WASHINGTON (Reuters) - George Jones, a classic country singer with a voice full of raw honky-tonk emotion and a life full of honky-tonk turmoil, died on Friday at age 81, his spokesman said.

Jones, whose career spanned more than six decades and included hits such as "He Stopped Loving Her Today" and "Window Up Above," died at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, in Nashville.

He had been hospitalized since April 18 with fever and irregular blood pressure, spokesman Kirt Webster said.

In November 2012, Jones embarked on a farewell tour after a career that produced his first top 10 record in 1955 with "Why Baby Why."

The "Grand Tour" was to conclude in Nashville in November this year, where Jones was to be joined by some of the many stars who influenced him.

News of his death brought tributes from a number of country music's top stars.

"Heaven better get ready for George Jones. He will always be the greatest singer of real country music - there'll never be another," Alan Jackson said on Twitter.

Dolly Parton said, "My heart is absolutely broken. George Jones was my all time favorite singer and one of my favorite people in the world."

"George Jones has passed. Damn. Thought he'd live forever. Let's break out his catalogue and play it all day," said Toby Keith.

Like his idol, Hank Williams, Jones battled addiction. Alcohol and cocaine frequently derailed his career and at one point his reputation for canceling performances earned him the nickname No-Show Jones.

But when Jones did show up and was in good form, listeners were treated to a powerful and evocative voice. Jones was at his best with cry-in-your-beer songs made extra mournful by his masterful phrasing.

As his late contemporary Waylon Jennings put it, "If we could all sound like we wanted to, then we'd all sound like George Jones."

Born in Saratoga, Texas, on September 12, 1931, Jones began performing for spare change as a boy on the streets of nearby Beaumont. Under the influence of Williams, Ernest Tubb and Lefty Frizzell, he graduated to the rough roadhouses of East Texas.

Jones had an early marriage, a divorce and a stint in the Marines before his first hit, "Why Baby Why" in 1955. His first No. 1 song, "White Lightning," came in 1959, followed by "Tender Years" in 1961.

'THE POSSUM'

The next two decades brought a string of top 10 songs - "If Drinkin' Don't Kill Me (Her Memory Will)," "Window Up Above," "She Thinks I Still Care," "Good Year for the Roses," "The Race Is On" and "He Stopped Loving Her Today," which Jones said was his favorite. He also had a successful run of duets early in his career with Melba Montgomery.

Jones, who was known as "The Possum," divorced his second wife in 1968 and the next year married one of country music's most popular singers, Tammy Wynette. The pairing was an enormous professional success for both as they recorded and toured together and Jones began working with Billy Sherrill, Wynette's producer.

During his time with Sherrill, Jones refined his honky-tonk voice and sang more ballads, often with the lush string accompaniment that had become a trend in the country music capital of Nashville.

The marriage to Wynette went bad as Jones' addiction problem escalated and Wynette claimed he once came at her with a gun. They divorced in 1975 but later resumed recording together. Wynette died in 1998 at age 55.

Jones continued to put out hit songs in the early 1980s, even as cocaine compounded his personal tumult. Amid a string of hospitalizations and arrests, he disappeared for days at a time, missed shows and recording sessions and took police on a drunken chase through Nashville.

Jones credited fourth wife Nancy, whom he married in 1983, with helping him clean up. But in 1999 he was seriously injured after driving drunk and crashing into a bridge, leading to another stay in rehab.

At one point Jones was so incorrigible that one of his four wives cleared the liquor from their home and hid all the car keys so he could not go for more. Jones responded by cranking up his riding lawn mower and driving it to a bar - an escapade he chronicled in "Honky Tonk Song."

Although he was heard infrequently on mainstream country radio in the later years of his career, Jones was a sought-after duet partner and won a Grammy for the song "Choices" in 1999.

He also won a Grammy for best male country vocal performance in 1980 for "He Stopped Loving Her Today," and received a lifetime achievement Grammy last year.

(Additional reporting by Tim Ghianni in Nashville and Jill Serjeant; Writing by Bill Trott; Editing by Vicki Allen)

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The 2014 Ryder Cup may be a distant 16 months away but United States captain Tom Watson has already identified three winning qualities he needs in his 12-man team to take on holders Europe in Scotland.

Above all, Watson wants his players to have a 'never-say-die' attitude, the ability to thrive under pressure and also to cope well in adverse weather conditions.

"Basically, it comes down to three things and these three things should come as no surprise," Watson wrote in the first installment of his captain's blog, posted on Friday on the official Ryder Cup website (www.rydercup.com).

"1. I'm looking at players who have a lot of heart. 2. I'm looking at a player who can hold or even increase his lead under pressure.

"3. I'm looking for a player who can play well in bad conditions. That last one should be obvious, because those are likely to be the type of conditions we'll face in Scotland."

Nine players will automatically qualify via the U.S. points standings for the September 26-28 matches at Gleneagles and Watson will then round out his team with three wildcard picks, to be announced earlier that month.

LAYING GROUNDWORK

Though the U.S. points system is barely underway, Watson says he has already spent a great deal of time over the last few months laying the foundation to his Ryder Cup preparations.

"Several processes have been put in place," added Watson, who will be 65 when the matches are played at Gleneagles in Scotland, making him the oldest captain in Ryder Cup history.

"While I haven't made any final decisions, I've given a lot of thought to the people I'll use as assistant captains, caddie liaisons and other people I'll entrust with the workings of the Ryder Cup. The process is ongoing.

"I'm formulating a list of names and asking questions about certain people privately. That goes part and parcel with getting to know the players and their abilities better. It's an observational process that I'll be going through with help from others."

Watson, who led the U.S. to victory in 1993 in his previous stint as Ryder Cup captain, said he was thirsty for as much inside information as possible on his likely players at Gleneagles.

"That's the process," he said. "That's what I'm going through. This is a different way of being involved with golf than what I've been used to for many years.

"Now, I'm actively involved in paying attention to the outcome at tournaments for players other than myself."

A winner of eight majors, including five British Opens, Watson is the seventh man to be named U.S. captain on more than one occasion. The last was Jack Nicklaus in 1987.

Americans are hoping the appointment of Watson will end a run of seven losses against Europe in the last nine editions of the biennial competition.

Their most recent defeat came in Chicago last year when the U.S. threw away a commanding four-point lead heading into the final day in what became known as the 'Meltdown at Medinah.'

(Reporting by Mark Lamport-Stokes; Editing by Frank Pingue)

RELATED:

It may seem impossible, but there is going to be another Men in Black. I guess aliens will never stop attacking us. And, y'know, Men In Black III, which , made the most money in the franchise's history. So Universal has hired a screenwriter. It's unclear if Will Smith will be back, expensive as he is (and probably bored?), but something in the larger MiB world is on its way. Probably far off, but on its way. Which, fine, whatever. There are far more offensive movie franchises to get upset about. Transformers comes to mind. Or Percy Jackson. Or that hideous Up Series. That Michael Apted. What a hack. []

RELATED:

Michael Caine has joined the cast of Christopher Nolan's Interstellar, because Michael Caine is always in Christopher Nolan movies. They're basically best friends at this point. Caine joins Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, and the just-announced Jessica Chastain. Yup. Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain in the same movie. Can you imagine? That's going to be pretty, pretty intense. Imagine them at the press junket together. Sitting in director's chairs all day in the same small, dark room. That will not end well! But hopefully the movie will at least be good. All we know about the plot right now is that it concerns "a heroic interstellar voyage to the farthest borders of our scientific understanding," so that could be anything. That could be a wacky comedy for all we know! I mean, it won't be, but it could be. Anyway. Michael Caine. Welcome to the club. []

RELATED:

Disney Channel star Bella Thorne (she's on some show about dancing, I believe) has been cast in the new Adam Sandler/Drew Barrymore romantic comedy Blended. She will play the blender. No no, she's going to play Adam Sandler's daughter. That's a big break for her, at all of 15 years old. I'm sure the Disney lot is going to be an intense place for the next few weeks, as she walks around all puffed up, referring to "Adam" and "Drew" all the time with practiced ease, not noticing of course the posters of Miley Cyrus and Hilary Duff fading and yellowing on the walls. []

RELATED:

Here's a new, more plot-heavy trailer for Roland Emmerich's White House siege actioner White House Down. The teaser made the movie look kind of exciting, all jittery and newsy (I mean, in a ridiculous made-up way) and paranoid. But this trailer... Yikes. This thing looks straight-up corny, from the imperiled child actress to Jamie Foxx's True Lies-esque thing about dropping the rocket launcher. I don't know. I guess I shouldn't have expected much, this being a Roland Emmerich movie and everything, but I surprisingly liked Anonymous so much that I was hoping he'd maybe turned a directing corner. But, nope. Seemingly not. Ah well.

RELATED:

https://groups.diigo.com/group/brantefny/content/chimps-don-t-wear-glasses-stories-to-go-ebook-downloads-9336919
http://tamelayupeu.inube.com/blog/3257971/sony-super-digital-slr-handbook-with-cd-rom-download/
http://ballosec.info/1/books/The%20Google-Yahoo%21%20agreement%20and%20the%20future%20of%20Internet%20advertising:%20hearing%20before%20the%20Subcommittee%20on%20Antitrust%2c%20Competition%20Policy
http://elincurud.inube.com/blog/3257975/downloads-irresistible-you/
http://phileyp.guildomatic.com/news/show/1427073
http://delmabae.guildomatic.com/news/show/1427067
http://en.netlog.com/angelinecreswell/blog/blogid=22038576
http://en.netlog.com/nicollecamacho/blog/blogid=22038581
http://pdotkeal.metroblog.com/james_beard_s_theory_and_practice_of_good_cooking_james_beard_library_of_great_american_cooking_e_book
http://terencelik.jigsy.com/entries/general/download-the-great-seattle-fire-of-june-6th-1889-containing-a-succinct-and-complete-account-of-the-greatest-conflagration-on-the-pacific-coast-e-book
http://linahio.guildomatic.com/news/show/1427077
http://pulimonk.bravesites.com/entries/general/haunted-ohio-4-restless-spirits-haunted-ohio-series-ebook
http://en.netlog.com/kendallheiner/blog/blogid=22038596
http://en.netlog.com/lishabeaver/blog/blogid=22038611
http://susieyobu.jigsy.com/entries/general/downloads-handbook-of-electronic-charts-graphs-and-tables-prentice-hall-series-in-electronic-technology-e-book
http://erynyiubreo.inube.com/blog/3257982/out-of-step-out-of-detroit-e-book-downloads/
http://lauriepuh.jigsy.com/entries/general/download-herbal-medicine-healing-cancer-a-comprehensive-program-for-prevention-and-treatment-e-book
https://groups.diigo.com/group/chinayoo/content/download-the-murder-hole-a-jean-fairbairn-alasdair-cameron-mystery-book-9336922

DUBLIN (AP) -- Ireland's Roman Catholic leaders appealed to the public Friday to lobby their lawmakers to reject a bill that would permit abortions deemed necessary to save the life of the pregnant woman, a measure long ordered by Irish and European courts.

In a joint statement, Ireland's bishops, archbishops and lone cardinal described the bill, unveiled this week after decades of debate, as "a dramatic and morally unacceptable change to Irish law."

They argued it would be most grievously wrong to give any woman an abortion to assuage her threats to commit suicide, as the bill allows.

"It is a tragic moment for Irish society when we regard the deliberate destruction of a completely innocent person as an acceptable response to the threat of the preventable death of another person," the bishops wrote.

Cardinal Sean Brady, leader of Ireland's 4 million Catholics, said in an interview that the bill made the right to life of the fetus subservient to the rights of the woman. "There are two lives involved here," he said.

The intervention of Ireland's dominant church in the abortion debate raises the political temperature at a moment when the 2-year-old government of Prime Minister Enda Kenny is already fraying over the merits of the bill. The government has been under international pressure to clarify the rights of doctors to perform life-saving abortions since October, when a miscarrying Indian woman died from blood poisoning in an Irish hospital after being denied a termination.

The smaller left-wing party in the coalition, Labour, supports the bill but Catholic conservatives in Kenny's own Fine Gael party are vowing to weaken or block it, chiefly over its suicide section. The bill faces weeks of parliamentary debate and likely amendments before reaching a vote expected in July.

If passed, the bill would permit a single doctor to authorize an abortion if the woman's life was in immediate danger from continued pregnancy; two doctors if the pregnancy posed a potentially lethal risk, such as by triggering the return of cancer in remission; and three doctors if the woman was threatening to kill herself.

Kenny, who has previously clashed with Brady and other Catholic leaders over their admitted involvement in child abuse cover-ups, declined to respond. But Deputy Foreign Minister Eamon Gilmore, the Labour leader, said the bishops had no influence on government policy.

"They're entitled to express their point of view. This is a democratic country. But the laws of this country are made by those of us who are elected by the people and are charged with that responsibility," Gilmore said. "And for 21 years now, legislators have failed to legislate for a Supreme Court decision which set down what was lawful and what wasn't lawful in circumstances where a pregnant woman's life is at risk. It is time that that legislation is dealt with."

In 1992, the Supreme Court ruled that an abortion in Ireland should be lawful only if doctors determined one was necessary to preserve the woman's life. Crucially, the judges found that this rule should apply to women making credible threats to kill themselves if denied a termination.

In 2010, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Ireland's failure to back the Supreme Court judgment with laws and medical regulations meant Irish doctors were left in legal limbo and women were endangered in the process.

The Strasbourg, France-based court found that doctors sometimes told pregnant patients who needed abortions, particularly to keep their cancer in remission, to travel to England for the procedures. The court ordered Ireland to remedy the situation.

But the government still took no action until the death of Savita Halappanavar. She was 17 weeks pregnant when hospitalized in severe pain at the start of a protracted miscarriage.

Doctors refused her requests to terminate the pregnancy, arguing that the fetal heartbeat must stop first. During a three-day delay, a coroner's inquest found, Halappanavar contracted blood poisoning from ruptured uterine membranes and died of massive organ failure after the fetus' own death.

Ireland has the most severe restrictions on abortion in Europe. An 1861 law makes it a crime punishable by life in prison to procure or perform an abortion. The bill would reduce that maximum prison penalty to 14 years. Dozens of women in Irish maternity wards annually do receive abortions, but only for the most clear-cut medical emergencies.

Malta, the only other European Union member to outlaw abortions except for life-saving purposes, sets the maximum prison sentence at three years. And Poland, which outlaws abortion except in cases involving medical emergencies, incest, rape or serious genetic abnormalities, has no such criminal penalties.

The other 24 EU states all offer wider access to abortion, most notably neighboring Britain, the favored destination for Irish abortion-seekers since England legalized the practice in 1967.

More than 4,000 Irish women receive abortions there annually, while an increasing number induce their own miscarriages at home by using drugs ordered from foreign suppliers via the Internet.

Gen. Garad Nor Abdulle, a senior police official said the members of the Qatari delegation were unharmed and safely reached their hotel.

Mohamed Abdi, an officer at the scene of the blast, said four civilians and a soldier died in the attack.

Soldiers fired in the air to disperse crowds that had gathered at the blast site at the busy KM4 junction.

The Somali government reopened key roads in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, four days ago which had been closed for security reasons. The road was closed after the government received intelligence that militants were planning attacks, officials said.

KM4 is among the busiest roads in Mogadishu, largely used by government officials and African Union forces. It connects the presidential compound and other government offices to the airport.

The car bombing falls into a pattern of attacks blamed on the Islamic extremist group al-Shabab, which has been pushed out of much of the areas it occupied in South and Central Somalia by African Union troops.

Al-Shabab once controlled almost all of Mogadishu. African Union and Somali forces pushed the radical rebels out of the city in 2011, but the fighters have continued to carry out bomb attacks.

Al-Shabab claimed responsibility for an attack on Somali's Supreme Court last month that killed 35, including nine attackers.

Somalia's prime minister said that several experienced foreign fighters took part in attack on the Supreme Court, the most serious Islamic extremist attack on Mogadishu in years, while other officials indicated the explosive devices were more advanced than normal, a possible indication of greater involvement by al-Qaida.The attack included six suicide bombings and two car bombs.

Al-Shabab boasts several hundred foreign fighters, including some from the Middle East with experience in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. Al-Shabab also recruits fighters from Somali communities in the United States and Europe.

In March, an explosives-filled car targeting a truck of government officials hit a civilian car and exploded, setting a mini-bus on fire and killing at least seven.

Tsarnaev, the eldest of two sibling suspects in the April 15 attacks that killed three people and injured more than 200, died four days later in a shootout with police. His bullet-riddled body has yet to be claimed, and Dr. Michael Craig Miller claims his brain could hold important clues.

"There are political motives, social motives, cultural motives, but one that gets less attention is the biological basis for all this,"said Miller, a psychiatrist at Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where Tsarnaev died and his younger brother, Dzhohkar Tsarnaev, was treated for bullet wounds.

In , Miller argued that neuroscientists should be given the chance to examine Tsarnaev's brain.

"This suspect's brain may teach us a small but important bit about the biology of violence," he wrote.

Miller, a former Watertown, Mass., resident who is also an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, said Tsarnaev's boxing career could have triggered chronic traumatic encephalopathy or CTE, a degenerative brain disease linked to concussions. Researchers at Boston University have found evidence of CTE in the brains of , including eight boxers.

"Our local experts should get the chance to study Tamerlan Tsarnaev's brain. And they should study it as closely as our forensic experts have studied a few blocks along Boylston Street," Miller wrote.

CTE is associated with impaired judgment, impulse control problems and aggression, according to. The condition, which shares symptoms with Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and Lou Gehrig's disease, is also marked by memory loss, confusion and depression.

It's the second time in four months that the brain of an alleged killer has become the topic of such interest and speculation. In January 2013, one month afterkilling 26 people, including 20 children, and then himself, a medical examiner said he found nothing unusual in the 20-year-old's brain.

"It's a fishing expedition," Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Wayne Carver IIof the Lanza brain study.

But Miller described the case of Charles Whitman, who in 1966 killed his mother, his wife, and 17 strangers at the University of Texas in Austin. The day before, he wrote a note requesting an autopsy of his brain an autopsy that revealed a tumor pressing on his amygdala, an almond-shaped brain structure that regulates emotion.

The pathologist ultimately decided that the tumor had no bearing on the case, and that Whitman was "a psychopath of the worst kind," according to Miller's op-ed.

"Even though there's a biological basis for our actions, we're still responsible for our actions," Miller said, adding that Tsarnaev might have "a perfectly a healthy brain" or evidence of disease that fails to fully explain his actions. "But it's in his brain that these ideas were formed. And so it would be interesting to look at that organ, where those ideas began."

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The euro zone economy will contract by more than expected this year and budget deficits will decline more slowly, the European Commission said on Friday as it set out forecasts for the next two years.

France, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands - four of the five largest euro zone economies - will be in recession through 2013, the Commission's forecasts showed, with only Germany, the largest euro zone economy, managing to eke out growth.

"In view of the protracted recession, we must do whatever it takes to overcome the unemployment crisis in Europe. The EU's policy mix is focused on sustainable growth and job creation," EU Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn said.

"Fiscal consolidation is continuing, but its pace is slowing down. In parallel, structural reforms must be intensified to unlock growth in Europe."

The Commission said the euro zone economy would shrink 0.4 percent this year and grow 1.2 percent next year, revising down its projections from last February of a 0.3 percent recession and 1.4 percent growth respectively.

The forecast is roughly in line with the mid-point of the -0.9 to -0.1 percent range forecast for 2013 by the ECB in March, and the 0.0 to 2.0 percent growth range seen for 2014.

The expectations underline a shift of focus in the 17 countries that share the euro from sharp fiscal consolidation in the first years of the sovereign debt crisis to economic growth as earlier radical deficit cuts and European Central Bank action restored some market trust in euro zone finances.

Economic growth will be slower than thought in all the biggest euro zone countries, with France even dipping into a recession of 0.1 percent, rather than growing 0.1 percent as forecast in February, the Commission said.

The only positive change against the February forecasts was Greece, where the economy is now seen contracting 4.2 percent this year, rather than the previous 4.4 percent.

To reduce the negative impact of fiscal consolidation on growth, the overall euro zone budget deficit reduction will be marginally slower this year and next compared with forecast from three months ago. Country differences are bigger.

The aggregate euro zone deficit is to fall to 2.9 percent of gross domestic product this year and to 2.8 percent next year from 3.7 percent last year -- only 0.1 percentage point for each year less than previously envisaged.

But the slower consolidation will be most pronounced in Italy, which is now seen reducing its budget shortfall only to 2.9 percent of GDP this year from 3 percent in 2012, rather than to the 2.1 percent forecast in February.

The main reason for that is a deeper than expected recession this year and a more modest economic rebound in 2014, when Rome is to bring the budget gap down to 2.5 percent, against the earlier forecast 2.1 percent.

France, also in recession, is to have a budget shortfall of 3.9 percent this year and 4.2 percent in 2014 unless policies change, against earlier forecasts of 3.7 percent and 3.9 percent respectively.

Portugal, on a euro zone financial lifeline, will cut its budget deficit this year only to 5.5 percent of GDP from 6.4 percent last year because the recession there will be deeper than expected. The 2013 target in February was 4.9 percent.

(Reporting By Jan Strupczewski; editing by Luke Baker)

However, is the best way to determine which teacher is cut from a district to base it on who was last hired?

The ease of application of Last In, First Out has allowed a difficult conversation to be avoidedthe discussion of how to evaluate teachers. Rather than simply looking at hire date, why not have a conversation about the quality of teachers, not the longevity of teachers time in a classroom?

Asus, the company that built the first Eee PC netbook, seems to have gotten the memo that netbooks aren't "in" anymore. It's calling its new 10.1-inch laptop theand nowhere on Asus' product page does the word netbook appear, even though its screen size and $299 price tag put it in line with pretty much every netbook ever made.

In what may be another throwback to the early days of laptops, Joey-Elijah Sneddon of the OMG! Ubuntu! blog reports that the 1015E Series will optionallyThere's only a Windows 8 option available on Asus' product page, but it's right under a section which says "Choose your model," which implies that more may become available.

What is the 1015E Series Notebook capable of?

Anything a normal laptop can do, aside from advanced PC games. It'll just do it much slower, thanks to its 1.1 GHz Celeron processor and its 5400 RPM hard drive -- the solid-state drives used in the 11-inch MacBook Air are the biggest reason why they feel so fast compared to PC laptops the same size.

What are its other specs like?

It has a 1366 x 768 display, which is the same resolution as a midrange laptop's but sharper thanks to the smaller screen. It also has "up to" 7 1/2 hours of battery life, an option which probably increases the price, weight, and thickness (it's normally less than an inch thick and weighs 2.64 pounds).

Most of the other features are more or less standard, except for its ability to resume from hibernate mode in two seconds.

Why isn't it called a "netbook?"

The word "netbook" has come to mean a small, slow, and cheap laptop, and while they used to be popular, the iPad has sharply cut into their sales. Asus earlier announced plans to abandon the "netbook" market, while Samsung and Acer have both moved on to making netbook-sized "Chromebooks" instead. Asus appears to have decided to just keep making netbooks, and call them by a different name.

Other Ubuntu notebooks

Ubuntu fans who want a small and cheap laptop often buy Chromebooks and install Ubuntu on them, although there are a handful of netbooks sold with Ubuntu preinstalled. Dell also manufactureswhich is powered by Ubuntu, while boutique computer shopsandboth offer Ubuntu laptops as well.

Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.

Each driver and car owner was docked 25 championship points, dropping Keselowski from second to fourth in the Cup standings and Logano from ninth 14th.

Along with the $100,000 fine they each got, Keselowski crew chief Paul Wolfe and Logano crew chief Todd Gordon were suspended for the next six championship points races and placed on probation for the rest of the calendar year. Also suspended and put on probation were Travis Geisler, who serves as team manager for both cars, and the individual car chiefs and team engineers for the two cars.

NASCAR also announced penalties for Martin Truex Jr. and Ron Hornaday Jr., but neither was as steep as those against the Penske cars.

Penske Racing vowed to appeal, a move that would put any suspensions on hold.

"Penske Racing will appeal utilizing the appropriate NASCAR process," the team said. "We have no further comment at this time."

NASCAR inspectors confiscated the original rear-end housing with suspension parts from Keselowski's No. 2 Ford and Logano's No. 22 before Saturday night's race, causing a pre-race scramble for both teams. Logano was late to the starting grid because of additional inspections and had to start at the back of the field. He recovered to finish fifth and Keselowski was ninth.

Keselowski was livid following the race.

"The things I've seen over the last seven days have me questioning everything that I believe in, and I'm not happy about it," Keselowski said. "I have one good thing to say, and that was my team and the effort they put in today, in fighting back with the absolute (expletive) that's been the last seven days in this garage area."

NASCAR said both Penske cars used parts that had not been approved before getting to Texas. This is the first year of the series' new cars that underwent nearly two years of testing before their debuts.

With the team manager and the engineers of both cars also being suspended, the penalties against the Penske teams went further than last season, when Jimmie Johnson's No. 48 car failed the opening day inspection at the Daytona 500. Five-time championship winning crew chief Chad Knaus and the car chief for that Hendrick Motorsports car were suspended for six races.

Knaus still had to pay a $100,000 fine, but the bulk of the penalties levied against him and the car chief were later overturned by NASCAR's chief appellate officer, the highest level of appeal. Johnson also got back 25 points that had been docked.

Logano said Wednesday on NASCAR Race Hub that the fines and penalties won't be a distraction for Penske Racing.

"We can definitely move ahead. We are ready for that and obviously we have talked a lot about it," said Logano, whose appearance on the Speed Channel show was previously scheduled. "Penske Racing has a lot of depth inside the company, and we can make adjustments to make sure we still run well.

"I think it goes to show we made some adjustments before the race started and we still were able to come home with a top-five finish," he said, also noting Keselowski's top-10 finish. "Proud of that effort in Texas, and especially after all of the adversity there. I think it says a lot about our company."

Keselowski, who has six top-10 finishes, got a penalty a week earlier at Martinsville for pitting outside his stall. He still disputes that.

"There's so much stuff going on. You guys have no idea ... what's going on," Keselowski said Saturday night. "I could tell you there is nobody, no team in this garage with the integrity of the 2 team. And the way we've been treated over the last seven days is absolutely shameful."

NASCAR didn't punish Keselowski for his post-race rant.

Keselowski spent Tuesday at the White House, where President Barack Obama honored him and his crew for winning the Sprint Cup championship.

Truex, who finished second at Texas behind Kyle Busch, was punished for having a front end that was too low. He and owner Michael Waltrip were each docked six points and crew chief Chad Johnston was fined $25,000 and placed on probation until June 5. The points deduction dropped Truex from 16th to 19th heading into this weekend's race at Kansas.

NASCAR fined Hornaday $25,000 and docked him 25 points for spinning Darrell Wallace Jr. under caution in Sunday's Truck Series race at Rockingham.Hornaday's team, NTS Motorsports, said it wouldn't appeal the penalties.

___

AP Auto Racing Writer Jenna Fryer contributed to this report.