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Shahram Amiri, who has flown from the US to Tehran, also denied being heavily involved in Iran’s nuclear programme.

Mr Amiri disappeared a year ago and resurfaced this week in the Pakistani embassy in Washington asking to be repatriated.

The US said he had been in the country “of his own free will”.

Wearing a beige suit, a smiling Mr Amiri was greeted at Tehran’s international airport early on Thursday by his tearful son and wife, along with other family members and Deputy Foreign Minister, Hassan Qashqavi.

Speaking at a news conference afterwards, he repeated his earlier claims that he had been abducted by US agents while undertaking the Hajj pilgrimage in the Saudi Arabian city of Medina.

Mr Amiri said he was placed under intense pressure by his interrogators to co-operate in the first months following his alleged kidnapping.

“I was under the harshest mental and physical torture,” he said, adding that Israeli agents had been present during the interrogations and that the CIA had offered him $50m to remain in the US.

“The Americans wanted me to say that I defected to America of my own will to use me for revealing some false information about Iran’s nuclear work. But with God’s will, I resisted.”

Mr Amiri offered no evidence, but said he would eventually.

“I have some documents proving that I’ve not been free in the United States and have always been under the control of armed agents of US intelligence services.”

He also denied he had been heavily involved in Iran’s nuclear programme, saying he was a “simple researcher who was working at a university”.

“I’m not involved in any confidential jobs. I had no classified information.”

“I had nothing to do with the Natanz and Fordo sites,” he said, referring to Iran’s two uranium enrichment plants.

Unconfirmed reports that he worked for Iran’s atomic energy organisation were “a tool the US government brought up for political pressure”.

Mr Qashqavi thanked the scientist for his “resistance to pressure”.

He rejected suggestions that Mr Amiri’s return was linked to a possible deal to release three US hikers who have been detained in Iran since 2009.
‘Breakdown’

In the US, unnamed officials and security sources said that Mr Amiri defected and was put into a programme similar to a witness-protection scheme.

Later, he apparently became concerned for family members he had left behind, had a breakdown and decided to return to Iran, US reports claim.

A US official told the BBC: “He provided useful information to the United States. The Iranians now have him. In terms of win-loss, it’s not even a close call.”

In its online edition, The Washington Post newspaper quoted unnamed officials saying Mr Amiri had been working for the CIA for more than a year and was paid $5m.

In June, the Iranian government announced that it had handed evidence to the US that the scientist had been abducted.

It came shortly after Mr Amiri appeared in two videos posted on the internet giving conflicting stories about how he had arrived in the US.

He said in the first that he had been kidnapped by CIA and Saudi agents while on a pilgrimage. In the second message, he said he had gone to the US to improve his education and was living freely in Arizona.

In a third message posted on the internet later that month, Mr Amiri said he had escaped from US custody and was on the run in Virginia.

In an interview with Iranian state Press TV before he left the US, Mr Amiri said he was in Medina when three men in a van posing as fellow pilgrims offered him a ride.

“As I sat down, the man in back held a gun toward me and told me to keep quiet,” he said.

“They took me to a secret place and injected me, and when I woke up I saw myself in a huge airplane” and was taken to the US.

The US state department repeatedly denied it had kidnapped him, but never said that he was not in the country.

Iran accused Saudi Arabia of handing over Shahram Amiri to the US after he went missing during a pilgrimage to Mecca a year ago. A man purporting to be Amiri subsequently appeared in a series of internet videos. In one, the man said he was studying in the US, while in another a man calling himself Amiri said he was hiding from US agents.

This morning, a spokesman for Pakistan’s ministry of foreign affairs in Islamabad said Amiri had been “dropped off” at the Iranian interests section of the Pakistani embassy in Washington at 6.30pm (11.30pm BST) last night.

“He was dropped there by someone,” said Abdul Basit. “He’s in the Iranian interests section, not in the Pakistan embassy per se. They are making arrangements to repatriate him.”

Because Iran and the US do not have diplomatic relations, Pakistan handles Iranian interests in the US.

The Iranian interests section is in a separate building, about two miles from the Pakistani embassy and is staffed by around eight Iranians. Basit said he did not know how Amiri had got there or how he would be sent back to Iran.

Separately, Iran’s state radio reported today that Amiri was taking refuge and wanted to return to Iran immediately.

Amiri, who works for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation, could have valuable information on the progress of Iran’s nuclear programme.

According to some reports, he had defected to the US and was helping the CIA. The US, Britain and other western powers allege that Iran is secretly trying to build nuclear weapons, while Iran insists its nuclear development is for peaceful purposes.

The European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the International Monetary Fund have all recently warned of a looming crunch, especially in Europe, where banks have enough trouble raising money as it is.

Their concern is that banks hungry for refinancing will compete with governments — which also must roll over huge sums — for the bond market’s favor. As a result, credit for business and consumers could become more costly and scarce, with unpleasant consequences for economic growth.

“There is a cliff we are racing toward — it’s huge,” said Richard Barwell, an economist at Royal Bank of Scotland and formerly a senior economist at the Bank of England, Britain’s central bank. “No one seems to be talking about it that much.” But, he added, “it’s of first-order importance for lending and output.”

Banks worldwide owe nearly $5 trillion to bondholders and other creditors that will come due through 2012, according to estimates by the Bank for International Settlements. About $2.6 trillion of the liabilities are in Europe.

U.S. banks must refinance about $1.3 trillion through 2012. While that sum is nothing to scoff at, analysts seem most concerned about Europe because the banking system there is already weighed down by the sovereign debt crisis.

She was evasive, for one thing. When I asked what it was like being a robot, she said she wanted a playmate — but declined to elaborate.

“Are you lonely?” I pressed.

Now the University of California wants to jump into online education for undergraduates, hoping to become the nation’s first top-tier research institution to offer a bachelor’s degree over the Internet comparable in quality to its prestigious campus program.

“We want to do a highly selective, fully online, credit-bearing program on a large scale – and that has not been done,” said UC Berkeley law school Dean Christopher Edley, who is leading the effort.

But a number of skeptical faculty members and graduate student instructors fear that a cyber UC would deflate the university’s five-star education into a fast-food equivalent, cheapening the brand. Similar complaints at the University of Illinois helped bring down that school’s ambitious Global Campus program last fall after just two years.

UC officials say theirs will be different.

Called Taranis, the wedge-shaped, 8-tonne stealth jet will be able to fly regular drone missions in regions of conflict – but it will also be able to seek and destroy enemy aircraft in dogfights. However, the high degree of autonomy promised by the makers has some observers concerned that the aircraft may decide on its own what constitutes a target.

Taranis is the UK government’s response to the dominance of US technology in the uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) market, where aircraft such as the General Atomics Predator reign supreme. Taranis is the outcome of a 2006 Ministry of Defence decision to develop and fly an uncrewed plane that goes one better than the US systems by using jet engines rather than propellers. The result is a fast, highly manoeuvrable fighter jet.

Today, the Ministry of Defence and the UK-based military technology company BAE Systems unveiled the fruits of that development in a high-security roll-out of their Uncrewed Combat Air Vehicle (UCAV). But after reading pre-launch information one expert has raised concerns about the technology.

“Taranis looks set to put the UK ahead of the game in UCAVs,” says Noel Sharkey, a robotics engineer specialising in the autonomous military systems at the University of Sheffield in the UK.

“But warning bells ring for me when they talk about Taranis being ‘a fully autonomous intelligent system’ together with applications in ‘deep missions’ and having a ‘deep target attack’ capability.”

Sharkey says that “deep mission” is military speak for “beyond the reach of a remote pilot”. “We need to know if this means the robot planes will chose their own targets and destroy them – because they certainly will not have the intelligence to discriminate between civilians and combatants.”

The mine clearance charity Landmine Action, based in London, has already expressed its concerns that creeping autonomy in military technology is creating robots that are capable of deciding for themselves what constitutes a target – making them as indiscriminate as a landmine.

Gerald Howarth, the UK minister for international security strategy, says that Taranis will use minimal human intervention but can be remotely piloted at any time.

When asked whether Taranis and later UCAVs based on its technology would ever make their own targeting decisions, air chief marshal Simon Bryant of the UK’s Royal Air Force said: “This is a very sensitive area we are paying a lot of attention to.”

Marine Lt. Andrew Abbott, 23, took it all in as he peered out at the graffiti-covered buildings, knowing that the lessons he learned recently in one of the city’s toughest neighborhoods could help him soon in the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

“People are the center of gravity and if you do everything you can to protect them, then they’ll protect you,” he said. “That’s something true here and pretty much everywhere.”

Abbott was among 70 Camp Pendleton Marines in a training exercise that aims to adapt the investigative techniques the LAPD has used for decades against violent street gangs to take on the Taliban more as a powerful drug-trafficking mob than an insurgency.

The Marines hope that learning to work like a cop on a beat will help them better track the Taliban, build relationships with Afghans leery of foreign troops and make them better teachers as they try to professionalize an Afghan police force beset by corruption.

The troops believe they can learn valuable lessons from the LAPD, which has made inroads into communities after highly publicized abuses, from the videotaped beating of Rodney King to corruption in an anti-gang unit.

“Their role is to win the hearts and minds of the community and that’s what they did,” said Marine Staff Sgt. Brendan Flynn, who also works as a Los Angeles police officer and will be deployed to help train Afghan police.

The weeklong exercise — unbeknownst to the public — involved Marines dressed in jeans and T-shirts observing drugs busts, witnessing prostitution arrests and even following a murder case. It was the largest group of Marines to embed with the city’s officers.

Abbott, of Long Island, N.Y., rode with Sgt. Arno Clair, a 16-year veteran with salt-and-pepper hair who swims up to a mile a day.

During their afternoon together, police handcuffed a bus driver — moments after he was caught by an undercover officer with $25,000 worth of crack cocaine outside an apartment complex in a south-central Los Angeles neighborhood long plagued by violent gangs.

The tattooed suspect wearing an earring and baggy shorts seemed a world away from the ragtag, Kalashnikov-toting Taliban fighters, just as the streets of south-central Los Angeles are from the dusty villages of mud-brick houses in Afghanistan.

But in many ways, police in Los Angeles’ crime-ridden neighborhoods use the same skills that Marines say could help them.

Marines are in charge of training Afghanistan’s army and police but often have no police experience themselves. Their success in building effective police forces is considered key to stabilizing the country and allowing foreign troops to withdraw.

Marines also are changing their approach, realizing that marching into towns to show force alienates communities. Instead, they are being taught to fan out with interpreters to strike up conversations with truck drivers, money exchangers, cell phone sellers and others.

The rapport building can net valuable information that could even alert troops about potential attacks.

Marines can gather intelligence by picking up the notebooks, receipts and other papers left behind in raids that could provide insight into the opium business the Taliban uses to buy their weapons, Afghan expert Gretchen Peters said.

She told Marines before the Los Angeles patrols that they should follow the lead of some Afghans who have gone from using the term “mujahadeen” or “holy warrior” to identify the Taliban to calling them gangsters.

That, she said, shows how fed up the villagers are with being extorted by them and calling them gangsters will win them over.

“Think of the Taliban as the Sopranos in turbans,” she said. “I think essentially they’re criminals.”

Peters, who has written extensively about the Taliban being a criminal network, has been talking to troops across the country before they deploy to Helmand Province, a top opium-producing region.

Afghanistan supplies 90 percent of the world’s opium, the main ingredient of heroin, and is also the leading global supplier of hashish. Last year, opium seizures soared 924 percent because of better cooperation between Afghan and international forces.

In the end, the police training mission is what will win the war, said Marine 2nd Lt. Jared Siebenaler, 24, of Hastings, Minn., who spent the past six months training police in Afghanistan. But he acknowledged their police mission faces enormous challenges.

Siebenaler said many recruits tested positive for drugs, arriving to work high on hashish if they came at all. Supervisors were believed to be skimming money off their officers’ measly salaries. One force had men from two tribes who could barely stand each other.

And then there’s the language barrier between Marines and the Afghan police.

But like most police work, getting past issues of trust and cultural difference begins with a brief encounter on a street.

As Clair and Abbott cruised past a row of dilapidated homes, the police sergeant told him to notice how a person’s walk and dress changes from street to street, and whether children are playing or hurrying by.

Crime here increases with summer’s heat, he said, encouraging Abbott to identify the violence-trigger in Afghanistan, such as at the end of the poppy harvest.

“What’s happenin,’ man?” Clair said, waving his hand out his window to a man who looked away in disgust.

“If they are on the fence about police and they say ‘hi’ back, then at least we’ve dealt with that issue, and if they don’t, then at least I know who I’m dealing with around here,” he told Abbott.

Bank of America, the biggest U.S. bank by assets, may record a $1 billion second-quarter gain from writing down its debts to their market value, Citigroup Inc. analyst Keith Horowitz estimated in a June 23 report. The boost to earnings, stemming from an accounting rule that allows banks to book profits when the value of their own bonds falls, probably represented a fifth of pretax income, Horowitz wrote.

Investor fears of a Greek default, stalled U.S. economic recovery and tougher industry regulations have rattled markets, snapping banks’ trading streaks and rekindling doubts about their creditworthiness. Prices for Bank of America’s credit derivatives — used by traders to bet on the likelihood of the firm’s default — rose by 34 percent during the second quarter, while Morgan Stanley’s doubled and Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s surged 86 percent.

Neighbors of the victim told an ABC News affiliate in Houston that the bomb was disguised as a box of chocolates in a gift bag, left on the home’s doorstep around Thursday.

Instead, it contained what authorities described as a pipe bomb carrying a load of thumb tacks and nails. When she opened the package on Friday evening, standing on her back porch around 6:30, it resulted in shrapnel embedded across the woman’s face — injuries police said were not life-threatening.

“It wasn’t immediately clear whether the house was targeted, however, Eyewitness News found out the home is owned by an oil company executive,” the ABC affiliate further noted.

Police refused to release the victim’s name and none of the area media stated who the home belongs to or which oil company employs that individual.

However, an examination of the homefront shown on local news reports correlated to images featured on Google Street View. A series of basic searches across a publicly available property database revealed the home’s owner to be James Brock Moore III, president of Adams Resources Exploration Corporation (AREC). A separate name listed on the home’s appraisal record, one Vennie Wolf, may or may not be the bomb’s victim.

The company brags on its Web site that it successfully “exploited” the “Austin chalk,” which is a geological formation that’s proved tricky to drill under due to its fractured oil and gas stocks. Many companies have adopted advanced horizontal drilling techniques to conquer the chalk and penetrate even deeper into underground Texas mineral reserves. AREC says its areas of interest stretch along the Gulf coast from south Texas all the way to Alabama.