US president Barack Obama says the United States has asked Iran to return a captured spy drone, as a top Iranian official says his country will reverse engineer the plane and is in the "final stages" of unlocking its software secrets.

Mr Obama confirmed the request for the drone, which Tehran said it brought down while overflying its territory, at a news conference with Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki.

"We've asked for it back. We'll see how the Iranians respond," he said.

Tehran says it is planning to use the downed craft to produce a fleet of its own drones.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has denied ministers threatened to resign from Parliament if they were demoted in yesterday's Cabinet reshuffle.

Two of the so-called faceless men who engineered Ms Gillard's coup against Kevin Rudd last year, Bill Shorten and Mark Arbib, were promoted yesterday as Ms Gillard unveiled an expanded Cabinet.

Rudd supporter Kim Carr was booted out of Cabinet and there have been reports two ministers - Robert McClelland and Peter Garrett - threatened to resign from Parliament and force by-elections if they were sacked.

From Paul Sheehan...

Everyone has a bad banking story, and we take for granted all the productive things the banks do for us. It is the bad stories that come to mind when the big four banks issue their profit statements. In the latest financial year the big four made a combined profit of $24 billion.

The O'Farrell government's whip in the upper house has become a minor sensation on Twitter this afternoon, attacking other users, telling one to "go fuck yourself" and declaring himself the "Marieke Hardy" of the Right.

Peter Phelps, a member of the hard right of the NSW Liberal Party, who notably once described traffic lights as a "Bolshevist menace", joined the social networking site less than a month ago with some trepidation.

Dr Phelps quickly responded: "go fuck yourself, commie! And you can't complain because I put in smiley ;-)".

A number of Twitter users criticised him for the response, which only elicited further strong reactions from the politician.

Britain is facing isolation in Europe after prime minister David Cameron vetoed a radical change to the treaty governing the European Union.

All EU countries except Britain signed a "new fiscal compact" treaty giving Brussels ultimate authority over the way EU governments raise taxes and spends revenue.

After two years of foot-dragging on deepening integration, 26 member nations are set to approve a series of tough new rules that will include "automatic consequences" for countries whose public deficits exceed 3 per cent of GDP.

Euro zone members agreed to a treaty that requires stricter fiscal discipline, but efforts to reach unanimity among the members of the European Union failed as Britain refused to go along.

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Lack of urgency in the Durban meeting halls and pressing issues elsewhere threaten to block progress as the UN climate summit enters its final days.

Some delegates said there was no clear process for bridging divides.

Others suggested that the EU summit on Thursday and Friday would see European leaders "thinking of the euro crisis, not the climate crisis".

Most nations appear to want a strong deal - but the exceptions are some of the world's most powerful countries.

HOW do you feel after imbibing a bit of red wine? Euphoric, excited, or perhaps simply cheery? Or are you one of those drinkers prone to suffering a nagging feeling of guilt, combined with an uncomfortable sensation inside your head?

Well now, thanks to new research by Victorian scientists, you could instead simply feel content that you are doing your bit for the environment, as well as for the nation's dairy herd.

New research has found a convenient and practical use for the leftover material from wine-making that will help two sometimes fiercely competing worlds; the environment and agriculture.

When fed the stems, seeds and skins that were left over from making red wine, material known as grape marc, the methane emissions from dairy cows dropped by 20 per cent.

One wonders about charitable souls when they loose it...:

Leaders in the charity sector have questioned the wisdom of a prominent youth worker who has joined Clubs Australia to fight the Government's proposed poker machine reforms.

Youth Off The Streets founder Father Chris Riley has become the face of the clubs' campaign against the reforms, which include mandatory pre-commitment technology.

Father Riley appears on a pamphlet that will be sent today to almost 50 electorates across the eastern states.

US President Barack Obama's administration has rejected Republican calls to fire the ambassador to Belgium after he suggested that Israeli actions against Palestinians, including settlement building and military strikes, were partly to blame for anti-Semitism in Europe.

Ambassador Howard Gutman, who is Jewish and the son of a Holocaust survivor, said in a speech that a new type of anti-Semitism had emerged in Europe that was not "classic bigotry" but instead linked to "continuing tensions" between Israel and the Palestinian territories and other Arab neighbours.

Ideas erupt from the mind of Newt Gingrich — bold, unconventional and sometimes troubling and distracting.

On Monday, Mr. Gingrich sought to do damage control on the latest of his Big Thoughts to land him in hot water — helping children bootstrap their way out of poverty by paying them to mop and clean their schools, and rolling back child labor laws that he has called “truly stupid.”

Former Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull has urged his successor Tony Abbott to support a conscience vote on the issue of same-sex marriage.

The ALP national conference at the weekend changed its platform to one of support for gay marriage, voting for Labor MPs to be allowed a conscience vote on the issue.

Opinion polls reveal the community is in support of same-sex marriage with a Galaxy Research poll released yesterday showing 76 per of Coalition voters back a conscience vote.

Mr Abbott continues to insist the Coalition strongly opposes any change to the Marriage Act, but he has not vetoed a conscience vote.

"If Australia is going to lift the ban on a country which has not signed a non-Nuclear Proliferation Treaty, it is hoped it is also applied to Pakistan the same way."

Currently Pakistan has not made any request for uranium from  Australia yet, but Abdullah said this may change in the future.