Pakistan to train Afghan army
4 NATO troops, including 1 GI, killed in Afghanistan
RAWALPINDI, Pakistan — Pakistan has told U.S. military leaders it is willing to help train Afghan soldiers to fight Taliban forces, the country’s army chief said Monday, a promising gesture by a government at times skeptical of Washington’s strategy.
Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, in his first briefing with foreign journalists, sought to counter criticisms from the West that Pakistan is a reluctant ally when it comes to battling the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Emphasizing the importance of having a stable, secure Afghanistan on Pakistan’s western border, Kayani said his country has offered to help prepare Afghanistan’s army to assume sole responsibility for the country’s security.
“We’re talking to the U.S. and (NATO forces). We are interested in getting more involved in training of the Afghan national army,” Kayani said during a briefing. “This is good for the short term and the long term.”
Pakistan has rankled Obama administration officials because of its refusal to militarily pursue Afghan Taliban who use Pakistan’s tribal areas as staging areas for attacks on Afghanistan-based U.S. and NATO forces.
The training of Afghanistan’s national army and its police is seen as a vital cog in Obama’s strategy to defeat the Taliban and ready the country for the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops.
In Afghanistan, four NATO service members — including one American — were killed in action Monday, the deadliest day for the international force in more than two weeks, The Associated Press reported.
The American service member, who was not identified, died in a roadside bombing in southern Afghanistan, the NATO command announced.
Two British soldiers also died in bomb blasts during a foot patrol in the south, the British Defense Ministry said.
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Spain’s Defense Ministry said one Spanish soldier was killed and six were wounded when their vehicle struck a bomb while escorting a U.N. relief convoy 340 miles west of Kabul.
1 wounded, 1 killed after standoff in Buffalo
BUFFALO, N.Y. — People react at the scene where a Buffalo police hostage negotiator was shot Monday during a standoff. According to authorities, Detective John Garcia was hit with buckshot, but his injuries weren’t considered life-threatening. About an hour after Garcia was wounded, a SWAT team entered a building and found the suspect dead with a shotgun nearby. The suspect’s name was not released, and police didn’t say whether the fatal shot was self-inflicted or from police.
NATION
Air Force Academy setsplace for pagan worship
AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. — The U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado has designated an outdoor worship area for followers of Druidism and other pagan or Earth-centered religions.
A double circle of stones atop a hill on the campus has been designated for cadets and other service personnel in the area to practice Earth-centered faiths.
The academy said Monday that staff at the academy chapel worked with Tech. Sgt. Brandon Longcrier, a follower of the pagan tradition, to establish the site. He’s the noncommissioned officer in charge of the academy’s astronautics labs.
The military academy, which trains Air Force officers, also has worship facilities for Christians, Jews, Muslims and Buddhists. The chief of the academy has made religious tolerance a priority after a 2004 survey of cadets found instances of harassment.
Obama abroad in March
WASHINTGON — President Barack Obama will make his first international trip of the year in March, visiting Indonesia and Australia.
The trip will be something of a homecoming for Obama, who as a child lived several years in Indonesia. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Obama will officially launch a comprehensive partnership with Indonesia during the trip.
Obama also will mark the 70th anniversary of U.S.-Australian relations and discuss Afghanistan and nuclear nonproliferation.
Meanwhile, China said it strongly opposed any meeting of Obama with exiled Tibetan leader Dalai Lama.
Gates to make 1st moves aimed at lifting gay ban
WASHINTGON — Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Tuesday will take the first real steps toward lifting the ban on gays serving openly in the military, announcing a yearlong review aimed at answering questions about the effect of lifting the ban, and imposing looser standards for enforcing the ban in the meantime, The Associated Press reported.
The study would start from the premise that it will take time to lift the ban but that it can be done without harming the military, U.S. officials told the AP.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the emerging Pentagon plan ahead of Gates’ announcement, the AP said.
Study finds advantage inabstinence-only classes
An experimental abstinence-only program without a moralistic tone can delay teens from having sex, a provocative study found.
Billed as the first rigorous research to show long-term success with an abstinence-only approach, the study differed from traditional programs that have lost federal and state support in recent years. The classes didn’t preach saving sex until marriage or disparage condom use.
Instead, it involved assignments to help sixth- and seventh-graders see the drawbacks to sexual activity at their age, including having them list the pros and cons themselves. Their “cons” far outnumbered the “pros.”
The students, mostly 12-year-olds, were assigned to one of four options: eight hourlong abstinence-only classes; safe-sex classes; classes incorporating both approaches; or classes in general healthy behavior.
Two years later, about one-third of abstinence-only students said they’d had sex since the classes ended, versus nearly half — about 49 percent — in each of the other three groups.
The study was released Monday in the February edition of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.
WORLD
Mexico party deaths at 16
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — The mayor of a violent Mexican border city said Monday he fears a shooting that killed 16 students at a party may have been random because the victims were “good kids” with no apparent ties to drug gangs.
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The death toll of the weekend massacre in Ciudad Juarez, one of the deadliest cities in the world, rose to 16 after three more victims died at hospitals, according to the Chihuahua state attorney general’s office.
THE NEWSMAKER
Ex-aide: Sex tape sealed the book on Edwards
Andrew Young, a former aide to presidential candidate John Edwards, said he has rejected offers of “gigantic amounts of money” to sell what he says is a sex tape showing Edwards with his former mistress. In a new book, Young claimed that he found the tape in a home he and his wife had shared with Edwards’ mistress, Rielle Hunter. “I could not have told this story without including this sex tape,” Young said Monday on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”