PHOENIX (Reuters) – Even as a five-year slump in house prices drags on, eight-out-of-10 Americans say bricks and mortar remain the best long-term investment, according to a study released on Tuesday.

The survey by the Pew Research Center's Social and Demographic Trends project found that 81 percent of respondents see housing as the best investment a person can make, despite a slump in prices that has knocked nearly a third off home values since 2006.

"The resilience of the American public's belief in the investment value of home ownership is pretty impressive," Paul Taylor, the project's director and a co-author of the report, told Reuters.

"In modern economic history we've never had a five-year period where home values have fallen as long or as far as they have now," he added.

U.S. home prices were down by around 32 percent at the start of this year from their pre-recession peak in July 2006, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices released late last month.

After a pause last year, prices fell again in the first quarter of this year, the Pew Research Center said.

The telephone survey was conducted among a nationally representative sample of 2,142 adults, between March 15 and March 29 this year.

It found that while the American public continued to believe in housing as an investment, there had been some falloff in the intensity of their faith.

It found that 37 percent "strongly" agreed that a home is the best long-term investment a person can make, while 44 percent "somewhat" agreed that homeownership is the best investment a person can make.

When the same questions were put to respondents in a CBS News/New York Times survey two decades ago, 49 percent "strongly agreed" that homes were the best investment, and 35 percent "somewhat agreed," the study noted.

Nearly half of all homeowners said that their home was worth less now than before the recession began in late 2007, the survey found.

Of that group, the overwhelming majority said it would take at least three years for values to recover, while nearly half said it would take at least six years to recover.

Among those whose homes have lost value, Westerners and Midwesterners were more pessimistic about a speedy recovery than those living in the South and East.

Nearly a quarter -- 23 percent -- of all homeowners said that if they had it to do all over again, they would not buy their current home.

(Reporting by Tim Gaynor; Editing by Jerry Norton)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A naturalized U.S. citizen from Pakistan pleaded guilty on Monday to joining what he thought was an al Qaeda plot to bomb the Washington area subway system and received a 23-year prison sentence.

Farooque Ahmed, 35, was arrested in October in a government sting operation for conducting surveillance at subway stops and suggesting where to place explosives.

Ahmed, who moved to the United States in 1993, pleaded guilty to one count of attempting to provide material support to al Qaeda and one count of collecting information to assist in the planning of a terrorist attack on a transit facility, the Justice Department said.

Ahmed, who previously pleaded not guilty, changed his plea during a federal court hearing in Alexandria, Virginia.

As part of the plea deal, prosecutors dropped one count against Ahmed and agreed to the 23-year prison term, officials said. He had previously faced up to 50 years in prison.

U.S. officials said the public was never in any danger and Ahmed's activities were closely monitored during the six-month sting operation in which government agents posed as al Qaeda operatives.

After his arrest, the FBI said Ahmed had told undercover agents that he had trained himself to use firearms in hopes of fighting U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.

Since the September 11, 2001, attacks, the Justice Department and FBI have faced criticism for such sting operations and questions over whether the suspects have been unfairly targeted and lured into plots.

Justice Department officials have defended them as legal and an important way to prevent another attack on U.S. soil.

Other recent sting operations include a Somali-born teenager arrested in November in Portland, Oregon, on charges of joining what he thought was a plot to set off a bomb at a Christmas tree lighting ceremony.

(Editing by Eric Beech)

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Mark Zuckerberg won a legal battle against former Harvard classmates who accuse him of stealing their idea for Facebook, but the feud made famous on the silver screen is not over yet.

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss must accept a cash and stock settlement with Facebook that had been valued at $65 million, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Monday. Meanwhile, a New York man filed an amended lawsuit against Zuckerberg on Monday, citing a 2003 email in which Zuckerberg discusses an urgent need to launch his site before "a couple of upperclassmen" could launch theirs, an apparent reference to the Winklevoss twins.

The Winklevoss brothers argued their settlement with Facebook was unfair because the company hid information from them during talks. But the twins were sophisticated negotiators aided by a team of lawyers, 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge Alex Kozinski wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel.

"At some point, litigation must come to an end," Kozinski wrote. "That point has now been reached."

An attorney for the brothers, Jerome Falk Jr., said on Monday his clients would seek a rehearing before a larger, "en banc" group of 9th Circuit judges.

That larger group can overrule a three-judge panel, although only a fraction of cases undergo such a review. Should the 9th Circuit refuse to rehear the case, the last option would be an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Falk said he "respectfully" disagreed with the 9th Circuit's conclusions.

The 6-foot, 5-inch (1.96-meter) Winklevoss brothers are Olympic rowers who participated in the 2008 games in Beijing, and their saga with Zuckerberg was dramatized in the film "The Social Network."

In the movie, actor Armie Hammer played both identical twins. Zuckerberg's character snidely called them on-screen the "Winklevi."

FACT AND FICTION

The twins, along with Divya Narendra, started a company called ConnectU while at Harvard. They say Zuckerberg stole their idea. Facebook denies these claims.

Facebook took in $1.2 billion of revenue in 2010's first nine months, according to documents that Goldman Sachs provided to clients to entice investors in a special fund set up to invest in the giant social networking firm.

The company was valued at $50 billion as part of that transaction. The company said on Monday it is evaluating the Internet market in China, but a source indicated it has not yet signed a business deal with any companies there.

The Winklevoss twins and Narendra agreed to a settlement that had been valued at $65 million. But they argue that, based on an internal valuation that Facebook did not reveal, they should have received more Facebook shares as part of the deal.

A lower court had granted Facebook's request to enforce the settlement with the Winklevoss twins and Narendra. The 9th Circuit agreed on Monday.

"The Winklevosses are not the first parties bested by a competitor who then seek to gain through litigation what they were unable to achieve in the marketplace," Kozinski wrote.

Facebook deputy general counsel Colin Stretch said the company appreciated the court's careful consideration of the case and was "pleased" it ruled in their favor.

The case is not the only ownership dispute Zuckerberg must fend off. A New York businessman, Paul Ceglia, claims a contract with Zuckerberg to develop and design a website entitled him to an 84 percent stake in the privately held social networking site.

In a new twist to the long-running case, Ceglia filed an amended lawsuit on Monday, in which he outlined an 2003 email from Zuckerberg that suggested the Facebook founder stalled "a couple of upperclassmen here" from launching their competing website. The lawsuit does not specifically name the Winklevoss twins.

"If we don't make a move soon, I think we will lose the advantage we would have if we release before them," the lawsuit claims Zuckerberg wrote in an email.

Ceglia claims Zuckerberg pleaded with him for money to finance the social network's set-up with the intention of getting it live before the other site.

Facebook has repeatedly said it believes the lawsuit is fraudulent. Orin Snyder, a lawyer for the company, said Facebook looks forward to defending the case in court and on Monday characterized Ceglia's claims as "ridiculous."

The case involving the Winklevosses in the 9th Circuit is The Facebook Inc v. ConnectU Inc. 08-16745.

(Reporting by Dan Levine; editing by Gerald E. McCormick)