US report faults Pakistan over Afghan war

WASHINGTON: Despite an easing of tensions with the United States, Pakistan is persistently undermining security in Afghanistan by permitting safe havens for insurgents, a Pentagon report said Monday.

In a twice-a-year war assessment mandated by Congress, the Defense Department said that the 68,000 US troops in Afghanistan and their allies had succeeded in preventing Taliban advances while limiting civilian casualties.

But Taliban havens across the border in Pakistan, the limited capacity of the Afghan government and "endemic corruption" pose the greatest risks as the United States prepares to pull out troops by the end of 2014, the Pentagon said.

The report noted the better US relations with Pakistan, which agreed in July to reopen Western forces' supply routes into Afghanistan. Pakistan had refused access after a US border strike killed 24 of its troops in November 2011.

"However, Pakistan's continued acceptance of sanctuaries for Afghan-focused insurgents and failure to interdict (explosive) materials and components continue to undermine the security of Afghanistan and pose an enduring threat to US, coalition and Afghan forces," the report said.

The report, which covered developments from April through September, said that Pakistan "has contributed to US interests while simultaneously falling short in other areas."

The Pentagon also reported modest progress between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Since then, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said that an attack last week on the Afghan intelligence chief was planned in Pakistan.

Islamabad denied Karzai's assertion. Many analysts believe Pakistan has sought to keep open ties to militants in Afghanistan in hopes of preserving influence after the NATO withdrawal.

The Pentagon report said that enemy attacks went up one percent from April-September 2011. But it attributed the rise to a shorter poppy harvest, which kept low-level insurgents busy for less time, and said life had improved in urban areas.

Enemy attacks "are now disproportionately occurring outside of populated areas, and the security of many of Afghanistan's largest cities increased substantially during the reporting period," it said.

However, the Pentagon figures showed that enemy attacks were higher than in 2009 before President Barack Obama ramped up troop numbers. The last of the 33,000 "surge" troops withdrew in September this year.

Opinion polls show that most Americans want to end their country's longest-ever war, which was launched following the September 11, 2001 attacks by Al-Qaeda militants living in Afghanistan under Taliban rule.

The Pentagon report described "substantial progress" by Afghans in taking the lead in their own security, but acknowledged logistical and management shortcomings in the national forces as well as corruption.

A Defense Department official, briefing reporters on the report on condition of anonymity, said that the goal remained for Afghan forces to be able to operate independently by 2014.

"Is it going to be a challenge? I agree with you, yes," he said. "Will there continue to be a need for training and advising after 2014? Yes."

The report recorded 66 insider attacks on NATO or Afghan national forces, a sharp rise from 43 the year earlier, but voiced hope that new countermeasures would reduce the threat.

The Pentagon gave a positive assessment to efforts to reduce civilian casualties, seen as a major cause of resentment toward the Western-backed government.

Civilian casualties caused by NATO forces decreased by 35 percent compared with the previous year, although overall civilian casualties rose due to attacks by insurgents, the report said.

-AFP/ac

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DJs 'heartbroken' and 'sorry' over prank gone wrong

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Michael Christian says he's "gutted, shattered and heartbroken"


• It's "gut-wrenching" that the prank apparently led to a nurse's suicide, Mel Greig said


• The pair says the decision to air the recorded prank call was not theirs

(CNN) -- The two Australian radio personalities who made the prank phone call to a British hospital caring for the pregnant Duchess of Cambridge made tearful apologies Monday for making the call, which may have led to the suicide of a nurse who spoke to the pair.

Mel Greig and Michael Christian, both crying at times, told two Australian television shows Monday that their thoughts are with the family of Jacintha Saldanha, the 46-year-old nurse who put the prank call through to the ward where the duchess was.

Saldanha apparently committed suicide Friday.

"I'm very sorry and saddened for the family, and I can't imagine what they've been going through," Greig said on the program "Today Tonight."

Christian described himself as "gutted, shattered and heartbroken."

"For the part we played, we're incredibly sorry," Christian said on "Today Tonight."

The pair said the idea for the call came out of a production meeting before their 2DayFM show, the idea being to capitalize on what was the hottest topic in the news, Catherine's pregnancy.

The prank has drawn public outrage, which has snowballed since the nurse's death.

"This death is on your conscience," reads one post on 2DayFM's Facebook page. Several posters accused Greig and Christian of having "blood on your hands."

But in their interviews Monday, both stressed that while they made the call to King Edward VII Hospital, they did not have a say on whether it went to air. The call was recorded and then went through a vetting process at their network, Southern Cross Austereo, before it was broadcast, they said.

"This was put through every filter that everything is put through before it makes it to air," Christian said in an interview with the program "A Current Affair."

But Christian said he did not know what that vetting process entailed.

"I'm certainly not aware of what filters it needs to pass through," he said.

"Our role is just to record and get the audio," Christian said.

Greig and Christian said they never expected the prank call to be successful.

Death casts glare on 'shock jocks'

Posing as Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles, the pair said they thought their bad accents would give them away and whoever answered the phone at the hospital would hang up on them.

"We wanted to be hung up on with our silly voices," Greig said.

"We assumed that we'd be hung up on, and that would be that," Christian said.

But they were put through to the duchess's ward and given some details of her medical condition.

"It was never meant to go that far. It was meant to be a silly little prank that so many people have done before," Greig said.

It was Saldanha who put the call through.

"If we played any involvement in her death, then we're very sorry for that," said Greig, who described how she found out about Saldana's apparent suicide.

"It's the worst phone call I've had in my life," she said, fighting tears.

"There's not a minute that goes by that we don't think about her family and what they must be going through, and the thought that we may have played a part in that is gut-wrenching," Greig said.

The pair have been taken off the air by their network, which has not said when they might return.

"I don't even want to think about going back on air, to be honest," Greig said.

"I'm still trying to make sense of it all," Christian said. "We're shattered. We're people, too."

Greig said she'd willingly face Saldanha's family if it would help bring them closure.

"If that's gonna make them feel better, then I'll do what I have to do," she said.

"I've thought about this a million times in my head, that I've wanted to just reach out to them and just give them a big hug and say sorry," Greig said. "I hope they're OK, I really do."

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Pot officially legal in Colorado

Marijuana is now legal to use and possess for those over 21-years old in Colorado after Gov. John Hickenlooper, D-Colo., signed an executive order today formalizing the legal, casual use of pot into the state's constitution.

Voters approved the measure on Election Day by a margin of 55 to 45 percent. After the vote, Hickenlooper, who opposed the legalization, expressed caution, indicating that it is unclear how the state law would work in concert with national drug laws that still criminalizes pot.

But Hickenlooper's move Monday officially okayed usage, possession and limited home growing of the drug in the state. He also created a task force on implementation of the law.

Pot advocates celebrated the news, calling the move "historic."

"From this day forward, adults in Colorado will no longer be punished for the simple use and possession of marijuana. We applaud Gov. Hickenlooper for issuing this declaration in a timely fashion, so that adult possession arrests end across the state immediately," proponent Mason Tvert said in a statement.

Voters in Washington state also legalized pot this past election and the measure took effect last week.

Despite the dispute between the states and the federal government on legalization, it appears that support for the issue is on the rise. A new USA Today/Gallup poll released today found that 64 percent of Americans believe the federal government should not intervene in state marijuana laws.

Legalization, however, did not receive as much support. Fifty percent oppose it while 48 percent lawful pot smoking.

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New Evidence Suggests Biblical Flood Happened

The story of Noah's Ark and the Great Flood is one of the most famous from the Bible, and now an acclaimed underwater archaeologist thinks he has found proof that the biblical flood was actually based on real events.

In an interview with Christiane Amanpour for ABC News, Robert Ballard, one of the world's best-known underwater archaeologists, talked about his findings. His team is probing the depths of the Black Sea off the coast of Turkey in search of traces of an ancient civilization hidden underwater since the time of Noah.

Tune in to Christiane Amanpour's two-part ABC News special, "Back to the Beginning," which explores the history of the Bible from Genesis to Jesus. Part one airs on Friday, Dec. 21 and part two on Friday, Dec. 28, both starting at 9 p.m. ET on ABC. See photos from her journey HERE

Ballard's track record for finding the impossible is well known. In 1985, using a robotic submersible equipped with remote-controlled cameras, Ballard and his crew hunted down the world's most famous shipwreck, the Titanic.

Now Ballard is using even more advanced robotic technology to travel farther back in time. He is on a marine archeological mission that might support the story of Noah. He said some 12,000 years ago, much of the world was covered in ice.

"Where I live in Connecticut was ice a mile above my house, all the way back to the North Pole, about 15 million kilometers, that's a big ice cube," he said. "But then it started to melt. We're talking about the floods of our living history."

The water from the melting glaciers began to rush toward the world's oceans, Ballard said, causing floods all around the world.

"The questions is, was there a mother of all floods," Ballard said.

According to a controversial theory proposed by two Columbia University scientists, there really was one in the Black Sea region. They believe that the now-salty Black Sea was once an isolated freshwater lake surrounded by farmland, until it was flooded by an enormous wall of water from the rising Mediterranean Sea. The force of the water was two hundred times that of Niagara Falls, sweeping away everything in its path.

Fascinated by the idea, Ballard and his team decided to investigate.

"We went in there to look for the flood," he said. "Not just a slow moving, advancing rise of sea level, but a really big flood that then stayed... The land that went under stayed under."

Four hundred feet below the surface, they unearthed an ancient shoreline, proof to Ballard that a catastrophic event did happen in the Black Sea. By carbon dating shells found along the shoreline, Ballard said he believes they have established a timeline for that catastrophic event, which he estimates happened around 5,000 BC. Some experts believe this was around the time when Noah's flood could have occurred.

"It probably was a bad day," Ballard said. "At some magic moment, it broke through and flooded this place violently, and a lot of real estate, 150,000 square kilometers of land, went under."

The theory goes on to suggest that the story of this traumatic event, seared into the collective memory of the survivors, was passed down from generation to generation and eventually inspired the biblical account of Noah.

Noah is described in the Bible as a family man, a father of three, who is about to celebrate his 600th birthday.

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Female lemurs avoid the wrong love in the dark

IT IS the ultimate voice-recognition system. Without ever meeting him, a female lemur still knows the call of her father.

The ability to identify family members is important to avoid inbreeding. For large-brained mammals like apes that engage in complex social interactions this is relatively straightforward. Now, a team has shown that nocturnal grey mouse lemurs appear to do the same, even though lemurs are reared exclusively by their mothers (BMC Ecology, doi.org/jvx).

Study leader Sharon Kessler of Arizona State University in Tempe, believes that the young lemurs may associate calls similar to their own, or to those of male siblings, with their fathers.

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

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Mass rival rallies called in Egypt as crisis sharpens

CAIRO: Rival mass protests have been called for next Tuesday in Egypt over a bitterly disputed constitutional referendum, raising the potential for more violent street clashes in a sharpening political crisis.

President Mohamed Morsi's chief foes, the opposition National Salvation Front, late Sunday called for huge protests in Cairo to reject the December 15 referendum on a new charter.

The Muslim Brotherhood, from which Morsi hails, told AFP that it and allied Islamist movements would counter with their own big rallies in the capital in support of the referendum.

If the duelling demonstrations go ahead, there is a risk of vicious further clashes like the ones that erupted between both sides outside the presidential palace last Wednesday, killing seven people and wounding hundreds.

Egypt's powerful army, which is trying to remain neutral in the deepening struggle, warned on the weekend it "will not allow" a worsening of the crisis. It said both sides must start dialogue.

Morsi has made a key concession to the opposition on the weekend by rescinding a decree giving himself wide-ranging powers free from judicial challenge.

But the opposition was unmoved, and maintained its position that no talks could happen while the referendum was going ahead.

"The Front calls for demonstrations in the capital and in the regions on Tuesday as a rejection of the president's decision that goes against our legitimate demands," National Salvation Front spokesman Sameh Ashour told a news conference.

"We do not recognise the draft constitution because it does not represent the Egyptian people," he said, reading a statement.

Going ahead with the referendum "in this explosive situation with the threat of the Brothers' militias amounts to the regime abandoning its responsibilities," he said.

The Brotherhood's spokesman, Mahmud Ghozlan, told AFP that the Alliance of Islamist Forces it belongs to was also "calling for a demonstration Tuesday, under the slogan 'Yes to legitimacy'," and in support of the referendum.

The almost nightly protests over the past two weeks have brought out thousands of people into the streets.

In recent days, the protesters have hardened their slogans, going beyond criticism of the decree and the referendum to demand Morsi's ouster.

Amid the protests and tensions, the army was watching nervously. Tanks and troops have been deployed outside the presidential palace but they have made no move to confront the demonstrators.

On Sunday, air force F-16 warplanes flew low over the city centre. The official MENA news agency described the unusually low flyover as an exercise against "hostile air attacks and to secure important state installations."

That did not prevent several hundred anti-Morsi protesters gathering outside his palace late Sunday, according to an AFP correspondent there.

The opposition sees the constitution, which was largely written up by Islamists, as a tool weakening human rights, the rights of women, religious minorities, and the judiciary's independence.

It dismisses arguments by Morsi aides that the referendum could not be delayed under constitutional rules requiring a plebiscite two weeks after it is formally presented to the president.

"The two-week deadline is just a date for organising the referendum, and you can postpone it without any problems," a Front leader, Munir Fakhri, told AFP.

Morsi's camp, though, argues that it is up to the people to accept or reject the draft constitution.

If it is rejected in the referendum, Morsi has promised to have a new one drawn up by 100 officials chosen by the public, rather than by the Islamist-dominated parliament as was the case for the current text.

Prime Minister Hisham Qandil has urged protesters from both sides to stop demonstrating, and to vote in next Saturday's referendum, MENA said.

Analysts said still-strong public support for Morsi, and the proven ability of his Muslim Brotherhood to mobilise Egypt's voters at the grassroots level, would likely help the draft constitution be adopted.

"The Muslim Brotherhood believes that it has majority support so it can win the constitutional referendum," said Eric Trager, analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

If that happens, he warned, it would "set up the country for prolonged instability."

-AFP/ac

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Lagarde warns of 'zero' growth

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Cory Booker considering run for N.J. governor, Senate

(CBS News) Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker did not skirt the question nor pause for a moment when asked if he had aspirations for higher office. Booker said he is considering running for either the New Jersey Senate seat or governor.

"I am absolutely considering running for governor, as well as giving other options some consideration." Booker said on CBS News' "Face the Nation." He added that he is also considering a run for Senate.

Booker, should he be the Democratic nominee for governor, would run against current governor Chris Christie, who's approval ratings reached 67 percent in a Monmouth University poll last week.

Booker, however, said he needs to decide "in the next few weeks" if he is going to make the move. "[T]here are a lot of very good candidates for governor in New Jersey on the Democratic side and I have to give my party and be a part of my party's push forward, whether me as a candidate or supporting other candidates for that office."

If he instead chooses to run for Senate, it would be for current Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg's seat. Lautenberg is the oldest sitting senator and would be 90 years old on Election Day in 2014, but he has not announced plans to retire.

Democrats consider Booker a rising star - a young African-American politician who has made national news for a range of reasons, including his efforts to turn around crime in his city and for running into a burning building to save a neighbor. He is also an avid conversationalist on Twitter, which led him to a food stamp challenge in which he is currently living off $30 dollars worth of food for one week, the amount the average 46 million food stamp recipients receive. He called it "very challenging."

"I had an apple for breakfast. I burnt a sweet potato and couldn't go out and buy another one because it wasn't on my budget so I cut around the burned part and had a sweet potato around lunch time and made a casserole with broccoli, cauliflower, beans, and peas and nursed that over a couple hours. I found I could stave off hunger if I ate a spoonful and came back to it," Booker said.

"Even going to Starbucks and buying a cup of coffee is more than my daily food allows right now," Booker said. "I'm thoroughly uncaffeinated right now. And it's a terrible state of human existence. I don't see how people do it."

As for the "fiscal cliff," Booker said there's "an immediate fear" among people in his city that their taxes could go up by $2,000 for the middle class if Congress doesn't act. "For many families, not only in my city, but across our state, a couple of thousands dollars could be the difference between making that mortgage payment, being able to afford food and making critical investments during every month," he said.

"This is not time for the Republicans to hold the country hostage again, really at this point, holding it hostage to protect a couple of percent of our population."

Booker, whose city and state was impacted by Hurricane Sandy, said the country can't afford serious cuts in investments to things such as infrastructure. "This is not a time to be penny-wise and pound-foolish," he said.

Sandy "really exposed how vulnerable and unprepared our infrastructure is in this country," Booker said "And you have storm systems and even heavy rainfalls right now are causes of incredible economic damage. To not invest the pennies now to asset dollars later is also a bad thing to do."

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Cowboys Players Were Like 'Brothers'

Dallas Cowboys players Joshua Price-Brent and Jerry Brown Jr., had a brotherly bond that began when they were teammates at the University of Illinois and carried on when they were both signed, in different years, to the NFL franchise.

But in an instant, the lives of the young, successful men who were living out their NFL dreams were altered.

Irving police suspect Price-Brent, 24, was intoxicated when he was behind the wheel of his 2007 Mercedes early Saturday morning. He was allegedly speeding when his car hit a curb, flipped, landed in the middle of a service road and caught fire, killing his passenger, Brown, 25, who had been a linebacker on the Cowboys practice squad.

Price-Brent, who is scheduled to be arraigned today on an intoxication manslaughter charge, released a statement Saturday night from his jail cell.

"I will live with this horrific and tragic loss every day for the rest of my life," he wrote.

His attorney, George Milner, called Brown's death a "tremendous loss" and said "this was like losing a little brother" for his client.

Kansas City Chiefs Player Jovan Belcher's Murder-Suicide Watch Video

Authorities were alerted to the accident, which occurred at about 2:21 a.m., by several 911 callers, Irving Police Department spokesman John Argumaniz said. When police arrived, they found Price-Brent pulling Brown from his 2007 Mercedes, which had caught fire, he said.

Brown was unresponsive and was transported to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

It was not known where the men were coming from or where they were going, but Argumaniz said officers suspected alcohol may have been a factor in the crash and asked Price-Brent to perform field sobriety tests.

"Based on the results of the tests, along with the officer's observations and conversations with Price-Brent, he was arrested for driving while intoxicated," Argumaniz said.

This is the second week in a row an NFL player has been accused of being involved in another person's death. Jovan Belcher of the Kansas City Chiefs killed his girlfriend early Dec. 1, then committed suicide while talking to team officials in the parking lot at Arrowhead Stadium.

Jovan Belcher: Police Release Dash-Cam Videos of NFL Star's Final Hours

Price-Brent was taken to a hospital for a mandatory blood draw where he was treated for minor scrapes, Argumaniz said. He was then booked on an intoxication manslaughter charge after it was learned Brown had died of injuries suffered in the crash.

It is expected that results from the blood draw could take several weeks, the police spokesman said.

If convicted, the second-degree felony intoxication manslaughter charge carries a sentence of two to 20 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Milner suggested that ongoing construction in the area of the crash may have played a role.

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