Afghanistan: Blast kills 7 civilians in east

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — An explosion killed seven Afghan villagers Sunday as they tried to pull bodies of insurgents killed from the rubble of a village mosque after a night raid by NATO and Afghan troops in the country's east, officials said. Four insurgents and an Afghan soldier were also reported to have been killed.
The predawn operation in Sayedabad district was aimed at capturing a Taliban fighter who had holed up in a village, said Wardak province spokesman Shahidullah Shahid . The international and Afghan forces captured their target but came under attack from insurgents, sparking a two-hour gunfight during which at least one large blast sounded, he said. Four insurgents were dead by the time fighting ended around 4:30 a.m.
Then at about 6 a.m. local time, residents came out to find the local mosque partly destroyed and started digging through the rubble to uncover bodies. Shahid says something exploded as they dug, killing seven civilians. He says the insurgents were wearing suicide vests, but it was not immediately clear if that caused the explosion.
A spokesman for international forces in Afghanistan confirmed that four insurgents were killed but did not have any immediate reports of civilian deaths.
"I am aware of reports that indicate there may have been civilians killed and ISAF and Afghan officials are assessing the situation to determine the facts," said Jamie Graybeal, a spokesman for the international military coalition in Afghanistan.
He said that there was no airstrike as part of the operation, but that the NATO and Afghan troops did discover a large cache of weapons, which they destroyed there on the site, causing a large explosion.
The NATO force said in a statement that an Afghan soldier was also killed in the operation.

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6 arrested in new rape of a bus passenger in India

NEW DELHI (AP) — Police said Sunday they have arrested six suspects in another gang rape of a bus passenger in India, four weeks after a brutal attack on a student on a moving bus in the capital outraged Indians and led to calls for tougher rape laws.
Police officer Raj Jeet Singh said a 29-year-old woman was the only passenger on a bus as she was traveling to her village in northern Punjab state on Friday night. The driver refused to stop at her village despite her repeated pleas and drove her to a desolate location, he said.
There, the driver and the conductor took her to a building where they were joined by five friends and took turns raping her throughout the night, Singh said.
The driver dropped the woman off at her village early Saturday, he said.
Singh said police arrested six suspects on Saturday and were searching for another.
Gurmej Singh, deputy superintendent of police, said all six admitted involvement in the rape. He said the victim was recovering at home.
Also on Saturday, police arrested a 32-year-old man for allegedly raping and killing a 9-year-old girl two weeks ago in Ahmednagar district in western India, the Press Trust of India news agency reported. Her decomposed body was found Friday.
Police officer Sunita Thakare said the suspect committed the crime seven months after his release from prison after serving nine years for raping and murdering a girl in 2003, PTI reported Sunday.
The deadly rape of a 23-year-old student on a New Delhi bus in December led to the woman's death and set off an impassioned debate about what India needs to do to prevent such tragedies. Protesters and politicians have called for tougher rape laws, police reforms and a transformation in the way the country treats women.
"It's a very deep malaise. This aspect of gender justice hasn't been dealt with in our nation-building task," Seema Mustafa, a writer on social issues who heads the Center for Policy Analysis think tank, said Sunday.
"Police haven't dealt with the issue severely in the past. The message that goes out is that the punishment doesn't match the crime. Criminals think they can get away it," she said.
In her first published comments, the mother of the deceased student in the New Delhi attack said Sunday that all six suspects in that case, including one believed to be a juvenile, deserve to die.
She was quoted by The Times of India newspaper as saying that her daughter, who died from massive internal injuries two weeks after the attack, told her that the youngest suspect had participated in the most brutal aspects of the rape.
Five men have been charged with the physiotherapy student's rape and murder and face a possible death penalty if convicted. The sixth suspect, who says he is 17 years old, is likely to be tried in a juvenile court if medical tests confirm he is a minor. His maximum sentence would be three years in a reform facility.
"Now the only thing that will satisfy us is to see them punished. For what they did to her, they deserve to die," the newspaper quoted the mother as saying.
Some activists have demanded a change in Indian laws so that juveniles committing heinous crimes can face the death penalty.
The names of the victim of the Dec. 16 attack and her family have not been released.

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Roadside bomb kills 14 Pakistani soldiers

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan (AP) — A roadside bomb hit a Pakistani army convoy Sunday in a mountainous militant stronghold in the northwest, killing 14 soldiers, one of the deadliest attacks against the army in that sector, intelligence officials said.
The North Waziristan tribal area is a major trouble spot that the military has been reluctant to tackle. The remote region is home to Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaida militants at war with the government. It is also used as a sanctuary by other militants who have focused their attacks in neighboring Afghanistan.
The attack Sunday occurred near Dosalli village in North Waziristan, said Pakistani intelligence officials. The blast destroyed two vehicles and damaged a third, they said.
The 14 dead and 20 wounded were brought to a military hospital in the nearby town of Miran Shah, the officials said.
Pakistani military officials confirmed the bombing but said four soldiers were killed and 11 others wounded. The discrepancy could not immediately be reconciled.
Then officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters.
The Pakistani military is worried that if it targets its enemies in North Waziristan, that could trigger a backlash whereby other militants in the area turn against Pakistan. The most powerful group in the area, the Afghan Haqqani network, is also believed to be seen by the army as a potential ally in Afghanistan after foreign forces withdraw, making a military offensive even more complicated.
North Waziristan has been a sore point in relations between Pakistan and the United States. Washington has repeatedly pushed Islamabad to launch an operation in the area, especially against the Haqqani network, considered one of the most dangerous groups fighting in Afghanistan. But Pakistan has refused.
North Waziristan has also become an increasing problem for Pakistan. It is the only part of the tribal region where the army has not conducted an offensive, and many Pakistani Taliban militants have fled there to escape army operations. The Taliban and their allies have staged hundreds of attacks across Pakistan that have killed thousands of people.
One of those allies, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, carried out a twin bombing at a billiards hall in the southwest city of Quetta on Thursday that killed 86 people. The attack targeted minority Shiite Muslims, whom many radical Sunnis consider heretics.
Thousands of Shiites protested in Quetta for a third day Sunday, pressing their demands for greater security by blocking a main road with dozens of coffins of relatives killed in the attack on the billiards hall.
Pakistani Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf traveled to Quetta on Sunday and met with representatives from the Shiite community in an attempt to pacify the protesters, said Dawood Agha, who attended the meeting.
The country's religious affairs minister failed the day before to persuade them to bury those killed in attack.
The group is demanding that the provincial government be dismissed and the army take over responsibility for the city, Shiite leader Ibrahim Hazara said.
On Saturday the prime minister ordered authorities to give policing powers to paramilitary forces in Quetta to improve law and order, but the move did not appear to satisfy the protesters.
More than 400 Shiites died in attacks in Pakistan in 2012, the deadliest year in history for the minority sect, according to Human Rights Watch. The rights group has accused the government of not doing enough to protect Shiites.
Also Sunday, a Pakistani cleric and thousands of his supporters left the eastern city of Lahore on a "long march" to demand sweeping election reforms before national elections expected this spring.
Police officer Suhail Sukhera estimated the crowd to be at least 15,000. They left for Islamabad in hundreds of buses, cars and trucks. Some waved flags and pictures of the 61-year-old Sunni Muslim cleric, while others shouted, "Revolution is our goal, brave and religious leader Qadri."
Critics of Qadri, who returned last month after years in Canada, are worried he is bent on derailing elections, possibly at the behest of the country's powerful military — allegations the cleric has denied.
Qadri has a large following that extends outside Pakistan and has a reputation for speaking out against terrorism and promoting his message through hundreds of books, an online television channel and videos.
Now, Qadri's focus is on Pakistan's election laws. He is suggesting vaguely worded changes, such as making sure candidates are honest as well as ending exploitation and income disparities so that poor people are free to vote for whomever they want.
His plan to hold a massive rally in Islamabad on Monday has alarmed many members of Pakistan's political system. The government has deployed a large number of police throughout the capital and set up shipping containers to block protesters from reaching sensitive areas.
Qadri accused the provincial government of Punjab, where Lahore is the capital, of harassing his supporters Sunday to make it difficult for them to participate in the march.
"These negative tactics will not work, and God willing the march will reach Islamabad with a sea of people," Qadri told reporters.

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Column: No suspense for Bonds, Clemens in HOF vote

Barry Bonds can go for a bike ride. Roger Clemens might want to head to the gym for one of those famous workouts that used to make him pitch like he was 22 when he was 42.
If the polls are right — and my guess is they're pretty spot on — there's no need for either to wait by the phone Wednesday when baseball writers weigh in with their first verdict on what is arguably the greatest class of Hall of Fame candidates since Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth were among the inaugural inductees 77 years ago.
Bonds and Clemens won't get in, and no one else may either. In a fitting twist, the player who is most likely the leading candidate to make it is known almost as much for getting hit by pitches as hitting them himself.
Actually, Craig Biggio had 3,060 hits to go with the 285 times he got hit, and being a member of the 3,000-hit club usually guarantees a spot in Cooperstown. But in any other time the greatest home run hitter ever and only pitcher to win seven Cy Young awards would be absolute locks, too.
This, however, is as much a referendum on the Steroids Era as it is on the numbers that are so sacrosanct in baseball. This is about what people suspect players did while they were off the field, not what they accomplished while on it.
And this may be the last chance anyone has of somehow trying to make it right.
No, denying Bonds a spot in the Hall of Fame won't wipe away the bloated numbers that will almost surely scar the record books for generations to come. But it does put a giant asterisk that Bud Selig and the rest of baseball refuse to attach next to the 73 home runs he hit in one season, or the 762 he slugged through his career.
And while Clemens will keep his Cy Young awards, keeping him out of Cooperstown at least sends a message that maybe next time we won't be so easily hoodwinked again.
It shouldn't be the job of baseball writers to make the final statement about the Steroids Era; indeed some of the voters I know are quite uncomfortable with trying to sort out who did what and when. They're not the steroid police, as they often point out, and don't know any better than the guy next to them in the locker room who did what and when.
But Selig and his minions failed time and time again to confront the epidemic that swept through the game the last few decades. They used the power surge — four of the top 10 all-time home run hitters are either admitted steroid users or associated with them — to bring fans back to the ballparks who were disillusioned with baseball after a bitter strike wiped out the playoffs and the World Series in 1994.
They sat back and watched the cash registers heat up, knowing all along that much of it was built on a giant fraud. And they certainly didn't follow criteria that is spelled out for Hall of Fame voters, who are pledged to look at not only a player's numbers but the "integrity, sportsmanship, character and contributions to the team(s)" on which he played.
Under those guidelines, Bonds and Clemens don't qualify. Neither does Sammy Sosa, who thankfully will receive only a handful of votes in his first year of eligibility.
Unlike Sosa and Mark McGwire — who at least admitted he used steroids — the odds are that Bonds and Clemens will one day be enshrined in the hall. As the years go by and the stigma of the steroid era fades, they'll gain support among voters and probably make the 75 percent threshold required for admittance.
Unfortunately for some of those on the ballot with them, they may have to wait, too. That includes Mike Piazza and Jeff Bagwell, whose numbers have to be looked at twice not because they've been accused of wrongdoing but because they were put up in the heart of the Steroids Era.
That may not be fair to them, but the Hall of Fame is an exclusive place where fairness does not always carry the day. How else to explain why the late Roger Maris was never voted in, despite breaking Ruth's home run record with 61, a mark that stood for 37 years before McGwire and Sosa obliterated it in the home run orgy of 1998.
We may never know exactly what Bonds did to hit home runs unlike any human being before him. He's not talking, though a look at the newly svelte slugger today suggests that the change in his body size isn't completely due to his new love of cycling.
Don't expect Clemens to be any more forthcoming, either. Not after a jury in Washington, D.C., sided with him over accusations by former trainer Brian McNamee that he injected the pitcher with human growth hormone to salvage what was left of his good name.
They hurt baseball more than the banned and disgraced Pete Rose ever did by betting on games. Maybe, like Rose, they need some more time before explaining what really happened.
Meanwhile, they'll continue to keep us all hanging, including the sport and fans that made them rich.
Fortunately, baseball writers are in a position to return the favor.

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Soccer-41 players get life bans for South Korea match-fixing

Jan 9 (Reuters) - Forty one South Korean players have been handed worldwide lifetime bans following a match-fixing scandal in the country's K-League, world governing body FIFA said on Wednesday.
The 41, charged after a domestic match-fixing investigation dating back to 2011, received lifetime bans from all football activity by the K-League and the Korea Football Association's disciplinary committee with FIFA's Disciplinary Committee extended the sanctions to have worldwide effect.
South Korean sport has been marred by match-fixing allegations in professional soccer, volleyball and baseball, forcing the government to declare war on the issue.
In February soccer officials scrapped the K-League Cup competition as part of sweeping changes brought in to avoid a repeat of last year's match-fixing scandal.
Ten other players involved in match-fixing were given worldwide bans by FIFA in June while in March, South Korea's volleyball association banned 11 players for life in a bid to curb corruption in domestic sport.

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Judgment day for Bonds, Clemens, Sosa at Hall

NEW YORK (AP) — Judgment day has arrived for Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Sammy Sosa to find out their Hall of Fame fates.
With the cloud of steroids shrouding many candidacies, baseball writers may fail for only the second time in more than four decades to elect anyone to the Hall.
About 600 people are eligible to vote in the BBWAA election, all members of the organization for 10 consecutive years at any point. Results were to be announced at 2 p.m. EST Wednesday, with the focus on first-time eligibles that include Bonds, baseball's only seven-time Most Valuable Player, and Clemens, the only seven-time Cy Young Award winner.
Since 1965, the only years the writers didn't elect a candidate were when Yogi Berra topped the 1971 vote by appearing on 67 percent of the ballots cast and when Phil Niekro headed the 1996 ballot at 68 percent. Both were chosen the following years when they achieved the 75 percent necessary for election.
"It really would be a shame, especially since the other people going in this year are not among the living, which will make for a rather strange ceremony," said the San Francisco Chronicle's Susan Slusser, president of the Baseball Writers' Association of America.
Three inductees were chosen last month by the 16-member panel considering individuals from the era before integration in 1946: Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert, umpire Hank O'Day and barehanded catcher Deacon White. They will be enshrined during a ceremony at Cooperstown on July 28.
Also on the ballot for the first time are Sosa and Mike Piazza, power hitters whose statistics have been questioned because of the Steroids Era, and Craig Biggio, 20th on the career list with 3,060 hits — all for the Houston Astros. Curt Schilling, 11-2 with a 2.23 ERA in postseason play, is another ballot rookie.
The Hall was prepared to hold a news conference Thursday with any electees. Or to not have one.
Biggio wasn't sure whether the controversy over this year's ballot would keep all candidates out.
"All I know is that for this organization I did everything they ever asked me to do and I'm proud about it, so hopefully, the writers feel strongly, they liked what they saw, and we'll see what happens," Biggio said on Nov. 28, the day the ballot was announced.
Jane Forbes Clark, the Hall's chairman, said last year she was not troubled by voters weighing how to evaluate players in the era of performance-enhancing drugs.
"I think the museum is very comfortable with the decisions that the baseball writers make," she said. "And so it's not a bad debate by any means."
Bonds has denied knowingly using performance-enhancing drugs and was convicted of one count of obstruction of justice for giving an evasive answer in 2003 to a grand jury investigating PEDs. Clemens was acquitted of perjury charges stemming from congressional testimony during which he denied using PEDs.
Sosa, who finished with 609 home runs, was among those who tested positive in MLB's 2003 anonymous survey, The New York Times reported in 2009. He told a congressional committee in 2005 that he never took illegal performance-enhancing drugs.
The BBWAA election rules say "voting shall be based upon the player's record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played."
"Steroid or HGH use is cheating, plain and simple," ESPN.com's Wallace Matthews wrote. "And by definition, cheaters lack integrity, sportsmanship and character. Strike one, strike two, strike three."
Several holdovers from last year remain on the 37-player ballot, with top candidates including Jack Morris (67 percent), Jeff Bagwell (56 percent), Lee Smith (51 percent) and Tim Raines (49 percent).
When The Associated Press surveyed 112 eligible voters in late November, Bonds received 45 percent support among voters who expressed an opinion, Clemens 43 percent and Sosa 18 percent. The Baseball Think Factory website compiled votes by writers who made their opinions public and with 159 ballots had everyone falling short. Biggio was at 69 percent, followed by Morris (63), Bagwell (61), Raines (61), Piazza (60), Bonds (43) and Clemens (43).
Morris finished second last year when Barry Larkin was elected and is in his 14th and next-to-last year of eligibility. He could become the player with the highest-percentage of the vote who is not in the Hall, a mark currently held by Gil Hodges at 63 percent in 1983.
Several players who fell just short in the BBWAA balloting later were elected by either the Veterans Committee or Old-Timers' Committee: Nellie Fox (74.7 percent on the 1985 BBWAA ballot), Jim Bunning (74.2 percent in 1988), Orlando Cepeda (73.6 percent in 1994) and Frank Chance (72.5 percent in 1945).
Ace of three World Series winners, Morris finished with 254 victories and was the winningest pitcher of the 1980s. His 3.90 ERA, however, is higher than that of any Hall of Famer. Morris will be joined on next year's ballot by Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine, both 300-game winners.
If no one is elected this year, there could be a logjam in 2014. Voters may select up to 10 players.
The only certainty is the Hall is pleased with the writers' process.
"While the BBWAA does the actual voting, it only does so at the request of the Hall of Fame," said the Los Angeles Times' Bill Shaikin, the organization's past president. "If the Hall of Fame is troubled, certainly the Hall could make alternate arrangements.

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Baseball-No players voted to Hall of Fame, Bonds and Clemens snubbed

Jan 9 (Reuters) - No one was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame on Wednesday, with all-time home run leader Barry Bonds and seven-time Cy Young winner Roger Clemens snubbed over suspicion they used performance enhancing drugs.
Bonds was named on 36.2 percent of the ballots, and Clemens 37.6, well short of the 75 percent of ballots required in voting by members of the Baseball Writers' Association of America.
Closest to winning election was former Houston Astros player Craig Biggio, who received 68.2 percent of the vote, falling 39 votes short of election.

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With BlackBerry 10, there’s no place for home

Research In Motion (RIMM) has a steep hill to climb as it prepares to unveil its next-generation BlackBerry 10 operating system later this month. Launching sleek new BlackBerry 10 handsets that prompt a healthy portion of its current user base to upgrade is of the utmost importance, of course. Just as important, however, is creating a user experience that showcases compelling differentiation and might draw users away from leading smartphone platforms.
[More from BGR: Apple’s next iPhone to reportedly feature larger screen and ‘brand new exterior design’]
Early glimpses at BlackBerry 10 revealed software that attempts to take a fresh look at the smartphone experience in some ways, but after our first look, we wondered if RIM was going far enough with its new OS. Now that we’re just weeks away from the BlackBerry 10 launch event, RIM appears to have started slowly showing users that BlackBerry 10 will, in fact, provide a unique user experience.
[More from BGR: Smooth sailing is over for Apple]
To highlight one example, RIM’s Donny Halliwell recently took to the company’s BlackBerry blog to discuss BlackBerry 10′s take on smartphone navigation. Unlike iOS and Android, RIM’s new platform does not support a home button, which on other platforms would bring the user back to the home screen from anywhere in the OS.
Why exclude the home button? Halliwell says that BlackBerry 10 is all about “moving forward,” not backward.
“In much the same way you multitask with frames on your BlackBerry PlayBook tablet – keeping one frame in front of you while other frames are minimized – you can keep your most-used apps readily available,” Halliwel wrote while explaining RIM’s new “Flow” interface. He says that like all BlackBerry device owners, he was a “long-time user of the U-turn arrow” and upon first picking up a BlackBerry 10 developer device, he had concerns about navigating the device with no home button.
The Flow interface negates the need for a home button in many respects. Like webOS did before it, Flow presents users with a series of minimized windows representing each open application. The result is a UI that lets users easily jump between apps without the need to return to a home screen between steps. Combined with gesture support, RIM may have indeed simplified the smartphone user experience in several key ways.
“If you think about it, the real world pretty much works the same way,” Halliwell wrote. ”Picture yourself preparing to take a walk: You put on your shoes and coat, grab your keys, and go out the door. The point is that you’re always moving forward in a general ritualistic ‘flow’ toward the goal of taking a walk. You don’t put on your shoes then take them off to put your socks on.”
RIM’s first two next-generation smartphones, the BlackBerry Z10 and BlackBerry X10, are expected to be unveiled alongside the BlackBerry 10 OS on January 30th.

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James Franco Does His Best Justin Bieber

We realize there's only so much time one can spend in a day watching new trailers, viral video clips, and shaky cell phone footage of people arguing on live television. This is why every day The Atlantic Wire highlights the videos that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention. Today:
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Remember when Justin Bieber was struggling for relevance and James Franco was the super serious, super educated actor destined for greatness? Well, Franco clearly doesn't want you to:
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So what do you do when someone gets their dream wedding ruined by a doomed hot-air balloon ride? Well, if you're the Today show, you make a macabre Wedding Crashers joke:
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Here's perhaps one of the better arguments against that trillion-dollar coin, courtesy of Homer Simpson and company:
And this guy seems pretty down on the squandered opulence of cruise ships:

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Verizon looks beyond mobile phones for increased revenue in coming years

Lowell McAdam, chief executive officer of Verizon Communications (VZ), believes the company can generate hundreds of millions of dollars in additional revenue from its wireless network if it looks beyond smartphones and tablets. The executive notes that Verizon will focus on other areas of business, from healthcare and automobiles to energy management. Utilizing wireless networks beyond mobile devices is expected to be a major theme at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada and in the future. Verizon’s biggest rival, AT&T (T), on Monday announced plans to develop a wireless home security network, for example.
[More from BGR: Corning demonstrates the strength of Gorilla Glass 3 [video]]
“It’s safe to say this is a market potential of billions in the 2020 timeframe,” McAdam said in an interview with Reuters, adding that this should translate into a market with “hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for a company the size of us.”
[More from BGR: With BlackBerry 10, there’s no place like home]
At the annual technology trade show, McAdam highlighted two examples where company’s wireless network can be used to bolster revenue with nonstandard services. He said that it could allow doctors to remotely treat patients and could also help firefighters navigate a burning building with the use of an infrared camera that has wireless access to its layout.
The executive said that people will be “really surprised” at what the company can do once “the power of the networks is finally going to be able to provide these sort of things.

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