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VIDEO: Today's Headline News from Associated Press

HAGEL VISITS TROOPS IN HAWAII ON FIRST ASIA TRIP

 

HONOLULU (AP) — Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has met with troops at Hickam Field in Hawaii.

 

It's the first stop on Hagel's first visit to Asia as defense chief. The weeklong trip will take him to Singapore and then to Brussels.

 

Hagel plans to deliver a speech to a national security conference in Singapore, bringing allies up to date about the Pentagon's heightened focus on the Asia-Pacific region.

 

Former defense chief Leon Panetta spoke to the conference last year, describing plans to assign 60 percent of the Navy's fleet to the Pacific even as he acknowledged ongoing budget problems.

 

It's now up to Hagel to reaffirm that commitment, even as the U.S. budget crisis continues.

 

Hagel told troops they will all have to do more with less.

 

BOSTON BOMBING SUSPECTS IS WALKING, MOTHER SAYS

 

MAKHACHKALA, Russia (AP) -- The remaining suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings has recovered enough to walk and assured his parents in a phone conversation that he and his slain brother were innocent, their mother told The Associated Press on Thursday.

 

Meanwhile, the father of a Chechen immigrant killed in Florida while being interrogated by the FBI about his ties to the slain brother maintained that the U.S. agents killed his son "execution-style."

 

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, walked without a wheelchair to speak to his mother last week for the first and only phone conversation they have had since he has been in custody, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva told the AP.

 

In a rare glimpse at Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's state of mind, he told her he was getting better and that he had a very good doctor, but was struggling to understand what happened, she said.

 

"He didn't hold back his emotions either, as if he were screaming to the whole world: What is this? What's happening?," she said.

 

The April 15 bombings killed three people and wounded more than 260. Elder brother, 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was killed in a shootout with police, and Dzhokhar remains in a prison hospital after being badly wounded.

 

"I could just feel that he was being driven crazy by the unfairness that happened to us, that they killed our innocent Tamerlan," their mother said, standing by the family's insistent belief that their children are innocent.

 

RUSSIANS FIND MAMMOTH CARCASS WITH LIQUID BLOOD

 

MOSCOW (AP) -- Russian researchers say they have discovered a perfectly preserved woolly mammoth carcass with liquid blood on a remote Arctic island, fueling hopes of cloning the Ice Age animal.

 

They say the frozen remains of a female mammoth were so well-preserved that blood was found in ice cavities when they were broken up.

 

Semyon Grigoryev, the head of the Mammoth Museum who led the expedition, said Thursday the carcass was preserved because its lower part was stuck in pure ice. He said the find could provide scientific material for cloning a mammoth.

 

Wooly mammoths are thought to have died out about 10,000 years ago. Scientists have deciphered much of the animals' genetic code from their hair, and some believe it's possible to clone them if living cells are found.