiterating comments other officials from his government made earlier in the day.

But Mr. Correa, who has a history of thumbing his nose at the US, also noted that despite its support for Snowden, Ecuador cannot come to a decision on his asylum request, as he is not on Ecuadorian territory, according to Al Jazeera. "You request asylum when you are on a country's territory. Snowden is not on Ecuadorean territory, so technically we cannot even process the asylum request," Correa said.

RECOMMENDED: Six countries where Edward Snowden could get asylum

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/where-snowden-dad-russia-ecuador-weigh-165924579.html

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Building PayPal Galactic for Off-World Payments Will Take Years

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. ? Developing a cosmic cash system to meet the needs of future space tourists and interplanetary settlers is a complicated task that will take several years to complete, leaders of the new project say.

On Thursday (June 27), online-payment company PayPal and the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute unveiled PayPal Galactic, an initiative that aims to figure out the best way to process financial transactions beyond Earth.

This is much easier said than done, with many big questions demanding attention right off the bat, officials said. [9 Ways to Stay Safe Using PayPal]

"What will be our standard currency up there? How will the banking system need to adapt?" PayPal president David Marcus said here at the SETI Institute during the project's unveiling on Thursday. "How will risk and fraud management evolve? IP address from space? That's not a country for us; how are we going to deal with that?"

It's also unclear at the moment how off-world banking transactions will be regulated, and which bodies here on Earth would do the regulating, Marcus added, stressing that such issues will take a while to work out.

"We will focus on answering those questions and inviting everyone around the table who wants to participate ? scientists and the industry as well," Marcus said. "We're really, really looking forward to having the conversation for the next couple of years."

It's important to start this lengthy and involved process now, Marcus said, because private spaceflight is set to open the final frontier up to the masses soon.

Indeed, Virgin Galactic?and XCOR Aerospace may begin commercial flights to suborbital space within the next year or so. These companies are currently charging $250,000 and $95,000, respectively, for seats aboard their spaceships, but Marcus sees the price coming down dramatically before much longer.

"Futurists expect space travel to follow what happened to air travel," he said, adding that a roundtrip plane ticket from New York to Los Angeles cost $4,500 in 1935 ? the equivalent of $80,000 today.

So it's not hard to imagine that Virgin's $250,000 ticket price could come down to just a few thousand dollars in a decade or so, enabling large numbers of people to fly to space, Marcus said.

While brief suborbital flights can easily be booked and paid for here on Earth, Marcus and others see bigger things following in their wake that call out for a new off-planet monetary system ? orbiting hotels, luxury "space yachts" for the megarich and, eventually, outposts on the moon and Mars.

"The time is right," Marcus said. "Space tourism is taking off."

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter?@michaeldwall?and?Google+.?Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook?or Google+. Originally story at?SPACE.com.

Copyright 2013 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/building-paypal-galactic-off-world-payments-years-194003872.html

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Grand jury indicts accused Boston Marathon bomber

By Scott Malone

BOSTON (Reuters) - A grand jury has indicted accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on charges of killing four people and using a weapon of mass destruction, federal prosecutors in Boston said on Thursday.

Tsarnaev, 19, is one of two ethnic Chechen brothers accused of carrying out the April 15 attack, which killed three people. A fourth victim, a university police officer, died in a gunfight with the pair four days later as authorities raced to capture them.

The younger Tsarnaev, who was badly injured in that gun battle, has been held in a prison hospital west of Boston since his capture on April 19.

(Reporting by Scott Malone; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/accused-boston-marathon-bomber-indicted-federal-grand-jury-173206491.html

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Khloe Kardashian Turns 29! See Her Cutest Photos With Lamar

As the reality star celebrates her birthday, see the evolution of her romance with her hubby.

Source: http://www.ivillage.com/khloe-kardashian-and-lamar-odoms-cutest-moments/1-b-517071?dst=iv%3AiVillage%3Akhloe-kardashian-and-lamar-odoms-cutest-moments-517071

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Babies can read each other?s moods, study finds

June 27, 2013 ? Although it may seem difficult for adults to understand what an infant is feeling, a new study from Brigham Young University finds that it's so easy a baby could do it.

Psychology professor Ross Flom's study, published in the academic journal Infancy, shows that infants can recognize each other's emotions by five months of age. This study comes on the heels of other significant research by Flom on infants' ability to understand the moods of dogs, monkeys and classical music.

"Newborns can't verbalize to their mom or dad that they are hungry or tired, so the first way they communicate is through affect or emotion," says Flom. "Thus it is not surprising that in early development, infants learn to discriminate changes in affect."

Infants can match emotion in adults at seven months and familiar adults at six months. In order to test infant's perception of their peer's emotions, Flom and his team of researchers tested a baby's ability to match emotional infant vocalizations with a paired infant facial expression.

"We found that 5 month old infants can match their peer's positive and negative vocalizations with the appropriate facial expression," says Flom. "This is the first study to show a matching ability with an infant this young. They are exposed to affect in a peer's voice and face which is likely more familiar to them because it's how they themselves convey or communicate positive and negative emotions."

In the study, infants were seated in front of two monitors. One of the monitors displayed video of a happy, smiling baby while the other monitor displayed video of a second sad, frowning baby. When audio was played of a third happy baby, the infant participating in the study looked longer to the video of the baby with positive facial expressions. The infant also was able to match negative vocalizations with video of the sad frowning baby. The audio recordings were from a third baby and not in sync with the lip movements of the babies in either video.

"These findings add to our understanding of early infant development by reiterating the fact that babies are highly sensitive to and comprehend some level of emotion," says Flom. "Babies learn more in their first 2 1/2 years of life than they do the rest of their lifespan, making it critical to examine how and what young infants learn and how this helps them learn other things."

Flom co-authored the study of 40 infants from Utah and Florida with Professor Lorraine Bahrick from Florida International University.

Flom's next step in studying infant perception is to run the experiments with a twist: test whether babies could do this at even younger ages if instead they were watching and hearing clips of themselves.

And while the talking twin babies in this popular YouTube clip are older, it's still a lot of fun to watch them babble at each other.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_JmA2ClUvUY

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/mind_brain/child_development/~3/ttEOJhEX-Xk/130627102835.htm

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Noel, Len atop an NBA draft full of questions

NEW YORK (AP) ? Nerlens Noel is coming off a major knee injury. Alex Len is in a walking boot.

One of them could be the No. 1 pick Thursday in an NBA draft that appears short on stardom, and neither looks ready to get his career off to a running start.

"This draft is really unpredictable, a lot of guys with injuries and you don't have any, like, LeBron James," Len said Wednesday. "So it's going to be interesting."

Ten years after James climbed on stage to start a draft that goes down as one of the best in recent memory, the No. 1 pick again belongs to Cleveland.

The Cavaliers won't find anyone who can play like James on the court ? if they keep the pick ? and even the climbing the stage part will be a challenge for the big men who opened their college seasons against each other and are competing again now.

Noel tore the ACL in his left knee on Feb. 12, ending his lone season at Kentucky. The 6-foot-11 freshman led the nation in shot blocking and his conference in rebounding, but hasn't been able to show the Cavaliers if his offensive game has grown.

The only basketball work he did during his visit to Cleveland was shooting some free throws. Perhaps the pants he wore with his sports jacket and orange tie were just too tight, but Noel was walking gingerly as he exited a hotel ballroom after meeting with the media Wednesday.

"I wanted to do more. Unfortunately I got hurt, but I mean I definitely felt right before I got injured I was really coming along as a player and just really coming into my own during that part of the season," Noel said. "But like I said, unfortunately I got hurt, so I wasn't able to show as much as I wanted to."

Nor has Len, but that hasn't stopped the 7-1 center from the Ukraine who spent two seasons at Maryland from climbing into the mix at No. 1. His left foot started bothering him around February, and he found out after the season that it was a stress fracture.

He was aware he was projected as a top-10 pick before the draft combine, but may go much higher even though his visits to teams have consisted of nothing more than interviews. He no longer needs crutches but will be in the boot for perhaps two more weeks.

So, with all these injury questions, what about playing it safe and picking a healthy guy?

"I mean, probably a lot of people wish it could be that easy," Kansas guard Ben McLemore said. "But it's a process for the teams, they've got to see what's available and what they really need. And like I said, this draft is up in the air and nobody knows what's going to happen, who's going to get drafted in which order."

Orlando has the No. 2 pick, followed by Washington, Charlotte and Phoenix.

McLemore, Indiana's Victor Oladipo, Georgetown forward Otto Porter and national player of the year Trey Burke of Michigan are among the other players who will hear their names called early at Barclays Center by NBA Commissioner David Stern in his final draft.

It's a class that won't draw any comparisons to the one that James led, which featured future Miami Heat teammates Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, along with NBA scoring champion Carmelo Anthony among the first five picks.

Brooklyn Nets general manager Billy King said a number of teams are trying to trade out of the draft and acquire extra picks for next year, which is expected to be a stronger class. But he doesn't know if there will be enough teams interested in being trade partners to get those deals done.

"There are good players in this draft, but right now, there are not impact players. What I mean by that is that there's no one you look at in this draft that within two years will be an All-Star, say like Kyrie Irving was, players like that," said Minnesota Timberwolves president Flip Saunders, referring to the guard Cleveland took with the No. 1 pick in 2011.

"And so in order for you to move up and dilute your talent pool and your roster, you've got to get an impact-type player, and I just don't believe ... there's good players, probably pretty good players in this league, but are they going to be that impact player who's going to be an All-Star or future Hall of Famer? That's what you don't see. And sometimes that's something you don't see for two or three years in a row."

McLemore has in some ways been hurt by healthy, since by being able to work out he's given teams something to nitpick. Noel and Len have been largely free of criticism while sitting on the sideline.

Instead, Len is hoping his first impression of the season is one that holds up, when he had a career-high 23 points, 12 rebounds and four blocks against Noel in Maryland's loss to Kentucky, right in the building where they will be Thursday.

"I did well against him. So, it's not up to me, it's up to teams," Len said of a team choosing between the two.

Neither player said he knows what the Cavs will do. There has been speculation they are open to dealing the pick, something teams rarely consider in a year with a clear-cut No. 1.

Noel said he had gotten no sense from the Cavs that they had concern about his knee, which could keep him off the court until early in the regular season. And in a draft full of questions, he believes selecting him is the right answer.

"I'm a good teammate, I definitely love to work," Noel said. "I want to get better. I want to be great, I want to reach my potential, be the best player I can be. I definitely do countless hours in the gym and I'm definitely working to get there."

___

AP Basketball Writer Jon Krawczynski in Minneapolis contributed to this report.

___

Follow Brian Mahoney on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/Briancmahoney

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/noel-len-atop-nba-draft-full-questions-211509916.html

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