Hoy | The Miami Herald | 2012-ENE-13

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U.S., Karzai slam video of Marines urinating on dead BY ROBERT BURNS Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai on Thursday condemned as “completely inhumane” a video that purports to depict four U.S. Marines urinating on the corpses of Taliban fighters. Pentagon officials said commanders believe they have identified the men’s unit and that it is back in the United States. The Marine Corps said Wednesday it was investigating the YouTube video but had not yet verified its origin or authenticity. The case has been referred to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, the Navy’s worldwide law enforcement organization. In a statement, Karzai called on the U.S. military to punish the Marines. The Afghan Ministry of Defense also condemned the actions in the video, which it described as “shocking.” The NATO-led security force in Afghanistan released a statement Thursday saying, “This disrespectful act is inexplicable and not in keeping with the high moral standards we expect of coalition forces.” The actions “appear to have been conducted by a small group of U.S. individuals, who apparently are no longer serving in Afghanistan,” the International Security Assistance Force said. The statement did not identify the personnel or explain why the ISAF thought they had left the country. Sen. John McCain, a Navy veteran who fought and was held prisoner in the Vietnam War, said the incident “makes me so sad.” McCain, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, called the Marine Corps one of the United States’ strongest institutions and said its image has apparently been tarnished by “a handful of obviously undisciplined people.” “There should be an investigation and these young people should be punished,” McCain said Thursday on CBS This Morning. Pentagon officials said the criminal investigation would likely look into whether the Marines violated laws of war, which include prohibitions against photographing bodies and detainees and a range of other rules. The video, posted on the Internet, shows the Marines in combat gear, standing in a semi-circle over three bodies. It’s not clear whether the dead were Taliban or civilians or someone else. The title on the posting said they were Taliban • TURN TO VIDEO, 2A

INTERNATIONAL EDITION

In Cuba, Iran leader says capitalism in decay BY PAUL HAVEN

Associated Press

HAVANA — Two of Washington’s top irritants, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Fidel Castro, discussed world events for two hours, and the Iranian leader on Thursday described the retired Cuban revolutionary as healthy and engaged, and declared their two countries to be allies “ﬁghting on the same front.” “It made me enormously happy to see the comandante healthy and ﬁt,” Ahmadinejad said through a translator at an

impromptu airport appearance alongside Fidel’s brother, Cuba’s President Raul Castro, before ﬂying off to Ecuador. Raul Castro said his 85-yearold brother and Ahmadinejad met for two hours Wednesday, “a demonstration that his brain is working very well.” Fidel Castro stepped down in 2006 due to an illness that nearly killed him, but continues to write essays on world events. After receiving an honorary doctorate in political science at the University of Havana, Ah-

New York Times Service

Conﬂict between rich and poor now eclipses racial strain and friction between immigrants and the native-born as the greatest source of tension in U.S. society, according to a survey released this week. About two-thirds of U.S. citizens now believe there are “strong conﬂicts” between rich and poor in the United States, a survey by the Pew Research Center found, a sign that the message of income inequality brandished by the Occupy Wall Street movement and pressed by Democrats may be seeping into the national consciousness. The share was the largest since 1992, and represented about a 50 percent increase from the 2009 survey, when immigration was seen as the greatest source of tension. In that survey, 47 percent of those polled said there were

IN U.S., MORMONS UNEASY IN THE SPOTLIGHT, 3A

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madinejad attacked the United States and paralleled Fidel Castro’s often-repeated argument that the capitalist model is on the wane. “We are seeing that the capitalist system is in decline, in a dead-end alley,” he declared in his speech, according to news reports. “The world needs a new order or a new thinking that respects all human beings based on justice.” One of his main themes has been warning that a conﬂict pitting the United States and Israel

against Iran could lead the world toward nuclear Armageddon. Iranian ofﬁcials last year said they welcomed Castro’s support, but did not share his apocalyptic concerns, arguing the West would not dare attack. Raul Castro and Ahmadinejad also held a late-night meeting Wednesday, discussing bilateral relations and world events. “We have common positions on many things,” Ahmadinejad said. • TURN TO VISIT, 4A

FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP-GETTY IMAGES

Visitors gather around a display of laptops, tablets and smartphones at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Below, a bluetooth enabled watch that connects to your smartphone.

In Las Vegas, the future of high tech BY DAVID POGUE

New York Times Service

If you just peek into the huge International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, you might think that it’s mostly a deafening showcase for tablets, thin TV screens, superthin laptops and Android phones. But if you really take the time to look — if you walk all 15 miles of exhibit halls — you’ll discover that, in fact, you were right. CES really is primarily a deafening showcase for tablets, thin TV screens, superthin laptops and Android phones. The show isn’t open to the public; believe it or not, the 150,000 attendees are all press and industry buyers. For them,

CES is an incredible, exhausting glimpse at the tech that will be ﬂying off holiday shelves a year or two from now — or rotting on

Survey finds rising perception of class tension BY SABRINA TAVERNISE

FRIDAY, JANUARY 13, 2012

strong conﬂicts between classes. of those polled, up from 38 percent “Income inequality is no longer in 2009, even as the party leaderjust for economists,” said Richard ship has railed against the concept Morin, a senior editor at Pew So- of class divisions. The change in perception is cial & Demographic Trends, which conducted the latest survey, of 2,048 adults in December. “It • TURN TO has moved off the business TENSION, 2A pages into the front page.” The new numbers show that perception of class conﬂict surged the most among whites, middle-income earners and independent voters, the survey found. But it also increased substantially among RepubliMCT cans, to 55 percent

MYANMAR SIGNS TRUCE WITH ETHNIC REBEL GROUP, 6A

FOR EUROPE, FEW OPTIONS IN A VICIOUS CYCLE OF DEBT, BUSINESS FRONT

display among the 3,100 booths. To save you a foot-throbbing hike of your own, here’s one man’s CES 2012 notebook. • TELEVISIONS All right, let’s get this out of the way. There were a lot of ﬂatpanel screens. In rows. In columns. In banks reaching up four stories. There were high-deﬁnition screens, 3-D screens, gigantic screens. (71 inches! 80 inches! 84 inches!) LG and Samsung displayed prototype 55-inch OLED screens that were so thin, you could shave BRUCE BENNETT/GETTY IMAGES with them. (OLED is a breathtakstore shelves in humiliation. Now, ingly clear, crisp, colorful, expendespite that wisecrack about the sive kind of screen — and the sameness of the offerings, there really were some great ideas on • TURN TO CES, 2A

Mitt Romney’s rivals bring a smile to the White House BY JACKIE CALMES

New York Times Service

week — with rivals lumping Romney, a former private equity executive, with corporate raiders and even “vultures” — highlights the tension within a party that has historically backed business and eschewed class-based political attacks. The economy has delivered scant gains for many middle-class and blue-collar workers over the past decade, and the Republican base now includes large numbers of these workers. Even before the Tea Party movement arose three years ago after the big bank bailouts, the Republican base had grown more populist, heightening old tensions between Main Street and Wall Street Republicans. The Romney

WASHINGTON — For months David Axelrod, U.S. President Barack Obama’s longtime senior strategist, has argued with evident anticipation that Mitt Romney offers a glass jaw when he boasts that his business record sets him apart as a presidential candidate. Now Romney’s Republican rivals have beaten the Obama team to the punch, and Democrats could hardly be more pleased. “It’s a total win-win,” said Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster who works with a group supporting Obama. “Either Romney will be the nominee or one of those other, even more unelectable candidates will be.” The Republican sniping this • TURN TO ROMNEY, 2A

JETS NAME SPARANO AS OFFENSIVE COORDINATOR, SPORTS FRONT

INDEX THE AMERICAS ............4A U.S. NEWS.....................5A OPINION........................7A COMICS & PUZZLES ...6B

1/13/2012 5:13:59 AM

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