Here's what's happening across the United States and around the world today.
Islamic State group threatens to kill 2 Japanese hostages; Japan's premier vows to save them
CAIRO (AP) — The Islamic State group threatened to kill two Japanese hostages Tuesday unless they receive $200 million in 72 hours, directly demanding the ransom from Japan's premier during his visit to the Middle East. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe vowed to save the men, saying: "Their lives are the top priority."
However, Abe and other Japanese officials declined to say whether they'd make the payment to save the men, identified in an extremist video released Tuesday as Kenji Goto Jogo and Haruna Yukawa.
The video, identified as being made by the Islamic State group's al-Furqan media arm and posted on militant websites associated with the extremist group, mirrored other hostage threats it has made. Japanese officials said they would analyze the tape to verify its authenticity, though Abe offered no hesitation as he pledged to free the men while speaking to journalists in Jerusalem.
"It is unforgivable," said Abe, now on a six-day visit to the Middle East with more than 100 government officials and presidents of Japanese companies. He added: "Extremism and Islam are completely different things."
In the video, the two men appear in orange jumpsuits like other hostages previously killed by the Islamic State group, which controls a third of Iraq and Syria.
U.S. & World
Stories that affect your life across the U.S. and around the world.
With State of the Union economic proposals, Obama aims to influence 2016 debate
WASHINGTON (AP) — Key elements of the economic proposals President Barack Obama will outline in his State of the Union address Tuesday appear to be aimed at driving the debate in the 2016 election on income inequality and middle-class economic issues, rather than setting a realistic agenda for Congress.
Obama's calls for increasing taxes on the wealthy, making community college free for many students and expanding paid leave for workers stand little chance of winning approval from the new Republican majority on Capitol Hill. But the debate over middle-class economics is looking critical for the coming campaign.
"Inequality_and especially the growing opportunity gap_have become the top litmus test of seriousness for 2016," said Robert Putnam, a Harvard political scientist who has discussed inequality issues with the president and his advisers. "The entry ticket for the presidential sweepstakes is that you have a policy — some policy — for dealing with this issue."
Indeed, potential Republican candidates Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney have been talking openly about income inequality and the need to give lower-earning Americans more opportunities. On the Democratic side, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren appears intent on keeping the party focused on a populist economic agenda, even if she doesn't plan to run for president herself.
As the nation's attention increasingly turns to the 2016 election, the Obama White House is making clear that it still wants to set the terms of the economic conversation.
HealthCare.gov connections to online marketing firms raise concerns over consumer profiling
WASHINGTON (AP) — A little-known side to the government's health insurance website is prompting renewed concerns about privacy, just as the White House is calling for stronger cybersecurity protections for consumers.
It works like this: When you apply for coverage on HealthCare.gov, dozens of data companies may be able to tell that you are on the site. Some can even glean details such as your age, income, ZIP code, whether you smoke or if you are pregnant.
The data firms have embedded connections on the government site. Ever-evolving technology allows for individual Internet users to be tracked, building profiles that are a vital tool for advertisers.
Connections to multiple third-party tech firms were documented by technology experts who analyzed HealthCare.gov, and confirmed by The Associated Press. There is no evidence that personal information from HealthCare.gov has been misused, but the number of outside connections is raising questions.
"As I look at vendors on a website...they could be another potential point of failure," said corporate cybersecurity consultant Theresa Payton. "Vendor management can often be the weakest link in your privacy and security chain."
Pope on contraception: Good Catholics don't have to breed 'like bunnies'
ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE (AP) — Pope Francis is firmly upholding church teaching banning contraception, but said Monday that Catholics don't have to breed "like rabbits" and should instead practice "responsible parenting."
Speaking to reporters en route home from the Philippines, Francis said there are plenty of church-approved ways to regulate births. But he said most importantly, no outside institution should impose its views on regulating family size, blasting what he called the "ideological colonization" of the developing world.
African bishops, in particular, have long complained about how progressive, Western ideas about birth control and gay rights are increasingly being imposed on the developing world by groups, institutions or individual nations, often as a condition for development aid.
"Every people deserves to conserve its identity without being ideologically colonized," Francis said.
The pope's comments, taken together with his defense of the Catholic Church's ban on artificial contraception during the trip, signal that he is increasingly showing his more conservative bent, which has largely been ignored by public opinion or obscured by a media narrative that has tended to highlight his populist persona.
Officials: 1 dead, 1 injured when Interstate 75 overpass collapses in Cincinnati
CINCINNATI (AP) — A construction worker was killed and a tractor-trailer driver injured when an interstate overpass undergoing demolition collapsed in Cincinnati, fire and emergency medical officials said.
The Cincinnati Fire Department said the collapse onto southbound interstate 75 happened near Hopple Street north of downtown at about 10:30 p.m. Monday.
Police Chief Jeff Blackwell called it a workplace accident, saying crews were taking down the old bridge when something went "terribly wrong."
"The big-rig driver is very lucky; in a matter of seconds his fate would have probably been different," Blackwell said.
The driver was taken to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center with minor injuries.
For Etan Patz's parents, man's murder trial is a complex case; they had eyed earlier suspect
NEW YORK (AP) — For years, Etan Patz' parents were sure they knew who had kidnapped the first-grader on his way to school in 1979, and they devoted themselves to trying to hold him accountable.
Testimony will soon start in the murder trial they so long awaited — with a different man at the defense table, a man never suspected until he gave a 2012 confession he now disavows.
The trial partly reflects Stan and Julie Patz' efforts to keep the investigation going and make missing children a national priority. But it stands to be both searing and complex for the parents, who had pressed authorities to prosecute the earlier suspect — a convicted Pennsylvania child molester — and even brought their own wrongful-death suit against him.
"Sometimes I think the worst thing that could happen," Julie Patz once said, "would be never knowing what happened to Etan."
Jury selection is underway for Pedro Hernandez' trial in one of the first missing-child cases ever featured on milk cartons. Hernandez, a former shop worker in the Patzes' neighborhood, denies the charges. His lawyers say his confessions were fiction spurred by mental illness.
California boy, 13, builds Braille printer with Lego kit, starts company with Intel funding
SANTA CLARA, Calif. (AP) — In Silicon Valley, it's never too early to become an entrepreneur. Just ask 13-year-old Shubham Banerjee.
The California eighth-grader has launched a company to develop low-cost machines to print Braille, the tactile writing system for the visually impaired. Tech giant Intel Corp. recently invested in his startup, Braigo Labs.
Shubham built a Braille printer with a Lego robotics kit as a school science fair project last year after he asked his parents a simple question: How do blind people read? "Google it," they told him.
Shubham then did some online research and was shocked to learn that Braille printers, also called embossers, cost at least $2,000 — too expensive for most blind readers, especially in developing countries.
"I just thought that price should not be there. I know that there is a simpler way to do this," said Shubham, who demonstrated how his printer works at the kitchen table where he spent many late nights building it with a Lego Mindstorms EV3 kit.
Japan to sell talking robots that won't try to understand human speech or make much sense
TOKYO (AP) — The scientist behind a new talking robot in Japan says people should stop expecting robots to understand them, and instead try to chime in with robotic conversations.
Hiroshi Ishiguro's 28-centimer (11-inch) tall button-eyed Sota, which stands for "social talker," is programmed to mainly talk with a fellow robot, and won't be trying too hard to understand human speech — the major, and often frustrating, drawback of companion robots.
Sota, shown to reporters at a Tokyo museum Tuesday, goes on sale in July at under 100,000 yen ($850) each. To fully enjoy its features, one would have to buy at least two of them, although people can buy just one.
"Don't stop at just two. Please buy three or four," said Ishiguro, a professor at Osaka University, who has previously shown a variety of robots that look eerily human, including one that's his double.
Ishiguro also demonstrated a more elaborate robot CommU, which stands for communication unity. It will cost five times as much as Sota.
Wahlberg's victims divided over pardon request in racist attacks committed as Boston teen
BOSTON (AP) — Victims of one of Mark Wahlberg's racially motivated attacks as a teenage delinquent in segregated Boston in the 1980s are divided over whether he should be granted a pardon for his crimes.
Kristyn Atwood was among a group of mostly black fourth-grade students on a field trip to the beach in 1986 when Wahlberg and his white friends began hurling rocks and shouting racial epithets as they chased them down the street.
"I don't think he should get a pardon," Atwood, now 38 and living in Decatur, Georgia, said in an interview with The Associated Press.
"I don't really care who he is. It doesn't make him any exception. If you're a racist, you're always going to be a racist. And for him to want to erase it I just think it's wrong," she said.
Mary Belmonte, the white teacher who brought the students to the neighborhood beach that day, sees things differently. "I believe in forgiveness," she said. "He was just a young kid — a punk — in the mean streets of Boston. He didn't do it specifically because he was a bad kid. He was just a follower doing what the other kids were doing."
AP PHOTOS: In Pakistan, cross-dressing men and those transgendered dance on in spite of fear
RAWALPINDI, Pakistan (AP) — By day, 27-year-old Waseem Akram sells mobile phone accessories from an alleyway shop in an old neighborhood of this Pakistani city. But by night, Akram stands before a mirror, shaving away his beard and picking through mascara and rouge to become Rani, a female wedding party dancer
"Life is so hard, one job is not enough to help me and my family," Akram says, the bachelor's voice taking on Rani's higher register. "Being a dancer at weddings, parties and private events ... helps me to earn much more money than working in a shop."
Across conservative Pakistan, where Islamic extremists launch near-daily attacks and many follow a strict interpretation of their Muslim faith, male cross-dressers and the transgendered face a challenge of balancing two identities. Some left their villages for the anonymity of a big city, fearing the reactions of their families while still concealing their identity from neighbors and co-workers.
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