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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Juanes, Guerra poised to shine at Latin Grammys

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Colombian rocker Juanes could become the most decorated Latin Grammy winner when the 13th annual Latin Grammy Awards are presented in Las Vegas. He's up for four awards, and three victories would break the record held by Calle 13.

Dominican musician Juan Luis Guerra comes into Thursday's ceremony as the leading nominee with six bids, followed by Mexican pop duo Jesse & Joy with five.

But Guerra can only win four awards, since he is competing against himself in two categories. He's up for producer and album of the year for Juanes' album "MTV Unplugged," and is also nominated for record and song of the year for "En El Cielo No Hay Hospital."

Besides Juanes, Ricardo Arjona, Edgar Barrera, Carla Morrison, Arturo Sandoval, Ivete Sangalo and the Latin Recording Academy's 2012 Person of the Year honoree Caetano Veloso each have four nods. Chico Buarque, ChocQuibTown, Don Omar, Rafael Dragaud, Gregg Field, Javier Garza, Gilberto Gil, Ulises Hadjis, Roberto Talma and Martin Terefe have three nominations apiece.

Thursday's ceremony is set to feature performances by Guerra, Jesse & Joy and Juanes, who plans to share the stage with Santana.

The Latin Grammy celebration kicked off Wednesday with its Person of the Year gala, where Brazilian composer and activist Veloso was honored with performances by Juanes, Guerra, Nelly Furtado and Natalie Cole. Furtado and Cole were also set to serve as presenters during Thursday's ceremony at the Mandalay Bay Events Center. The event will be broadcast live on Univision.

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AP Entertainment Writer Sandy Cohen contributed to this report from Los Angeles.

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Online:

www.latingrammy.com

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GOP-led states start warming up to health care law

WASHINGTON (AP) — From the South to the heartland, cracks are appearing in the once-solid wall of Republican resistance to President Barack Obama's health care law.

Ahead of a federal deadline Friday for states to declare their intentions, Associated Press reporters interviewed governors and state officials around the country, finding surprising openness to the changes in some cases. Opposition persists in others, and there is a widespread, urgent desire for answers on key unresolved details.

The law that Republicans have derided as "Obamacare" was devised in Washington, but it's in the states that Americans will find out if it works, delivering promised coverage to more than 30 million uninsured people.

States have a major role to play in two of the overhaul's main components: new online insurance markets for individuals and small businesses to shop for subsidized private coverage, and an expanded Medicaid program for low-income people.

Friday is the day states must declare if they'll build the new insurance markets, called exchanges, or let Washington do it for them. States can also opt for a partnership with the feds to run their exchanges, and they have until February to decide on that option.

Some glimpses of grudging acceptance across a shifting scene:

— One of the most visible opponents of Obama's overhaul, Florida Republican Gov. Rick Scott, now says "if I can get to 'yes,' I want to get to 'yes.'"

Florida was a leader in the failed effort to overturn the law in the Supreme Court, and a group formed by Scott ran TV ads opposing it before it passed Congress. But the governor told the AP this week he wants to negotiate with the federal government to try to help the nearly 4 million uninsured people in his state.

— In Iowa, GOP Gov. Terry Branstad says he is postponing a decision because Washington has not provided enough information about key details. But his spokesman, Tim Albrecht, said Iowa is exploring a partnership exchange that could include several states. Albrecht said they're confident they can get to a state option if needed.

Ohio, like Florida and Iowa a state Obama carried in the election, is leaning toward a partnership with the federal government despite GOP officials' continued misgivings about the law.

— In Mississippi, Republican insurance commissioner Mike Chaney formally notified Washington on Wednesday that his agency will proceed with a state-run exchange, disappointing GOP Gov. Phil Bryant, who remains staunchly opposed to Obama's law.

Chaney, too, says he wishes the law could be repealed, but he worries that "if you default to the federal government, you forever give the keys to the state's health insurance market to the federal government."

As for trying to fight the feds, Chaney observed: "We tried that 150 years ago in the South, and it doesn't work."

— In New Mexico, the administration of Republican Gov. Susana Martinez had been quietly working to put the law into place as the political storm swirled. With a fifth of its population uninsured, the state is planning to run its own exchange.

"The party is over. The opposition is over," New Mexico Human Services Secretary Sidonie Squier told the AP. "Whatever states didn't think they were going to do it, I think they're going to have to do it whether they like it or not. It's a done deal now."

Policy experts in Washington are noticing the shift.

"I think it's a very practical decision for states now," said Alan Weil, executive director of the nonpartisan National Academy for State Health Policy. "We are going to have a significant number of states running their own exchanges, a significant number where the federal government is running the exchange, and a significant number of partnerships. The bottom line is we are going to have to figure out how to make all three models work."

Although the public remains divided about the health care law, the idea of states running the new insurance markets is popular, especially with Republicans and political independents. A recent AP poll found that 63 percent of Americans would prefer states to run the exchanges, with 32 percent favoring federal control.

The breakdown among Republicans was 81-17 in favor of state control, while independents lined up 65-28 for states taking the lead. Democrats were almost evenly divided, with a slim majority favoring state control.

There are several potential benefits to a state operating its own exchange, experts say.

The biggest advantage may be that states would be more closely involved in coordinating between the exchanges and Medicaid programs. Because many people are going to be going back and forth between Medicaid and private coverage in the exchanges, states would probably be better served by a hands-on role.

States can also decide whether to allow open access to all insurers, or work only with a panel of pre-screened companies that meet certain requirements.

Also, the exchanges will offer coverage to people buying in the individual and small business markets, areas that states have traditionally regulated. Without a state-run exchange, states could be dealing their own regulators out of the equation, as Mississippi's insurance commissioner Chaney noted.

When the legislation was being considered in Congress, Democrats in the House wanted to have a national exchange administered by the federal government. But they lost the argument with their centrist Democratic counterparts in the Senate, who wanted state exchanges in order to preserve a state role.

Despite signs of movement toward going along with implementation of the overhaul, some major Republican-led states are holding fast. In Texas, the election results did not change any of the opposition to expanding Medicaid or to setting up insurance exchanges. The same holds for Louisiana, South Carolina, Missouri, Kansas and others.

"Adding more people to an already sinking ship with money that is either being borrowed from China or coming out of taxpayers' pockets is bad policy and bad for Texans," said Catherine Frazier, spokeswoman for Gov. Rick Perry. Twenty-seven percent of that state's residents are uninsured, the largest percentage for any state.

Many Republican state officials complain that the Obama administration simply hasn't given them enough information. Indeed, several major regulations affecting the exchanges have yet to be released. But that doesn't seem to have stopped states that made an early decision to proceed.

Virginia, a Republican-led state that voted for Obama on Nov. 6 and also elected a Democratic U.S. senator, is among those defaulting to Washington. But a spokesman for Gov. Bob McDonnell said things may change.

"This is not a final decision," said Jeff Caldwell. "The fact is, states still need far more information before any final decisions can be made on behalf of Virginia's taxpayers." The final call, he added, belongs to the state Legislature.

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Associated Press writers Gary Fineout and Kelli Kennedy in Florida, Grant Schulte in Nebraska, Ann Sanner in Ohio, Jeff Amy and Emily Wagster Pettus in Mississippi, Barry Massey in New Mexico and Chris Tomlinson in Texas contributed to this report.

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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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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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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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