Ahead of the one-year anniversary of the Costa Concordia disaster, in which 32 people were killed when the cruise ship ran aground off the Italian island of Giglio, the captain of the ship told an Italian newspaper that he "was painted worse than bin Laden."
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Luxury cruise ship runs aground
Francesco Schettino said in an interview with the Turin newspaper La Stampa that he is tormented by the disaster.
"It is sincere pain from the bottom of my heart," he said.
The 950-foot-long Costa Concordia struck rocks and capsized on January 13 last year. Thirty-two people aboard were killed and hundreds injured in the panicked evacuation.
Prosecutors have accused Shettino of sailing the luxury liner too close to shore. He faces multiple charges of manslaughter and of abandoning ship during the evacuation of the 4,200 passengers and crew on board.
Italian media have referred to Schettino as "Captain Coward,"
He complained to the paper that the press' characterization of him and his actions "ridicules not just 30 years of my work, my experience in the whole world, but also the image of our country, which has been exposed to the criticism, often unjust, of the entire planet."
The Costa Concordia cruise ship is seen on its side near the Italian island of Giglio, January 7, 2013.
/ FILIPPO MONTEFORTE/AFP/Getty Images
Schettino - who told the paper that he did not intentionally abandon ship, but slipped and fell into a lifeboat when the Concordia listed to its side - says he may have made a mistake by sailing too close to land, but he was not given exact information, and should not be the only one to get the blame.
In fact, eight others (including the ship's first officer and four other crew members, and three members of a crisis unit set up by the cruise ship's owner) also face possible criminal charges following the Italian prosecutors' investigation, which concluded last month.
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Costa Concordia: Salvaging a shipwreck
Last Thursday at a Naples courtroom, Schettino brought a case against Costa Cruises, the ship's operator, for wrongful dismissal.
Efforts by salvage crews to right the ship are underway.
Jodi Arias is a woman that many can't keep their eyes off of--a soft-spoken, small-framed 32-year-old who last year won a jailhouse Christmas caroling contest. But she is also an admitted killer who is now on trial in Arizona for the 2008 murder of her ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander.
Sitting in a Maricopa County court, Arias, whose trial resumes today, cries every time prosecutors describe what she admits she did -- stab her one-time boyfriend Travis Alexander 27 times, slit his throat and shoot him in the head.
Arias grew up in the small city of Yreka, Calif. She dropped out of high school, but received her GED while in jail a few years ago. She was an aspiring photographer; her MySpace page includes several albums of pictures, one of which was called "In loving memory of Travis Alexander."
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"Jodi wanted nothing but to please Travis," defense attorney Jennifer Wilmot said in her opening statements, but added that there was another reality – that Arias was Alexander's "dirty little secret."
Arias' attorneys want the jury to believe she killed Alexander in June of 2008 in self defense, that he abused her, and she feared for her life when she attacked him in the shower of his Mesa, Ariz., home.
Alexander's family and friends say Arias was a stalker who killed him in cold blood. They say the 30-year-old was a successful businessman who overcame all the odds. His parents were drug addicts, and he grew up occasionally homeless until he converted to Mormonism and turned his life around.
Jodi Arias Trial: A Timeline of Events in the Arizona Murder Case
"He actually had everything going for him," said Dave Hall, one of Alexander's friends. "A beautiful home, a beautiful car, a great income."
Alexander kept a blog, and in a haunting last entry, just two weeks before his murder, he wrote about trying to find a wife.
"This type of dating to me is like a very long job interview," he wrote. "Desperately trying to find out if my date has an axe murderer penned up inside of her."
Alexander did date a killer. It's now up to the jury to decide if she killed in self defense.
Tunis (Reuters) - Tunisia has freed, for lack of evidence, a Tunisian man who had been suspected of involvement in an Islamist militant attack in Libya last year in which the U.S. ambassador was killed, his lawyer said on Tuesday.
Ali Harzi was one of two Tunisians named in October by the Daily Beast website as having been detained in Turkey over the violence in which Christopher Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, and three other American officials were killed.
"The judge decided to free Harzi and he is free now," lawyer Anouar Awled Ali told Reuters. "The release came in response to our request to free him for lack of evidence and after he underwent the hearing with American investigators as a witness in the case."
A Tunisian justice ministry spokesman confirmed the release of Harzi but declined to elaborate.
A month ago, Harzi refused to be interviewed by visiting U.S. FBI investigators over the September 11 assault on the U.S. consulate in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi.
The Daily Beast reported that shortly after the attacks began, Harzi posted an update on an unspecified social media site about the fighting.
It said Harzi was on his way to Syria when he was detained in Turkey at the behest of U.S. authorities, and that he was affiliated with a militant group in North Africa.
(Reporting by Tarek Amara; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
SRINAGAR, India: Pakistani troops killed two Indian soldiers on Tuesday near the tense disputed border between the nuclear-armed neighbours in Kashmir and one of the bodies was badly mutilated, the Indian army said.
The firefight broke out at about noon on Tuesday (0630 GMT) after an Indian patrol discovered Pakistani troops about half a kilometre (1,600 feet) inside Indian territory, an army spokesman told AFP.
A ceasefire has been in place along the Line of Control that divides the countries since 2003, but it is periodically violated by both sides and Pakistan said Indian troops killed a Pakistani soldier on Sunday.
Relations had been slowly improving over the last few years following a rupture in their slow-moving peace process after the 2008 attacks on Mumbai, which were blamed by India on Pakistan-based militants.
"There was a firefight with Pakistani troops," army spokesman Rajesh Kalia told AFP from the mountainous Himalayan region.
"We lost two soldiers and one of them has been badly mutilated," he added, declining to give more details on the injuries.
"The intruders were regular (Pakistani) soldiers and they were 400-500 metres (1,300-1,600 feet) inside our territory," he said of the clash in Mendhar sector, 173 kilometres (107 miles) west by road from the city of Jammu.
In Islamabad, a Pakistan military spokesman denied what he called an "Indian allegation of unprovoked firing". He declined to elaborate.
On Sunday, Pakistan said Indian troops had crossed the Line of Control and stormed a military post. It said one Pakistani soldier was killed and another injured.
It lodged a formal protest with India on Monday over what it called an unprovoked attack.
India denied crossing the line, saying it had retaliated with small arms fire after Pakistani mortars hit a village home.
A foreign ministry spokesman said Indian troops had undertaken "controlled retaliation" on Sunday after "unprovoked firing" which damaged a civilian home.
The deaths are set to undermine recent efforts to improve relations, such as opening up trade and offering more lenient visa regimes which have been a feature of talks between senior political leaders from both sides.
Muslim-majority Kashmir is a Himalayan region which India and Pakistan both claim in full but rule in part. It was the cause of two of three wars between the neighbours since independence from Britain in 1947.
Lexar's Professional XQD USB 3.0 Reader for reading XQD flash memory cards
(Credit: Lexar)
Nikon photography pros will be happy to know there's a major new supplier of XQD flash-memory cards: Lexar.
Lexar's 64GB XQD flash memory card
(Credit: Lexar)
They might not be so happy about the price for the new high-end format: a 1100X 64GB model costs $580, and a 32GB costs $300. At the CES show today, the Micron subsidiary also announced a $45 USB 3.0 card reader for the new format.
Nikon's flagship D4 SLR uses the XQD cards, which before were available only from Sony. Lexar's 1100X models guarantee a 168MB/sec read speed, though write speeds are somewhat lower.
XQD is one of two formats vying to be the replacement for the venerable CompactFlash. Perversely, the CompactFlash Association is overseeing standardization of both. Nikon signed up for XQD, which is based on the PCI Express data-transfer technology, but Canon signed up for CFast 2.0, which uses the Serial ATA data-transfer technology.
Having two high-end flash card formats means the market is fragmented, making it harder for photographers to switch between camera models or use multiple brands. It also means shipment volumes of either format will be lower than if there were a unified standard, which typically translates into lower availability and higher cost.
Lexar's top rival, SanDisk, is making CFast 2.0 cards but not XQD cards.
Meanwhile, SD card is the victor of the mainstream flash-card market.
That victory doesn't mean SD is immune from stratospherically priced options for buyers who need to keep up with 3D video or other high-throughput demands, though.
Also at CES, Lexar also announced new high-performance SD cards. The Lexar Professional 600x SDXC UHS-I card comes in a 256GB size that costs $1,000.
Lexar's 256GB Professional 600x SDXC UHS-I flash memory card
CENTENNIAL, Colo. Nearly six months after the Colorado movie theater massacre, prosecutors began laying out their case Monday against the former neuroscience graduate student accused in the rampage.
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The Aurora shooting victims
Investigators say James Holmes wore body armor and a gas mask when he tossed two gas canisters and then opened fire during the midnight showing of the Batman movie "The Dark Knight Rises," killing 12 people and wounding dozens.
Whatever details emerge at the preliminary hearing, they will do so in a nation that has changed dramatically since the July 20 attack that pushed the problems of gun violence and mental illness into the forefront before receding.
That debate reignited last month when a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary school in Newtown, Conn., spawning calls for better psychiatric care, tougher gun laws and the arming of teachers.
The preliminary hearing, which is expected to last all week, will allow the judge to determine whether the prosecution's case is strong enough to warrant a trial.
CBS News senior legal analyst Andrew Cohen reports the prosecution has a low burden to meet at the hearing, but notes that the proceeding allows the defense an early chance to evaluate the strength of the state's case and to question law enforcement officials.
"It's likely to be dramatic and in many ways heartbreaking," Cohen told CBS Radio News. "The public will hear details for the first time about what police believe went on inside that theater. We could hear 911 tapes. There will likely be photos and video, and Holmes will be at the defense table through it all."
Holmes is charged with more than 160 counts, including murder and attempted murder.
Legal analysts say that evidence appears to be so strong that Holmes may well accept a plea agreement before trial.
In such cases, the preliminary hearing can set the stage for a deal by letting each side assess the other's strengths and weaknesses, said Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor and now a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.
They "are often the first step to resolving the case, a mini-trial so both sides can see the writing on the wall," she said.
In general, plea agreements help prosecutors avoid costly trials, give the accused a lesser sentence like life in prison rather than the death penalty, and spare the victims and their families from the trauma of going through a lengthy trial.
At this stage, prosecutors must only meet a "probable cause" standard — much lower than the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard for a guilty verdict, said Mimi Wesson, a professor of law at the University of Colorado Law School.
Many of the survivors and family members of the dead are expected to attend the hearing, and court officials expect an overflow crowd of reporters and spectators.
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Aurora movie theater massacre pre-trial to begin
Chantel Blunk, whose husband, Jonathan Blunk, died in the attack, flew from Reno, Nev., to attend the hearing. She wanted to be there for the late father of their children and the other victims, CBS News correspondent Manuel Bojorquez reports.
"No matter what this guy did to everybody, you know, we're still going there and representing the people that were lost, that were hurt, and that he is not going to win," Blunk told Bojorquez. "You know, it's not about his name or remembering him. It's about the people that were taken away."
The hearing is the first extensive public disclosure of the evidence against Holmes. Three days after the shooting, District Judge William Sylvester forbade attorneys and investigators from discussing the case publicly, and many court documents have been filed under seal.
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Prosecutors: Holmes threatened university prof.
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Psychiatrist who treated Holmes testifies
It took this long to get to the preliminary hearing because lawyers have been debating what physical evidence should be made available to one side or the other, whether a psychiatrist who met with Holmes is barred from testimony by doctor-patient privilege, who was responsible for leaks to the media, and other issues.
Police say Holmes, now 25, had stockpiled weapons, ammunition, explosives and body armor. He was a first-year student in a Ph.D. neuroscience program at the University of Colorado, Denver, but he failed a year-end exam and withdrew in June, authorities have said.
The shootings happened six weeks later.
Federal authorities have said Holmes entered the theater with a ticket and is believed to have propped open a door, slipped out to his car and returned with his weapons. Police arrested him outside the theater shortly after the shootings ended.
Holmes' mental health could be a significant issue — and possibly a contentious one — in the preliminary hearing.
His attorneys have told the judge Holmes is mentally ill, but they have not said whether they plan to employ an insanity defense. He had seen a university psychiatrist, and his lawyers have said he tried to call the psychiatrist nine minutes before the killing began.
Defense lawyers have said they plan to call at least two people, described as "lay witnesses," who could testify about Holmes' mental health. Prosecutors asked Sylvester to block the witnesses, but he refused.
Accused movie theater gunman James Holmes was "relaxed" and "detached" when police confronted him just moments after he had allegedly killed 12 people and wounded dozens more in the Aurora, Colo., massacre, a police officer testified today.
A preliminary hearing for Holmes began today in Colorado, with victims and families present. One family member likened attending the hearing to having to "face the devil."
The first two witnesses to take the stand were Aurora police officers who responded to the theater and spotted Holmes standing by his car at the rear of the theater.
Officer Jason Oviatt said he first thought Holmes was a cop because he was wearing a gas mask and helmet, but as he got closer realized he was not an officer and held Holmes at gunpoint.
Holmes allegedly opened fire at the crowded movie theater during a midnight showing of "The Dark Knight Rises" on July 20, 2012. In addition to wearing the body armor and gas mask, Holmes had dyed his hair red.
Click here for full coverage of the Aurora movie theater shooting.
Throughout the search and arrest, Holes was extremely compliant, the officer said.
"He was very, very relaxed," Oviatt said. "These were not normal reactions to anything. He seemed very detached from it all."
Oviatt said Holmes had extremely dilated pupils and smelled badly when he was arrested.
Arapahoe County Sheriff/AP Photo
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Officer Aaron Blue testified that Holmes volunteered that he had four guns and that there were "improvised explosive devices" in his apartment and that they would go off if the police triggered them.
Holmes was dressed for the court hearing in a red jumpsuit and has brown hair and a full beard. He did not show any reaction when the officers pointed him out in the courtroom.
This is the most important court hearing in the case so far, essentially a mini-trial as prosecutors present witness testimony and evidence—some never before heard—to outline their case against the former neuroscience student.
The hearing at the Arapahoe County District Court in Centennial, Colo., could last all week. At the end, Judge William Sylvester will decide whether the case will go to trial.
Prosecutors say they will present potentially gruesome photos and videos in addition to 911 calls from the night of the shooting that left 12 people dead and 58 wounded. They will aim to convince the judge that there is enough evidence against Holmes to proceed to a trial.
It is expected that the prosecution's witnesses will include the Aurora police lead detective, first responders, the coroner and a computer forensic specialist.
In an unusual move, defense attorneys may call two witnesses. Last week, the judge ruled that Holmes can call the witnesses to testify on his "mental state," but it is not clear who the witnesses are.
A court-imposed gag order days after the shooting has kept many of the details under wraps, so much of the information could be new to the public.
Hundreds of family members and victims are expected to attend the hearing.
Holmes has been charged with 166 counts of murder, attempted murder, possession of explosives and crime of violence. The district attorney has not decided whether to seek the death penalty, and Holmes' defense team believes Holmes is mentally ill. He has not entered a plea.
One of the attendees will be MaryEllen Hanson, whose great-niece Veronica Moser Sullivan, 6, was killed in the shooting. Veronica's mother Ashley was shot and is now a quadriplegic and suffered a miscarriage.
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Five men accused of raping and murdering an Indian student were read the charges in a near-empty courtroom on Monday after the judge cleared out lawyers for bickering over whether the men deserved a defense.
The 23-year-old physiotherapy student died two weeks after being gang-raped and beaten on a moving bus in New Delhi, then thrown bleeding onto the street. Protests followed, along with a fierce public debate over police failure to stem rampant violence against women.
With popular anger simmering against the five men and a teenager accused in the case, most lawyers in the district where the trial will be held refuse to represent them.
Before the men arrived for a pre-trial hearing on Monday, heckling broke out in a chamber packed with jostling lawyers, journalists and members of the public after two of the lawyers, Manohar Lal Sharma and V. K. Anand, offered to defend the men.
"We are living in a modern society," declared Lal Sharma, defending his decision. "We all are educated. Every accused, including those in brutal offences like this, has the legal right ... to defend themselves."
One woman lawyer prodded V. K. Anand in the chest, saying: "I'll see how you can represent the accused."
Unable to restore order, presiding magistrate Namrita Aggarwal ordered everyone to leave except the prosecution, and set police to guard the entrance.
She said the trial would now be held behind closed doors because of the sensitivity of the case.
FACES COVERED
Reuters video images showed the men stepping out of a blue police van that brought them from Tihar jail and walking, their faces covered, through a metal detector into the South Delhi court building.
The court was across the street from the cinema where the victim watched a film before she was attacked on her way home.
Aggarwal gave the men copies of the charges, which include murder, rape and abduction, a prosecutor in the case told Reuters.
Police have conducted extensive interrogations and say they have recorded confessions, even though the men have no lawyers.
If the men, most of them from a slum neighborhood, cannot arrange a defense, the court will offer them legal aid before the trial begins.
Two of them, Vinay Sharma and Pawan Gupta, have offered to give evidence against the others - Mukesh Kumar, Ram Singh and Akshay Thakura - possibly in return for a lighter sentence.
Mohan, describing what he called a heinous crime, said: "The five accused persons deserve not less than the death penalty."
The case has sharpened long-standing anger against the government and police for a perceived failure to protect women.
A male friend who was assaulted with the woman on December 16 said on Friday that passers-by left her unclothed and bleeding in the street for almost an hour and that, when police arrived, they spent a long time arguing about where to take them.
The woman lived for two weeks after her attack, dying in a Singapore hospital where she had been taken for treatment.
FAST-TRACK COURT
Aggarwal said the next hearing would be on January 10. The case is due to move later to another, fast-track court set up since the woman was attacked to help reduce a backlog of sex crime cases in Delhi.
Legal experts say the lack of representation for the five men may give grounds for appeal if they are found guilty. Convictions in similar cases have often been overturned years later.
Some legal experts have also warned that previous attempts to fast-track justice in India in some cases led to imperfect convictions that were later challenged.
The sixth member of the group alleged to have lured the student and a male friend into the private bus is under 18 and will be tried in a separate juvenile court.
The government is aiming to lower the age at which teenagers can be tried as adults, acknowledging public anger that the boy will face a maximum three-year sentence.
The victim was identified by a British newspaper at the weekend but Reuters has opted not to name her.
Indian law generally prohibits the identification of victims of sex crimes. The law is intended to protect victims' privacy and keep them out of the glare of media in a country where the social stigma associated with rape can be devastating.
The dead woman's father repeated on Monday that he wanted her identified and said he would be happy to release a photograph of her.
"We don't want to hide her identity. There is no reason for that. The only condition is it should not be misused," he told Reuters.
He said he was confident the trial would be quick and reiterated a call that the perpetrators be hanged.
(Writing by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Robert Birsel and Tom Pfeiffer)
PARIS: European aircraft manufacturer Airbus said Monday that it has won a tender to supply India with six A330 air refuelling tankers, a deal potentially worth more than US$1.0 billion.
"We are pleased to confirm that we were selected by the Indian government following its tender for air refuelling tankers," said a spokesman for Airbus Military, the group's defence division, while declining to comment on the deal's value, which would have a catalogue price of US$1.25-1.38 billion.
Airbus still has a way to go before it can take a signed contract to the bank however, as the development opened the door to a long process of negotiations between Delhi and the aircraft manufacturer.
As an example, the French company Dassault Aviation was chosen by India in January 2012 to supply 126 Rafale combat jets, but that deal has yet to be finalised.
Airbus had already won a bid to build air refuelling tankers for India moreover, but that deal was cancelled owing to irregularities in the tender process.
This time around, Airbus was competing head-to-head with the Russian group Ilyushin, which has already supplied aircraft to India.
If the Airbus contract with India is finalised, it would mark the sixth country to buy or say it will buy the tankers.
The others are Australia, Britain, France, United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia.
An industry source said that India might need many more than just six of the planes, meanwhile.
The A330 MRTT (multirole tanker transport) can supply two aircraft with fuel at the same time, and in the configuration now being used by the Australian air force, can carry 111 tonnes of fuel, 37 tonnes of material and 270 passengers.
LAS VEGAS -- Panasonic has joined LG's Smart TV Alliance which was designed develop and use a single connected platform for televisions from 2013 onward.
The Smart TV alliance was announced by LG in June 2012 in conjunction with Philips (TP Vision) but it has now grown to include Toshiba, Panasonic, and chipmakers such as Qualcomm and IBM.
LG's smart TV interface is arguably one of the best on the market and this agreement goes some way to creating an industry standard platform, which is a boon for customers and developers.
The new platform allows for 3D video, MPEG-DASH support for smoother video streaming and DRM standards for third-party content owners.
