A father's anguish in Gaza

Jihad Misharawi carries his son’s body at a Gaza hospital. (AP)

Jihad Misharawi, a BBC Arabic correspondent who lives in Gaza, tragically became part of the story he's been covering on Wednesday, when an Israeli airstrike killed his 11-month-old son.

A chilling photo showing Misharawi carrying his son's body through al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City was published by the Associated Press and printed on the front page of Thursday's Washington Post.

According to Paul Danahar, the BBC's Middle East bureau chief, Misharawi's sister-in-law was also killed in the the airstrike that hit his home in Gaza. Misharawi's brother was also seriously wounded, Danahar said.

"This is a particularly difficult moment for the whole bureau in Gaza," BBC World editor Jon Williams wrote in a memo to colleagues. "We're fortunate to have such a committed and courageous team there. It's a sobering reminder of the challenges facing many of our colleagues."

At least 10 Palestinians, including Hamas military chief Ahmed al-Jabari, were killed during the Israeli airstrikes on Wednesday, Palestinians officials said.

Israel launched the operation targeting militants in response to successive days of rocket fire coming out of Gaza. Hamas, meanwhile, warned Jabari's assassination "had opened the gates of hell."

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Police test Afghanistan's fragile ethnic balance

MARJAH, Afghanistan (AP) — Patrolling in all-terrain vehicles that whip up clouds of dust, members of Afghanistan's elite Civil Order Police might be viewed as outsiders here in southern Helmand province, an ethnic Pashtun heartland where residents talk wistfully of the Taliban's rule, call NATO troops invaders and refer to Afghan government officials as thieves.

Col. Khalil Rahman and the 441 police under his command in the 3rd Battalion are almost all from northern Afghanistan and belong to minority ethnic groups. Many don't even speak Pashto, the language of most southerners. That could be a recipe for conflict in this majority Pashtun country that descended into a bloody civil war over ethnic lines in the 1990s.

Yet Rahman said he asked for each of his three deployments to Helmand and is planning to settle his bride of two months in the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah.

"This is my country, all of it. I asked to come here," said Rahman, 30, whose clean-shaven face and tightly cropped hair contrasts with most local men, who wear unkempt bushy beards and the traditional turban. Still, when they met in the villages, he embraced them in the traditional hug and Pashtu greeting of "May you not get weary."

As the U.S. and NATO close out their mission in Afghanistan preparing for the final withdrawal of combat troops by the end of 2014, the worry looms large that fresh outbursts of ethnically motivated fighting would send the country into a spiral of chaos and violence that could give al-Qaida the toehold it needs to re-establish camps to plot attacks on Western targets and train wannabe jihadis.

But an Associated Press reporter and photographer who accompanied the 3rd Battalion for a week did not observe any hostility among local residents to the Civil Order Police, known as ANCOP. Instead, they channeled much of their anger toward government officials, an international community they said reneged on promises of development and the U.S- financed Afghan Local Police.

"No one helps us," said Abdul Qayyum, who was up to his elbows in mud after stepping away from repairing his sun-baked mud home. "The situation was good before the fighting," he said.

Qayyum was referring to the joint NATO, U.S. and Afghan assault on Taliban bases in Marjah, a sprawling region of dozens of small mud villages with a total population of less than 50,000. The idea behind the February 2010 counterinsurgency operation — the largest in Afghanistan since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion — was to kick out the Taliban and make Marjah a model of development and good governance, a shining example of how an area can prosper if it spurns the Taliban and embraces the Afghan government.

It hasn't quite worked out that way, however.

Instead, the Taliban routinely lay mines on the road, and Marjah residents complain bitterly that the development they were promised hasn't materialized and that international money went into the hands of a few corrupt government and tribal leaders.

The residents particularly resent the establishment of the U.S-financed Afghan Local Police, who they say routinely set up random road blocks, charge tolls and threaten to turn over villagers to the Americans as Taliban if they don't pay bribes.

International and Afghan human rights groups have also criticized the Afghan Local Police for various abuses.

Anatol Lieven, chair of international relations at the War Studies Department at the U.K-based King College, said "the local police as a force . . . absent U.S. funding and backup will inevitably turn into drug dealing militias."

Yet Seth Jones, a senior analyst at the U.S.-based Rand Corporation, said the reputation is undeserved.

"The program appears to be effective in undermining Taliban and other insurgent control of parts of the south, east, north, and west ... (and) is contributing to improved security and governance," Jones said. "As with any program, it does have its challenges."

But in Marjah, the criticism was loud and clear.

In a tiny general store in Marjah, Mullah Daoud scoffed when he recalled the 2010 operation, saying they were told prosperity would follow. He said corrupt government officials instead set up shop, along with the local police.

"ANCOP does not bother us. The local police are the problem," said Daoud, an elderly man with a gray beard who was lying on a bright red cushion.

A half-dozen other men — some sitting nearby on the floor, some peering through the curtained door — then launched into a chorus of complaints about the police. One man said the police seized his motorcycle, another said he was forced to pay $20 to get his cotton crop past a checkpoint.

Among the Afghan security forces, the 16,500-strong ANCOP stands out as an exception. They are better educated than the average national policeman or soldier, most of whom can neither read nor write. An ANCOP recruit needs a Grade 9 education, and some among Rahman's battalion are college graduates. They study human rights and behavioral science.

In Helmand, Rahman's men run patrols between Lashkar Gah and Marjah along dirt roads and through mud villages, where they create small outposts and swarm areas where Taliban fighters have been sighted. Occasionally they team up with the Afghan Army and National Police for assaults on Taliban hideouts. They also set up road blocks, stop vehicles and search the occupants — though not women.

Daoud said ANCOP conducts patrols but does not search homes. "They are good. We don't mind them," he said.

He and others in Marjah say the biggest problems with law enforcement in the area are bad training, poor discipline and corruption — not ethnicity.

Some analysts agree that Afghanistan's ethnic divisions have been oversimplified, and even misunderstood.

"There is a tendency among observers to overestimate the animosity between the north and the south, or rather to see it something fixed and static. As if people hate each other just because they are from different areas. It's not like that," said Martine van Bijlert, co-director of Afghanistan Analysts Network, an independent research group based in Afghanistan.

She said animosity arises when one ethnic group forcibly tries to subdue another, not when a group like ANCOP enters an ethnic majority Pashtun area with the intention of working with the population.

"It would probably be quite difficult to rile up people against a contingent that is largely from the north but that behaves well, you would need some pretty strong propaganda and even then it would probably be an uphill struggle," she said. "Many people in the south, and all over the country, are really on the lookout for representatives of the government that behave well. They still hold out the hope that this can supersede factionalism and other dividing lines."

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Kathy Gannon is AP Special Regional Correspondent for Afghanistan and Pakistan. She can be followed on www.twitter.com/kathygannon

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Facebook jumps on biggest lock-up expiration day

NEW YORK (AP) — Facebook‘s stock is up more than 7 percent despite expectations that it would fall because more than 850 million additional shares in the company are being freed up for sale.

Shares of Facebook Inc. are up $ 1.48, or 7.5 percent, at $ 21.34. Facebook went public in May at $ 38 in a much-hyped initial public offering of stock that turned out to be a letdown for investors. Its stock price hasn’t hit $ 38 since.

Wednesday marked the expiration of Facebook’s biggest lock-up period, which is a time following an IPO that prevents insiders from selling stock. In all, 773 million shares became eligible for sale, along with 31 million restricted stock units. And about 48 million shares held by former Facebook employees also became eligible for sale, bringing the total to 852 million. These shares would be on top of what’s already been available for trading, increasing the supply and potentially lowering the overall price.

Lock-ups are common after initial public stock offerings and are designed to prevent a stock from experiencing the kind of volatility that might occur if too many shareholders decide to sell all at once.

The previous lock-up expired on Oct. 29, when U.S. stock markets were closed because of Superstorm Sandy. Facebook’s stock fell nearly 4 percent two days later, when the stock market reopened.

Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Youssef Squali believes a potential increase in the capital gains tax on Jan. 1, when Bush-era tax cuts would expire unless Congress acts, could pressure Facebook’s stock. That said, he called the Menlo Park, Calif.-based social media company a “long-term winner.”

Facebook’s stock saw its biggest one-day gain on Oct. 24, the day after the company reported stronger-than-expected third-quarter results and detailed for the first time how much money it made from mobile ads. The stock, which added 19 percent that day, closed at $ 23.23. Even with Wednesday’s gain, it is still 8 percent below that price.

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Judge tosses anti-paparazzi counts in Bieber case

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A law aimed at combating reckless driving by paparazzi is overly broad and should not be used against the first photographer charged under its provisions, a judge ruled Wednesday.

Superior Court Judge Thomas Rubinson dismissed counts filed under the law against Paul Raef, who was charged in July with being involved in a high-speed pursuit of Justin Bieber.

The judge cited numerous problems with the 2010 law, saying it was aimed at First Amendment newsgathering activities, and lawmakers should have simply increased the penalties for reckless driving rather than targeting celebrity photographers.

Attorneys for Raef argued the law was unconstitutional and was meant merely to protect celebrities while punishing people who gather news.

"This discrimination sets a dangerous precedent," attorney Brad Kaiserman said.

Prosecutors argued that the law, which seeks to punish those who drive dangerously in pursuit of photos for commercial gain, didn't merely apply to the media but could apply to people in other professions.

Rubinson cited hypothetical examples in which wedding photographers or even photographers rushing to a portrait shoot with a celebrity could face additional penalties if charged under the new statute.

Raef still faces traditional reckless driving counts.

Prosecutors allege he chased Bieber at more than 80 mph and forced other motorists to avoid collisions while Raef tried to get shots of the teen heartthrob on a Los Angeles freeway in July.

Raef has not yet entered a plea in the case.

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Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP

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Ireland probes death of ill abortion-seeker

DUBLIN (AP) — The debate over legalizing abortion in Ireland flared Wednesday after the government confirmed that a woman in the midst of a miscarriage was refused an abortion and died in an Irish hospital after suffering from blood poisoning.

Prime Minister Enda Kenny said he was awaiting findings from three investigations into the death of Savita Halappanavar, a 31-year-old Indian woman who was 17 weeks pregnant. Her case highlighted the legal limbo in which pregnant women facing severe health problems can find themselves in predominantly Catholic Ireland.

Ireland's constitution officially bans abortion, but a 1992 Supreme Court ruling found the procedure should be legalized for situations when the woman's life is at risk from continuing the pregnancy. Five governments since have refused to pass a law resolving the confusion, leaving Irish hospitals reluctant to terminate pregnancies except in the most obviously life-threatening circumstances.

The vast bulk of Irish women wanting abortions, an estimated 4,000 per year, simply travel next door to England, where abortion has been legal on demand since 1967. But that option is difficult, if not impossible, for women in failing health.

Halappanavar's husband, Praveen, said doctors at University Hospital Galway in western Ireland determined she was miscarrying within hours of her hospitalization for severe pain on Sunday, Oct. 21. He said over the next three days, doctors refused their requests for an abortion to combat her surging pain and fading health.

The hospital declined to say whether doctors believed Halappanavar's blood poisoning could have been reversed had she received an abortion rather than waiting for the fetus to die on its own. In a statement, it described its own investigation into the death, and a parallel probe by the government's Health Service Executive, as "standard practice" whenever a pregnant woman dies in a hospital. The Galway coroner also planned a public inquest.

"Savita was really in agony. She was very upset, but she accepted she was losing the baby," he told The Irish Times in a telephone interview from Belgaum, southwest India. "When the consultant came on the ward rounds on Monday morning, Savita asked if they could not save the baby, could they induce to end the pregnancy? The consultant said: 'As long as there is a fetal heartbeat, we can't do anything.'

"Again on Tuesday morning ... the consultant said it was the law, that this is a Catholic country. Savita said: 'I am neither Irish nor Catholic' but they said there was nothing they could do," Praveen Halappanavar said.

He said his wife vomited repeatedly and collapsed in a restroom that night, but doctors wouldn't terminate the fetus because its heart was still beating.

The fetus died the following day and its remains were surgically removed. Within hours, Savita was placed under sedation in intensive care with blood poisoning and he was never able to speak with her again, her husband said. By Saturday, her heart, kidneys and liver had stopped working. She was pronounced dead early Sunday, Oct. 28.

The couple had settled in 2008 in Galway, where Praveen Halappanavar works as an engineer at the medical devices manufacturer Boston Scientific. His wife was qualified as a dentist but had taken time off for her pregnancy. Her parents in India had just visited them in Galway and left the day before her hospitalization.

Praveen Halappanavar said he took his wife's remains back to India for a Hindu funeral and cremation Nov. 3. News of the circumstances that led to her death emerged Tuesday in Galway after the Indian community canceled the city's annual Diwali festival. Savita Halappanavar had been one of the festival's main organizers.

Opposition politicians appealed Wednesday for Kenny's government to introduce legislation immediately to make the 1992 Supreme Court judgment part of statutory law. Barring any such bill, the only legislation defining the illegality of abortion in Ireland dates to 1861, when the entire island was part of the United Kingdom. That British law, still valid here due to Irish inaction on the matter, states it is a crime punishable by life imprisonment to "procure a miscarriage."

In the 1992 case, a 14-year-old girl identified in court only as "X'' successfully sued the government for the right to have an abortion in England. She had been raped by a neighbor. When her parents reported the crime to police, the attorney general ordered her not to travel abroad for an abortion, arguing this would violate Ireland's constitution.

The Supreme Court ruled she should be permitted an abortion in Ireland, never mind England, because she was making credible threats to commit suicide if refused one. During the case, the girl reportedly suffered a miscarriage.

Since then, Irish governments twice have sought public approval to legalize abortion in life-threatening circumstances — but excluding a suicide threat as acceptable grounds. Both times voters rejected the proposed amendments.

Legal and political analysts broadly agree that no Irish government since 1992 has needed public approval to pass a law that backs the Supreme Court ruling. They say governments have been reluctant to be seen legalizing even limited access to abortion in a country that is more than 80 percent Catholic.

An abortions right group, Choice Ireland, said Halappanavar might not have died had any previous government legislated in line with the X judgment. Earlier this year, the government rejected an opposition bill to do this.

"Today, some 20 years after the X case, we find ourselves asking the same question: If a woman is pregnant, her life in jeopardy, can she even establish whether she has a right to a termination here in Ireland?" said Choice Ireland spokeswoman Stephanie Lord.

Coincidentally, the government said it received a long-awaited expert report Tuesday proposing possible changes to Irish abortion law shortly before news of Savita Halappanavar's death broke. The government commissioned the report two years ago after the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Ireland's inadequate access to abortions for life-threatening pregnancies violated European Union law.

The World Health Organization, meanwhile, identifies Ireland as an unusually safe place to be pregnant. Its most recent report on global maternal death rates found that only three out of every 100,000 women die in childbirth in Ireland, compared with an average of 14 in Europe and North America, 190 in Asia and 590 in Africa.

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Obama warns GOP to lay off Rice attacks

President Barack Obama speaks at his first news conference since his reelection. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)President Barack Obama bluntly told John McCain and other Republicans to lay off their attacks against U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice over the Benghazi assault, telling lawmakers that if they go after her "then you have a problem with me." And Obama, speaking at his first post-election press conference, vowed that Republican opposition would not dissuade him from nominating Rice to replace departing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

"I don't think there's any debate in this country that when you have four Americans killed that's a problem," he told reporters in the East Room of the White House. "And we've go to get to the bottom of it, and there needs to be accountability, we've got to bring those who carried it out to justice --they won't get any debate from me on that."

"But when they go after the U.N. ambassador, apparently because they think she's an easy target, then they've got a problem with me," he warned.

McCain, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and some other Republicans have signaled they will oppose Rice's confirmation if Obama nominates her. Their numbers thus far seem far short of the 40 needed to block it, and some Republican senators have signaled that she should get a fair hearing.

"Let me say specifically about Susan Rice: She has done exemplary work. She has represented the United States and our interests in the United Nations with skill, and professionalism, and toughness, and grace," Obama said.

"And should I choose, if I think that she would be the best person to serve America in the capacity of the State Department, then I will nominate her," he vowed. "That's not a determination that I've made yet."

Rice and Democratic Senator John Kerry, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, are seen as the front-runners in the race to succeed Clinton.

Conservatives have assailed Rice, who is close to Obama, ever since she made the rounds of the Sunday morning talk shows and said that American intelligence believed that the attack on the American compound in Benghazi, which claimed the lives of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, grew out of demonstrations against an Internet video that ridicules Islam.

"As that unfolded, it seems to have been hijacked, let us say, by some individual clusters of extremists who came with heavier weapons, weapons that, as you know, in the wake of the revolution in Libya are quite common and accessible. And it then evolved from there," she told ABC.

White House aides have said that Rice was speaking based on the best available intelligence at the time.

"She made an appearance at the request of the White House in which she gave her best understanding of the intelligence provided to her," Obama said Wednesday. "If Senator McCain and Senator Graham want to go after somebody, they should go after me."

"But for them to go after the U.N. ambassador, who had nothing to do with Benghazi, and was simply making a presentation based on intelligence that she had received, and to besmirch her reputation is outrageous," he said.

"We're after an election now," he scolded. "I think it is important for us to find out exactly what happened in Benghazi, and I'm happy to cooperate in any ways that Congress wants. We have provided every bit of information that we have and we will continue to provide information and we've got a full-blown investigation. And all that information will be disgorged to Congress."

McCain and Graham hit back quickly.

"I have always said that the buck stops with the President of the United States," the Arizona senator said in a written statement. McCain accused Obama of "contradictory statements" about the attack, labeling it an "act of terror" the day after it happened then resisting the use of the word "terrorism" for roughly a week afterwards.

"We owe the American people and the families of the murdered Americans a full and complete explanation, which for two months the President has failed to deliver," said McCain, who has called for Congress to create a "select committee" to investigate.

"Mr. President, don't think for one minute I don't hold you ultimately responsible for Benghazi.  I think you failed as commander in chief before, during and after the attack," Graham said in a statement released by his office.

"We owe it to the American people and the victims of this attack to have full, fair hearings and accountability be assigned where appropriate. Given what I know now, I have no intention of promoting anyone who is up to their eyeballs in the Benghazi debacle," Graham said.

Obama opened what was his first press conference in months with a vow to work with both parties in Congress to tackle the so-called fiscal cliff and revive the economy. He also said he had "no evidence" that the scandal that led David Petraeus to resign in disgrace from his job as CIA director had led to breaches in classified national security material.

"Right now our economy is still recovering from a very deep and damaging crisis, so our top priority has to be jobs and growth," Obama said in opening remarks in the East Room of the White House.

"Both parties can work together" to address the fiscal challenges "in a balanced and responsible way," he said, before pushing Republicans to sign on to his call for raising taxes on the richest Americans.

Asked whether the scandal the drove Petraeus from office had led to national security breaches, Obama replied: "I have no evidence at this point, from what I've seen, that classified information was disclosed that in any way would have had a negative impact on our national security." And the president praised the retired general, saying "we are safer because of the work Dave Petraeus has done."

Asked for his appraisal of the FBI's work in bringing to light the marital infidelity that Petraeus cited in his resignation message, and why he and the American public learned of the probe only earlier this month, Obama said "I am withholding judgment" on that process but expressed "a lot of confidence generally in the FBI."

Turning to his tax battle with Republicans, Obama stuck by his vow to oppose any legislation that extends the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans. The president, asked why he had agreed to extend them in the 2010 lame duck session of Congress, said that "was a one-time proposition" and that "we cannot afford" to do so again.

Obama said he would be willing to look at raising tax revenues by closing loopholes. But he warned that doing so would probably not outweigh an estimated trillion dollars lost by extending tax cuts on income above $250,000. "The math tends not to work," he said.

"I just want to emphasize: I am open to new ideas," Obama underlined. "If the Republican counterparts or some Democrats have a great idea for us to raise revenue, maintain progressivity, make sure the middle class isn't getting hit, reduces our deficit, encourages growth, I'm not going to just slam the door in their face. I want to hear ideas from everybody."

And he reiterated that he does not want just a stopgap agreement with Congress.

"I want a big deal, I want a comprehensive deal," he said. "Fair-minded people can come to an agreement."

Obama, who won the Latino vote by a lopsided margin, also vowed to pursue comprehensive immigration reform in his second term. He said it should include border enforcement, penalties for companies that knowingly hire undocumented workers, while providing "a pathway for legal status" for those who pay their taxes and learn English. He also said it should lock in his presidential determination that undocumented immigrants brought here as children should not be deported but have a potential path to citizenship.

"We need to seize the moment," he said, predicting that "we will have a bill introduced and we begin the process in Congress very soon after my inauguration."

Obama addressed a handful of other issues:

- On the standoff over Iran's suspect nuclear program

Obama pledged to "try to make a push in the coming months to see if we can open up a dialogue between Iran and not just us but the international community, to see if we can get this thing resolved." "I can't promise that Iran will walk through the door that they need to walk though, but that would be very much the preferable option" to military action, he said.

- On the possibility of working with Republican rival Mitt Romney

Obama said that "we haven't scheduled something yet." "I think everybody needs to catch their breath. I'm sure that Governor Romney is spending some time with his family. And my hope is, before the end of the year, though, that we have a chance to sit down and talk," the president said.

- On whether he has a mandate

"I don't presume that because I won an election, that everybody suddenly agrees with me on any — everything. I'm more than familiar with all the literature about presidential overreach in second terms," Obama said. "We are very cautious about that."

"On the other hand, I didn't get re-elected just to bask in re- election. I got elected to do work on behalf of American families and small businesses all across the country who are still recovering from a really bad recession but are hopeful about the future. And I am, too."

- On climate change

Obama said he would embark "over the next several weeks, next several months" in a "wide-ranging discussion" with scientists, engineers, elected officials and others about "short-term" steps in reducing carbon emissions blamed for fueling global warming. But he seemed pessimistic about any broad response.

"I don't know what either Democrats or Republicans are prepared to do," he said. "There's no doubt that for us to take on climate change in a serious way would involve making some tough political choices."

"And you know, understandably, I think the American people right now have been so focused and will continue to be focused on our economy and jobs and growth that, you know, if the message is somehow we're going to ignore jobs and growth simply to address climate change, I don't think anybody's going to go for that. I won't go for that."

- On relations with the media. Bloomberg reporter Hans Nichols shouted out a question about taxes after Obama had indicated that he had already taken his final query.

"That was a great question, but it would be a horrible precedent for me to answer your question just because you yelled it out," he said. "So thank you very much, guys."

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US quickly going through commanders in Afghan war

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — At the international military headquarters in Kabul, it's jokingly being called the curse of the commander's job.

The last four U.S. generals to run the Afghan war were either forced to resign or saw their careers tainted by allegations of wrongdoing.

The first, Gen. David McKiernan, was ousted on May 11, 2009, a year before his term as commander was set to end. Then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates wanted McKiernan's resignation as newly elected President Barack Obama launched a counterinsurgency strategy of working to undermine the Taliban's pull on the population.

It was the first presidential dismissal of a wartime general since President Harry Truman ousted Gen. Douglas MacArthur during the Korean War.

Obama replaced McKiernan with Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who had a background in special operations and came in with a mandate to remake the war effort with the help of "surge" troops. But he lasted only 13 months.

In June 2010, Rolling Stone published an article that quoted scathing remarks McChrystal and his aides made about their civilian bosses, including Vice President Joseph Biden, as fools who were ignorant of the complexities of war. Obama called McChrystal back to Washington to explain and forced him to resign.

Gen. David Petraeus took over the Afghan command in July 2010 to fill the void left by McChrystal's abrupt departure and agreed to serve for one year. He completed that term and then retired from the military to become CIA director in September 2011.

Petraeus resigned as CIA director on Nov. 9 after he had an extramarital affair with his biographer. The affair came out as part of an FBI investigation into suspicious emails between the biographer and another woman.

The current chief, Gen. John Allen, was appointed by Obama to oversee the drawdown of U.S. and international forces ahead of the planned transfer of security responsibility to the Afghan government in 2014.

Pentagon officials said Tuesday that Allen, 58, is under investigation for thousands of alleged "inappropriate communications" with the second woman involved in the Petraeus case, a Florida socialite. Allen's nomination to become the next commander of U.S. European Command and the commander of NATO forces in Europe has now been put on hold.

Expecting Allen to be confirmed for his new post, Obama had already chosen Gen. Joseph Dunford succeed him. If confirmed, Dunford would be the 15th top commander there since 2002, a revolving door of generals that some analysts say is detrimental to the war effort.

"Rotating top commanders on an annual basis makes no management sense," Thomas E. Ricks, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, wrote in an opinion piece published Sunday in The New York Times. "Imagine trying to run a corporation by swapping the senior executives every year. Or imagine if, at the beginning of 1944, six months before D-Day, Gen. George C. Marshall, the Army chief of staff, told Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the supreme allied commander, that it was time to give someone else a chance to lead."

When Petraeus took the helm as coalition commander on July 4, 2010, he proclaimed: "We are in this to win."

Petraeus relied heavily on air strikes and night raids. But the emphasis on killing and capturing militants worked better than the other main part of the strategy, which was to clear the Taliban out of a particular territory, then focus on holding and developing it to win over the local Afghan population.

Since he took charge, Allen has been confronted with a series of U.S. tragedies and missteps that have hindered the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan, where militants, while weakened, continue to conduct their trademark suicide attacks and roadside bombings.

A month after he assumed his command, insurgents shot down a Chinook helicopter in eastern Afghanistan, killing 30 American troops and seven Afghan commandos and a translator. It was the single deadliest loss in the war.

In January, a video purportedly showing American Marines laughing and urinating on the corpses of Taliban fighters surfaced on the Web.

In February, Muslim holy books were burned at a U.S. base north of Kabul. Obama called the incident a terrible mistake, but it triggered scores of anti-American protests across the country, leaving more than 30 Afghans and six U.S. soldiers dead.

In March, a U.S. soldier allegedly went on a shooting rampage in two villages in southern Kandahar province, killing 16 villagers.

In June, Allen traveled to eastern Logar province to personally deliver his regrets about a NATO airstrike that Afghan officials said killed 18 civilians.

The events have shattered the Afghan people's trust in America and have driven a dagger into the U.S.-led coalition's hearts-and-minds campaign, which was already in decline after years of war. Coalition forces will still help bolster the Afghan government and security forces in the coming years, but Afghans increasingly believe America's only mission is to leave as soon as it can.

Allen also had to contend with a spike in insider attacks by Afghan forces, or insurgents in their uniforms, on their foreign allies and even on their Afghan colleagues. The attacks have raised questions about how effectively the allied forces can train the Afghans to take over security of their own country in 2014.

The news about the Allen investigation broke in Kabul just a few hours after militants fired four rockets on the Afghan capital, killing one Afghan man and wounding three other people.

Waheed Muzhda, a former foreign ministry official under the Taliban regime, said Petraeus' affair is evidence that American civilization is crumbling.

"It is shameful for a military general with such a big name and authority to violate the rights of his wife," Muzhda said. "These types of values are totally different from the values of Islam and our culture. ... If this happens in our country, the punishment is stoning."

Mullah Maulvi Habibullah, a well-known Muslim cleric in Kabul, said the affair tarnishes the dignity of the CIA around the world.

"Such immoral sexual relations take place in societies with no Islamic values," he said. "The U.S. has no such authority or dignity to (say they want to) bring human rights and women's rights to the world."

In neighboring Pakistan, Akhlaq Ahmad, who works at an electric company in the southern city of Karachi, said Pakistani officials could learn a lesson from Petraeus' decision to resign.

"In this matter, America proved to be on high moral ground and also proved that law and moral ethics apply to every citizen equally," Ahmad said. "If we compare it with Pakistan we should be shameful and learn a lesson from this."

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Associated Press writers Patrick Quinn, Slobodan Lekic, Amir Shah and Rahim Faiez in Kabul, Robert Burns in Perth, Australia, Adil Jawad in Karachi, Pakistan, and Riaz Khan in Peshawar, Pakistan contributed to this report.

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Day-Lewis heeded inner ear to find Lincoln's voice

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A towering figure such as Abraham Lincoln, who stood 6 feet 4 and was one of history's master orators, must have had a booming voice to match, right? Not in Daniel Day-Lewis' interpretation.

Day-Lewis, who plays the 16th president in Steven Spielberg's epic film biography "Lincoln," which goes into wide release this weekend, settled on a higher, softer voice, saying it's more true to descriptions of how the man actually spoke.

"There are numerous accounts, contemporary accounts, of his speaking voice. They tend to imply that it was fairly high, in a high register, which I believe allowed him to reach greater numbers of people when he was speaking publicly," Day-Lewis said in an interview. "Because the higher registers tend to reach farther than the lower tones, so that would have been useful to him."

"Lincoln" is just the fifth film in the last 15 years for Day-Lewis, a two-time Academy Award winner for best actor ("My Left Foot" and "There Will Be Blood"). Much of his pickiness stems from a need to understand characters intimately enough to feel that he's actually living out their experiences.

The soft, reedy voice of his Lincoln grew out of that preparation.

"I don't separate vocal work, and I don't dismember a character into its component parts and then kind of bolt it all together, and off you go," Day-Lewis said. "I tend to try and allow things to happen slowly, over a long period of time. As I feel I'm growing into a sense of that life, if I'm lucky, I begin to hear a voice.

"And I don't mean in a supernatural sense. I begin to hear the sound of a voice, and if I like the sound of that, I live with that for a while in my mind's ear, whatever one might call it, my inner ear, and then I set about trying to reproduce that."

Lincoln himself likely learned to use his voice to his advantage depending on the situation, Day-Lewis said.

"He was a supreme politician. I've no doubt in my mind that when you think of all the influences in his life, from his childhood in Kentucky and Indiana and a good part of his younger life in southern Illinois, that the sounds of all those regions would have come together in him somehow.

"And I feel that he probably learned how to play with his voice in public and use it in certain ways in certain places and in certain other ways in other places. Especially in the manner in which he expressed himself. I think, I've no doubt that he was conscious enough of his image."

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British medical journal slams Roche on Tamiflu

LONDON (AP) — A leading British medical journal is asking the drug maker Roche to release all its data on Tamiflu, claiming there is no evidence the drug can actually stop the flu.

The drug has been stockpiled by dozens of governments worldwide in case of a global flu outbreak and was widely used during the 2009 swine flu pandemic.

On Monday, one of the researchers linked to the BMJ journal called for European governments to sue Roche.

"I suggest we boycott Roche's products until they publish missing Tamiflu data," wrote Peter Gotzsche, leader of the Nordic Cochrane Centre in Copenhagen. He said governments should take legal action against Roche to get the money back that was "needlessly" spent on stockpiling Tamiflu.

Last year, Tamiflu was included in a list of "essential medicines" by the World Health Organization, a list that often prompts governments or donor agencies to buy the drug.

Tamiflu is used to treat both seasonal flu and new flu viruses like bird flu or swine flu. WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl said the agency had enough proof to warrant its use for unusual influenza viruses, like bird flu.

"We do have substantive evidence it can stop or hinder progression to severe disease like pneumonia," he said.

In the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends Tamiflu as one of two medications for treating regular flu. The other is GlaxoSmithKline's Relenza. The CDC says such antivirals can shorten the duration of symptoms and reduce the risk of complications and hospitalization.

In 2009, the BMJ and researchers at the Nordic Cochrane Centre asked Roche to make all its Tamiflu data available. At the time, Cochrane Centre scientists were commissioned by Britain to evaluate flu drugs. They found no proof that Tamiflu reduced the number of complications in people with influenza.

"Despite a public promise to release (internal company reports) for each (Tamiflu) trial...Roche has stonewalled," BMJ editor Fiona Godlee wrote in an editorial last month.

In a statement, Roche said it had complied with all legal requirements on publishing data and provided Gotzsche and his colleagues with 3,200 pages of information to answer their questions.

"Roche has made full clinical study data ... available to national health authorities according to their various requirements, so they can conduct their own analyses," the company said.

Roche says it doesn't usually release patient-level data available due to legal or confidentiality constraints. It said it did not provide the requested data to the scientists because they refused to sign a confidentiality agreement.

Roche is also being investigated by the European Medicines Agency for not properly reporting side effects, including possible deaths, for 19 drugs including Tamiflu that were used in about 80,000 patients in the U.S.

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Online:

www.bmj.com.tamiflu/

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Congress' choice whether Petraeus testifies on Benghazi attack

Holly Petraeus and Gen. David Petraeus walk past a seated Paula Broadwell (rear right) at his confirmation hearing …The White House said Tuesday that it was "up to Congress" whether to call former CIA Director David Petraeus to testify about the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi, Libya.

"Congress [makes] decisions about who is called to testify," press secretary Jay Carney told reporters at his daily briefing.

The Intelligence Committees of the Senate and House of Representatives had been set to hear from Petraeus about the attack on the American compound in separate closed-door hearings on Thursday. But aides to both panels indicated that the retired Army general would be replaced by Mike Morrell, the acting CIA director.

"The president is confident that Acting Director Morrell is fully informed and capable of representing the CIA in a hearing about the incidents in Benghazi," Carney said.

Still, key senators have made it clear that Petraeus, whose shocking resignation came after the public disclosure of an extramarital affair, will ultimately need to be heard. The attack claimed the lives of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, told MSNBC on Monday that her panel "should go ahead with Mike Morell and the way it is now set up."

"But I also think that the community should know that this is not sufficient," she continued. "And I have no doubt now that we will need to talk with David Petraeus. And we will likely do that in closed session, but it will be done one way or the other."

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