Taliban say Marine tape won't hurt Afghanistan talks |

The video, posted on YouTube and other websites, shows four men in camouflage Marine combat uniforms urinating on three corpses. One of them jokes: "Have a nice day, buddy." Another makes a lewd joke.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned the video, describing the men's actions as "inhuman" and calling for an investigation, in a statement on Thursday evening.

In Washington U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta telephoned Karzai to denounce the actions in the video as "deplorable" and to say it would be investigated immediately, the Pentagon said. General Martin Dempsey, the top U.S. military officer, said actions depicted in the video were illegal.

Although the U.S. military has stopped short of confirming the video is authentic, the Pentagon on Thursday came close. Pentagon spokesman Captain John Kirby said, "We don't have any indication that it's not authentic."

The video is likely to stir up already strong anti-U.S. sentiment in Afghanistan after a decade of a war that has seen other cases of abuse, and that could complicate efforts to promote reconciliation as foreign troops gradually withdraw.

"Such action will leave a very, very bad impact on peace efforts," Arsala Rahmani, a senior member of the Afghan government's High Peace Council, told Reuters.

The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama, seeing a glimmer of hope after months of efforts to broker talks, is launching a fresh round of shuttle diplomacy this weekend.

Marc Grossman, Obama's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, will fly into the region for talks with Karzai and top officials in Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

One immediate goal is to seal agreement for the Taliban to open a political office in the Gulf state of Qatar.

Despite concerns when the video first emerged that it would not help his efforts to build confidence among the warring parties, a Taliban spokesman said although the images were shocking, the tape would not affect talks or a mooted prisoner release.

"We know that our country is occupied ... . This is not a political process, so the video will not harm our talks and prisoner exchange because they are at the preliminary stage."

CONCERN FOR MORE PROTESTS

Panetta called the actions shown in the film "utterly deplorable" and said he had ordered the Marine Corps and the commander of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan to investigate.

"Those found to have engaged in such conduct will be held accountable to the fullest extent," he said in a statement.

General James Amos, the commandant of the Marine Corps, said in a statement the video "apparently depicts Marines desecrating several dead Taliban in Afghanistan."

He said he had asked the Naval Criminal Investigative Service to investigate and had set up another internal inquiry headed by Marine officers.

A Marine officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that the Marines in question were believed to be from the 3rd Battallion, 2nd Marines, which is based in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said he was not aware of whether President Barack Obama had seen the video or not.

News of the footage had yet to spread in Afghanistan - a country where a minority have access to electricity and the Internet is limited to a tiny urban elite - but Afghans who were told about what the tape appears to show were horrified.

"It may start with just video footage, but it will end with demonstrations around the country and maybe the world," said 44-year-old Qaisullah, who has a shop near the Kabul's Shah-e-dushamshera mosque.

Anti-American feeling has boiled over, or been whipped up, into violence several times in Afghanistan in recent years. Protests over reports of the desecration of the Muslim holy book have twice sparked deadly riots.

The tape also sparked anger across the Middle East and in Internet chatrooms, prompting reference to earlier scandals involving U.S. soldiers' treatment of prisoners in Iraq and the killing of unarmed civilians in Afghanistan.

"This is the embodiment of the strong assaulting the weak. It's nothing new for the Americans, it only adds to what they have done in Abu Ghraib prison. This a breach of the sacredness of Islam and Muslims," said Othman al-Busaifi, 45, in Tripoli.

The U.S. military has been prosecuting soldiers from the Army's 5th Stryker Brigade on charges of murdering unarmed Afghan civilians while deployed in Kandahar province in 2010, and cutting off body parts as war trophies.

"They cut off ears and fingers and keep them as medals, and urinate on bodies, then they talk about civilization," wrote user Abu Abdullah al-Janubi on one forum.

CRITICAL TIME

The video was released at a critical time for what U.S. officials hope might become authentic talks on Afghanistan's political future.

In Kabul Grossman will seek approval from Karzai - whose support for a U.S. effort he fears will sideline his government has wavered - to move ahead with good-faith measures seen as an essential precursor to negotiations that could give the Taliban a shared role in governing Afghanistan.

Internet blacklist power to be stripped from Senate's PROTECT IP Act

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) doesn't want to give up his DNS-based Interent blacklisting plans—but he's willing to put them on hold. One of the key drivers of the PROTECT IP Act in the Senate announced today that he will recommend stripping the DNS-blocking provisions from his bill while further technical studies are underway.

The complaints against DNS-based blocking have been vocal ones. Leahy announced his plan today to introduce a "manager's amendment" to the current bill after hearing from "engineers, human rights groups, and... a number of Vermonters." Not that he's convinced DNS blocking is really problematic.

I remain confident that the ISPs—including the cable industry, which is the largest association of ISPs—would not support the legislation if its enactment created the problems that opponents of this provision suggest. Nonetheless, this is in fact a highly technical issue, and I am prepared to recommend we give it more study before implementing it.

As I prepare a managers’ amendment to be considered during the floor debate, I will therefore propose that the positive and negative effects of this provision be studied before implemented, so that we can focus on the other important provisions in this bill, which are essential to protecting American intellectual property online, and the American jobs that are tied to intellectual property. I regret that law enforcement will not have this remedy available to it when websites operating overseas are stealing American property, threatening the safety and security of American consumers. However, the bill remains a strong and balanced approach to protecting intellectual property through a no-fault, no-liability system that leverages the most relevant players in the Internet ecosystem.

Federal judges could still order sites cut off by US-based payment processors and ad networks, but actual Internet blacklisting would be provisionally off the table.

While these sorts of issues seem like they should have come up during drafting or during hearings on the bill, PROTECT IP has already moved out of committee and to the Senate floor, where it currently suffers a hold by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR). Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) will try to move the bill forward regardless on January 24, and the late change from Leahy appears designed to get the current legislation passed now rather than allow opposition to crystallize around a totally different approach, like the OPEN Act now being pitched by Wyden.

DNS blocking remains in the House version of the bill, called SOPA, though rumors suggest it too could be altered soon.

Opponents like Public Knowledge aren't satisfied. "We appreciate the action Chairman Leahy is taking to improve his legislation," said attorney Sherwin Siy. "Even with that change, however, the bill would still be unacceptable. The definitions in the bill are still far too sweeping, it still grants too much enforcement power to private parties, and still confers inappropriate blanket immunity for private companies."

Missing Teenager Natalee Holloway Declared Dead

The parents of Natalee Holloway looked on somberly as a judge on Thursday declared their child dead, more than six years after the American teenager vanished during a high school graduation trip to the Caribbean island of Aruba.

"We've been dealing with her death for the last six and a half years," Dave Holloway said after a brief hearing. He said the judge's order closes one chapter in a long ordeal, but added: "We've still got a long way to go to get justice.

Natalee Holloway disappeared in Aruba on May 30, 2005. The 18-year-old was last seen leaving a bar early that morning with a young Dutchman, Joran van der Sloot. Her body was never found and the ensuing searches for the young woman would reap intense media scrutiny and worldwide attention.

Thursday's hearing was scheduled long before van der Sloot — a suspect questioned in Holloway's disappearance — pleaded guilty Wednesday in Peru to the 2010 murder of a woman he met at a casino in Lima. Stephany Flores, 21, was killed five years to the day after Holloway, an 18-year-old from the wealthy Birmingham suburb of Mountain Brook, disappeared.

Shortly after Flores' death on May 30, 2010, van der Sloot told police he killed the woman in Peru in a fit of rage after she discovered on his laptop his connection to the disappearance of Holloway. Police forensic experts disputed the claim.

Dave Holloway told the judge in September he believed his daughter had died and he wanted to stop payments on her medical insurance and use her $2,000 college fund to help her younger brother.

The teen's mother originally objected, but her lawyer, Charlie DeBardeleben, said she subsequently changed her mind once she understood her husband's intentions.

Natalee Holloway's parents were divorced in 1993 and Beth Holloway sat in the back row of the courtroom, mostly staring at her hands in her lap through the hearing Thursday afternoon in a probate court in Birmingham.

Although Beth Holloway declined to speak to journalists, her attorney signaled it was a difficult moment for her to witness a judge signing the order declaring her daughter dead.

"She's ready to move on from this," DeBardeleben added.

Mark White, an attorney for Dave Holloway, told the judge just before he announced his decision, that there was no evidence that Holloway was alive.

"Despite all that no evidence has been found Natalee Holloway is alive," he told the judge, noting that exhaustive searches, blanket international media coverage and even the offer of rewards had turned up nothing new.

King had ruled in September that Dave Holloway had met the legal presumption of death for his daughter and it was up to someone to prove she didn't die on a high school graduation trip. He had set the hearing after a period of several months in the event anyone might come forward with new information.

However, investigators have long worked from the assumption that the young woman was dead in Aruba, where the case was officially classified as a homicide investigation.

That investigation remains open, though there has been no recent activity, said Solicitor General Taco Stein, an official with the prosecutor's office on the Dutch Caribbean island.

"The team that was acting in that investigation still is functioning as a team and they get together whenever there is information or things are needed in the case or a new tip arrives," Stein said in a phone interview Thursday.

Dave Holloway said he hopes the 24-year-old van der Sloot, who is awaiting sentencing in Lima, gets a 30-year prison term sought by Peruvian prosecutors.

"Everybody knows his personality. I believe he is beyond rehabilitation," Holloway said.

AP

David Holloway, left, looks over papers as he... View Full Caption

Attorneys said both parents also expressed hope that van der Sloot's next stop is Birmingham, where he faces federal charges accusing him of extorting $25,000 from Beth Holloway to reveal the location of her daughter's body.

Prosecutors said the money was paid, but nothing was disclosed about the missing woman's whereabouts.

"I expect to see him in Birmingham," Dave Holloway said Thursday.