Nasrallah, Aoun stress unity in face of threats

Kerry to hold Arab anti-ISIS talks in Saudi Arabia

Gebran Bassil will join other Arab foreign ministers in Jeddah with John Kerry to discuss the region's commitment to a...

Michigan lawmakers propose contraceptive bills

LANSING, Mich. -- Democratic lawmakers are proposing bills to require Michigan employers to give information to employees and prospective workers about insurance coverage for contraceptives.

The legislation being outlined Tuesday is a response to a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that said businesses with religious objections can opt out of paying for birth control in their employee health plans.

Senate Democratic Leader Gretchen Whitmer of East Lansing and Rep. Gretchen Driskell of Saline are sponsoring the bills. The legislation would require employers to tell prospective employees about their reproductive health coverage in writing before making an offer.

Employers also would have to include the information in any job posting. Employees would have to get a written notice of a change in contraceptive coverage at least 90 days in advance.

Michigan lawmakers return for pre-election session

LANSING, Mich. -- Michigan lawmakers are returning for a four-week session before the November election.

Legislators are waiting to see if the Michigan Supreme Court reconsiders a ruling that could cost the state more than $1 billion. If the court doesn't change its mind, lawmakers are likely to introduce legislation designed to keep the decision from affecting 134 other cases.

The July ruling involves a dispute over how IBM had to calculate taxes in past years.

It's unlikely that the Republican-led Senate will tackle the big issue of road funding before the election. A plan to significantly increase Michigan's gasoline tax stalled in June.

Gay rights activists and major businesses hope legislation is introduced this month to prohibit discrimination against gays and lesbians. Both the House and Senate will begin meeting Tuesday.

Longer Rice video features obscenities, spitting

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. -- Ray Rice and Janay Palmer can be heard shouting obscenities at each other, and she appears to spit in the face of the three-time Pro Bowl running back right before he throws a knockout punch in a video shown to The Associated Press by a law enforcement official.

The video, shown to the AP Monday night, includes audio and is longer than the grainy TMZ Sports video released earlier that day. After the TMZ video made its way around the Internet, the Baltimore Ravens cut Rice and the league suspended him indefinitely. Rice was originally suspended for two games and coaches and others had praised his behavior since the arrest for striking his then-fiancee in February.

The videos show Rice and Palmer in an elevator at an Atlantic City casino. Each hits the other before Rice knocks Palmer off her feet and into a railing. Months ago, a TMZ video showed Rice dragging Palmer, now his wife, from the elevator at the Revel casino, which closed on Sept. 2.

The higher-quality video shown to the AP shows Rice made no attempt to cover up the incident. After Palmer collapses, he drags her out of the elevator and is met by some hotel staff. One of them can be heard saying, "She's drunk, right?" And then, "No cops." But Rice didn't respond.

The video was shown to the AP on condition of anonymity because the official isn't authorized to release it.

Coach John Harbaugh said he met with Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti, team president Dick Cass and general manager Ozzie Newsome after they saw the TMZ video, and they made the decision to let Rice go.

"It's something we saw for the first time today, all of us," Harbaugh said. "It changed things, of course. It made things a little bit different."

The action represented a complete reversal for the team, even though an Atlantic City police summons stated that Rice caused "bodily injury to Janay Palmer, specifically by striking her with his hand, rendering her unconscious."

The Ravens had used words like "respect" and "proud" in referring to Rice following his arrest.

When the NFL announced Rice's two-game suspension for domestic violence on July 24, Newsome said: "We respect the efforts Ray has made to become the best partner and father he can be. That night was not typical of the Ray Rice we know and respect. We believe that he will not let that one night define who he is, and he is determined to make sure something like this never happens again.

Asked Monday night if Rice misled him, Harbaugh said he didn't want to get into "all that."

"I don't think of it that way. Everything I said in terms of what I believe, I stand by," he said. "I believe that still, and I'll always believe those things, and (we'll) always stand in support of them as a couple, and that's not going to change."

Rice said in a news conference this summer that his actions that night were "inexcusable." But the Ravens never took action against him until after the second video was released.

The NFL, which has been working hard to promote the game to women, also took action after the explicit video was released. Commissioner Roger Goodell announced that, based on the new video evidence, Rice has been suspended indefinitely.

"We requested from law enforcement any and all information about the incident, including the video from inside the elevator," NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said Monday morning. "That video was not made available to us and no one in our office has seen it until today."

Rice's lawyer, Michael Diamondstein, declined to comment when contacted by The Associated Press.

Rice, 27, stood to make $4 million this year.

"Obviously, any video that depicts an act of violence in that video is disturbing to watch. For our union, we have an unshakable position against any violence, certainly domestic violence included," NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith said at the Seahawks' facility in Renton, Washington. "It will be a time for us now to catch up with everything else that has occurred today."

He had been charged with felony aggravated assault in the case, but in May he was accepted into a pretrial intervention program that allowed him to avoid jail time and could lead to the charge being purged from his record.

After Goodell drew criticism not being tough enough on Rice, he wrote a letter to all 32 NFL owners in August saying he "didn't get it right."

First-time offenders now face a six-game suspension.

Rice began his suspension Sunday, when the Ravens opened their season with a 23-16 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals. He was scheduled to return after Thursday night's game against Pittsburgh.

He leaves the Ravens as the second-leading rusher in franchise history, behind only Jamal Lewis. A three-time Pro Bowl selection, Rice is the team's career leader in total yards from scrimmage (9,214) and is the only player in Ravens history to rush for 1,000 yards in four consecutive seasons.

But those are mere numbers, and his actions in that elevator shed a new light on him.

"I'm not going to go into what he told us or anything or if it matches or if it doesn't," Ravens receiver Torrey Smith said. "That doesn't matter. What matters is what you see. It wasn't a pleasant site at all."

Rice hasn't spoken often to the media since his arrest, but on July 31 he said this is "something I have to live with the rest of my life."

He added: "I know that's not who I am as a man. ... I let so many people down because of 30 seconds of my life that I know I can't take back."

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AP Sports Writers David Ginsburg in Baltimore, Brett Martel in Metairie, Louisiana, and Tim Booth in Renton, Washington, and AP freelancer Jeff Seidel in Baltimore contributed to this report.

Following Ferguson, Senate Weighs Use Of Military-Grade Equipment

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Police fire tear gas from an armored personnel carrier on Aug. 18, 2014, in Ferguson, Mo. The U.S. Senate is holding a hearing on the use of military-grade equipment by local police departments. Jeff Roberson/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Jeff Roberson/AP

Police fire tear gas from an armored personnel carrier on Aug. 18, 2014, in Ferguson, Mo. The U.S. Senate is holding a hearing on the use of military-grade equipment by local police departments.

Jeff Roberson/AP

Last month, scenes from Ferguson, Mo., showed police in military-style armored vehicles pointing assault rifles at protesters.

Now, the first Congressional hearing in response to those events is being held. It's looking specifically at Washington's hand in militarizing local law enforcement, through federal programs that equipped thousands of police and sheriff's departments with gear made for warfare.

Ferguson is in Sen. Claire McCaskill's home state, and the Missouri Democrat is leading the hearing of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. She says she wanted to hold the hearing "to make sure that the images that we saw where there was a red pinpoint of laser in the chest of a young woman who was protesting, that we don't see that in America again."

She's already called on officials in Ferguson to de-militarize their police force. Now, McCaskill has questions for officials from the Pentagon, Justice Department, and Homeland Security whose programs supply local forces:

"What are the various types of equipment that are being funded, are we training people appropriately, who's paying to maintain this equipment, and maybe the biggest question of all is how much this equipment is actually being used and is it being used effectively?" she asks.

McCaskill expects adjustments in how Washington equips local police forces. A good start, she says, would be requiring that all officers wear body cameras. Others, including the American Civil Liberties Union, want more strings attached to how such equipment is used. The ACLU's Kara Dansky points out that when Congress created the Pentagon's program during the Clinton Administration, it did so in the name of fighting drugs and terrorism:

"So there are some preferences that are stated in the statute in terms of the purposes for which the equipment is intended to be used, at least in the eyes of Congress," she says.

Dansky says too little is known about what happens to the war material that the Pentagon's so-called 1033 distributes. "We think that Congress could require the Defense Department to do much more extensive reporting on the transfers of weapons through the 1033 program and even more importantly, on the use of the weapons that are transferred through the 1033 program," she says.

The Pentagon's Defense Logistics Agency runs that military surplus program. It takes a hands-off attitude toward the equipment given to police departments.

Michelle McCaskill, the agency's spokeswoman, says the department doesn't tell departments how to use the equipment. "That's not up to us. The states and the law enforcement agencies determine the use of the equipment that's provided through the program," she says.

The eight thousand law enforcement agencies that do receive military hardware have to file annual inventory reports with the program's coordinators in their states. The Defense Logistics Agency's McCaskill says the point is to identify agencies that have lost track of equipment, everything from assault rifles to armored vehicles:

"That has happened and when that happens, those agencies become suspended from the program, because they have to go back and figure out what happened to that weapon, where did it go, they have to file reports," she says.

And there can be consequences. The states of Minnesota, North Carolina and Alabama have all been suspended from the military surplus program since March due to reporting issues.

Letting your car find a spot and park itself

DETROIT -- With a thumb swipe on a smartphone, your car one day will be able to drive into a parking deck, find an open spot and back into a space — all by itself.

Technology being honed by French auto parts maker Valeo uses a dozen ultrasonic sound-wave sensors, 360-degree cameras and a laser scanner to safely park within a few centimeters of other vehicles. Then, when you're done with dinner or a business meeting, the car will return to you after another swipe of the thumb.

The potential benefits are plenty. More orderly parking means less congestion. Drivers are spared the time and frustration of the hunt for a spot. Parking lots can squeeze more vehicles into limited space.

The fully-automated system called "Connected Automated Valet Parking" is still about a decade away, however. More states must permit driverless cars and regulations have to be crafted. Equipment needs to be rolled out.

Still, Valeo executives see it as a big step toward the day in the distant future when cars actually drive themselves with no one behind the wheel.

Other companies have already demonstrated self-parking systems, but in most cases the driver has to find the spot and activate the system to make it work. The Valeo system, demonstrated Monday at an intelligent vehicle conference in Detroit using a Land Rover SUV, allows cars today to do tasks currently performed by human valets.

"The car is able to do a much better parking maneuver than we as humans," said Amine Taleb, Valeo's project manager for advanced driver assistance systems.

Here's how it works: Drivers approach their destination and the system finds a deck with an open space. The driver goes to the deck and activates the system. The deck then tells the car where the open space is. The sensors, cameras and laser activate, letting the car drive itself about 3 miles per hour, winding its way to the space and backing in. The system can even find a space on its own without a signal from a deck.

The system won't let the car hit anything, Taleb says. And it can brake and even take action on its own to evade a hazard such as another moving car. A driver can even watch the car park through the cameras and software that simulates an aerial view.

Although the technology is already available, there are hurdles. Only nine states allow driverless cars on public roads, and then only for testing purposes, said Scott Belcher, CEO of the Intelligent Transportation Society of America, the group holding the conference.

Also, parking decks will have to be equipped with systems to communicate with cars. Radio frequencies haven't been allocated yet by the federal government. The auto industry is vying with the cellphone industry for the bandwidth, for vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication, Belcher said.

Cyber security guidelines and government regulations have to be put in place. And legal liability has to be sorted out if the car somehow gets into a wreck.

What's likely within five years is an interim step: The driver finds the space and the car then parks itself. Taleb wouldn't say if an auto company is interested in buying the self-parking system.

The traffic benefits alone are tremendous. Omno Zoeter, a senior research scientist at Xerox, says some studies show as many as 30 percent of urban drivers are looking for parking at any given time.

Eugene Tsyrklevich, the CEO of Parkopedia, an app that monitors more than 30 million parking spaces in 45 countries to help drivers park, predicts a decade of transition as cars and then parking garages adopt technology.

"Driving around looking for a space is not dead yet," said Tsyrklevich. "But it will be."

Auto Writer Dee-Ann Durbin contributed to this report.

Safety board takes up fatal cargo airline crash

WASHINGTON -- A federal accident investigation board is deciding the cause of a fatal cargo plane crash that has become the focus of dispute between UPS and its pilots union over whether work schedules are causing fatigue and jeopardizing safety.

The National Transportation Safety Board was also expected Tuesday to make safety recommendations stemming from the predawn crash, which occurred on Aug. 14, 2013, during a landing approach at Birmingham-Shuttlesworth Airport in Alabama. UPS Flight 1354 descended too rapidly, clipped the tops of trees and then slammed into a hillside just shy of the shorter of the airport's two runways. Capt. Cerea Beal, 57, of Matthews, North Carolina, and First Officer Shanda Fanning, 37, of Lynchburg, Tennessee, were killed.

Beal and Fanning had discussed their work schedules during the flight from Louisville, Kentucky, complaining that the Federal Aviation Administration exempts cargo airline pilots from the more stringent scheduling rules that apply to pilots for passenger airlines, according to a cockpit voice recorder transcript. Beal also had complained to colleagues that the airline's schedules were "killing" him, investigators said. The day before the crash, Fanning sent several text messages describing her fatigue and saying she had fallen asleep during flights.

The Independent Pilots Association has filed a lawsuit to force the government to apply the same work schedule regulations to cargo pilots that apply to passenger airline pilots.

UPS officials have said Beal was rested and Fanning had opportunity for rest before the flight. The company also noted that the pilots' schedules through the time of crash didn't exceed FAA limits on pilot hours. UPS has lobbied strongly against inclusion of cargo pilots in the more stringent work schedule rules.

Besides possible pilot fatigue, the crash has also raised questions about pilot professionalism, the safety of one of the airport's runways and the adequacy of cockpit equipment intended to warn pilots when they are flying dangerously low.

Testimony at an earlier hearing indicated the pilots made a series of errors, including incorrectly programming the twin-engine Airbus A300's flight management computer. As a result, the computer was unable to help them with the landing, but the pilots didn't attempt to abort the landing. The pilots also didn't call out important altitude levels as they descended.

A ground warning system in the plane didn't issue an alert until one second after the plane struck the trees, just moments before the crash, according to a lawsuit filed by Fanning's husband against Honeywell Aerospace, the system's maker. Honeywell has said the warning system wasn't responsible for the crash.

The airport's main runway, which is 12,000 feet long, was closed for repairs. The UPS pilots were trying to land on the airport's second runway, which is 7,000 feet long and has hills at either end. The short runway also lacks complete guidance equipment, making landings there trickier.

Southwest Airlines has since barred its pilots from landing on the shorter runway, and ExpressJet, one of the nation's largest regional airlines, has urged its pilots to avoid landing on the runway in favor of the main runway whenever possible. An ExpressJet analysis of landings by its own planes on the shorter runway concluded that they come "dangerously close" to nearby hills if they're only a few feet below their target altitude.