Militants apparently captured 29 Chinese workers after attacking a remote worksite in a volatile region of Sudan, and Sudanese forces were increasing security for Chinese projects and personnel there, China said Sunday.

China has close political and economic relations with Sudan, especially in the energy sector.

The Foreign Ministry in Beijing said the militants attacked Saturday and Sudanese forces launched a rescue mission Sunday in coordination with the Chinese embassy in Khartoum.

The Ministry's head of consular affairs met with the Sudanese ambassador in Beijing and "urged him to actively conduct rescue missions under the prerequisite of ensuring the safety of the Chinese personnel," the statement said.

In Khartoum, a Chinese embassy spokesman said the northern branch of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement announced that 29 Chinese workers had been captured in the attack. The spokesman, who asked not be identified, gave no other details and it wasn't clear if the militants had demanded conditions for their return.

Other details weren't given. The official Xinhua News Agency cited the state governor as saying the Sudan People's Liberation Movement attacked a road-building site in South Kordofan and seized the workers.

The Sudan People's Liberation Movement are a guerrilla force that has fought against Sudan's regime. Its members hail from a minority ethnic group now in control of much of South Sudan, which became the world's newest country only six months ago in a breakaway from Sudan.

Sudan has accused South Sudan of arming pro-South Sudan groups in South Kordofan. The government of South Sudan has called such accusations a smoke screen intended to justify a future invasion of the South.

China has sent large numbers of workers to potentially unstable regions such as Sudan and last year was forced to send ships and planes to help with the emergency evacuation of 30,000 of its citizens from the fighting in Libya.

China has consistently used its clout in diplomatic forums such as the United Nations to defend Sudan and its longtime leader Omar al-Bashir. In recent years, it has also sought to build good relations with leaders from the south, where most of Sudan's oil is located.

Chinese companies have also invested heavily in Sudanese oil production, along with companies India and elsewhere.

In dozens of tanks and armored vehicles, Syrian troops stormed rebellious areas near the capital Sunday, shelling neighborhoods that have fallen under the control of army dissidents and clashing with fighters. At least 62 people were killed in violence nationwide, activists and residents said.

The widescale offensive near the capital suggested the regime is worried that military defectors could close in on Damascus, which has remained relatively quiet while most other Syrian cities descended into chaos after the uprising began in March.

The rising bloodshed added urgency to Arab and Western diplomatic efforts to end the 10-month conflict.

The violence has gradually approached the capital. In the past two weeks, army dissidents have become more visible, seizing several suburbs on the eastern edge of Damascus and setting up checkpoints where masked men wearing military attire and wielding assault rifles stop motorists and protect anti-regime protests.

Their presence so close to the capital is astonishing in tightly controlled Syria and suggests the Assad regime may either be losing control or setting up a trap for the fighters before going on the offensive.

Residents of Damascus reported hearing clashes in the nearby suburbs, particularly at night, shattering the city's calm.

"The current battles taking place in and around Damascus may not yet lead to the unraveling of the regime, but the illusion of normalcy that the Assads have sought hard to maintain in the capital since the beginning of the revolution has surely unraveled," said Ammar Abdulhamid, a U.S.-based Syrian dissident.

"Once illusions unravel, reality soon follows," he wrote in his blog Sunday.

Soldiers riding some 50 tanks and dozens of armored vehicles stormed a belt of suburbs and villages on the eastern outskirts of Damascus known as al-Ghouta Sunday, a predominantly Sunni Muslim agricultural area where large anti-regime protests have been held.

Some of the fighting on Sunday was less than three miles (four kilometers) from Damascus, in Ein Tarma, making it the closest yet to the capital.

"There are heavy clashes going on in all of the Damascus suburbs," said Rami Abdul-Rahman, director of the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, who relies on a network of activists on the ground. "Troops were able to enter some areas but are still facing stiff resistance in others."

The fighting using mortars and machine guns sent entire families fleeing, some of them on foot carrying bags of belongings, to the capital.

"The shelling and bullets have not stopped since yesterday," said a man who left his home in Ein Tarma with his family Sunday. "It's terrifying, there's no electricity or water, it's a real war," he said by telephone on condition of anonymity, for fear of reprisals.

The uprising against Assad, which began with largely peaceful demonstrations, has grown increasingly militarized recently as more frustrated protesters and army defectors have taken up arms.

In a bid to stamp out resistance in the capital's outskirts, the military has responded with a withering assault on a string of suburbs, leading to a spike in violence that has killed at least 150 people since Thursday.

The United Nations says at least 5,400 people have been killed in the 10 months of violence.

The U.N. is holding talks on a new resolution on Syria and next week will discuss an Arab League peace plan aimed at ending the crisis. But the initiatives face two major obstacles: Damascus' rejection of an Arab plan that it says impinges on its sovereignty, and Russia's willingness to use its U.N. Security Council veto to protect Syria from sanctions.

Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby told reporters Sunday in Egypt that contacts were under way with China and Russia.

"I hope that their stand will be adjusted in line with the final drafting of the draft resolution," he told reporters before leaving for New York with Qatari Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim.

The two will seek U.N. support for the latest Arab plan to end Syria's crisis. The plan calls for a two-month transition to a unity government, with Assad giving his vice president full powers to work with the proposed government.

Because of the escalating violence, the Arab League on Saturday halted the work of its observer mission in Syria at least until the League's council can meet. Arab foreign ministers were to meet Sunday in Cairo to discuss the Syrian crisis in light of the suspension of the observers' work and Damascus' refusal to agree to the transition timetable, the League said.

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon said he was "concerned" about the League's decision to suspend its monitoring mission and called on Assad to "immediately stop the bloodshed." He spoke Sunday at an African Union summit in Addis Ababa.

While the international community scrambles to find a resolution to the crisis, the violence on the ground in Syria has continued unabated.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 27 civilians were killed Sunday in Syria, most of them in fighting in the Damascus suburbs and in the central city of Homs, a hotbed of anti-regime protests. Twenty-six soldiers and nine defectors were also killed, it said. The soldiers were killed in ambushes that targeted military vehicles near the capital and in the northern province of Idlib.

The Local Coordination Committees' activist network said 50 people were killed Sunday, including 13 who were killed in the suburbs of the capital and two defectors. That count excluded soldiers killed Sunday.

The differing counts could not be reconciled, and the reports could not be independently confirmed. Syrian authorities keep tight control on the media and have banned many foreign journalists from entering the country.

Syria's state-run news agency said "terrorists" detonated a roadside bomb by remote control near a bus carrying soldiers in the Damascus suburb of Sahnaya, killing six soldiers and wounding six others. Among those killed in the attack some 12 miles (20 kilometers) south of the capital were two first lieutenants, SANA said.

In Irbil, a Kurdish city in northern Iraq, about 200 members of Syria's Kurdish parties were holding two days of meetings to explore ways of supporting efforts to topple Assad.

Abdul-Baqi Youssef, a member of the Syrian Kurdish Union Party, said representatives of 11 Kurdish parties formed the Syrian Kurdish National Council that will coordinate anti-government activities with Syria's opposition.

Kurds make up 15 percent of Syria's 23 million people and have long complained of discrimination.

Authorities are investigating the death of a passenger aboard the Carnival Fantasy who fell from an upper deck to a lower deck while the cruise ship was docked in the Bahamas.

The 26-year-old victim, whose identity was not released, fell from one of the upper levels of the ship's atrium to the lobby level late Friday night,  Carnival Cruise Lines said in a statement Saturday. The ship was docked in Nassau at the time.

Bahamas police said the man was from South Carolina and that initial reports indicate he may have jumped. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

The ship was cleared by authorities to sail Saturday morning, but because of the delay due to the investigation a scheduled visit to Freeport was canceled.      

Carnival Fantasy was sailing on a five-day Bahamas cruise that departed Charleston, S.C., on Wednesday and is scheduled to return to Charleston on Monday.

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Updated 12:51 p.m. ET: Syria says it regrets an Arab League decision to halt its mission monitoring a peace plan in the country, official state television reported on Saturday.

"Syria regrets and is surprised at the Arab decision to stop the work of its monitoring mission after it asked for a one-month extension of its work,'' Syria Television reported in an urgent news flash.

Updated at 11:31 a.m. ET: The Arab League halted its observer mission to Syria on Saturday, sharply criticizing the regime of President Bashar Assad for escalating violence in recent days that has killed nearly 100 people across the country.

"Given the critical deterioration of the situation in Syria and the continued use of violence ... it has been decided to immediately stop the work of the Arab League's mission to Syria pending presentation of the issue to the league's council," Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby said in a statement.

AP

This citizen journalism image provided by the Local Coordination Committees in Syria purports to show anti-Syrian regime protesters during a demonstration in Idlib province, Syria Friday.

A delegate at the league said no date had yet been fixed for a meeting of the council on Syria.

The rising bloodshed has added urgency to new attempts by Arab and Western countries to find a resolution to the 10 months of violence that according to the United Nations has killed at least 5,400 people as Assad seeks to crush persistent protests demanding an end to his rule.

But the initiatives continue to face two major obstacles: Damascus' rejection of an Arab peace plan which it says impinges on its sovereignty, and Russia's willingness to use its U.N. Security Council veto to protect Syria from sanctions.

Syrian government forces clashed with anti-regime army defectors across the country on Saturday. At least 20 were reported killed in the clashes and other violence. The new deaths come after two days of bloody turmoil killed at least 74 people, including small children.

The Arab League and Western countries are pushing for a U.N. Security Council resolution on Syria.

The Security Council discussed a European-Arab draft resolution on Friday aimed at halting the bloodshed.

Russia, which joined China in vetoing a previous Western draft resolution in October and which has since promoted its own draft, said the European-Arab version was unacceptable in its present form but said it was willing to "engage" on it.

Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said Moscow wanted a Syrian-led political process, not "an Arab League-imposed outcome of a political process that has not yet taken place" or Libyan-style "regime change.

The Arab League said it was in talks with Russia ahead of a Security Council meeting in New York. Britain and France said they hoped to put the draft resolution to a vote next week.

Published at 7:30 a.m. ET: A Syrian opposition group claimed Saturday that 130 people had been killed across the country in just 24 hours by President Bashar al-Assad's forces.

The U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported the death toll while speaking to NBC News in London.

Activists also told Reuters Saturday that the bodies of 17 men previously held by Syrian security forces have been found in the city of Hama.

"They were killed execution-style, mostly with one bullet to the head. Iron chains that had tied them were left on their legs as a message to the people to stop resisting," Abu al-Walid, an activist in the city, told Reuters by telephone.

Another activist said the bodies, their hands tied with plastic wire and some with their legs chained, were dumped in the streets of five Hama neighborhoods on Thursday evening.

Turkey was due to meet Gulf Arab states later Saturday to reinforce support for an Arab call for Assad to quit.

The Arab League and Western countries are pushing for a U.N. Security Council resolution on Syria, resisted by Assad's ally Russia. The U.N. Security Council discussed a new European-Arab draft resolution on Friday aimed at halting the bloodshed.  

The United Nations Children's Fund also said Friday that at least 384 children had been killed and virtually the same number had been jailed during the course of the uprising.

UN Security Council weights action on Syria

The U.N., which estimated in mid-December that more than 5,000 people had been killed, says it can no longer keep track of the total death toll. The Syrian government says insurgents have killed more than 2,000 soldiers and policemen.

'Siding with the Syrian people'
Turkey urged Syria's leadership to comply with an Arab League transition plan that calls on Assad to step down.

"We are siding with the Syrian people and their legitimate demands," Turkish President Abdullah Gul was quoted as saying by the United Arab Emirates newspaper al-Bayan.

Outside Syria capital, suburbs look like war zones

Turkish officials say the number of Syrians seeking sanctuary in Turkey has risen in the past six weeks, with 50 to 60 arriving daily, taking the total living in refugee camps to nearly 9,600 from about 7,000 previously.

More than 6,000 Syrian refugees have fled to Lebanon.

Turkey, which spent years rebuilding relations with Syria, turned against Assad after he ignored its advice to enact reforms to calm what began in March as a peaceful uprising against his rule, inspired by Arab revolts elsewhere.

Russia, which joined China in vetoing a previous Western draft U.N> resolution in October and which has since promoted its own draft, said the European-Arab version was unacceptable in its present form but added that it was willing to "engage" on it.

Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin criticized the draft, which endorses the Arab transition plan.

Moscow, he said, wants a Syrian-led political process, not "an Arab League-imposed outcome of a political process that has not yet taken place" or Libyan-style "regime change."

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Reuters

Anti-government protestors march past burning tires in Dakar on Friday, Jan. 27, 2012.

Toure Behan / AFP - Getty Images

Tires burn in a street on Friday, Jan. 27, 2012, in Senegal's capital Dakar, where clash broke out between police and young protesters.

AP

Protesters set fires in a street on Friday.

Reuters reports from DAKAR — Protesters hurled rocks at police who retaliated with tear gas in Senegal's capital Dakar on Friday after a top legal body said President Abdoulaye Wade had the right to run for a third term in elections next month.

Local television said one policeman died from head injuries after clashes in the capital Dakar. Reuters reporters saw youths set fire to tires in the street and overturn cars after a late-night ruling of the West African country's Constitutional Council.

Updated 5:20 p.m. ET: The world marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Friday with a promise never to forget the genocide at Auschwitz during World War II.

Friday was the 67th anniversary of the Nazi camp's liberation by Soviet troops. Jan. 27 was designated as International Holocaust Remembrance Day by the United Nations in 2005, and marked with ceremonies across Europe.

In Poland, Kazimierz Smolen, a 91-year-old Auschwitz survivor who after World War II became director of the memorial site, died Friday on the anniversary of its liberation.

Smolen died in a hospital in Oswiecim, the southern Polish town where Nazi Germany operated Auschwitz-Birkenau during World War II, said Pawel Sawicki, a spokesman for the Auschwitz-Birkenau state museum.

Sawicki said soon after Smolen's death the news was announced to Holocaust survivors who had gathered at the vast site of dilapidated barracks still enclosed in barbed-wire fencing, The Associated Press reported. They fell silent for a minute in his honor.

Smolen was born on April 19, 1920, in the southern Polish town of Chorzow Stary. He was a Pole involved in the anti-Nazi resistance who was arrested by the Germans in April 1941 and taken to Auschwitz in one of the early mass shipments of prisoners there. He left the camp on the last transport of prisoners evacuated by the Germans on Jan. 18, 1945, nine days before its liberation. He later attributed his survival to good health and extreme luck.

He once explained his decision to return to the camp to manage it as a way of honoring those who were killed there.

"Sometimes when I think about it, I feel it may be some kind of sacrifice, some kind of obligation I have for having survived," he said.

In other gestures of remembrance, Norway's Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg apologized for his nation's role in arresting and deporting Jews after it was invaded by Nazi Germany. During the war, 772 Norwegian Jews and Jewish refugees were deported to Germany. Only 34 survived.

He said it's time the nation acknowledges that politicians and other Norwegians took part and expressed "our deep regrets that this could have happened on Norwegian soil." He spoke at a ceremony in Oslo attended by the last surviving Jew in a group of 532 deported from Norway in 1942.

In Turkey, state television on Thursday broadcast the epic French documentary "Shoah," about the mass murder of Jews under the German Nazi regime. It was the first time the film has been aired on public television in a predominantly Muslim country.

"It is a historical event," filmmaker Claude Lanzmann, 87, said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press from his home in Paris. "It is extremely important that it is being shown in a Muslim country."

Germany's Parliament also gathered Friday for a special sitting to remember the Holocaust.

Prominent survivor and literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki recalled how the Nazi SS informed members of the Warsaw ghetto's Jewish council in July 1942 of plans for the inhabitants' "resettlement" to the east.

Reich-Ranicki, 91, recounted how a "deathly silence" was followed by uproar. He said those present "seemed to sense what had happened: that the sentence had been pronounced for the biggest Jewish city in Europe. The death sentence."

The Nazis set up the Warsaw ghetto in November 1940, cramming hundreds of thousands of Jews into inhuman conditions. Most who survived disease and starvation in the ghetto were transported to death camps.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON - American officials told NBC News on Friday that they were "aware" of Somali pirates' threats to kill an American hostage they had grabbed over the weekend, but for now the Pentagon and U.S. military has no plans to try and rescue him.

The American, Michael Scott Moore, who wrote a book on surfing, was in Somalia gathering material for another book on modern-day pirates when he was kidnapped by 15 armed men on Saturday.

A pirate commander was reportedly in charge of negotiating Moore's release, although it was unclear whether a precise ransom demand had been made.

Following the rescue of American aid worker Jessica Buchanan and her Danish colleague Poul Thisted this week, Moore's kidnappers threatened to kill him if the United States tried something similar.

There's was no indication, however, that a similar American mission is in the works.

As a rule, the U.S. military is "not in the business of hostage rescues," a senior official told NBC News.  The officials spoke to NBC on condition of anonymity.

• New details emerge on Somalia hostage rescue

The American official said the decision to launch a rescue is made on a "case-by-case basis" and depended on the circumstances at hand.

Several factors led to the decision to try and rescue of Buchanan, U.S. officials told NBC.  Firstly, the kidnappers themselves claimed that Buchanan was suffering from a potentially fatal health condition. Also, Somalia was largely lawless and there was little or no hope that local security forces would be able to track down the kidnappers and free their captives.

Finally, the group holding Buchanan was a fairly disorganized band of "criminals and thugs" making it a somewhat easy targets for the Navy Seals that saved her, the officials said.  Given the public relations blitz already launched by Moore's kidnappers and their open threats to kill him, recovering him would be a much riskier mission, they added.

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Rodrigo Abd / AP

Guatemala's former strongman Efrain Rios Montt, who faces genocide charges, stands amid policemen during a break at a courtroom in Guatemala City on Jan. 26, 2012.

Reuters reports from GUATEMALA CITY: 

Former Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt will face trial on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity as the Central American nation seeks to close files on a brutal 36-year civil war.

A judge found sufficient evidence that linked Rios Montt, who ruled during a particularly bloody period in 1982 and 1983, to the killing of more than 1,700 indigenous people in one counterinsurgency effort. Read the full story.

Rodrigo Abd / AP

Relatives of genocide victims watch Efrain Rios Montt in the courtroom during a hearing related to the accusations of genocide.

Rodrigo Abd / AP

A banner with portraits of people who disappeared during Montt's reign.

Updated at 2:35 p.m. ET: ROME -- Passengers who were on the Costa Concordia are being offered $14,460 apiece to compensate them for their lost baggage and psychological trauma after the cruise ship ran aground and capsized off Tuscany when the captain deviated from his route.

In addition to the lump-sum indemnity, Costa, a unit of the world's biggest cruise operator, the Miami-based Carnival Corp., also said it would reimburse uninjured passengers the full costs of their cruise, their return travel expenses and any medical expenses they sustained after the grounding.

The deal does not apply to the hundreds of crew on the ship, many of whom have lost their jobs, the roughly 100 people who were injured in the chaotic evacuation or the families who lost loved ones. Sixteen bodies have already been recovered from the disaster and another 16 people who were on board are missing and presumed dead.

The agreement was announced Friday after a day of negotiations between Costa representatives and Italian consumer groups representing 3,206 people from 61 countries who suffered no physical harm when the Costa Concordia hit a reef on Jan. 13.

Passengers are free to pursue legal action on their own if they aren't satisfied with the deal and it was clear Friday — two weeks after the grounding — that some would.

"We're very worried about the children," said Claudia Urru of Cagliari, Sardinia, who was on board the ship with her husband and two sons aged 3 and 12. Her eldest child, she said, is seeing a psychiatrist: He won't speak about the incident or even look at television footage of the grounding.

"He's terrorized at night," she told The Associated Press. "He can't go to the bathroom alone. We're all sleeping together, except my husband, who has gone into another room because we don't all fit."

As a result, she said, her family has retained a lawyer because they don't know what the real impact — financial or otherwise — of the trauma will be. She said her family simply isn't able to make such decisions now.

"We are having a very, very hard time," she said.

Some consumer groups have already signed on as injured parties in the criminal case against the Concordia's captain, Francesco Schettino, who is accused of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning the ship before all those aboard were evacuated. He is under house arrest.

In addition, Codacons, one of Italy's best-known consumer groups, has engaged two U.S. law firms to launch a class-action lawsuit against Costa and Carnival in Miami, claiming that it expects to get anywhere from $164,000 to $1.3 million per passenger.

German attorney Hans Reinhardt, who currently represents 15 Germans who survived the accident and is in talks to represent families who lost loved ones, said he is advising his clients not to take the settlement.

Instead, he, like Codacons, is working with the U.S. law firm to pursue the class-action suit in Miami.

But Roberto Corbella, who represented Costa in the negotiations, said the deal provides passengers with quick and "generous" restitution that consumer groups estimate could amount to some $18,500 per passenger when it includes the other reimbursements.

"The big advantage that they have is an immediate response, no legal expenses, and they can put this whole thing behind them," he told AP.

Passengers who want to file a lawsuit in U.S. courts over the cruise ship disaster will likely face choppy seas. That's because the ticket contract includes what's known as a "choice of forum" clause stating that lawsuits must be filed in Italy.

Depending on each country's laws, passengers can be at a sharp disadvantage compared to the U.S. legal system. Italy, for example, requires plaintiffs to post a judiciary tax that is a certain percentage for larger amounts of damages, said attorney Bob Peltz, chairman of the Cruise Line Committee of the Maritime Law Association.

Maritime law experts say that similar attempts to sue in the U.S. despite these clauses have been turned away by the U.S. Supreme Court and that the expense of filing a lawsuit in a foreign court has deterred many plaintiffs in the past.

"It's well-settled law," said Jerry Hamilton, a maritime attorney who regularly defends cruise lines against lawsuits. "The Supreme Court has said those clauses are valid clauses. They will be upheld."

The clauses in the cruise industry are not as common in other forms of travel. Lawsuits against airlines, for example, can be brought virtually anyplace they do business for domestic flights; for international flights, lawyers can generally sue in the airline's home location or where the flight departed, among other venues.

At least one lawsuit has been filed against Carnival and Costa in U.S. courts, by Peruvian crew member Gary Lobaton. That case, filed in Chicago federal court on Thursday, seeks class-action status to represent all passengers and 1,000 crew members. It blames the companies for negligence because of an unsafe evacuation and seeks at least $100 million in damages, attorney Monica Kelly said in an email to the Associated Press on Friday.

Peltz said that case has two big problems: The passengers are covered by the forum clause, and crew members likely have contracts requiring them to submit first to arbitration.

"I think they are going to have a difficult time," he said of the Chicago lawsuit. 

• Costa officials discuss compensation deal for passengers

The lawsuit sought to determine whether Carnival deviated from international safety standards when operating the cruise ship.

"Costa Concordia's Captain, Francesco Schettino, delayed the order to abandon ship and deploy the lifeboats," Lobaton's lawyers said in the filing.

Schettino has admitted he had taken the ship on "touristic navigation" near Giglio but has said the rocks he hit weren't charted on his nautical maps.

Codacons has called for a criminal investigation into the not-infrequent practice of "tourist navigation" — steering huge cruise ships close to shore to give passengers a view of key sites.

• How common are cruise ship 'salutes?'

The chief executive of Costa, Pier Luigi Foschi, told Italian lawmakers this week that "tourist navigation" wasn't illegal, and was a "cruise product" increasingly sought out by passengers and offered by cruise lines to try to stay competitive.

Neither Costa nor Carnival would comment about potential lawsuits. The case is Gary Lobaton vs Carnival Corp, Case No. 1:12-cv-00598, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.

Search efforts for the missing resumed Friday as salvage crews set up to begin extracting some 500,000 tons of heavy fuel oil on Saturday before it leaks into the pristine waters surrounding the ship. That pumping operation is expected to last nearly a month.

Italy's civil protection office on Friday released a list of some of the other possibly toxic substances aboard the cruise liner, including 50 liters of insecticide and 41 cubic meters of lubricants, among other things.

But so far, even though some film has been detected in the waters around the ship, tests on the waters indicate nothing outside the norm, according to Tuscany's regional environment agency.

"Toxic tests have all resulted negative," the agency said.

The crystal clear seas around Giglio are a haven for scuba divers and form part of a marine sanctuary for dolphins, porpoises and whales.

Slideshow: Luxury cruise ship runs aground

DigitalGlobe

The Costa Concordia, carrying more than 4,200 passengers, ran aground Jan. 13 off the coast of Italy. At least 15 people died in the accident, and rescuers continue to search for others missing.

Launch slideshow

Related stories:

• Official: Miracle to find cruise ship survivors
• Death toll from cruise ship wreck up to 15
• Captain says he was told to perform fatal maneuver
• Woman's body found aboard stricken Italian cruise ship
• PhotoBlog: Madonna recovered from Costa Concordia

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

Iran is stepping up its military bluster, and it's not all talk, The Christian Science Monitor reports.

Tehran's stepped-up warnings follow the approval by the European Union and the United States of sanctions on Iran’s oil exports and central bank in over accusations that it is developing nuclear weapons.

A top Iranian general this week declared the United States dared not send an aircraft carrier through the strait alone because of danger posed by the Islamic Republic. The USS Abraham Lincoln was flanked by British and French warships.

While Iran’s naval prowess wouldn't match the West's in size, the Persian Gulf nation could still employ tactics to cripple the flow of oil shipments through the strategic Strait of Hormuz, analysts told the Monitor.

Iran's tactics include layers of harassment that would create uncertainty and drive up the cost of shipping oil through the Gulf.

See the complete story.  

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The State Department said Thursday it is "very actively involved" in working with the Egyptian government to lift the travel restrictions on American citizens working with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Egypt.

State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland said, "We are urging the government of Egypt to lift these restrictions immediately and allow folks to come home as soon as possible. And we are hopeful that this issue can be resolved in merest days."

Related: Egypt stops US Transport Secretary's son, three others, from leaving country

There are four or five specific cases of Americans who have been barred from leaving Egypt that the State Department is currently working on. Nuland would not confirm if Sam LaHood is one of those cases because of privacy concerns. International Republican Institute (IRI), the NGO that LaHood works for, however, confirmed that for NBC News on Wednesday night. LaHood's father is U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

The Americans who have unsuccessfully tried to leave Egypt are not being detained, and they are in possession of their passports.

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The Obama administration and Philippine officials are in talks about expanding military cooperation, including joint exercises in the Pacific, but adding American bases to the island nation is off the table, both countries said on Thursday.

Talks with the Philippines, a U.S. ally which voted to remove huge American naval and air bases 20 years ago, follow Washington's announcement of plans to set up a Marine base in northern Australia and possibly station warships in Singapore. Those moves come as part of the Obama's administration plans to enhance American presence in Asia because of the region's economic importance and China's rise as a military power.

Philippine Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin told The Associated Press that any additional joint military activity would conform with the 1999 Visiting Forces Agreement, a bilateral accord that allows U.S. ship visits and American troops to hold joint military exercises in the Philippines. There would be no discussion on bringing back permanent U.S. military bases in the country, he said.

 “U.S bases in the Philippines would be out of the question,” Peter Galvez, acting chief of staff to the secretary of national defense, told the New York Times on Thursday.

Pentagon spokesman Leslie Hullryde also denied talk of bases in the Philippines to Reuters.

"We are holding a bilateral strategic dialogue, during which we will discuss a broad range of issues, including our cooperation on counterterrorism, counter-proliferation, disaster preparedness, border security, and human rights," Hullryde said. “… The idea that we are looking to establish U.S. bases or permanently station U.S. forces in the Philippines - or anywhere else in Southeast Asia - as part of a China containment strategy is patently false," Hullryde said.

The Washington Post  first reported on Wednesday that negotiations that would lead to a return of U.S. bases to the Philippines were in the early stages. Officials from both governments were quoted as saying they were favorably inclined toward a deal.

The Obama administration describes the moves as part of a "pivot" toward economically dynamic Asia designed to reassure allies who felt neglected during the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, but China sees the deployments as part of a broader U.S. attempt to encircle it as it grows into a major power.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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In addition to a casino, Resorts World Sentosa in Singapore also has six hotels, Southeast Asia's first Universal Studios theme park and trendy restaurants and shops.

Even though it has just two resort-casinos, each less than two years old, the island-nation of Singapore is on pace to generate more gaming revenue than Las Vegas, which has 41 casinos on The Strip alone.

“The final numbers for 2011 aren’t quite in yet,” said Holly Wetzel, spokesperson for the American Gaming Association. “But it is anticipated that this year Singapore could surpass Las Vegas as the world’s second-largest gaming market.”

The world’s number one gaming destination is Asia’s Macau, where 33 casinos raked in $23.5 billion of gaming revenues in 2010. “That’s more than twice the total revenue of every casino in the state of Nevada,” said David G. Schwartz, director of the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada Las Vegas.

Las Vegas and Singapore, with 2010 gaming revenues of $5.8 billion and $5.1 billion, respectively, still lag way behind Macau. But that No. 2 spot is highly coveted, and analysts are predicting that in 2011 the combined gaming revenues for Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands and Resorts World Sentosa could total $6.4 billion versus $6.2 billion for Las Vegas.

How have Singapore’s two casinos managed to beat the odds?

It may have a something to do with what’s outside the casinos.

When the Singapore government issued the licenses for these first two casinos, it did so with the understanding that gaming would be just one amenity available at “Integrated Resorts” offering a wide range of dining, retail and other non-gaming activities. (As a social safeguard, the government also ruled that Singapore citizens must pay a $100 fee to enter the casinos; visitors enter for free.)

The strategy was designed to broaden Singapore’s existing mix of offerings, “enrich the overall visitor experience and strengthen our appeal to business and leisure travelers,” said Carrie Kwik, Executive Director, Integrated Resorts, Singapore Tourism Board.

To that end, the sprawling Resorts World Sentosa is home to six hotels, including a Hard Rock Hotel and one designed and named for iconic architect Michael Graves, and Southeast Asia’s first Universal Studios theme park, which recently debuted TRANSFORMERS, The Ride. Trendy shops and restaurants, a huge maritime museum, a Las Vegas-style stage show and a marine life park said to be the largest oceanarium in the world are also onsite. A six-star spa and wellness retreat is scheduled to open soon.

The 57-floor Marina Bay Sands has three giant hotel towers capped by Sands Sky Park, a cruise ship-shaped park the size of the three football fields with an observation deck, night club, restaurants and an infinity-edge swimming pool that is the world’s largest outdoor pool at that height. On the ground, the resort has a lotus-shaped museum, entertainment venues, upscale retail stores and restaurants and, of course, a casino.

“Before the integrated resorts opened, people were wondering if Singapore was taking too many chances and trading its squeaky clean image for the sleazy version that unfortunately comes with casinos,” said Robin Goh, assistant director of communications for Resorts World Sentosa. “But here no one needs to pass through a casino to check in or get to their rooms.”

The gamble seems to be paying off.

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Find more by Harriet Baskas on StuckatTheAirport.com and follow her on Twitter.

When British nightclub DJ Tony Alleyne rebuilt his apartment to resemble a spaceship from "Star Trek," he couldn't have foreseen the day when he'd have to boldly go ... someplace else.

The British tabloid The Sun reports that Alleyne's apartment, in the English town of Hinckley, is actually owned by the wife he's been separated from since 1994. Now she wants to sell, meaning he'll have to leave the space-themed home behind.

"To say I'm gutted is an understatement. It is my life's work," Alleyne told the Sun. "I admit there were tears."

He says it would cost at least 100,000 British pounds (more than $150,000 American) to redo the theme in a new apartment.

When msnbc TV reported on the apartment back in 2006, Alleyne was about to file for bankruptcy over the money spent on renovations, and said he had hoped to start a business transforming homes for other "Star Trek" fans.

Msnbc TV did another segment on Alleyne in 2007 when he was apparently also hoping to sell the tricked-out home, which includes a mock transporter.

"Most people thought I was barmy," Alleyne said at the time. "I mean, you could go spend the time down the pub or in a nightclub or whatever ... I decided to live in a spaceship." He says on his website, which bills him as a "24th century interior designer," that he became hooked on science fiction at age 11.

In the msnbc video, Alleyne, clad in a "Trek" uniform and with a bald head reminscent of "Next Generation" Captain Picard,  demonstrates that even his microwave has a snap-on panel to hide it and make it look like part of the gleaming spaceship technology. He started the project in 1997 and refitted it from the Starship Enterprise to Voyager later on.

Too bad it doesn't have a working holodeck. Would you want to live in Alleyne's apartment? Beam over to Facebook and tell us.

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