AAA: Average price of gasoline in Washington $3.49 (AP)

BELLEVUE, Wash. ? The AAA auto club reports the average price of a gallon of gasoline in Washington is $3.49.

That's up 2 cents in a week and 7 cents in a month. It's 6 cents higher than the national average.

Some metro prices from Monday's AAA survey:

Bellingham $3.62, Bremerton $3.54, Seattle-Bellevue-Everett $3.56, Tacoma $3.54, Olympia $3.55, Vancouver $3.53, Yakima $3.61, Tri-Cities $3.29, Spokane $3.18.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/energy/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120130/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gas_prices_washington

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Hawaii-based Marine in hazing case goes to trial

KANEOHE BAY, Hawaii (AP) ? A Hawaii-based lance corporal accused of hazing a fellow Marine who committed suicide at their remote outpost in Afghanistan is appearing in court after agreeing to a plea bargain.

In October, Lance Cpl. Jacob D. Jacoby was referred to a general court-martial on charges that he assaulted, threatened, and humiliated Lance Cpl. Harry Lew, who killed himself on April 3.

Jacoby will instead appear Monday before a special court martial ? a venue for less serious crimes than a general court-martial? at a Marine base in Kaneohe Bay after reaching a plea agreement. The Marines didn't release details of the agreement ahead of the trial.

Two other Marines have also been accused of hazing Lew, 21, a nephew of U.S. Rep. Judy Chu of California, before he shot himself with his machine gun in his foxhole.

Sgt. Benjamin Johns, the leader of the squad the Marines belonged to, and Lance Cpl. Carlos Orozco III will each have their own separate courts-martial at later dates.

The case involves the actions of Marines at an isolated patrol base the U.S. was establishing to disrupt Taliban drug and weapons trafficking in Helmand province.

At an Article 32 hearing ? the equivalent of a grand jury hearing in the civilian world ? in September, Marines testified Lew had repeatedly fallen asleep while he was on duty. Squad members and officers had tried different methods to get him to stay awake, including referring him up the chain of command for discipline and taking him off patrols so he could get more rest.

But on Lew's last night, those efforts escalated into alleged acts of violence and humiliation, according to charges outlined at the hearing. The Marines were accused of punching and kicking him, making him do push-ups and pouring sand in his face.

A significant share of the questions raised at the Article 32 hearing focused on whether the accused intended to humiliate and harm Lew or discipline him so he would stop falling asleep while on watch duty.

Before Lew put the muzzle of his machine gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger, he scrawled a note on his arm: "May hate me now, but in the long run this was the right choice I'm sorry my mom deserves the truth."

A Marine commander in retrospect speculated Lew may have been nodding off because he suffered from depression or some other medical condition.

Chu discussed her nephew's death during a House Armed Services hearing on suicide prevention in September, held at the same time as the Article 32 hearing. She told military witnesses that Lew was "a very popular and outgoing young man known for joking and smiling and break dancing."

Chu also issued a statement saying no one deserves being "hazed and tortured" like her nephew was, and the military justice system must hold "any wrongdoers accountable."

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2012-01-30-Marines-Alleged%20Hazing/id-0016d26ff954492aa2637e2221d0fc31

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[OOC] 1 more demon

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Romney seeks to knock out Gingrich in Florida (Reuters)

PENSACOLA/PORT ST. LUCIE, Florida (Reuters) ? Bolstered by positive poll numbers, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Saturday sought to vanquish rival Newt Gingrich in Florida with a biting new ad about ethics charges and a mocking tone about his debate complaints.

Just days ahead of a pivotal primary race that could determine who has the momentum to win the Republican state-by-state nominating battle, Romney and Gingrich traveled around Florida in a final weekend pitch to undecided voters.

Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts and off-and-on front-runner to take on Democratic President Barack Obama in the November 6 election, needs a victory on Tuesday to regain his footing after losing badly to Gingrich in the South Carolina primary vote last weekend.

Gingrich, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, needs a Florida win to solidify the frontrunner mantle he took on after his resounding victory in the third nominating contests.

"If we win Florida, I will be the nominee," Gingrich declared at a golf facility in Port St. Lucie.

Polls show Romney with an edge, however, and the former private equity executive used his momentum and financial muscle to draw up a closing argument that Gingrich's behavior in Congress made him unfit to be the Republican Party's leader.

In a simple ad titled "History Lesson" -- a play on Gingrich's background as a historian -- Romney's campaign showed footage of an NBC television anchor's news report the day Democrats and Republicans found him guilty of ethics violations in 1997.

"Newt Gingrich, who came to power, after all, preaching a higher standard in American politics, a man who brought down another Speaker on ethics accusations, tonight he has on his own record the judgment of his peers, Democrat and Republican alike," anchor Tom Brokaw says in the report, which makes up the entire ad.

Gingrich denies wrongdoing.

CONTROVERSY

The ad drew controversy from television network NBC, which reported it asked the Romney team to remove the newscast material from the ad. Romney's campaign said it had not received the request from NBC.

Gingrich and Romney have sought to tear each other down in the run-up to the Florida election, fighting over who is best equipped to beat Obama. Gingrich has boasted of carrying on the legacy of the late President Ronald Reagan, a hero to conservatives, while pushing for the anti-establishment support of the Tea Party.

"I can run with a history - not a theory, not a promise - that we can create jobs by unleashing the American people," Gingrich told a pastel-clad crowd of golf fans at the PGA golf facility, criticizing Romney as not being a true conservative.

Don Brigham, 60, a golf pro from Port St. Lucie, said Gingrich's comments helped him make up his mind about whom to support.

"I was undecided, but I loved what I heard," he said. "I was very impressed with his personality. It's a two-man race on the Republican side. I was very impressed with his message. He pretty much spoke to my political beliefs."

But Romney's strong performances in two recent debates -- venues that have usually favored Gingrich -- have resonated with more voters, polls show.

Romney opened up a lead of 8 percentage points over Gingrich in a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Friday, beating him by 41 percent to 33 percent among likely voters in Florida's Republican primary.

The momentum fueled confidence in Romney, who mocked his rival for complaining about audience participation in their television debates.

"We've had about 18 debates so far, and they're getting more and more fun as time goes on," Romney said at one campaign event.

"This last one Speaker Gingrich said he didn't do so well because the audience was so loud. The one before he said he didn't do so well because the audience was too quiet. This is like Goldilocks."

Romney won in New Hampshire and former Senator Rick Santorum won the first contest in Iowa.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted on Thursday and Friday, partially capturing likely voters after the most recent debate.

Santorum trailed with 13 percent and Texas Congressman Ron Paul came in at the bottom with 5 percent support.

(Additional reporting by Steve Holland; Writing by Jeff Mason; Editing by Vicki Allen)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/gop/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120128/ts_nm/us_usa_campaign

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Oakland to assess damage after Occupy protests (AP)

OAKLAND, Calif. ? Oakland officials assessed damage to City Hall caused by Occupy protesters while leaders of the movement claimed Sunday that police acted illegally in arresting hundreds of demonstrators and could face a lawsuit.

Mayor Jean Quan was among those inspecting damage caused after dozens of people broke into City Hall on Saturday, smashing glass display cases, spray-painting graffiti, and burning an American flag.

That break-in culminated a day of clashes between protesters and police. Interim Police Chief Howard Jordan said nearly 400 people were arrested on charges ranging from failure to disperse and vandalism. At least three officers and one protester were injured.

In a news release Sunday, the Occupy Oakland Media Committee criticized the police conduct, saying that most of the arrests were made illegally because police failed to allow protesters to disperse.

"Contrary to their own policy, the OPD gave no option of leaving or instruction on how to depart. These arrests are completely illegal, and this will probably result in another class action lawsuit against the OPD, who have already cost Oakland $58 million in lawsuits over the past 10 years," the release said.

The scene around City Hall was mostly quiet Sunday morning, and it was unclear whether protesters would mount another large-scale demonstration.

Dozens of officers remained present inside and outside City Hall after maintaining guard overnight. Occupy Oakland demonstrators broke into the historic building and burned a U.S. flag, as officers earlier fired tear gas to disperse people throwing rocks and tearing down fencing at a convention center.

"They were never able to occupy a building outside of City Hall," Jordan said Sunday. "We suspect they will try to go to the convention center again. They will get not get in"

Saturday's protests ? the most turbulent since Oakland police forcefully dismantled an Occupy encampment in November ? came just days after the group said it planned to use a vacant building as a social center and political hub and threatened to try to shut down the Port of Oakland for a third time, occupy the airport and take over City Hall.

Quan, who faced heavy criticism for the police action last fall, on Saturday called on the Occupy movement to "stop using Oakland as its playground."

"People in the community and people in the Occupy movement have to stop making excuses for this behavior," Quan said.

On Sunday, Quan said she is tired of the protesters' repeated actions.

"I'm mostly frustrated because it appears that most of them constantly come from outside of Oakland," Quan said. "I think a lot of the young people who come to these demonstrations think they're being revolutionary when they're really hurting the people they claim that they are representing."

Saturday's events began late Saturday morning, when a group assembled outside City Hall and marched through the streets, disrupting traffic as they threatened to take over the vacant Henry Kaiser Convention Center.

The protesters then walked to the convention center, where some started tearing down perimeter fencing and "destroying construction equipment" shortly before 3 p.m., police said.

Police said they issued a dispersal order and used smoke and tear gas after some protesters pelted them with bottles, rocks, burning flares and other objects.

The number of demonstrators swelled as the day wore on, with afternoon estimates ranging from about 1,000 to 2,000 people.

A majority of the arrests came after police took scores of protesters into custody as they marched through the city's downtown, with some entering a YMCA building, said Sgt. Jeff Thomason, a police spokesman.

Quan said that at one point, many protesters forced their way into City Hall, where they burned flags, broke an electrical box and damaged several art structures, including a recycled art exhibit created by children.

Dozens of officers surrounded City Hall, while others swept the inside of the building looking for protesters who had broken into the building, then ran out of the building with American flags before officers arrived.

The protest group issued an email criticizing police, saying "Occupy Oakland's building occupation, an act of constitutionally protected civil disobedience was disrupted by a brutal police response today."

Michael Davis, 32, who is originally from Ohio and was in the Occupy movement in Cincinnati, said Saturday was a very hectic day that originally started off calm but escalated when police began using "flash bangs, tear gas, smoke grenades and bean bags."

"What could've been handled differently is the way the Oakland police came at us," Davis said. "We were peaceful."

City leaders joined Quan in criticizing the protesters.

"City Hall is closed for the weekend. There is no excuse for behavior we've witnessed this evening," City Council President Larry Reid said during a news briefing Saturday.

Oakland Councilman Ignacio De La Fuente, echoed Reid's sentiments and said that what was going on amounts to "domestic terrorism."

The national Occupy Wall Street movement, which denounces corporate excess and economic inequality, began in New York City in the fall but has been largely dormant lately.

Oakland, New York and Los Angeles were among the cities with the largest and most vocal Occupy protests early on. The demonstrations ebbed after those cities used force to move out hundreds of demonstrators who had set up tent cities.

In Oakland, the police department received heavy criticism for using force to break up earlier protests. Quan was among the critics, but on Saturday, she seemed to have changed her tune.

"Our officers have been very measured," Quan said. "Were there some mistakes made? There may be. I would say the Oakland police and our allies, so far a small percentage of mistakes. "But quite frankly, a majority of protesters who were charging the police were clearly not being peaceful.

Earlier this month, a court-appointed monitor submitted a report to a federal judge that included "serious concerns" about the department's handling of the Occupy protests.

Jordan said late Saturday that he was in "close contact" with the federal monitor during the protests.

Quan added, "If the demonstrators think that because we are working more closely with the monitor now that we won't do what we have to do to uphold the law and try keep people safe in this city, they're wrong."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120129/ap_on_re_us/us_occupy_oakland

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Iran is gearing up for elections and it isn't pretty

The arrest of at least 10 reporters since the turn of the year and new Internet restrictions point to a battening down of social control ahead of Iran's March elections.

The international focus may be on Iran's nuclear program and all the war talk that's surrounded it. But less noticed is that Iran is gearing up for parliamentary elections in March. Every early sign is that it will be as closely controlled an affair as the 2009 presidential contest that kept Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in power for a second term.

Skip to next paragraph

Iran's supreme religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei may have called Mr. Ahmadinejad's landslide victory a "divine assessment." But forces other than God probably had a hand in Ahmadinejad's victory; there was strong evidence of widespread fraud, which sparked protests on a scale not seen since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

While those protests have since been quashed, the grievances behind them remain. If anything, they have gathered in strength, with an economy suffering blows from US-led international sanctions and ongoing crackdowns against citizens. The smart money is on a parliamentary election whose results are massaged, much as the presidential elections were. But even fixed results will still show shifts in Iran's complex political landscape.

All of this matters because Iran isn't the religious dictatorship that the West imagines. A democracy? Hardly. But there are factions within the elite, and powerful forces in broader society that have influence. Supreme religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's power may be vast, and in theory stems from him being an emissary of God on earth, but in practice he has to bow to more prosaic concerns. There has been persistent speculation throughout the year that Ayatollah Khamenei is fed up with Mr. Ahmadinejad's obsession with end-times millenarian beliefs, representing just one of the fissures on the right in Iran.

Though the country is putting on a brave face internationally, there is evidence that the contradiction of having nominally democratic institutions under a theocratic umbrella is growing ever tougher to sustain. The country is desperately trying to tamp down on the free flow of information.

Human Rights Watch reports that 10 journalists and bloggers have been arrested since the start of the year and the arrests "appear to be part of the government?s most recent campaign to disrupt the free flow of information ahead of parliamentary elections."

Most of those were arrested by armed government agents storming their homes. Human Rights Watch says all of the detainees "have been associated with reformist papers or websites critical of government policies."

The Committee to Protect Journalists says that Iran had 42 reporters locked up last year, the highest number in the world.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/SkOs8hJeWE0/Iran-is-gearing-up-for-elections-and-it-isn-t-pretty

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Obama seeks government reforms in Congress (AP)

WASHINGTON ? President Barack Obama, fresh from a five-state tour following his State of the Union address, is calling for government reforms to ease gridlock and bar members of Congress from profiting from their position.

In his radio and Internet address Saturday, Obama said many people he encountered during his trip were optimistic but remained unsure "that the right thing will get done in Washington this year, or next year, or the year after that."

"And frankly, when you look at some of the things that go on in this town, who could blame them for being a little cynical?" Obama said.

The president reiterated his calls for government reform made in Tuesday's address, saying he wants the Senate to pass a rule that requires a yes-or-no vote for judicial and public service nominations after 90 days. Many of the nominees, he said, carry bipartisan support but get held up in Congress for political reasons.

Without mentioning him by name, the president noted that Utah Sen. Mike Lee, a Republican, said he would hold up nominations because he opposed the recess appointment of Richard Cordray to lead a new consumer protection agency, a move that many Republicans have called unconstitutional. Obama said the American people deserve "better than gridlock and games."

"One senator gumming up the works for the whole country is certainly not what our founding fathers envisioned," the president said.

Obama said he also wants Congress to pass legislation to ban insider trading by lawmakers and prohibit lawmakers from owning securities in companies that have business before their committees.

In addition, the president is seeking to prohibit people who "bundle" campaign contributions from other donors for members of Congress from lobbying Congress. Obama urged the public to contact their member of Congress and tell them "that it's time to end the gridlock and start tackling the issues that really matter."

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., delivering the GOP address, said Obama's address to Congress lacked much discussion of the president's achievements "because there isn't much."

"This president didn't talk about his record for one simple reason," Rubio said. "He doesn't want you to know about it. But you do know about it, because your feel the failure of his leadership every single day of the week."

Rubio accused the president of driving up the national debt, failing to reduce high unemployment across the country and offering divisive economic policies.

The Florida senator said there is a growing gap between the rich and the poor but the best way to solve the problem is by embracing the American free enterprise system. Rubio said he hopes 2012 "will be the beginning of our work towards a new and prosperous American century."

___

Online:

Obama address: www.whitehouse.gov

GOP address: http://www.youtube.com/gopweeklyaddress

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/politics/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120128/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_obama

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Irish may try IRA veteran over North Korean scam (AP)

DUBLIN ? An Irish Republican Army veteran long accused of laundering counterfeit U.S. $100 bills on behalf of North Korea could face trial in Ireland, a Dublin judge announced Friday.

High Court Justice John Edwards said he has forwarded an evidence file to state prosecutors against Sean Garland, 76, who denies smuggling more than $250,000 worth of fake American banknotes from the North Korean embassy in Moscow in 1998.

Edwards issued his follow-up statement one month after he rejected a 6-year-old U.S. extradition warrant for Garland. The judge explained that the alleged conspiracy was concocted in part on Irish soil, therefore Garland must stand trial in Ireland, not the United States.

The judge also ordered Garland's house deeds and euro75,000 ($98,000) in bail money returned to him pending any Irish decision to charge him.

In May 2005, a U.S. federal grand jury in Washington indicted Garland for allegedly dealing in North Korean "superdollars" ? so called because of their exceptional high quality ? and the U.S. Justice Department issued an international arrest warrant.

American officials said Garland received two loads of fake $100 bills during two 1998 trips to Moscow, when Russian interior ministry police said they tailed him traveling in North Korean diplomatic-plated cars to the North Korean embassy. Garland admitted traveling to Moscow but has denied everything else.

Officials in the Republic of Ireland took no immediate action following the American arrest demand. Instead, Garland was arrested during a rare 2005 foray into neighboring Northern Ireland, where British authorities traditionally are much more open to permitting a U.S. extradition.

However, Garland in October 2005 persuaded a Belfast judge to grant him bail to visit his home near Dublin. Weeks later, his lawyers told that court he wouldn't return.

In 2009, Garland was arrested in Dublin on the basis of the same U.S. warrant. His extradition trial was delayed to mid-2011.

Garland today remains national treasurer of the Workers Party, a fringe Marxist player in Irish politics linked to an Irish Republican Army faction called the Official IRA.

Garland was seriously wounded during a botched IRA attack on a Northern Ireland border police station in 1957. Two colleagues were killed, and he was interned without trial in the Irish Republic for two years.

When the outlawed IRA split into rival Official and Provisional factions in 1969 at the start of the modern Northern Ireland conflict, Garland served as an Official IRA commander.

He steered the Official IRA to a 1972 cease-fire. That faction then fought bloody feuds with both the Provisionals and a breakaway Official faction called the Irish National Liberation Army. The INLA shot and seriously wounded Garland in Dublin in 1975.

As Workers Party leader in 1986, Garland wrote a letter to the Communist Party of the then-Soviet Union seeking $1 million in hopes of inspiring Marxist revolution in Ireland.

The U.S. indictment and subsequent Justice Department affidavits accuse Garland of visiting the North Korean embassy in Moscow several times; of delivering superdollars to a British money-laundering contact at a Moscow hotel room in 1998; and of using other criminal contacts in Birmingham, England, and Dublin to sell the notes to Irish and English underworld contacts at less than half their face value.

___

Online:

Garland campaign site, http://seangarlandextradition.wordpress.com/

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/nkorea/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120127/ap_on_re_eu/eu_ireland_north_korea_superdollars

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Debate over Calif.'s new 'clean car' regs (AP)

SAN FRANCISCO ? Auto dealers say California's proposed rules to require carmakers to build more electric and other less-polluting hybrid cars and trucks by 2025 will cost consumers more money and will stifle the industry's growth.

Consumer groups say customers might pay more for the vehicles but will save in lower fuel and other costs.

Both sides submitted testimony Thursday during a meeting of the state's air quality board, which was poised to vote on rules to require that vehicles emit about 75 percent less smog-producing pollutants.

The new standards, which also include big cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, would begin with new cars sold in 2015, and get increasingly more stringent until 2025. The rules also mandate that one of every seven new cars sold in 2025 in the state be a zero-emission or plug-in hybrid vehicle.

California Air Resources Board Chairman Mary Nichols said she hopes the rules lead "the nation and the world."

"We can't afford to wait. We have to act on these issues now," she said at the panel's meeting. "Our projections show continued growth in population and vehicle miles traveled, which will affect air quality for years to come."

Other states often adopt California's smog emissions standards because they are stricter than federal ones.

Fourteen states, including Washington, New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts, have adopted the state's current emissions goals, which is why the new regulations could have a wide-ranging effect. Of those states, 10 also adopted the zero-emission vehicle standards.

But the California New Car Dealers Association and other industry groups representing those who sell cars said the board is overestimating consumer demand for electric vehicles and other so-called "zero-emission vehicles."

Some dealer groups have estimated that $3,200 would be added to the average cost of a car because of the required technological changes, and that consumers have been slow to adopt them.

Jonathan Morrison, of the state dealers' association, said car retailers are supportive of new technologies that are accepted by their customers, but said the acceptance of electric and other vehicles has been slow.

"Consumers do not make purchasing decisions based upon regulatory mandates," he said.

The board's research staff disputes those estimates and says increases in hybrid and other sales continue to rise as more cars hit the market. They argue that fuel cost savings will make up for any vehicle price increase.

"Our research shows a $1,400 to $1,900 car price increase. But over the life of the vehicles, the owners save $6,000 in reduced fuel and maintenance costs," board spokesman David Clegern said.

One of the nation's foremost consumer groups, the Consumers' Union, the policy and advocacy division of Consumer Reports, supports the regulations.

The rules will "protect consumers by encouraging the development of cleaner, more efficient cars that save families money, help reduce the American economy's vulnerability to oil price shocks and reduce harmful air pollution," according to a letter from the group.

Automakers including Ford Motor Corp., Chrysler Group LLC, General Motors Co., Nissan Motor Co. Ltd. and others said they generally supported the regulations in short statements delivered during the hearing.

The overall goal of the state is to have 1.4 million zero-emission and plug-in hybrids on California roads by 2025. But the program also looks ahead to 2050, laying groundwork for a goal of having 87 percent of the state's fleet of new vehicles fueled by electricity, hydrogen fuel cells or other clean technologies.

Yet the rules do provide some flexibility for automakers by giving them the ability to claim credits toward the state's zero-emission mandates if the company's other models exceed the federal greenhouse gas emissions mandates. The credits could be applied toward those zero-emission vehicle mandates starting in 2018 through 2021.

However, this aspect of the plan was not supported by many of the U.S. car makers, who said it could take hundreds of thousands of electric and other clean vehicles off the road in that time period, hurting the emerging market.

"This greenhouse gas over-compliance provision runs counter to the goals of the zero-emission vehicle mandates," said Robert Babick, speaking on behalf of GM. "We don't see how this provision makes the program better."

The board is scheduled to resume hearing testimony on Friday morning in Los Angeles.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/science/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120126/ap_on_re_us/us_california_clean_car_standards

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Proposal made for sweeping data protection in EU (AP)

BRUSSELS ? Applying the same standards to protect personal data in all 27 European Union countries will save businesses billions, a senior European Union official said Tuesday, launching a proposal for reforms she said would also safeguard individual privacy.

EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding's proposal also included a "right to be forgotten" that would mean if a Facebook user wants to take down photos or posts, the company will also have to delete them from its database.

Reding said if enacted the reforms would save businesses operating in the EU about euro2.3 billion ($2.99 billion) a year as they would have just one set of rules to follow rather than the 27 member countries' different sets.

Rule breaches could be punished by fines of up to euro1 million ($1.3 million), or up to 2 percent of the company's annual turnover, she said.

In addition, she asserted that giving consumers increased confidence about the security of their personal information would boost online business in the EU.

"The protection of personal date is a fundamental right for all Europeans, but citizens do not always feel in control of their personal data," Reding said.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/tech/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120125/ap_on_hi_te/eu_eu_data_protection

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CNN en Espanol anchor to participate in Fla debate (omg!)

MIAMI (AP) ? CNN en Espa?ol is joining the list of Spanish-language networks to co-host debates and forums with the GOP presidential candidates.

On Thursday, CNN en Espanol's top anchor Juan Carlos Lopez will moderate questions from a panel in Miami during the CNN debate in Jacksonville. The debate is also co-hosted by the Hispanic Leadership Network and the Republican Party of Florida.

Last the fall, Telemundo anchor Jose Diaz-Balart asked questions related to immigration during an MSNBC debate, and he has since interviewed several of the candidates, including Newt Gingrich. On Wednesday Univision anchor Jorge Ramos went head-to-head in a series of "Meet the Candidate" interviews with Mitt Romney, Gingrich and Rick Santorum.

Lopez has collaborated with CNN, before, but Thursday's event will showcase his talents to a much broader, English-speaking audience.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/entertainment/*http%3A//us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/external/omg_rss/rss_omg_en/news_cnn_en_espanol_anchor_participate_fla_debate085922390/44310830/*http%3A//omg.yahoo.com/news/cnn-en-espanol-anchor-participate-fla-debate-085922390.html

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Source: http://empirecraftwiki.com/on-the-internet-foreign-exchange-currency-investing-teaching-solution-to-foreign-exchange-investing-success

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Video: Russell 2000 Small Cap Index Up 5%

Small caps outperformed large caps to date in 2012. Steven DeSanctis, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, and Stephen Wood, Russell Investments, discuss.

Related Links:

Business & financial news headlines from msnbc.com

Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/cnbc/46105609/

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Gingrich's former company releases contract

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) ? Under pressure, Newt Gingrich arranged the release of a contract Monday night showing the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. paid his consulting firm a $25,000 monthly retainer fee in 2006, for a total of $300,000.

The agreement calls for "consulting and related services" but makes no mention of lobbying.

Gingrich has likened his work for the federally backed mortgage giant known as Freddie Mac to that of a historian, and later a strategic adviser. His top rival for the Republican presidential nomination, Mitt Romney, says he was lobbying.

Monday's disclosure touched off fireworks between the two contenders during a prime-time debate.

"This contract proves you were not a historian. You were a consultant," Romney said. "And you were hired by the chief lobbyist of Freddie Mac."

Gingrich chafed at the suggestion he was "influence peddling" and turned the issue back on his opponent.

"Gov. Romney has done consulting work for years," the former House speaker said. "I've never suggested his consulting work was lobbying."

Gingrich's work for Freddie Mac was disclosed long ago, but controversy has flared in the 48 hours since he trounced Romney in the South Carolina Republican presidential primary. The contract with Gingrich's former firm listed Freddie Mac's director of public policy ? jargon for lobbyist ? as the project executive.

Throughout the early voting states, Gingrich has faced questions from voters concerned about his work for Freddie Mac at town halls. A pro-Romney attacked him on the issue in Iowa. Reporters began asking if he would release the contracts in New Hampshire.

The next primary is set for Jan. 31 in Florida, a state particularly hard hit by the housing crisis of 2008, and one where Gingrich's connections with Freddie Mac may carry a political stigma.

The material was released by the Center for Health Transformation, which Gingrich helped create, and has since sold. The Center for Health Transformation and the Gingrich campaign share a lawyer, Stefan Passantino. He did not return a phone call seeking comment.

Its disclosure came about two hours before a campaign debate in Tampa, and the timing suggested Gingrich was hoping to blunt any attack Romney might make at the event.

Romney has been ramping up criticism for not making the details public sooner. Gingrich said it wasn't only up to him because he no longer controls the firm named in the contract and confidentiality clauses were at play.

The disclosure came amid a volley between the Romney and Gingrich campaigns about who is hiding information voters may want. After facing pressure himself, Romney intends to release some tax records on Tuesday, about a week after Gingrich made his tax returns public.

Gingrich has said previously that firms he ran received about $1.6 million from Freddie Mac for consulting services over several years, and he personally pocketed $35,000 a year. Only the contract covering 2006 was released.

A person who worked closely with Freddie Mac during the years Gingrich was receiving money said Monday night that the former House speaker was employed by the company from 1999 to 2002 by the company's then-chief political executive to review policy proposals created in the hope they would make Freddie Mac more appealing to Republicans.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of fear of retaliation, said that Gingrich was hired again in 2006 by the company's new chief political executive Hollis McLoughlin ? he still works there ? to speak and write on the benefits of Freddie Mac. He was paid $300,000 for 2006, and received some additional money in 2007.

In all, he was employed by the political arm of the company for approximately $1.7 million for the sole purpose of convincing fellow Republicans that Freddie Mac was a force for good in America. The person who provided the information on Gingrich's employment pointed to the open-ended nature of the 2006 contract that was released Monday.

Romney's campaign said it wasn't satisfied with only the contract. "He's got to come clean on Freddie Mac. He put out a contract today for a single year even though he's been providing services to Freddie Mac for multiple years," said senior Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom. "That contract raises more questions than it answers."

Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond said there are no plans for additional disclosures.

___

Associated Press writers Pete Yost in Washington and Shannon McCaffrey in Atlanta contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2012-01-23-Gingrich-Freddie%20Mac/id-2708f4074fcb4aa88f6dcf3b4d5eafd5

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Stocks end mixed as Greece negotiates to cut debt (AP)

NEW YORK ? The S&P 500 index eked out a tiny gain Monday while traders kept an eye on talks in Europe to cut Greece's crushing debt load and prevent a global financial crisis. Other indexes ended slightly lower.

The S&P added 0.62 of a point to close at 1,316 on Monday. The broad market measure has now closed higher on 12 of 14 days this year.

European stocks and the euro rose after the continent's finance ministers put pressure on banks that hold Greek government bonds to accept new ones that are worth half as much and carry a lower interest rate.

The Greek stock market gained 5 percent, and indexes in Germany, France, Spain and Britain all advanced less than 1 percent. The euro rose more than a penny to $1.302, close to its highest level against the dollar this year.

Negotiators are trying to prevent a disorderly default by Greece in March. The worst-case scenarios include a credit crisis similar to what happened after the Lehman Brothers investment bank fell in 2008.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 11.66 points to 12,708.82. That's a loss of 0.1 percent.

The Nasdaq composite index fell 2.53 points, or 0.1 percent, to 2,784.17.

Stocks are still off to a strong start in 2012. Investors' biggest fears have slowly faded. Stronger than expected job growth in the U.S. and falling borrowing costs for European governments have helped send the S&P 500 index up 4.6 percent for the year.

Maybe the biggest boon to markets this year is the lack of scary headlines, said Jeff Lancaster, a principal at the investment firm Bingham, Osborn & Scarborough.

"When everybody is feeling distressed, anxious and worried as they were at the end of last year, it doesn't take a lot of good news for the mood to change," he said. "It just takes a diminishing quantity of bad news."

Many energy stocks jumped along with prices for natural gas and crude oil. Chesapeake Energy Corp., the No. 2 producer of natural gas in the United States, gained 6 percent after it said it plans to cut production, a response to the recent slump in natural gas prices.

Natural gas futures rose 7.9 percent to $2.60 per 1,000 cubic feet. Gas futures were trading above $4 just six months ago.

Stocks of other gas producers shot higher. Southwestern Energy Co. jumped 10 percent, the biggest gain in the S&P 500. Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. was close behind, rising 6.5 percent.

Apache Corp., a producer of oil and gas, rose 1.6 percent after saying said it plans to buy Cordillera Energy Partners in a $2.85 billion deal. It's the largest merger announced in the U.S. this year.

The price of oil rose 1.3 percent to $99.58 per barrel. The European Union tightened sanctions against Iran by banning the purchase of Iranian oil. Iran threatened to block shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the passageway for one-sixth of the world's oil exports.

Research In Motion Ltd., maker of the BlackBerry, sank 8.5 percent after its new chief executive said no drastic changes are needed. The company's founders announced they were stepping down as co-CEOs late Sunday.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/stocks/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120123/ap_on_bi_st_ma_re/us_wall_street

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Dog-Gone Genetics: A Few Genes Control Fido's Looks

istockphoto.com

The difference between these two dogs is not as great as you think. New research shows almost all physical traits in dogs are controlled by just a few genes.

Humans are complicated genetic jigsaw puzzles. Hundreds of genes are involved in determining something as basic as height.

But man's best friend is a different story. New research shows that almost every physical trait in dogs ? from a dachshund's stumpy legs to a shar-pei's wrinkles ? is controlled by just a few genes.

Writer Evan Ratliff has been looking into dog genetics for National Geographic Magazine. He tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz that that quirk makes it extremely easy for breeders to develop new, custom-designed dogs ? like the German hunters who bred the original dachshunds a few hundred years ago.

"These German hunters wanted some sort of dog to hunt badgers and other sort of small rodents that live in holes." So they crossed long, low basset hounds with tenacious terriers, to produce a dog that could chase badgers into their dens and then be yanked out again by the tail if necessary. The breeders also built in loose fur, so any bites wouldn't do much damage.

Other breeds, like the shar-pei, developed after breeders pursued a particularly favored look, Ratliff says.

For years, scientists thought that dogs were just as genetically complicated as humans, Ratliff says. But that turned out not to be the case. Scientists at Cornell, UCLA, Stanford and the National Institutes of Health have been comparing dog DNA as part of a project called CanMap.

"They took a whole large collection of dogs, 900 dogs from, I think, 80 breeds," Ratliff says. "And what they learned was that in these dogs, if you look at their physical traits, everything from their body size to their coat color to whether they have floppy ears, it's determined by a very small number of genes."

It's actually human interference that's the cause of what Ratliff calls "Tinker-Toy genetics" in dogs. "The way that natural selection works, it usually works on very small changes," he says. Sudden large changes can actually be harmful.

But breeders can introduce large changes in a dog relatively rapidly, by selecting the genes that have the strongest effects.

"If I want a tall dog, a large dog, then I end up selecting for this gene called IGF1, which has a very very strong effect on the size of a dog. And when you do that over a couple of hundred years, what happens is ... it becomes the gene that controls body size."

No word yet on which genes control loyalty, dog breath, or a propensity to slobber on your slippers.

Source: http://www.npr.org/2012/01/22/145604966/dog-gone-genetics-a-few-genes-control-fidos-looks?ft=1&f=1007

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Ship search finds 12th body, captain's documents

An Italian fireman descends from an helicopter to the grounded cruise ship Costa Concordia off the Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, Saturday, Jan. 21, 2012. The cruise captain who grounded the Costa Concordia off the Tuscan coast with 4,200 people on board did not relay correct information either to the company or crew after the ship hit rocks, the cruise ship owner's CEO said as the search resumed for 21 missing passengers. (AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)

An Italian fireman descends from an helicopter to the grounded cruise ship Costa Concordia off the Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, Saturday, Jan. 21, 2012. The cruise captain who grounded the Costa Concordia off the Tuscan coast with 4,200 people on board did not relay correct information either to the company or crew after the ship hit rocks, the cruise ship owner's CEO said as the search resumed for 21 missing passengers. (AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)

A woman checks if her clothes are dry as the grounded cruise ship Costa Concordia is seen in background, off the Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, Saturday, Jan. 21, 2012. The cruise captain, Capt. Francesco Schettino, who grounded the Costa Concordia off the Tuscan coast with 4,200 people on board did not relay correct information either to the company or crew after the ship hit rocks, the cruise ship owner's CEO said as the search resumed for 21 missing passengers. (AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)

The grounded cruise ship Costa Concordia lays off the Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, Saturday, Jan. 21, 2012. The cruise captain who grounded the Costa Concordia off the Tuscan coast with 4,200 people on board did not relay correct information either to the company or crew after the ship hit rocks, the cruise ship owner's CEO said as the search resumed for 21 missing passengers. (AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)

An Italian Coast Guard boat patrols the area around the grounded cruise ship Costa Concordia off the Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, Saturday, Jan. 21, 2012. The cruise captain who grounded the Costa Concordia off the Tuscan coast with 4,200 people on board did not relay correct information either to the company or crew after the ship hit rocks, the cruise ship owner's CEO said as the search resumed for 21 missing passengers. (AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)

Fuel spilling experts work on the grounded cruise ship Costa Concordia off the Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, Saturday, Jan. 21, 2012. The cruise captain who grounded the Costa Concordia off the Tuscan coast with 4,200 people on board did not relay correct information either to the company or crew after the ship hit rocks, the cruise ship owner's CEO said as the search resumed for 21 missing passengers. (AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)

GIGLIO, Italy (AP) ? Divers plumbing the capsized Costa Concordia's murky depths pulled out the body of a woman in a life vest Saturday, while scuba-diving police swam through the captain's cabin to retrieve a safe and documents belonging to the man who abandoned the cruise liner after it was gashed by a rocky reef on the Tuscan coast.

Hoping for a miracle ? or at least for the recovery of bodies from the ship that has become an underwater tomb ? relatives of some of the 20 missing appealed to survivors of the Jan. 13 shipwreck to offer details that could help divers reach loved ones while it is still possible to search the luxury liner. The clock is ticking because the craft is perched precariously on a rocky ledge of seabed near Giglio island.

"We are asking the 4,000 persons who were on board to give any information they can about any of the persons still missing," said Alain Litzler, a Frenchman who is the father of missing passenger Mylene Litzler. "We need precise information to help the search and rescue teams find them."

The death toll rose to at least 12 Saturday after a water-logged body was extracted from a passageway near a gathering point for evacuation by lifeboats in the rear of the vessel, Coast Guard Cmdr. Filippo Marini said. It was not immediately clear if the woman was a passenger or crew member. A female Peruvian bartender and several adult female passengers were among the 21 people listed as missing before the latest corpse was found.

Relatives of the bartender and of an Indian crewman, along with two children of an elderly couple from Minnesota who are among the missing, boarded a boat Saturday to view the wrecked Concordia Saturday, said a maritime official, Fabrizio Palombo.

Family members tossed flowers near the site while islanders standing on the rocky edge of the island also strew bouquets on the water in a tribute to the victims.

Another Coast Guard official, Cosimo Nicastro, said the woman's body was found during a particularly risky inspection.

"The corridor was very narrow, and the divers' lines risked snagging" on furniture and objects floating in the passageway, Nicastro said. To help the coast guard divers reach the area, Italian navy divers had preceded them, setting off charges to blast holes for easier entrance and exit.

Meanwhile, police divers, carrying out orders from prosecutors investigating Captain Francesco Schettino for suspected manslaughter and abandoning the ship, swam through the cold, dark waters to reach his cabin. State TV and the Italian news agency ANSA reported that the divers located and remove his safe and two suitcases. His passport and several documents were also pulled out, state media said.

Searchers inspecting the bridge Saturday also found a hard disk containing data of the voyage, Sky TG24 TV reported.

Three bodies were found in waters around the ship in the first hours after the accident. Since then, divers have gone inside the Concordia to recover all the remaining victims, who were apparently unable to escape the lurching ship during a chaotic evacuation launched almost an hour after the liner hit a reef.

Some survivors who couldn't board lifeboats waited for hours aboard the capsizing craft for rescue by helicopters while others jumped into the water and swam to safety.

The last survivor, found aboard 36 hours after the crash, was an Italian crewman who broke his leg in the confusion and couldn't leave the ship.

The Concordia hit the reef, well-marked on maritime and even tourist maps, while most of the passengers sat down to dinner in the main restaurant, about two hours after the ship had set sail from the port of Civitavecchia on the Tyrrhenian Sea.

Costa Crociere, the ship's operator and subsidiary of U.S.-based Carnival Cruise Lines, has said the captain had deviated without permission from the vessel's route in an apparent maneuver to sail close to the island of Giglio and impress passengers.

Schettino, despite audiotapes of his defying Coast Guard orders to scramble back aboard, has denied he abandoned ship while hundreds of passengers were desperately trying to get off the capsizing vessel. He has said he coordinated the rescue from aboard a lifeboat and then from the shore.

The effort to find survivors and bodies has postponed an operation to remove heavy fuel in the Concordia's tanks; specialized equipment has been standing by for days.

Light fuel, apparently from machinery aboard the capsized ship, was spotted in nearby waters, authorities said Saturday.

But Nicastro said there was no indication that any of the nearly 500,000 gallons (2,200 metric tons) of heavy fuel oil has leaked from the ship's double-bottomed tanks, seen as a risk if the ship's position changes. He said the leaked substance appears to be diesel, which is used to fuel rescue boats and dinghies and as a lubricant for ship machinery.

There are 185 tons of diesel and lubricants on board the crippled vessel, which is lying on its side just outside Giglio's port. Nicastro described the fuel in the sea as "very light, very superficial" and appearing to be under control.

But an official leading rescue, search and anti-pollution efforts for the ship suggested that the luxury liner would have leaked contaminants on board when it tipped over.

"We must not forget that on that ship there are oils, solvents, detergents, everything that a city of 4,000 people needs," Franco Gabrielli, the head of Italy's civil protection agency, told reporters in Giglio.

Gabrielli was referring to the roughly 3,200 passengers and 1,000 crew who were aboard the cruise liner when it ran into the reef and, with seawater rushing into a 230-foot (70-meter) gash in its hull, listed and fell onto its side. "Contamination of the environment, ladies and gentlemen, already occurred" when the liner capsized, Gabrelli said.

Vessels equipped with machinery to suck out the light fuel oil were in the area. Earlier on Saturday, crews removed oil-absorbing booms used to prevent environmental damage in case of a leak. Originally white, the booms were grayish.

Schettino, is under house arrest for investigation of alleged manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning the ship before all were evacuated.

The search had been suspended Friday after the Concordia shifted, prompting fears the ship could roll off a rocky ledge of sea bed and plunge deeper into the pristine waters around Giglio, part of a seven-island Tuscan archipelago.

___

D'Emilio reported from Rome. Colleen Barry contributed from Milan and Andrea Foa from Giglio.

(This version CORRECTS Corrects misspelling 11th and 16th paragraphs. AP Video. This story is part of AP's general news and financial services.)

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2012-01-21-EU-Italy-Cruise-Aground/id-1befd625faad4df0ad7831de4eeb1d6f

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Saudis quit Arab monitoring mission in Syria

CAIRO?? Arab foreign ministers agreed Sunday on a new political roadmap for Syria that sees President Bashar Assad delegating power to a deputy and setting up a unity government as a prelude to early parliamentary and presidential elections.

Qatari Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani told a news conference after a meeting of Arab foreign ministers in Cairo that the Arab League would take its initiative to the U.N. Security Council and ask for its endorsement.

Earlier Sunday, the ministers extended a much-criticized monitoring mission to Syria for a month, but Saudi Arabia said it was withdrawing its observers.

"My country will withdraw its monitors because the Syrian government did not execute any of the elements of the Arab resolution plan," Prince Saud al-Faisal told fellow Arab foreign ministers meeting in Cairo.

"We are calling on the international community to bear its responsibility, and that includes our brothers in Islamic states and our friends in Russia, China, Europe and the United States," Saud said, calling for "all possible pressure" to push Syria to adhere to the Arab peace plan.

Saudi Arabia has been one of the harshest Arab critics of the crackdown, It recalled its ambassador from Damascus last year in protest.

Also Sunday, Syrian forces and army defectors clashed in a suburb of the tightly held capital of Damascus ? a sign that citizen protests against President Bashar Assad might turn into civil war.

The observer mission is supposed to be the first step toward implementing an Arab League plan to end the Syria crisis. Other points are pulling heavy Syrian weapons out of cities, stopping attacks on protesters, opening talks with the opposition and allowing foreign human rights workers and journalists in.

"There is partial progress in the implementation of the promises," Arab League chief Nabil Elaraby said in Cairo about Syria's implementation of the plan. Syria "did not carry out all its promises, although there are some implementation of pledges."

He added that the use of "extreme force" by Syrian forces have led to a reaction by the opposition "in what could lead to civil war."

So far the observer mission has not gone well. Though some credit it with tamping down violence in some places, the Local Coordination Committees activist group said Sunday that 976 people, including 54 children and 28 women, have been killed since the observers began their mission last month.

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The U.N. estimates some 5,400 have been killed since it began in March.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch called on the Arab League to "maximize" the effectiveness of the mission of the observers in Syria "to stop the killings."

"The deployment of the observers, has been disappointing ... Assad played games with observers," by moving around forces instead of removing them from cities, while the killing continues, Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.

The Arab League faced three options Sunday: ending the mission and giving up its initiative, extending it, or turning the crisis over to the U.N. Security Council, as some opposition groups have urged. There, however, it would face a possible stalemate because of disagreements among permanent members over how far to go in forcing Assad's hand.

Story: Rights group: West hasn't embraced Arab Spring

The mission's one-month mandate technically expired on Thursday.

The pullout of Assad's security forces from the Damascus suburb of Douma marked the second time in a week that troops have redeployed from an area near the tightly-controlled Syrian capital, an indication that Assad might be losing some control.

Diplomacy has taken on urgency as opponents of Assad's regime and soldiers who switched sides increasingly take up arms and fight back against government forces.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights' head Rami Abdul-Rahman said government troops had pulled back early Sunday to a provincial headquarters and a security agency building in the Damascus suburb of Douma after hours of clashes, although they still controlled the entrances. The clashes broke out after Syrian troops opened fire at a funeral on Saturday.

On Sunday afternoon, the battles resumed between the defectors and troops loyal to Assad, according to the Observatory and the Local Coordination Committees, another activist group. The LCC said that heavy machine gun fire was used in the clashes, and five people were killed.

Abdul-Rahman had no information on casualties from the clashes but said security forces at an entrance checkpoint shot dead one man who was passing by on Sunday. He added that one person was shot dead in a nearby town of Rankous as well as another person in the northwestern province of Idlib.

The LCC said 12 people were killed in Syria Sunday. The LCC and the Observatory reported intense gunfire in the central city of Homs that left at least one person dead.

State-run news agency SANA said gunmen opened fire at the car of an army brigadier general, killing him and another army officers who was in the vehicle.

Syria-based activist Mustafa Osso confirmed that security forces had abandoned Douma.

A video posted by activists on social media showed five masked gunmen, one of them in uniform, who read a statement saying, "the city of Douma has been liberated from Assad's gangs." He warned Syrian troops not to try enter Douma or defectors would "fire rockets at the presidential palace" in Damascus and execute five prisoners they are holding.

The Associated Press could not verify the authenticity of the video.

Also Sunday, state-run SANA, said an estimated 5,255 Syrian prisoners have been released over the past week under an amnesty, raising the total freed since November to more than 9,000. Opposition groups say thousands are still being held.

The U.S. has imposed sanctions on Syria as the bloodshed escalates. The U.S. has long called for Assad to step down, and officials say his regime's demise is inevitable.

Two U.S. Senators plan to introduce a bill to stiffen the sanctions.

The bill, sponsored by Democratic Senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York would require President Barack Obama to identify violators of human rights in Syria, call for reform and offer protection to pro-democracy demonstrators. It would also block financial aid and property transactions in the United States involving Syrian leaders involved in the crackdown.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46091558/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/

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