Country music legend Merle Haggard hospitalized (Reuters)

(Reuters) ? Country music great Merle Haggard has been admitted to a Georgia hospital with a respiratory illness that forced him to cancel a concert Tuesday night just seven minutes before taking the stage.

"He has a respiratory virus or infection," Frank Mull, his tour manager and close friend, said as he waited Wednesday morning for a taxi to take him to the hospital in Macon, Georgia.

Haggard, 74, a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame, is best known for songs like "Mama Tried," "Okie from Muskogee" and "The Fightin' Side of Me."

With influences ranging from Lefty Frizzell to Bob Wills to Jimmie Rodgers, Haggard is an architect of country music's so-called "Bakersfield Sound."

Haggard was preparing to take the stage Tuesday night in Macon when it was determined he was too ill to perform, Mull said.

A concert scheduled for Wednesday night in Columbus, Georgia was cancelled. Haggard's next scheduled concert is Thursday in Paducah, Kentucky.

"I imagine we'll determine more (about other tour dates) when I get to the hospital," said Mull, who was going to meet with the singer and doctors.

Mull said Haggard was unwell when he left his California home to begin the tour, but did not want to disappoint his fans.

"He wasn't well when he left home," he said. "He thought he was well enough to work and he did work three dates, and he got progressively worse."

(Reporting By David Bailey; Editing by Paul Thomasch)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/celebrity/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120118/people_nm/us_merlehaggard

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U.S. online piracy bill headed for major makeover (Reuters)

(Reuters) ? U.S. legislation aimed at curbing online piracy, which had appeared to be on a fast track for approval by Congress, appears likely to be scaled back or jettisoned entirely in the wake of critical comments over the weekend from the White House, people familiar with the matter said.

The legislation, known as SOPA in the House of Representatives and PIPA in the Senate, has been a major priority for entertainment companies, publishers, pharmaceutical firms and many industry groups, who say it is critical to curbing online piracy that costs them billions of dollars a year.

The legislation is designed to shut down access to overseas websites that traffic in stolen content or counterfeit goods.

Internet companies have furiously opposed the legislation and have ramped up their lobbying efforts in recent months, arguing the legislation would undermine innovation and free speech rights and compromise the functioning of the Internet.

Some Internet advocates have called for a boycott of any companies that support the legislation, and several popular websites, including community-edited encyclopedia Wikipedia and the social media site Reddit, have vowed to black out their sites this Wednesday in protest.

With public sentiment on the bill shifting in recent weeks and an implicit veto threat now emerging from the White House, Congressional staffers are resigning themselves to writing replacement language or possibly entirely new bills.

The White House said in a blog post over the weekend that it wouldn't support "legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet."

Three key section of the existing legislation seem likely to remain, a person familiar with the matter says. They comprise provisions aimed at getting search engines to disable links to foreign infringing sites; provisions that cut off advertising services to those sites; and provisions that cut off payment processing.

But critical provisions that would require Internet service providers such as Verizon Communications and Comcast Corp. to cut off infringing sites through a technology known as DNS blocking are now likely to be eliminated.

Critics have said that such measures would only encourage people to navigate the web in riskier ways, with modified browsers or other tweaks that could lead to their Internet sessions getting hijacked by scammers.

Lawmakers had already been coming around to the realization they would have to hold back on the DNS-blocking provisions.

Before the holidays, an amended version of the House bill had added a "kill switch," or provision that service providers wouldn't have to block a site if it did "impair the security or integrity of the system."

On Thursday, Senator Patrick Leahy, who is sponsoring the Senate bill, said he planned to propose amending it so that the ramifications of blocking access to a site be studied before implementation.

On Friday, Representative Lamar Smith, who is sponsoring the House bill, said he planned to remove altogether the provision that would require service providers to block access to infringing foreign websites.

A Google official said in Congressional testimony in November that the company did not necessarily oppose disabling search engine links and cutting off advertising.

But it is not clear if eliminating the DNS-blocking provisions alone will be enough to mollify critics.

"Like many other tech companies, we believe that there are smart, targeted ways to shut down foreign rogue websites without asking U.S. companies to censor the Internet," a Google spokeswoman told Reuters on Monday.

In addition to concerns about the technical ramifications of DNS blocking and the practical issues associated with disabling services to individual websites, many in the Internet business fear the bills create far too much leeway to shut down websites without sufficient due process.

But supporters of the legislation are just as adamant that something needs to be done. Over the weekend, News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch, whose holdings include Fox, complained that the White House had caved.

"So Obama has thrown in his lot with Silicon Valley paymasters who threaten all software creators with piracy, plain thievery," News Corp's chairman and chief executive officer posted on his personal Twitter account on Saturday."

The debate seems likely to intensify in the coming weeks. The White House said it would soon host a conference call among opponents of the existing bill.

(Reporting by Sarah McBride in San Francisco; Additional reporting by Ilaina Jones; Editing by Jonathan Weber and Sandra Maler)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/internet/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120116/wr_nm/us_usa_internet_piracy

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FBI seeks help finding teacher's body

Authorities renewed calls Monday for landowners near the northern North Dakota-Montana border to look for signs of a missing Montana teacher's buried body, while documents revealed one of the two suspects in her disappearance has spent time in prison.

At a news conference Monday, authorities asked that "landowners and landowners only" help look for the body of 43-year-old Sherry Arnold, a math teacher from Sidney, Mont., who has been missing since Jan. 7 and is presumed dead.

"We don't want the public out there running around in the countryside," Williston Police Chief Jim Lokken said. "The landowners know their land and their property. If they see anything that has been disturbed, we want them to check it out."

Authorities said little of the two men believed to be involved in Arnold's disappearance: 47-year-old Lester Vann Waters Jr. and 22-year-old Michael Keith Spell, both of Parachute, Colo.

Waters was arrested in Williston, and Spell was arrested in Rapid, City, S.D., The Billings Gazette reported.

The two are being held on aggravated kidnapping charges in the Williams County jail pending extradition to Montana, the newspaper reported.

Prison records in Florida show Waters has a criminal history in that state and has served prison time. Florida records show Waters has felony convictions for driving without a valid license and leaving the scene of an injury crash. He also served time for a weapons offense, and records show he has used numerous aliases.

Waters was released from a minimum-security corrections facility in August 2010, after serving about 18 months. He also was incarcerated between September 2002 and December 2003, and again between August 2007 and March 2008.

Court records show Spell was arrested in Colorado in May 2007 on state charges of drug possession, contributing to the delinquency of a minor and sexual contact without consent ? but the charges were dropped five months later. The records do not say why the charges were dismissed.

Spell also faced charges of careless driving and driving without a license in 2007, but that case also was dropped.

Investigators offered few new details on the investigation Monday, a day after the FBI issued a statement suggesting Arnold's body might be buried in a shelter belt, or line of trees that protects farmland from the region's strong winds.

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The agency put out a call to property owners in far northeastern Montana and in the North Dakota counties of Williams, McKenzie, Mountrail and in southern Divide County. It asked that they check vacant farmsteads for signs of disturbed soil or matted grass, especially in areas with lines of mature or rotted trees that serve as windbreaks.

Landowners who discover something unusual should not disturb the area, but call authorities, the FBI said.

Williams County Sheriff Scott Busching said the two suspects have made court appearances or are in the process. However, the closure of court offices for the weekend and the holiday Monday have confounded efforts to track legal documents filed in their cases. Busching said it's up to prosecutors to determine whether charges will be filed at the state or federal level.

"A lot of this will come out of the prosecution phase," Busching said. "We want to get Mrs. Arnold back to her family. We are not going to put anything out there that will even remotely hinder those efforts."

The Williams County Correctional Facility is about 46 miles from Sidney, where officials say Arnold disappeared while on an early-morning run along a truck route on the edge of the oil boom town of more than 5,500 residents.

Sidney school officials posted a statement online Friday saying they learned of Arnold's death that day. The statement provided no details.

In the days after Arnold disappeared, hundreds of residents, police, firefighters and others combed the town and surrounding countryside without success. The only clue that has been publicly released was that one of Arnold's shoes was found along her running route.

Arnold and her husband, Gary Arnold, have five children combined from prior marriages. Two live at home and attend the same school system where Sherry Arnold worked for the past 18 years.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46013196/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/

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Israel: Nuclear Iran could deter military action (AP)

JERUSALEM ? A nuclear Iran could make it tougher for Israel to act against enemies closer to home, a senior Israeli military official said Tuesday, suggesting that regional fallout would be broad should Tehran achieve bomb making capabilities.

Military planning division chief Maj. Gen. Amir Eshel said if Tehran attains atomic weapons, that could constrain Israel from striking Iranian-backed Islamist groups in Lebanon and Gaza, Hezbollah and Hamas.

"If we are forced to do things in Gaza or in Lebanon, under the Iranian nuclear umbrella it might be different," Eshel said at a briefing in Jerusalem.

He warned that a nuclear-armed Iran would set off an atomic arms race in the region, leading to "a global nuclear jungle."

Israel has been warning the world for years that Iran must not be allowed to develop the technology needed to build a bomb. It worries that a nuclear-armed Iran could threaten Israel's survival and has hinted it could strike Iran militarily if international sanctions do not halt nuclear development.

Iran claims its nuclear program is for energy production, not bomb making, and shows no sign of abandoning it.

Israel itself is assumed to have a large stockpile of nuclear weapons, and unlike Iran, it has not signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Based on photographs and material smuggled out of Israel's main nuclear reactor in the mid-1980s, experts concluded that Israel had several hundred nuclear warheads.

Israel has a policy of "ambiguity" concerning nuclear weapons. It refuses to confirm or deny their existence and insists it will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East.

Eshel spoke to reporters at a time of rising global tensions around Iran's nuclear aspirations. Last week, an Iranian nuclear scientist died in a car bomb assassination in Tehran, the fourth attack on a member of Iran's nuclear team. Iran blamed the killing on Israel, which had no comment, and on the U.S., which denied involvement.

Iran has also threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, the conduit for one sixth of the world's oil, should international sanctions block Iranian petroleum exports.

Eshel also said Israel is worried that Syria's "huge stockpile of chemical weapons" could reach militant groups like Hezbollah if the regime of President Bashar Assad falls. He predicted that would happen soon.

___

Mark Lavie contributed to this report from Cairo.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/iran/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120117/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_israel_iran

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Golden Globes Fashion Face-Off: Jessica Alba vs. Jessica Biel


We've compared co-stars (Modern Family's Julie Bowen and Sofia Vergara).

We did a showdown of screen legends (Meryl Streep and Helen Mirren).

We've pitted sisters against each other (Emily and Zooey Deschanel).

Now it's time for ... hot namesakes who once dated Derek Jeter!

Okay, a bit of a stretch for a Fashion Face-Off featuring Jessica Alba and Jessica Biel. But both attended the Golden Globe Awards last night and we have images of them, so we encourage you to vote for your favorite style star in the poll below!

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2012/01/golden-globes-fashion-face-off-jessica-alba-vs-jessica-biel/

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Bargain Automotive Rental ? EraNostra

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Cut price automotive apartment may come when you go back and forth throughout the week. Regularly costs are decrease throughout this time for the reason that automobiles aren?t in demand as they would be all over the weekend days. If you pass from Monday thru Thursday, you are perhaps going to discover a higher deal. Depending on the place you might be and where you are going, you?ll be able to get a considerable automotive condominium discount this way. When you go away on a Wednesday and come back on the similar day the following week, you can also or won?t get the similar deal.

Regardless that it will now not technically be a discount automotive condo, you?ll save money if you aren?t getting the insurance. You may also find that your present car insurance will cover you, even in a condo, however you do have to find out. Never assume that it will. You?ll name your insurance coverage agency to seek out out. If you?ll skip the insurance coverage that may be given by the car apartment agency, you?ll be able to avoid wasting cash in your rental over all. Do not forget to go back and forth on off days if you?ll be able to, and look out for specials that may additionally provide you with a discount car rental. Longer rentals may also garner a discount.

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Source: http://www.eranostra.com/2012/01/16/bargain-automotive-rental/

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Crash and burn time for Spain's crusading judge?

Citizens roll up a poster of Spanish judge Baltazar Garzon after a protest in support of Garzon outside the Supreme Court in Madrid Friday Jan. 13, 2012. Garzon, once widely regarded as Spain's most prominent magistrate, goes on trial Monday Jan. 16 for allegedly ordering illegal wiretaps of conversations between jailed suspects and their lawyers in a corruption probe. (AP Photo/Paul White)

Citizens roll up a poster of Spanish judge Baltazar Garzon after a protest in support of Garzon outside the Supreme Court in Madrid Friday Jan. 13, 2012. Garzon, once widely regarded as Spain's most prominent magistrate, goes on trial Monday Jan. 16 for allegedly ordering illegal wiretaps of conversations between jailed suspects and their lawyers in a corruption probe. (AP Photo/Paul White)

Citizens protest the upcoming trial of Spanish judge Baltazar Garzon outside the Supreme Court in Madrid Friday Jan. 13, 2012. Garzon, once widely regarded as Spain's most prominent magistrate, goes on trial Monday Jan. 16 for allegedly ordering illegal wiretaps of conversations between jailed suspects and their lawyers in a corruption probe. (AP Photo/Paul White)

Police watch as citizens protest the upcoming trial of Spanish judge Baltazar Garzon outside the Supreme Court in Madrid Friday Jan. 13, 2012. Garzon, once widely regarded as Spain's most prominent magistrate, goes on trial Monday Jan. 16 for allegedly ordering illegal wiretaps of conversations between jailed suspects and their lawyers in a corruption probe. (AP Photo/Paul White)

Citizens protest the upcoming trial of Spanish judge Baltazar Garzon outside the Supreme Court in Madrid Friday Jan. 13, 2012. Garzon, once widely regarded as Spain's most prominent magistrate, known for going after Augusto Pinochet and Osama bin Laden goes on trial Monday Jan. 16 for allegedly ordering illegal wiretaps of conversations between jailed suspects and their lawyers in a corruption probe. Garzon will also go on trial for allegedly overstepping his jurisdiction by probing Spanish civil war crimes, the culmination of a spectacular fall from grace for one of Spain's most prominent people. Banners read ' Solidarity with Garzon' and 'Against the impunity. Solidarity with the victims of Franco'. (AP Photo/Paul White)

(AP) ? He indicted late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet on genocide charges and became an instant hero to many around the world. A decade later he launched a similar crimes-against-humanity probe over atrocities by the right-wing victors of Spain's Civil War.

Now Judge Baltasar Garzon is finding himself in the dock.

On Tuesday, Garzon goes on trial for allegedly ordering illegal jailhouse wiretaps in a domestic corruption probe. A week later he appears in court to face charges he overstepped his authority in the Civil War case.

Supporters say he's the victim of a witchhunt by courthouse colleagues jealous of his fame and of arch-conservatives angered by his attempt to revisit Spain's war-time past.

Whatever the motivations, Spain's once high-flying but now-suspended super sleuth may be about to crash and burn definitively.

Garzon doesn't face jail time if convicted in either trial. But he can be removed from the bench for up to 20 years, which at his age ? 56 ? would in effect end his career as an investigating magistrate at the National Court.

The judge ? who also charged Osama bin Laden and probed abuses at the United States' Guantanamo Bay prison for terror suspects ? is separately under investigation over his dealings with a big Spanish bank.

Garzon's lawyer says the precedent set by the trials, plus the probe which could lead to a third trial, will make it virtually impossible for Garzon to take up his post again even if he is acquitted in all three cases.

"Judge Garzon is facing the perfect storm," said the attorney, Gonzalo Martinez-Fresneda.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said the fact that Garzon was even charged for probing killings and forced disappearances by supporters of Gen. Francisco Franco during and after the 1936-39 war is an outrage.

The group's spokesman, Reed Brody, said it is already discouraging judges in other countries from applying the principles of law he championed.

Both sides in the Spanish war ? the Republican side and Franco's rebel right-wing forces ? committed atrocities. But they were addressed by a post-Franco-era amnesty approved by Parliament. Republican atrocities against pro-Franco civilians had already been thoroughly documented by the regime.

The specific charge against Garzon is that he knowingly overstepped the bounds of his jurisdiction with his unprecedented albeit abortive probe of crimes committed by the Franco side.

Garzon, a workaholic from a modest background in Spain's olive-growing south, certainly never expected to find himself in court as a criminal suspect.

Rights advocates in Spain and abroad adore him for his pioneering cross-border justice cases, which apply the principle of universal jurisdiction ? the idea that some crimes are so heinous they can be prosecuted anywhere, not just in the country where they are alleged to have been committed.

Since Garzon had Pinochet arrested in London in 1998 in an ultimately failed bid to put him on trial in Madrid, Garzon and colleagues at the National Court have issued indictments and arrest warrants over crimes in such far-flung places as Tibet and Rwanda.

The effect here in Spain has been largely symbolic. There's been only one conviction ? that of an Argentine 'dirty war' suspect who came to Spain voluntarily to testify and ended up charged and convicted in 2005. And there has been one extradition.

But the arrest of Pinochet inspired victims of abuses, especially in Latin American countries like Argentina, Chile and Guatemala, to challenge and win the repeal of laws giving amnesty to perpetrators of atrocities committed by military juntas, said Brody.

"Garzon changed the world," he said.

Spain's decision to put Garzon on trial before the Supreme Court, he added, "leaves Spain open to the charge of double standards: they are willing to work for justice in so many other countries and yet at home they have problems with a judge who seeks justice."

The second trial begins Jan. 24 with a session due to focus on procedural issues. It picks up again a week later, with Garzon expected to testify just that day. His lawyer says the proceedings will probably take a month altogether, with a verdict possibly coming in late March or April.

Garzon is arguably Spain's most polarizing figure.

Even as he became the darling of human rights advocates, he's made many enemies at home. Conservatives deride him as a limelight addict more interested in fame and front-page photos than justice and doing things by the book. They say his attempt to probe the war atrocities was unnecessary digging at old wounds best left alone.

However, even many Spanish Socialists hold a grudge against Garzon over his indictment of government officials over state-financed death squads that targeted the Basque separatist group ETA in the 1980s.

Jose Antonio Martin Pallin, a judge emeritus at the Supreme Court, said there are many people in Spain who want a piece of Garzon ? and his indictment in 2010 over the Civil War probe opened up the floodgates.

Among other things, he said, that gush stems from envy among judges who are used to discretion and modest salaries and disliked Garzon's glitzy lifestyle of jetting around the world to give well-paid lectures on human rights and attracting gaggles of reporters wherever he went.

The first indictment of Garzon meant "hunting season is now open," Martin Pallin said. He described fellow judges' thinking as "this man is going to get it now, for all his enjoyment, for his speaking fees."

Before dropping the Civil War probe in a dispute over jurisdiction ? it began and ended in 2008 ? Garzon declared he had the right to probe what he estimated were 100,000 killings and forced disappearances of people at the hands of Franco supporters and the regime.

Garzon called this a systematic drive to crush opponents and thus a crime against a humanity. His resolutions essentially amounted to an indictment of the Franco regime itself.

After Franco died in 1975 and Spain moved toward democracy while trying to put behind it a ruinous chapter of the past, Parliament in 1977 passed an amnesty for Civil War crimes.

Garzon did not challenge that law. Rather, he said that under the body of international jurisprudence that has accumulated since then, forced disappearances cannot be covered by the 1977 legislation. He argued that since no bodies have been found in cases of missing persons, the crimes are still ongoing.

Martin Pallin agreed that even if acquitted, Garzon would be so tainted as to be finished at the National Court.

"He would probably have to make a sort of symbolic return. Return, and then leave again," he said.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2012-01-15-EU-Spain-Judge-on-Trial/id-bcfa6617b6fc45128e718dccc467d2d7

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Cruise captain under scrutiny, another body found (AP)

ROME ? The captain of a cruise liner that ran aground and capsized off the Tuscan coast faced accusations from authorities and passengers that he abandoned ship before everyone was safely evacuated as rescuers found another body on the overturned vessel.

The male passenger was found in a corridor of the part of the Costa Concordia still above water, fire department spokesman Luca Cari told state radio. The victim was wearing a life-vest. Six bodies have now been recovered, while 16 people are unaccounted-for after the luxury liner struck rocks or a reef off the tiny island of Giglio.

The number of unaccounted-for was raised after relatives of two Sicilian women who had been listed among those safely evacuated after Friday night's grounding told authorities they not heard from them.

The search of the ship, including a risky inspection of the underwater half of the capsized ship, was continuing Monday, in rough seas.

On Sunday, divers searching the murky depths of the ship found the bodies of two elderly men. Three other bodies were found in the hours after the accident.

Still, there were glimmers of hope: The rescue of three survivors ? a young South Korean couple on their honeymoon and a crew member brought to shore in a dramatic airlift some 36 hours after the grounding late Friday.

Meanwhile, attention focused on the captain, who was spotted by Coast Guard officials and passengers fleeing the scene even as the chaotic and terrifying evacuation was under way.

The ship's Italian owner, a subsidiary of Carnival Cruise lines, issued a statement late Sunday saying there appeared to be "significant human error" on the part of the captain, Francesco Schettino, "which resulted in these grave consequences."

Authorities were holding Schettino for suspected manslaughter and a prosecutor confirmed Sunday they were also investigating allegations the captain abandoned the stricken liner before all the passengers had escaped. According to the Italian navigation code, a captain who abandons a ship in danger can face up to 12 years in prison.

Schettino insisted he didn't leave the liner early, telling Mediaset television that he had done everything he could to save lives. "We were the last ones to leave the ship," he said.

Questions also swirled about why the ship had navigated so close to the dangerous reefs and rocks that jut off Giglio's eastern coast, amid suspicions the captain may have ventured too close while carrying out a maneuver to entertain tourists on the island.

Residents of Giglio said they had never seen the Costa come so close to the dangerous "Le Scole" reef area.

"This was too close, too close," said Italo Arienti, a 54-year-old sailor who has worked on the Maregiglio ferry between Giglio and the mainland for more than a decade. Pointing to a nautical map, he drew his finger along the path the ship usually takes and the jarring one close to shore that it followed Friday.

Costa captains have occasionally steered the ship near port and sounded the siren in a special salute, Arienti said. Such a nautical "fly-by" was staged last August, prompting the town's mayor to send a note of thanks to the commander for the treat it provided tourists who flock to the island, local news portal GiglioNews.it reported.

But Arienti and other residents said even on those occasions, the cruise ship always stayed far offshore, well beyond the reach of the "Le Scole" reefs.

Coast Guard Cmdr. Filippo Marini said divers had recovered the so-called "black box," with the recording of the navigational details, from a compartment now under water, though no details were released.

Survivors described a terrifying escape that was straight out of a scene from "Titanic." Many complained the crew didn't give them good directions on how to evacuate and once the emergency became clear, delayed lowering the lifeboats until the ship was listing too heavily for all to be released.

"We were left to ourselves," pregnant French passenger Isabelle Mougin, who injured her ankle in the scramble, told the ANSA news agency.

Another French passenger, Jeanne Marie de Champs, said that faced with the chaotic scene at the lifeboats, she decided to take her chances swimming to shore.

"I was afraid I wouldn't make the shore, but then I saw we were close enough, I felt calmer," she told Sky News 24.

___

Malin Rising in Stockholm, Sarah DiLorenzo in Paris, Gregorio Borgia in Giglio and Victor L. Simpson in Rome contributed.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120116/ap_on_bi_ge/eu_italy_cruise_aground

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Panetta assures Afghans of full probe into video (AP)

WASHINGTON ? Pentagon leaders scrambled Thursday to contain damage from an Internet video purporting to show four Marines urinating on Taliban corpses ? an act that appears to violate international laws of warfare and further strains U.S.-Afghan relations.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta called Afghan President Hamid Karzai to offer assurances of a full investigation and the top Marine general promised an internal probe as well as a criminal one. Investigators moved quickly to identify and interview at least two of the four Marines. They were members of a battalion that fought for seven months in former Taliban strongholds in southern Afghanistan.

Their unit, the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines, returned from Helmand province to its home base at Camp Lejeune, N.C., last September. Marine officials said that a battalion officer confirmed to investigators on Thursday, based on his examination of the video, that the four men depicted urinating had been members of the battalion. Two have since moved on to other units.

As the video spread across the Internet in postings and re-postings, U.S. officials joined with Afghans in calling it shocking, deplorable, inhumane and a breach of military standards of conduct. It shows men in Marine combat gear standing in a semicircle urinating on the bodies of three men in standard Afghan clothing, one whose chest was covered in blood.

It's not certain whether the dead were Taliban fighters, civilians or someone else.

The incident will likely further hurt ties with Karzai's government and complicate negotiations over a strategic partnership arrangement meant to govern the presence of U.S. troops and advisers in Afghanistan after most international combat troops withdraw by the end of 2014.

Panetta said the incident could endanger U.S.-Afghan-Taliban peace talks.

"The danger is that this kind of video can be misused in many ways to undermine what we are trying to do in Afghanistan and the possibility of reconciliation," Panetta said at Fort Bliss, Texas, adding it's important for the U.S. to move quickly to "send a clear signal to the world that the U.S. will not tolerate this kind of behavior and that is not what the U.S. is all about."

The emergence of the video comes at a delicate time in relations among the United States, Afghanistan's elected government and the Taliban insurgency fighting for both territorial control and cultural and religious preeminence in Afghanistan. The U.S. is trying to foster peace talks between the Karzai government and the Pakistan-based Taliban high command, and has made unprecedented offers to build trust with the insurgents, including the planned opening of a Taliban political office to oversee talks.

Anti-American sentiment is already on the rise in Afghanistan, especially among Afghans who have not seen improvements to their daily lives despite billions of dollars in international aid. They also have deplored the accidental killing of civilians during NATO airstrikes and argue that foreign troops have culturally offended the Afghan people, mostly when it comes to activities involving women and the Quran, the Muslim holy book.

Pentagon officials said the criminal investigation would likely look into whether the Marines violated laws of war, which include prohibitions against photographing or mishandling bodies and detainees. It also appeared to violate the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice, which governs conduct. Thus, some or all of the four Marines could face a military court-martial or other disciplinary action.

Karzai called the video "completely inhumane." The Afghan Defense Ministry called it "shocking." And the Taliban issued a statement accusing U.S. forces of committing numerous "indignities" against the Afghan people.

U.S. officials said a military criminal investigation was being led by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, the law enforcement arm of the Navy. The Marines will do their own internal investigation.

Panetta said the actions depicted in the brief video were inexcusable.

"I have seen the footage, and I find the behavior depicted in it utterly deplorable. I condemn it in the strongest possible terms," Panetta's statement said. "Those found to have engaged in such conduct will be held accountable to the fullest extent."

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, said he was deeply disturbed by the video and worried that it would erode the reputation of the entire military, not just the Marine Corps.

A veterans group, the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, noted the video was the act of a small number of Marines and said it did not reflect the behavior of the millions who have served honorably.

"Our troops and veterans are already facing enormous challenges and stereotypes both overseas and at home, and we encourage the public and media worldwide to refrain from rushing to stereotypes," the group said in a statement.

Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, the top civilian executive of the Marines and Navy, said it was "appalling and outrageously offensive," and Marine Commandant James Amos called it "wholly inconsistent with the high standards of conduct and warrior ethos" demanded in the Corps.

White House press secretary Jay Carney said President Barack Obama was aware of the story but may not have seen the video.

Asked how she thought the development might affect the Afghanistan peace efforts, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton did not directly reply.

"The United States remains strongly committed to helping build a secure, peaceful, prosperous, democratic future for the people of Afghanistan," she said. "And we will continue to support efforts that will be Afghan-led and Afghan-owned to pursue the possibility of reconciliation and peace."

On the streets of Afghanistan, the reaction was cool.

"If these actions continue, people will not like them (the Americans) anymore and there will be uprising against them," Mohammad Qayum, said while watching a television news story about the video that was airing in a local restaurant in Kabul.

Ahmad Naweed, a shopkeeper in Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban insurgency, said, "On the one hand, the Americans present themselves as friends of Afghanistan and ... they also try to have peace talks with the Taliban. So we don't know what kind of political game they are playing in Afghanistan."

This kind of embarrassment dispersed over the Internet is not new for the Pentagon.

Over the years of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, officials periodically have been stunned by the troops' penchant for taking photos or videos of themselves in acts ranging from criminal to simply stupid.

Outrage spread instantly across the globe in 2004 over the release of photos taken by a group of U.S. military police abusing prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The troops were grinning and posing beside naked detainees stacked in a pyramid, held on a leash and so on.

In 2008, a Marine was kicked out of the service after being videotaped throwing a puppy off a cliff while on patrol in Iraq and joking about it as the animal yelped.

___

Associated Press writers Slobodan Lekic and Deb Riechmann in Kabul, Afghanistan, Juan Carlos Llorca in Fort Bliss, Texas and Anne Gearan in Washington contributed to this report.

Robert Burns can be reached on Twitter at http://twitter.com/robertburnsAP

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120113/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_marines_taliban_corpses

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