Some members of the media and human rights groups have scrutinized the singer after reports that she performed "Happy Birthday" to Turkmenistan dictator Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov on June 29. The most vocally opposed organization has been HRF, which estimates that J. Lo has received in excess of $10 million for what it calls, "serenading crooks and dictators from Eastern Europe and Russia."

"What those covering this story have missed is that J. Lo and her management have misled her fans and the public," said HRF President Thor Halvorssen. "J. Lo has repeatedly mingled with and entertained some of the world's worst thugs and their cronies."

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"The 'Jenny-from-the-block-who-doesn't-Google' clarification may be credible in one instance, but it beggars belief in light of a pattern of repeated behavior, Halvorssen continued. "This is not about ignorance, it's about greed."

The non-profit organization also chronicled Lopez's recent highly-paid appearances in Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Belarus and Russia.

HRF has previously gone after actress Hilary Swank over her 2011 visit to Chechnya, as well as singer Julio Iglesias after he performed in Equatorial Guinea.

FORT MEADE, Maryland (Reuters) - A military judge trying the soldier accused of the biggest leak of classified material in U.S. history heard arguments on Monday over two defense motions that could result in the most serious charge against him - aiding the enemy - being dropped.

U.S. Army Private First Class Bradley Manning, 25, is charged with disclosing more than 700,000 classified files, combat videos and State Department cables to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks.

Manning, who served as an intelligence analyst in Iraq in 2009 and 2010, could face life in prison without parole if convicted of aiding the enemy, the most serious of 21 charges he faces.

Defense lawyer David Coombs argued before Judge Colonel Denise Lind that Manning was guilty of negligence but not of "general evil intent," or of having knowledge it would get to the enemy.

"His intent (was) to get information out to spark reform, spark debate," Coombs told the court.

The court-martial prosecution countered by highlighting Manning's training as an intelligence officer as evidence that he would have knowledge that the leaked information would be accessed by terrorists.

"He was relied upon to brief (U.S. officials) on the enemy," prosecution lawyer Captain Angel Overgaard said. "He knew exactly what he was doing in disclosing the charged information."

The second motion concerned charges related to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Manning has already plead guilty to the lesser offense of leaking classified information, including State Department cables.

The defense is asking that the judge dismiss the greater offense, whether he knowingly exceeded authorized access, punishable by a 10-year prison sentence if found guilty.

The defense sought to draw a distinction between access and use restrictions, acknowledging that Manning may have violated user restrictions - not a breach of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The prosecution countered by arguing he exceeded authorized access.

Lind will rule on the motions on Thursday.

Over the course of the trial, defense lawyers have sought to show that the short, bespectacled Manning was naive but well-intentioned in seeking to inform Americans about the reality of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The judge also heard arguments on the prosecution's request for rebuttal and accepted the return of several witnesses for testimony starting on Thursday.

Among the witnesses recalled by the prosecution will be Army Specialist Kyra Marshall. The prosecution will attempt to establish that Manning wanted to gain notoriety rather than inform Americans about the course of the conflicts.

Marshall has testified that Manning told her: "I would be shocked if you were not telling your kids about me in 10 to 15 years from now."

The defense rested on July 10. The trial is slated to run through August 23.

(Editing by Tim Gaynor and Xavier Briand)

A combination of suspicion, funding problems, alleged corruption and inefficiency leave Ukraine with the lowest vaccination rate of the 15 former republics of the Soviet Union, even though it is one of the best developed and the rate has fallen sharply in recent years. International health officials warn that the problems leave Ukraine vulnerable to an outbreak of polio, a disease that Europe has largely stamped out.

Only about half of Ukraine's children are fully immunized against polio, measles, rubella and other diseases that vaccines can prevent, despite a government policy calling for free universal vaccination, according to UNICEF, the United Nations children's agency. That compares with a rate of some 90 percent or higher in most Western European countries.

Ukraine doesn't mandate vaccination, but encourages it by requiring children to show certification of vaccination to be admitted to public schools. However, many parents who refuse to vaccinate arrange for fake certificates.

Widespread fears about vaccines prompted the government to cancel a U.N.-backed measles vaccination campaign in 2009 and the number of measles cases skyrocketed from about 40 in 2010 to 13,000 last year, including one lethal case, according to the Health Ministry.

Possibly more worryingly, Ukraine is at risk of a polio outbreak, according to the World Health Organization. Only 74 percent of the population is immunized against it, compared with 93 percent in the United States. To boost preparedness, Ukraine last month hosted a WHO-led polio simulation exercise, in which health officials worked out ways of better detecting, isolating and treating polio cases, should an outbreak occur.

"What really worries us is that polio, a disease which we hardly see anymore ... will come to Ukraine," said Dr. Dorit Nitzan, the head of the WHO office in Ukraine. "Only then will people understand that vaccination could have saved them."

Ukrainian health guidelines say children should be vaccinated against 10 infectious diseases. UNICEF estimates that full compliance declined from 70-80 percent in 2008 to about 50 percent in 2012. The Health Ministry disputes those figures, with Health Minister Raisa Bohatyryova estimating coverage at 60-70 percent.

"Ukraine is a high-risk country for communicable diseases because the immunization coverage rate, especially among children, is very low," said Yukie Mokuo, UNICEF's representative in Ukraine, adding that the rate resembles that seen in destitute sub-Saharan African countries.

Economic problems and political crises of recent years have led to delays in vaccine procurement in the government-run health system. Some state clinics that provide free health care are without certain vaccines for months. Ukraine is battling a recession and the Health Ministry says the state budget finances only some 65 percent of its vaccination needs 302 million hrvyna ($38 million or euro30 ) of the needed 465 million ($58 million or euro45 million).

In Hlushko's case, the local government-run clinic in her city, Chernihiv, was out of the combined vaccine against diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis and polio for her daughter Anya for about 10 months. Hlushko was forced to buy the three required doses out of her own pocket from a pharmacy for 250 hryvna ($30; euro25) each, a sum she could barely afford. Tens of thousands of other parents simply cannot pay as Ukraine's average monthly wage is 3,230 hryvna.

But even when vaccines are available for free, many Ukrainian parents are afraid to use them. In 2008, the death of a 16-year-old boy less than a day after receiving a shot for measles and rubella sparked a major scare that caused a sharp drop in immunization across the country. Although the Health Ministry and the World Health Organization concluded that the boy died of a bacterial infection unrelated to the vaccine, sensationalist media coverage and contradictory government statements drove parents to refuse vaccination.

Mainstream health experts as well as WHO say that immunization is a safe, efficient and cost-effective way to combat communicable diseases and that any risks associated with vaccination are outweighed by its benefits. Despite such assurances, a UNICEF study last year concluded that nearly a third of Ukrainian parents have a negative attitude toward vaccination.

Hlushko still feels nervous about vaccine safety. "I do vaccinate, but the same time I feel fear. You have to choose the lesser of two evils," she said.

Mainstream health professionals categorically reject claims made even by many Ukrainian doctors that vaccination is harmful.

"There is an information war which civilized medicine is losing, we are sliding back into the caves," said Yevgeny Komarovsky, Ukraine's most famous pediatrician, who promotes vaccination in best-selling books and on his television show.

Some experts say the problem isn't just psychology and inadequate funding. They contend corruption at the Health Ministry causes vaccine shortages, saying complicated and opaque bidding procedures allow the ministry to purchase vaccines at inflated prices, pocketing kickbacks and leaving children without the shots.

Last year, Olivier Adam, then the United Nations Development Program representative, told the Ukrainian newspaper Dzerkalo Tyzhnya that vaccine shortages are due to "certain private interests" being taken into account during vaccine tenders.

In 2011, a U.S. Court ordered a U.S. company to pay the Ukrainian government $60 million, after Ukraine's vaccine procurement agency alleged in a lawsuit that the American firm was involved in selling the agency vaccines often at twice the real cost.

Pricing information provided by the Health Ministry shows that many of the vaccines are procured at prices often more than three times those paid by UNICEF, which enjoys discounts as the leading vaccine buyer. The U.N. agency says that it can help Ukraine purchase vaccines at its competitive prices; it also urges the government to improve its procurement mechanisms, including better forecasting national immunization needs so that no clinics go without vaccines and no vaccines go to waste.

The Health Ministry denies allegations of corruption, saying vaccines are procured in line with Ukrainian legislation "and the possibility of any kind of schemes is completely ruled out."

Revelations last year that the health minister's son co-owned a drug company that supplied the government with a vaccine which regulators found to have been produced unsafely also shook Ukrainians' trust in immunization and government healthcare.

While Bohatyryova denied that her family was involved with the company, public documents showed that her son held a 19 percent ownership stake and was on its supervisory board when she made that statement. Soon afterward, the son sold his shares and resigned from the board, and Ukraine's parliament launched an investigation into alleged financial misdeeds by the ministry in connection to the company.

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Here's a chronological gallery of photos looking back at the case, from gunshot to his acquittal by a jury.

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A Russian lawmaker who was among the officials who met privately with Snowden in the transit zone of Sheremetyevo airport on Friday said Snowden wants asylum in Russia and is willing to stop sharing the secrets in his possession in exchange for such a deal.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said Russia should instead send Snowden back to the U.S. to face the felony charges that are pending against him.

"Providing a propaganda platform for Mr. Snowden runs counter to the Russian government's previous declarations of Russia's neutrality and that they have no control over his presence in the airport," Carney said. "It's also incompatible with Russian assurances that they do not want Mr. Snowden to further damage U.S. interests."

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki used similar language to express disappointment over the meeting.

"We are disappointed that Russian officials and agencies facilitated this meeting today by allowing these activists and representatives into the Moscow airport's transit zone to meet with Mr. Snowden despite the government's declarations of Russia's neutrality with respect to Mr. Snowden," Psaki said. "Our concern here is that he's been provided this opportunity to speak in a propaganda platform."

President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed Snowden, among other issues, during a telephone call on Friday, the White House said in a terse statement that provided no specifics of their conversation about the NSA leaker. Carney said the call was planned several days ago, suggesting that it was unrelated to Snowden's meeting with the activists.

Carney said Snowden is not a human rights activist or a dissident. "He is accused of leaking classified information, has been charged with three felony counts and should be returned to the United States," the spokesman said.

Carney also urged the Russian government to "afford human rights organizations the ability to do their work in Russia throughout Russia, not just at the Moscow transit lounge."

Snowden is believed to have been staying at the airport transit zone since June 23, when he arrived by air from Hong Kong. He fled to Hong Kong from the U.S. before his revelations were made public. Snowden had been expected to transfer in Moscow to a Cuba-bound flight, but he did not get on the plane.

He made an initial bid for asylum in Russia, but Putin said Snowden would have to agree to stop leaking the classified information in his possession before asylum would be considered. Snowden then withdrew his bid.

It was not immediately clear whether Russia would take Snowden up on his latest request for asylum. The Kremlin has signaled that it wants him out of the country. Granting asylum could further test U.S.-Russia relations.

Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua recently offered Snowden asylum.

At the State Department, Psaki denied that the U.S. ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, had telephoned a representative from Human Rights Watch. The anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks, which has been assisting Snowden, said in a statement that McFaul called the Human Rights Watch representative on her way to the airport and asked her to relay a message to Snowden that he is not considered a whistle-blower and was wanted in the United States.

Psaki said a U.S. Embassy officer placed the call.

"Ambassador McFaul did not call any representative from Human Rights Watch," she said. "An embassy officer did call to explain our position ... but at no point did this official or any official from the U.S. government ask anyone to convey a message to Mr. Snowden."

Psaki confirmed, however, that U.S. officials have been in touch with individuals who attended the meeting.

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Scientists used new techniques and computing to take DNA from a 5-inch fossil fragment most of which was contaminated with more modern bacteria and get a good genetic picture of an ancestral horse. The work was published Wednesday in the journal Nature and discussed at a science conference in Helsinki.

The research gives a better insight into the evolution of one of the most studied mammals. Perhaps more importantly, it opens up new possibilities for mapping the genetic blueprints of all sorts of ancient animals from early human ancestors to mastodons to mammoths to bison, said study lead authors Ludovic Orlando and Eske Willerslev of the University of Copenhagen.

This "is breaking the time barrier," Willerslev said.

The previous oldest animal fossil genetically mapped had been an ancient relative of Neanderthals called the Denisovans, from about 75,000 years ago, found in a Siberian cave.

The ancient horse was probably about the size of current Arabian horses, the researchers said. It didn't have the same genes for large muscles that make today's breeds good for racing, and it was larger than researchers once thought, Orlando and Willerslev said.

The new mapping techniques, which involve all sorts of technical changes, could be used not just with fossils from frozen areas like Canada's Yukon and Russia's Siberia, but also from more temperate climates, and may eventually allow researchers to map animal genomes from 1 million years ago, Orlando said.

Ross MacPhee, curator of mammals at the American Museum of Natural History, who wasn't part of the research, said the accomplishment suggests "there's no reason in substance why we couldn't go back further."

"I think it's cool," said another outside expert, Edward Rubin, who heads the U.S. Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute and has deciphered Neanderthal and cave bear DNA.

"We can always keep our fingers crossed that (DNA from) an ancient hominid will be found in one of those environments that have been cold," perhaps even the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans, he said.

Orlando and Willerslev said it doesn't have to be that cold, but much of the most ancient human development was in Africa where the hotter climate makes DNA disintegrate faster. Still, there were enough hominids in temperate climates to give hope for older genome sequencing of some of our ancestors, they said.

There was a lot of junk in the Yukon fossil that wasn't horse but bacteria, Orlando said. He said for every 200 DNA molecules they sequenced, only one was from the horse.

The research estimated that the evolutionary tree split that led to horses on one branch and donkeys on the other happened about 4 million years ago.

The analysis also found new evidence that an endangered animal called the Przewalski's horse, found in Mongolia and China, is the last surviving wild horse. It is genetically distinct from domestic horses.

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Ritter reported from New York.

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Online:

Journal Nature: http://www.nature.com/nature

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Seth Borenstein can be followed on Twitter at http://twitter.com/borenbears

Malcolm Ritter can be followed at http://www.twitter.com/malcolmritter

This was just the kind of celebration that had escaped them before.

Eric Young Jr. scored on shortstop Brandon Crawford's fielding error with two outs in the 16th inning, and the Mets outlasted the San Francisco Giants 4-3 in a game that ended early Tuesday morning.

The Mets already had played three games of at least 15 innings this season and lost each one.

"I've never heard of anything like this. It's unbelievable," manager Terry Collins said. "At least we're used to it."

Young singled with one out and stole second to start the final rally. After he advanced to third on Daniel Murphy's groundout, lefty Javier Lopez entered and intentionally walked David Wright.

Crawford couldn't handle pinch-hitter Anthony Recker's grounder, allowing Young to score and handing New York the victory. The game lasted 5 hours, 26 minutes.

"We've played in some long games and we haven't always come out on the winning side," Recker said. "As soon as the 10th inning started, we were like, 'Are we really going to do this again?'"

It was the longest game in time and innings the Giants had played since losing 1-0 to the Arizona Diamondbacks in 18 innings on May 9, 2001.

Marco Scutaro walked leading off the bottom of the 16th inning, and Buster Posey hit a one-out single for the first five-hit game of his career. But Bobby Parnell regrouped to strike out Pablo Sandoval and retire pinch-hitter Guillermo Quiroz on a grounder for his 16th save.

Posey went 5 for 8, including a two-run homer and two doubles. San Francisco has lost 12 of 14 and is a season-high eight games below .500.

The Giants went 1 for 15 with runners in scoring position and stranded 18 overall 13 in the last six innings.

"That's as frustrating a game as we've had," manager Bruce Bochy said.

Tim Lincecum and Matt Harvey each threw seven innings of three-run ball before the bullpens shut down the opposition. Harvey said a blister on his right index finger has been bothering him his last two starts but he doesn't consider it an issue.

"I'm just glad we won," he said.

Josh Edgin (1-1) pitched two scoreless innings for the win. George Kontos (2-2) allowed the one unearned run in 2 2-3 otherwise solid innings.

It was the 18th major league game to go 14 innings or more this season, two shy of last year's total, according to STATS.

The Mets improved to 1-3 in games of at least 15 innings. The last team to play that many in one season was the 2004 Minnesota Twins, who went 2-2, according to STATS.

By the time the final out was recorded at 12:42 a.m. local time, only a few thousand fans remained from an announced sellout crowd of 41,497. The ferry back to Oakland-Alameda had blown its departing horn at 11:30 p.m., and the final BART trains left about midnight.

The Giants even held a 14th-inning stretch for those who stayed. So many seagulls started to hover above the stands that the scoreboard operator asked fans to clap to try and scare them away.

Both teams had chances to end the game earlier.

With runners on second and third in the 11th, Crawford made a diving stop on Marlon Byrd's grounder at shortstop and recovered for a perfect throw from the outfield grass. In the 12th, Sandoval snagged Omar Quintanilla's liner at third and threw to first to get Kirk Nieuwenhuis for a double play.

The Giants blew a gift-wrapped opportunity when Posey doubled after his fly ball bounced off the glove of Murphy backpedaling from second while Byrd tried to make a sliding catch coming in from right. Sandoval was intentionally walked before Byrd caught Hunter Pence's slicing liner and Crawford flied out.

Brandon Belt, batting in the third spot for the first time in his career, was 0 for 8 with five strikeouts, including the final out of the 12th inning with two runners on base. Bochy said he expects to keep Belt in that spot Tuesday night.

Cole Gillespie broke his bat grounding out in the 13th with runners on second and third, and Gregor Blanco grounded out with the bases loaded in the 15th.

Posey's 13th homer put the Giants ahead 2-0 in the first.

Byrd singled leading off the fifth for the first hit off Lincecum, and John Buck's double sliced San Francisco's lead to 2-1.

Young tripled leading off the sixth, and Murphy followed with the tying single. Murphy advanced to third on Scutaro's throwing error at second base and scored when Ike Davis grounded into a double play to give the Mets a 3-2 lead.

Lincecum had a season-high 11 strikeouts in seven innings. He gave up three runs, six hits and one walk. It was the 33rd time Lincecum has had at least 10 strikeouts in a game and the first time this year.

But the two-time NL Cy Young Award winner was nowhere to be found in the Giants' clubhouse after the game. A team spokesman said he had already left to recover as did many of his teammates.

Other than Posey, Harvey had his way with San Francisco's lineup until late. He allowed three runs and six hits, striking out six and walking one.

Pence, who made a pair of diving catches in right field, tripled leading off the seventh. The ball hit the cement near the top of the right-field wall and ricocheted back onto the field.

Umpires reviewed the play and ruled that the triple stood, though the decision turned out to be an afterthought. Crawford immediately singled home Pence for the tying run.

"There's frustration," Pence said. "We want to stay as positive as we can right now. We've got to get it done. We've got to keep pushing to find a way to turn it around."

NOTES: Posey will get Tuesday night's game off after catching 16 innings, Bochy said. ... Mets LHP Jonathon Niese (shoulder inflammation) has been cleared to start throwing again. The team expects him back at some point this season. ... Mets RHP Shaun Marcum had his right hand examined by a specialist in St. Louis. With an off day Thursday, Harvey is slated to take Marcum's spot in the rotation Saturday at Pittsburgh. ... Barry Zito (4-6, 4.44 ERA) starts for the Giants against Dillon Gee (6-7, 4.45) on Tuesday. Zito began warming up in the bullpen in the bottom of the 16th in case the Giants tied it.

Even the release of minutes from the latest meeting of the Federal Reserve didn't jolt stocks.

Two major U.S. stock indexes were barely changed. The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose a fraction of a point to 1,652.62. The Dow Jones industrial average eased 8.68 points, or 0.1 percent, to 15,291.66.

Every move the Fed has made in recent months has been analyzed. Wednesday's minutes from the June policy meeting were no exception.

But the minutes offered no surprises. The report showed many Fed members want to see further job gains before cutting back on the central bank's stimulus measures. It also showed some divisions among officials over when the Fed should slow that stimulus.

"I don't think the minutes offered anything that would change (my) view of the market's direction or the Fed's intentions," said Quincy Krosby, market strategist for Prudential Annuities.

The small gain in the S&P 500 kept alive its winning streak. The index has now risen five days, its best streak in two months. Investors have become more confident about the economy after the strong June jobs report. The index is up 2.9 percent in July after falling 1.5 percent in June, its first monthly decline since October.

In another sign of confidence, small-company stocks continued their surge. The Russell 2000, which represents 2,000 publicly traded companies with small market valuations, rose 2.4 points, or 0.2 percent, to a record 1,020.42.

The Nasdaq, meanwhile, is at its highest level since October 2000. The Nasdaq gained 16.5 points, or 0.5 percent, to 3,520.76. Despite its rise, the index would still have to rise 43 percent to match its all-time high of 5,048 reached March 10, 2000, the peak of the dot-com bubble.

Investors are watching earnings results for the second quarter, which ended 10 days ago. Analysts expect earnings growth to average 2.8 percent for companies in the S&P 500, according to data from S&P Capital IQ.

The expected growth isn't spectacular and that makes it more likely that companies could beat analysts' estimates, said Eric Wiegand, senior portfolio manager at U.S. Bank Wealth Management.

"We have very low expectations," Wiegand said.

Family Dollar Stores was a case in point. The discount retailer said Wednesday that its quarterly earnings fell 3 percent. But the earnings topped analysts' estimates, and the stock surged $4.55, or 7.1 percent, to $68.50, making it the biggest gainer in the S&P 500.

Dollar General was the second-biggest gainer in the index, rising $2.98, or 5.75 percent, to $54.78.

In government bond trading, the yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 2.68 percent from 2.64 percent late Tuesday. As recently as early May, the yield was 1.63 percent.

The price of crude oil jumped almost 3 percent to the highest level in 16 months after the U.S. government reported another steep decline in the nation's supplies. Oil rose $2.99 to $105.71 a barrel in New York.

The price of gold rose $1.5, or 0.1 percent, to $1,247.40 an ounce.

Among stocks making big moves:

Hewlett-Packard rose 46 cents, or 1.8 percent, to $25.93 after a Citigroup analyst raised his rating on the company. The analyst doubled his price target for the stock, saying the PC maker's turnaround efforts are taking hold.

Fastenal, an industrial and construction supplies distributor, fell $1.33, or 2.8 percent, to $45.77 after the company reported that its second-quarter revenue fell short of analysts' estimates.