Afghan officials: Pakistan frees Taliban detainees

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Pakistan has freed eight Taliban prisoners and has agreed to release many more to help kick start a peace process that could lead to a political resolution of the 11-year-old Afghan war, Afghan officials said Thursday.

The decision to release the prisoners, including the former justice minister from when the repressive Taliban ruled Afghanistan, is seen as a signal that neighboring Pakistan might be willing to take concrete steps to revive efforts to lure the group to the negotiating table.

The three Afghan officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity as they are not yet authorized to discuss the results of the sensitive meetings in Islamabad, are familiar with the four-day trip that the Afghan government's peace council made there this week.

The U.S. and its allies fighting in Afghanistan are pushing to strike a peace deal with the Taliban so they can withdraw most of their troops by the end of 2014. But considerable obstacles remain, and it is unclear whether the Taliban even intend to take part in the process, rather than just wait until foreign forces withdraw.

Pakistan is seen as key to the peace process. Islamabad has ties to the Taliban that date back to the 1990s, and many of the group's leaders are believed to be based on Pakistani territory, having fled there following the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

The officials said the first group of prisoners was released on Wednesday as a goodwill gesture, and that Pakistani officials had agreed to free anywhere from 15 to 32 more prisoners in the future to help build traction for formal talks with the Taliban.

Two of the officials said former Taliban Justice Minister Nooruddin Turabi was among those released on Wednesday. Turabi, a native of Kandahar who is in his late 40s or early 50s, is missing an eye and has only one leg. He is believed to have played a role in the destruction of two, 1,500-year-old sandstone Buddha statues that once towered some 180 feet high in central Afghanistan. The Taliban, who considered them symbols of paganism, destroyed them in 2001.

A joint statement issued by Pakistan and Afghanistan on Wednesday said "a number of Taliban detainees are being released" to support the peace process at the request of the Afghan government. It also called on the Taliban and other armed opposition groups to participate in peace talks and sever links with al-Qaida. Neither the Pakistani nor Afghan governments have officially confirmed the identities of the prisoners released.

However, one of the officials familiar with the peace process gave The Associated Press a list of the Taliban prisoners — some identified by only one name — that Pakistan agreed to release. The eight prisoners on the list were:

—Turabi.

—Jahangirwal, who was a special assistant for the Taliban's top leader, Mullah Omar.

—Qutub, a Taliban leader.

—Abdul Salaam, the Taliban's former governor of Baghlan province.

—Maulvi Matiullah, who was director of the customs house in Kabul under the Taliban regime;

—Mahamad, the Taliban's former governor of Kunduz province.

—Sayed Saduddin Agha, a former Taliban commander.

—Allah Dad, the Taliban's former deputy minister of communication.

The eight are among 40 Taliban prisoners that the Afghan government has asked Pakistan to release.

Also on the list of 40 is the Taliban's former deputy leader, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who was captured in Pakistan in 2010.

Baradar is seen by some as crucial to the peace process. Baradar was reportedly conducting talks with the Afghan government that were kept secret from the Pakistanis, and his arrest in the sprawling southern port city of Karachi reportedly angered Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Pakistan helped the Taliban seize control of Afghanistan in the 1990s — providing funding, weapons and intelligence — and the Afghan government and the U.S. have accused Islamabad of continuing to support the group. Pakistan has denied the allegations, but many analysts believe the country continues to see the militant group as an important ally in Afghanistan to counter archenemy India.

However, Pakistan is also worried about instability in Afghanistan following the planned withdrawal of foreign forces. If civil war breaks out again as it did in the 1990s, hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees could stream across the border into Pakistan. Violence could also give greater cover to Pakistani militants who are at war with Islamabad.

These concerns have made a peace deal more urgent in the minds of Pakistanis.

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Associated Press writers Kathy Gannon in Islamabad, Pakistan, and Deb Riechmann in Kabul contributed to this report.

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Belize prime minister says McAfee “bonkers,” should help in murder case

BELIZE CITY (Reuters) – Belize‘s prime minister on Wednesday urged anti-virus software pioneer John McAfee to help the country’s police with a murder inquiry, calling McAfee “bonkers” for recent media statements.

“I don’t want to be unkind, but he seems to be extremely paranoid – I would go so far as to say bonkers,” Prime Minister Dean Barrow said in Belize City. “He ought to man up and respect our laws and go in and talk to the police.”

Belizean police want to question McAfee, 67, about the murder of his neighbor and fellow U.S. citizen, Gregory Viant Faull, 52, with whom McAfee had quarreled.

Police have been unable to track down McAfee since finding Faull dead on Sunday in his house on Ambergris Caye, an island off the coast. In an interview on Tuesday, McAfee said he had gone into hiding because he believed Belizean authorities were trying to frame him for Faull’s murder.

“You can say I’m paranoid about it, but they will kill me, there is no question. They’ve been trying to get me for months,” Wired magazine’s website quoted McAfee as saying. “I am not well liked by the prime minister.

According to the magazine, which has published details of several interviews with the entrepreneur, McAfee says he has been riding in boats, hunkering down on the floorboards of taxis, and sleeping in a bed that he said was infested with lice.

Since he went into hiding, McAfee has repeatedly told Wired he had nothing to do with Faull’s death. Explaining his actions, McAfee said he does not want to give himself up because he is afraid the authorities will torture or kill him.

But McAfee said they would track him down in the end. On Wednesday, the magazine said that McAfee claimed to have dyed his hair, eyebrows, beard, and mustache jet black.

“I’ll probably look like a murderer, unfortunately,” it quoted him as saying.

PUBLIC SPOTLIGHT

Barrow called McAfee’s statements “nonsense,” noting he had “never met the man” and that the media attention McAfee had attracted was offering him “the best possible safeguard.”

“It’s not as if the police have said he is a suspect and certainly there is no question at this point of charges pending,” Barrow said. “The fact that this is smeared across international headlines means the police would have to act extremely cautiously in the full glare of the public spotlight.”

McAfee, who invented the anti-virus software that bears his name, has homes and businesses in Belize, and is believed to have settled around 2010 in the tiny Central American nation bordered by Mexico and Guatemala.

There is already a case pending in Belize against McAfee for possession of illegal firearms, and police previously suspected him of running a lab to make the synthetic drug crystal meth.

On Wednesday, Belizean police said they had charged McAfee’s British bodyguard William Mulligan, 29, and Mulligan’s wife, Stefanie, 22, for having unlicensed weapons and ammunition.

Barrow rejected statements made by McAfee and an associate that the software pioneer was being targeted for refusing to donate to Belize’s ruling United Democratic Party (UDP) to help fund its successful re-election bid in March.

“I know of no individual in the UDP who has spoken to McAfee about contributions,” Barrow said.

McAfee was one of Silicon Valley’s first entrepreneurs to build an Internet fortune. The ex-Lockheed systems consultant started McAfee Associates in 1989. He now has no relationship with the company, which was sold to Intel Corp.

(Writing by Gabriel Stargardter; Editing by Dave Graham and Eric Walsh)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Holidays become a cable TV industry

NEW YORK (AP) — If the holidays still seem a long way off, you clearly haven't done much television channel surfing lately.

The Hallmark channel has already begun two months of wall-to-wall holiday programming. Lifetime has ramped up its seasonal selections with 10 new made-for-TV movies, the first one airing last weekend. ABC Family's annual "25 Days of Christmas" programming isn't enough, so they do a "Countdown to 25 Days of Christmas," starting Sunday.

This is in addition to all the old favorites, from Charlie Brown to Frosty the Snowman, that will fill broadcast network schedules during the next month. An already popular television genre is growing in power, judging by the 22 new movies Hallmark and Lifetime are rolling out between them, and a new Disney holiday musical.

"This is a strategy that developed naturally from demand," said Rob Sharenow, executive vice president of programming at the Lifetime networks. "It's really giving people what they want."

A sneak preview of the movie "Christmas Song" on Hallmark Nov. 3 was a hit that left the network second behind ESPN in cable viewership at that time, the Nielsen company said. Hallmark's 2006 movie, "The Christmas Card," is still the network's most-watched original movie and will be repeated again this season.

"Others try and emulate and replicate and copy what we do, but because of our brand, no one can do it like we do," said Bill Abbott, president and CEO of the Hallmark Channels.

Lifetime's aggressive investment makes it the relative newcomer in this area. The longtime maker of TV movies that appeal to women is coming off its biggest success in years, October's "Steel Magnolia" remake with Queen Latifah, which surprised even network executives with its potency.

Its movies feature Mira Sorvino, Shelley Long, George Wendt and Lea Thompson. Wendt and Long play Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus as they're about to meet their future daughter-in-law, Ralph Macchio is a former dance champion who comes back to win a Christmas Eve dance contest, and Thompson is featured in "Love at the Christmas Table."

Happy endings abound. Don't expect any holiday shootouts.

Beyond the new originals, Lifetime is airing more than 50 seasonal films, the biggest commitment in its history.

"In the times we're in, people want to feel good," Sharenow said. "People are definitely gravitating toward feel-good escapism and having fun and that's what these movies do. They're like little Christmas gifts."

Hallmark, part of a company that also sells Christmas cards, is a natural for holiday programming. This is the fourth year that the network essentially shuts down its regular programming for two full months to devote itself to the genre. The holiday focus began on Nov. 9 and ends Jan. 2.

There's a risk both in overkill and having fans get out of the habit of watching the network's regular shows, Abbott said, "but we have found over the years that our viewers really look forward to it and really want it."

Hallmark's original movies are premiering every Saturday and Sunday night heading into Christmas.

With titles like "Hitched for the Holidays," ''A Bride for Christmas," ''Matchmaker Santa," ''Come Dance With Me" and "Love at the Thanksgiving Day Parade," the focus is pretty clear.

While confident of the programming strategy's ultimate success, Abbott said it is clear that Hallmark has more competition. "We sleep with one eye open," he said.

ABC Family's holiday focus is primarily on movies that started in theaters, like "Home Alone" and "Elf." Its own production is "The Mistle-Tones," about a woman who creates her own Christmas singing group after being turned down for a spot in a well-known group.

The network's "countdown" programming includes the premiere of the movie "Home Alone: The Holiday Heist" on the Sunday after Thanksgiving.

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Diabetes rates rocket in Oklahoma, South

NEW YORK (AP) — The nation's diabetes problem is getting worse, and the biggest jump over 15 years was in Oklahoma, according to a new federal report issued Thursday.

The diabetes rate in Oklahoma more than tripled, and Kentucky, Georgia and Alabama also saw dramatic increases since 1995, the study showed.

The South's growing weight problem is the main explanation, said Linda Geiss, lead author of the report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study.

"The rise in diabetes has really gone hand in hand with the rise in obesity," she said.

Bolstering the numbers is the fact that more people with diabetes are living longer because better treatments are available.

The disease exploded in the United States in the last 50 years, with the vast majority from obesity-related Type 2 diabetes. In 1958, fewer than 1 in 100 Americans had been diagnosed with diabetes. In 2010, it was about 1 in 14.

Most of the increase has happened since 1990.

Diabetes is a disease in which the body has trouble processing sugar; it's the nation's seventh leading cause of death. Complications include poor circulation, heart and kidney problems and nerve damage.

The new study is the CDC's first in more than a decade to look at how the nationwide boom has played out in different states.

It's based on telephone surveys of at least 1,000 adults in each state in 1995 and 2010. Participants were asked if a doctor had ever told them they have diabetes.

Not surprisingly, Mississippi — the state with the largest proportion of residents who are obese — has the highest diabetes rate. Nearly 12 percent of Mississippians say they have diabetes, compared to the national average of 7 percent.

But the most dramatic increases in diabetes occurred largely elsewhere in the South and in the Southwest, where rates tripled or more than doubled. Oklahoma's rate rose to about 10 percent, Kentucky went to more than 9 percent, Georgia to 10 percent and Alabama surpassed 11 percent.

Several Northern states saw rates more than double, too, including Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio and Maine.

The study was published in CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

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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 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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Bon Jovi daughter recovering after heroin OD in NY

HAMILTON, N.Y. (AP) — Authorities say Jon Bon Jovi's 19-year-old daughter is hospitalized after overdosing on heroin in a dorm at her upstate New York college.

Town of Kirkland police say an ambulance was sent to Hamilton College early Wednesday morning after a report that a female had apparently overdosed on heroin.

Investigator Peter Cania (KAYN'-yah) says Stephanie Bongiovi, of Red Bank, N.J., is recovering at a hospital he declined to name.

Police say Bongiovi and 21-year-old Ian Grant, also of Red Bank, were charged with drug possession. Both were issued tickets and ordered to appear in court at a later date. Police didn't know if they have lawyers.

The musician's representative isn't commenting.

Bon Jovi is scheduled to perform at a benefit concert for Hamilton in Times Square on Dec. 5.

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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 sternly 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, and some other Republicans have signaled that 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 saying that American intelligence believed that the attack on the American compound in Benghazi, which claimed the lives of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and there 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.

Republicans have seized on some of her other comments suggesting that the attack grew out of a "spontaneous, not premeditated" demonstration in response to the Internet video -- there was no demonstration. 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."

Graham, who represents South Carolina, hit back quickly.

"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," he 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 — and first since the election that gave him a second term — 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.

In response to the first question, regarding Petraeus, Obama said he had "no evidence at this point from what I've seen" that there had been any national security breaches. And the president praised the retired general, saying "we are safer because of the work Dave Petraeus has done."

Asked later 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 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 two 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 said that "the math tends not to work" when it comes to making up that way for extending the tax rate reductions on income above $250,000. And he reiterated that he does not want 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.

"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."

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A look at US generals in Afghan war

A look at what went wrong for the four U.S. generals who have led U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan since 2008:

Gen. David McKiernan, June 2008 to June 2009

-Defense Secretary Robert Gates asked for McKiernan's resignation a year before his term as commander was set to end. The firing was seen as a rejection by newly elected President Barack Obama of McKiernan's conventional warfare approach in favor of the more targeted "counterinsurgency" strategy of working to undermine insurgents' pull on the population.

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, June 2009 to June 2010

-McChrystal, who had a background in special operations, came in with a mandate to remake the war effort with the help of "surge" troops ordered by Obama. A year into that push, an article in Rolling Stone magazine quoted members of McChrystal's team making disparaging comments about their commander in chief and other senior administration officials. Obama called McChrystal back to Washington to explain and forced him to resign.

Gen. David Petraeus, July 2010 to July 2011

-Petraeus took over the Afghan command 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.

Gen. John Allen, July 2011 to present

-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 early Tuesday that Allen 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.

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