Pakistan parents killed daughter for eyeing boy

Prosecutor: US soldier had blood of victims on him

Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, (L) 1st platoon sergeant, Blackhorse Company, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment, 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, is seen during an exercise at the National Training Center in Fort Irwin, California, in this August 23, 2011 DVIDS handout photo. REUTERS/Department of Defense/Spc. Ryan Hallock/Handout

JOINT BASE LEWIS-McCHORD, Wash. (AP) — A caped figure captured on surveillance video came running out of the darkness to the edge of a remote Army outpost in southernAfghanistan. Blood was smeared on his face, prosecutors said, and soaked into his clothes.

Less than a mile away, 16 Afghans, including nine children, were dead, some of their bodies on fire in two villages.

As fellow soldiers stopped him at the base's gate, Staff Sgt. Robert Bales was incredulous, prosecutors said. Then, as he was taken into custody, Bales said: "I thought I was doing the right thing."

The details, from a prosecutor as well as Bales' comrades, emerged Monday as a preliminary hearing in his case opened, offering the clearest picture yet of one of the worst atrocities of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

The attack on March 11 prompted the U.S. to halt combat operations for days in the face of protests, and it was a month before military investigators could reach the crime scenes.

Bales, 39, faces 16 counts of premeditated murder and six counts of attempted murder. The hearing could last up to two weeks and will help determine whether the case goes to a court martial.

The defense did not give an opening statement.

Bales has not entered a plea. His attorneys have not discussed the evidence, but say Bales has post-traumatic stress disorder and suffered a concussive head injury during a prior deployment to Iraq.

The father of two from Lake Tapps, Wash., wore green fatigues and sat beside one of his civilian lawyers as an investigating officer read the charges against him and informed him of his rights.

When asked if he understood them, Bales said, "Sir, yes, sir."

Bales spent the March night before the raids at Camp Belambay, watching "Man On Fire," a fictional account of a former CIA operative on a revenge spree, with his fellow soldiers, said Lt. Col. Jay Morse, the prosecutor.

He seemed normal as they shared whiskey, discussed Bales' anxiety over whether he'd get a promotion and talked about another soldier who lost his leg a week earlier in a roadside bomb attack, Cpl. David Godwin testified.

Shortly before leaving the base, Bales told a Special Forces soldier that he was unhappy with his family life and that the troops should have been quicker to retaliate for the March 5 bomb attack, Morse said.

"At all times, he had a clear understanding of what he was doing and what he had done," said Morse, who described Bales as lucid and responsive.

Bales is accused of slipping away from the remote outpost with an M-4 rifle outfitted with a grenade launcher to attack the villages of Balandi and Alkozai, in a dangerous district.

Morse said Bales broke the killings into two episodes. Dressed in a T-shirt, Bales walked first to one village, return to the base and then slipped away again to carry out the second attack.

Between the episodes, Bales told a colleague about shooting people at one of the villages, Morse said. The soldier apparently took it as a bad joke and responded: "Quit messing around."

Prosecutors played for the first time the video captured by a surveillance blimp that showed the caped figure running toward the base, then stopping and dropping his weapons as he was confronted. There was no audio.

It wasn't immediately clear from where Bales got the cape.

As he stood outside the base, Godwin testified, Bales had asked him and another soldier: "Did you rat me out? Did you rat me out?"

Part of the hearing will be held overnight to allow video testimony from witnesses, including an estimated 10 to 15 Afghans, in Afghanistan.

Bales' attorney, John Henry Browne, said the hearing will give the defense a chance to see what the military can prove. He said they are expecting a court martial.

The Ohio native joined the Army in late 2001 — after the 9/11 attacks — as his career as a stockbroker imploded, including an arbitrator's $1.5 million fraud judgment against him and his former company.

Bales was serving his fourth combat tour after three stints in Iraq and his arrest prompted a national discussion about the stresses that soldiers face from multiple deployments.

His lawyers have said Bales remembers little or nothing from around the time of the attacks.

Emma Scanlan, one of his attorneys, declined to say to what extent the lawyers hope to elicit testimony that could be used to support a mental-health defense. Bales himself will not make any statements.

She said the Army had only recently turned over a preliminary DNA trace evidence report from the crime scenes, but defense experts have not had time to review it.

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Johnson can be reached at https://twitter.com/GeneAPseattle

A look at gay marriage and adoption worldwide

FILE - In this file photo taken on Tuesday Oct. 23, 2012, Anti-gay marriage and gay adoption rights activists hold posters reading : "Mother - Father. Don't lie to your children" demonstrate in Paris. A plan to legalize same-sex marriage and allow gay couples to adopt was a liberal cornerstone of French President Francois Hollande's election manifesto earlier this year. It looked like a shoo-in, supported by a majority of the French, and an easy way to break with his conservative predecessor. But that was then, Now, as the Socialist government prepares to unveil its draft "marriage for everyone" law Wednesday, polls show wavering support for the idea and for the president amid increasingly vocal opposition in this traditionally Catholic country. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena, File)

FILE In this file photo taken on Tuesday Oct. 23, 2012, a man dressed as a bird performs during an anti-gay marriage demonstration in Paris, Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2012. A plan to legalize same-sex marriage and allow gay couples to adopt was a liberal cornerstone of French President Francois Hollande's election manifesto earlier this year. It looked like a shoo-in, supported by a majority of the French, and an easy way to break with his conservative predecessor. But that was then, Now, as the Socialist government prepares to unveil its draft "marriage for everyone" law Wednesday, polls show wavering support for the idea and for the president amid increasingly vocal opposition in this traditionally Catholic country. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena, File)

PARIS (AP) — France is unveiling a draft law this week that could see marriage and adoption legalized for homosexual couples.

If the law is passed, France would become the 12th country in the world to allow gay marriage. It would also become the world's biggest country, both in terms of population and economy, to permit it.

Since 2001, 11 countries have legalized same-sex marriage. They are: Denmark (2012), Portugal (2010), Iceland (2010),Argentina (2010), Sweden (2009), Norway (2008), South Africa (2006), Canada (2005), Spain (2005), Belgium (2003) and the Netherlands (2001).

Some jurisdictions inside countries also allow gay marriages.

In the United States, six states have legalized it: Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, and Vermont, in addition to the District of Columbia and two Native American tribal jurisdictions.

In 1996, under President Bill Clinton, the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was passed to prevent the federal government from recognizing gay marriage, allowing each U.S. state to refuse recognition of same-sex marriages performed elsewhere. Support for gay marriage has grown considerably in the U.S. since the start of the 21st century.

Mexico City also recognizes gay marriage, although Mexico as a whole doesn't.

Adoption for gay couples is more widespread, being allowed in 13 countries including in Brazil and the United Kingdom. France would become the 14th country where gay couples can adopt.

"The lack of Iran's oil in international markets would lead to increase in its global price", the minister said on Monday in a statement issued by the Ministry's Information and Press Center.

He stressed that lack of Iran's oil in world markets would create a situation in which this would be "the people who should pay the cost of measures which have been taken by their governments".

Stressing that Tehran has no desire to create such a situation, Qassemi said, absence of Iran's oil in the world markets would damage the supply and demand balance and would lead to insecurity and oil shortage in the global markets.

Iran holds the world's third-largest proven oil reserves and the second-largest natural gas reserves.

On Saturday, Qassemi warned that sanctions against Iran's oil exports would hike crude prices in the world market, which will, in turn, have devastating consequences for western economies.

"Lack of Iran's oil in global markets can affect energy prices across the world and prepare the ground for the creation of a broad crisis in the West's industrial economies," Qassemi said on Saturday.

The Iranian minister said Tehran may revise its policy about oil supplies to international markets if the hegemonic system proceeds with its efforts to exert more pressure on Iran.

He added that adverse repercussions of such a move would have impact on the people in industrial countries, and noted that arrogant countries should be held accountable for the consequences of an increase in energy price.

After the UN Security Council ratified a sanctions resolution against Iran on June 9, 2010, the United States and the European Union imposed further unilateral sanctions against the Islamic Republic over its nuclear program, mostly targeting the country's energy and banking sectors.

Tehran has always dismissed West's pressures and stressed that sanctions and embargos merely consolidate Iranians' national resolve to continue the path of progress.

The EU measure was ratified at a ministerial meeting in January, but the 27-member bloc deferred its implementation until July 1.

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