CAIRO (AP) — A video purporting to show the mass beheading of Coptic Christian hostages was released Sunday by militants in Libya affiliated with the Islamic State group.

The killings raise the possibility that the Islamic militant group — which controls about a third of Syria and Iraq in a self-declared caliphate — has established a direct affiliate less than 500 miles (800 kilometers) from the southern tip of Italy. One of the militants in the video makes direct reference to that possibility, saying the group now plans to "conquer Rome."

The militants had been holding 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians hostage for weeks, all laborers rounded up from the city of Sirte in December and January. It was not clear from the video whether all 21 hostages were killed. It was one of the first such beheading videos from an Islamic State group affiliate to come from outside the group's core territory in Syria and Iraq.

The Associated Press could not immediately independently verify the video. But the Egyptian government and the Coptic Church, which is based in Egypt, both declared it authentic.

The Egyptian government declared a seven-day mourning period and President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi addressed the nation late Sunday night, pledging resilience in the fight against terrorism.

"These cowardly actions will not undermine our determination" said el-Sissi, who also banned all travel to Libya by Egyptian citizens and said his government reserves the right to seek retaliation. "Egypt and the whole world are in a fierce battle with extremist groups carrying extremist ideology and sharing the same goals."

The Coptic Church in a statement called on its followers to have "confidence that their great nation won't rest without retribution for the evil criminals."

The video's makers identified themselves as the Tripoli Province of the Islamic State group. A still photo, apparently taken from the video, was published last week in the Islamic State group's Dabiq online magazine — indicating a direct connection between the Libyan militants and the main group.

The video, released Sunday night, depicts several men in orange jumpsuits being led along a beach, each accompanied by a masked militant. The men are made to kneel and one militant, dressed differently that the others, addresses the camera in North American-accented English.

"All crusaders: safety for you will be only wishes, especially if you are fighting us all together. Therefore we will fight you all together," he said. "The sea you have hidden Sheikh Osama Bin Laden's body in, we swear to Allah we will mix it with your blood."

The men are then laid face-down and simultaneously beheaded.

The militant speaker then pointed northward across the red-stained waves and said, "We will conquer Rome, by Allah's permission."

In el-Aour, a dusty and impoverished village some 200 kilometers (125 miles) south of Cairo and home to 13 of the hostages, friends and family assumed the worst as soon as the photo was published on Thursday.

On Saturday, two days after the photo appeared, the community was wrapped in sorrow. Men covered their heads with dirt in a sign of both grief and shame. Women slapped their own faces or let out heart-wrenching shrieks of pain.

Villagers accused the Egyptian government of doing little to help the captives. The authorities, they say, were able to free Muslim Egyptians abducted in Libya in recent months but have done nothing to save the 21 because they are Christian — an accusation rooted in the deep sense of religious discrimination felt by most Egyptian Copts.

Samuel Walham's family immediately recognized him from the picture, showing him kneeling on the beach alongside four other hostages — each flanked by a knife-wielding militant.

"Look at my love. Look how beautiful he is," Walham's mother, Ibtassal Lami, said through tears as she cradled a photo of her son and women wailed in the family's ramshackle, two-story home. "He only went there to earn his living."

Libya, rich in oil and short on labor, has long been a magnet for Egyptians from all professions. Laborers have flocked there to escape poverty and unemployment at home, while professionals have gone in search of a better salary. Libya's 2011 civil war left much of the country in ruins, creating a boom for skilled foreign workers.

Egyptians have jumped at the opportunity: they are the largest single group of foreign workers in Libya. But over time, the risks have grown for those looking to Libya for a better paycheck. Egyptians, and Copts in particular, have become frequent targets for Islamic extremists who have flourished amid Libya's political turmoil. Islamic and tribal militias have overrun Libya's two largest cities, Tripoli and Benghazi — forcing the elected Western-based government and parliament to meet elsewhere.

Egyptian authorities have responded by suspending most flights to Libya and issuing travel warnings. Yet, Egyptian workers remain undeterred, and still line up outside the Libyan Embassy in Cairo in search of visas.

Walham secured his visa in late 2013. He arrived months before militias seized the capital Tripoli in August 2014. He found work as a plumber in the coastal city of Sirte, which was largely destroyed during the war and was the hometown of ousted Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi

It was there that Walham was kidnapped on Dec. 28. Six days later, gunmen seized another 13 Egyptian Christians from Sirte in a targeted raid on a housing compound for laborers.

Abanoub Ishaq, a 19-year-old worker from el-Aour, was there the night the militants burst in just before dawn, knocking on doors with a list of names. Those who answered were hauled away, Ishaq said. He managed to evade capture by remaining silent after receiving a phone call from a Muslim neighbor who warned him not to open the door because militants were searching for Christians.

"We heard nothing but my friends' screams, then they were silenced," he told The Associated Press.

The video at the end makes reference to the case of Camelia Shehata — a longstanding rallying point for Muslim fundamentalists. Shehata is an Egyptian Coptic woman who went missing and was rumored to have converted to Islam to escape an unhappy marriage to a Coptic priest. The Coptic Church bans divorce.

Shehata was eventually found by Egyptian police and returned to the Church and promptly disappeared from public view. Her case became a rallying point for fundamentalist Muslims, who regard her as a Muslim being held prisoner by the church. Salafist Muslims in Alexandria held weekly rallies on her behalf throughout 2010, and Shehata's case is believed to be one of the motivations for a deadly bombing of a Coptic church in Alexandria on New Year's Eve 2010.

As the men are being beheaded, a subtitle on the video declares: "This filthy blood is just some of what awaits you, in revenge for Camelia and her sisters."

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Michael reported from el-Aour, Egyp

The unit is Fort Carson's heaviest force, armed with tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles. Many of its soldiers are veterans of one or more of the brigade's four combat tours in Iraq.

"We're no strangers to deployment," the brigade's commander, Col. Greg Sierra, told a crowd gathered for the ceremony.

Sierra's soldiers have trained for more than a year for the Kuwait mission. They practiced skills that atrophied over more than a decade of counterinsurgency fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, relearning the armored combat skills last used in the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

"We are absolutely ready for this mission," Sierra said.

President Barack Obama on Wednesday asked Congress to authorize long-term combat efforts against the Islamic State, but reinforced his pledge to not use the Army's big combat units in the fight.

"Local forces, rather than U.S. military forces, should be deployed to conduct such operations," Obama said in a letter to lawmakers. "The authorization I propose would provide the flexibility to conduct ground combat operations in other, more limited circumstances, such as rescue operations involving U.S. or coalition personnel or the use of special operations forces to take military action against (Islamic State) leadership."

The Army has kept a brigade in Kuwait since the end of the Iraq war in 2011. Those soldiers, including two units from Fort Carson, have worked to train local troops from throughout the Middle East. In its most recent deployment to Kuwait, Fort Carson's 2nd Brigade Combat team conducted training missions with allies including Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, which have joined the coalition against Islamic State fighters.

After the ceremony, Sierra said the brigade's training regimen readied soldiers for a range of missions from humanitarian relief to nonstop combat.

"We are prepared for any contingency," he said.

Sierra's soldiers are getting a long weekend with their families before they head out. The colonel gave the families reassurance that if his brigade tangles with Islamic State fighters, the outcome won't be in doubt.

"In the end, if we do get into fights, we win decisively," he said.

A Israeli report claims the US administration has stopped updating Israel about developments in nuclear negotiations between world power and Iran, allegedly in response to Prime Minister Netanyahu's decision to accept an invitation by Republicans to address Congress on the issue.

According to the report by Israel's Channel 2, US Undersecretary of State, Wendy Sherman, who is involved in the talks has announced she will no longer be updating Israelis about the talks. Susan Rice, US President Obama's National Security Advisor, has also reportedly announced she is cutting ties with her Israeli counterpart, Yossi Cohen, who serves as Netanyahu's National Security Advisor.

US House Speaker John Boehner

The White House denied the allegations in the Channel 2 report, saying they were "patently false. National Security Advisor Rice maintains regular contact with her Israeli counterpart National Security Advisor Cohen on the full range of issues of mutual concern to our nations, and will in fact meet with him later this week at the White House."

The State Department also denied any breakdown in communication between the Obama administration and Israel on the sensitive negotiations with Iran. "Secretary Kerry continues his conversations with Prime Minister Netanyahu about this issue, as has always been the case.

US House Speaker John Boehner says the White House might have tried to quash his plan to have Israeli prime minister speak to Congress if it had gotten wind of the invitation. That helps explain why Boehner made the offer to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu without letting the White House know in advance. Netanyahu's speech is set for March 3.

Some Democrats plan to skip it because they consider it a divisive stunt and a breach of protocol that suggests the US is taking sides in coming Israeli elections.

Photo: Reuters, AFP, Shutterstock

Boehner was asked by "Fox News Sunday" why he told Israel's ambassador to the United States not to mention the invitation to the White House in advance. Boehner says he "wanted to make sure that there was no interference."

“There’s a serious threat facing the world," he told Fox News. "And I believe Prime Minister Netanyahu is the perfect person to deliver the message of how serious this threat is.”

The statement makes clear that Boehner made the invitation without telling the Obama administration that he was in contact with Israeli ambassador to the US, Ron Dermer.

The majority of Americans think Obama should meet with Netanyahu when the Israeli premier visits Washington next month to speak in front of joint session of Congress, according to a poll conducted by international internet-based market research firm YouGov and the Huffington Post.

In a survey of 1000 US adults interviewed from February 4-8, 2015, 49 percent said it was inappropriate for a member of Congress to invite a foreign leader to speak in the US without first consulting with the White House – 26 percent found that such an invite would be appropriate while 25 percent said they were unsure.

When the question specifically addressed the case of House Speaker Boehner inviting Netanyahu to address Congress without approval, and mention the White House calling the invitation a breach of protocol, 47 percent found the invitation inappropriate, 30 percent found it appropriate and 23 percent were unsure.

(NaturalNews) With nowhere else to put it and workers constantly being exposed to it, radiation from the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility in Japan has been ordered to be dumped into the ocean by Japanese regulators, according to new reports. This was just two days after a plant employee accidentally fell into one of the onsite storage tanks filled with radioactive water, resulting in his death.

According to the Star Tribune, the 55-year-old man died of multiple injuries after falling through an opening at the top of the 10-meter (33-foot) high tank. He was one of three men who was inspecting the tank at the time of the fall.

Following the incident, Japan's Nuclear Regulatory Authority met to discuss options for disposing of the radioactive waste, which continues to pose health threats at the facility. The Wall Street Journal reports that the regulatory body's chairman isn't pleased with the way the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) has handled the disaster, which continues to wreak havoc.

"Tokyo Electric Power must consider whether it (storing the water) is really necessary," stated Shunichi Tanaka during a recent board meeting. "It is surely harmful if it leads to the death of workers."

Japanese regulators suggest that TEPCO start disposing of radioactive water in 2017

A draft recommendation was made at the meeting that proposes a 2017 start date for discharging the water. That proposal is expected to receive approval within the next week. More than one year ago, the International Atomic Energy Agency made the recommendation to TEPCO that it begin releasing small amounts of low-level tritium-contaminated water in a controlled manner so that it could focus on other problems at the plant.

But the power operator has yet to take action, which has resulted in massive contamination of local groundwater. Reports indicate that up to 400 tons of highly contaminated water is added to the site every day, an insurmountable level that will only make it that much worse to clean up in the future.

TEPCO's water purification process can't remove tritium; operator running out of room for storage tanks

TEPCO is currently trying to remove radioactive material from the tainted water before dumping it into the ocean. But the system it currently has in place to do this is unable to remove radioactive tritium, which is why the power operator has begun moving the water into large storage tanks onsite.

There are currently about 1,000-and-counting storage tanks at the facility, but TEPCO is quickly running out of space to add more. Besides this, TEPCO is having to continue working towards removing spent fuel rods and replacing cooling equipment to prevent further problems at the plant, which show no signs of relent.

Worker injuries increasing at Fukushima, suggesting sloppier safety measures

The plant's decommissioning process, which is expected to take several decades, currently involves some 7,000 workers laboring day and night to get things under control. Between April and November of 2014, however, there were 40 injuries at the plant compared to 12 the year prior, suggesting that safety measures are degrading.

"He was wearing a harness, but the hook was found tucked inside the harness," explained a TEPCO spokesman to reporters about the tank fall incident. "This means the harness was not being used. We are investigating whether safety measures were appropriately observed."

Earlier in 2014, another Fukushima worker died after being buried in earth and rubble while trying to dig a hole at the site.