More to Petraeus story than meets the eye

It's the soap opera that shocked official Washington and ensnared a previously squeaky clean CIA director at a time when he was supposed to play a role in the accounting for a possible security misstep in Libya.

We don't know all the facts of why the FBI started investigating David Petraeus' biographer and how it ultimately led to his resignation.

But a growing number of conservative commentators contend that the resignation of former CIA Director David Petraeus is more than simple amends made for a personal wrong.

Charles Krauthammer, the Fox News and Washington Post commentator, believes the Petraeus' sex scandal is linked to a closed briefing that he gave two days after the attack that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, in Benghazi, Libya.

Petraeus is set to speak about circumstances surrounding the tragedy again before a House committee on Friday and possibly at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, as well.

Petraeus' resignation from his post at the CIA in light of his extramarital affair raised the possibility that he would not testify. But on Wednesday morning, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., told ABC News Petraeus had agreed to do so.

Krauthammer said on Fox News Tuesday that ties he sees between what Petraeus' told the Congress in September and his fear for his future at the CIA make his affair with biographer Paula Broadwell important to the public.

"The reason that it's important is here's a man who knows the administration holds his fate in his hands, and he gives testimony completely at variance with what the Secretary of Defense had said the day before, at variance with what he heard from the station chief in Tripoli and with everything that we had heard," Krauthammer said. "Was he influenced by the fact he knew his fate was held by people in the administration at that time?"

Krauthammer's comments seemed to imply that the man who wrote the book on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq lied to the House Intelligence Committee to save his skin when he said that the attack was a spontaneous mob spurred by the film, "The Innocence of Muslims."

At the time of his briefings, no one in the White House was aware of the FBI investigation into Petraeus' relationship with Broadwell.

As ABC News' Martha Raddatz reported on "World News with Diane Sawyer," the FBI got involved around May or June tracing emails from Broadwell to Jill Kelley in Tampa, Fla., but President Obama was not informed about Petraeus' indiscretions until November

Former New Jersey Superior Court Judge Andrew Napolitano wrote an op-ed for the Washington Times Wednesday in which he said Petraeus was clearly forced to resign his post in an effort to keep him quiet.

"In the modern era, office-holders with forgiving spouses simply do not resign from powerful jobs because of a temporary, non-criminal, consensual adult sexual liaison, as the history of the FDR, Eisenhower, JFK, LBJ and Clinton presidencies attest. So, why is Gen. Petraeus different?" Napolitano wrote. "Someone wants to silence him."

Napolitano offered no guesses as to what those pressuring Petraeus might be hoping to suppress.

Rudy deLeon, senior vice president for national security and international policy at the Center for American Progress, said the American people should allow Petraeus to "speak for himself."

"Anyone who knows Gen. Petraeus, and I've known him since my Pentagon days, knows that his integrity comes first, that he's not a political guy, and that being straightforward is what his considerable reputation has been based on," deLeon said.

In late October, Petraeus personally traveled to Libya to investigate the CIA personnel who were in Benghazi on the night of the attack.

Read more about that trip  HERE.

On the night Petraeus first announced his resignation, Krauthammer said the affair would spur the mainstream media to dig deeper into what transpired in Benghazi.

"It will now become the hottest story around and you can be sure that even the mainstream papers, which did not show any interest whatsoever in this story up to and into the election, are going to get on it," Krauthammer said. "It will unravel."

Implications that Petraeus was covering for the White House play into a larger theory floating around conservative circles that Obama administration officials like Petraeus and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice purposely misled the American people following the attack in Benghazi.

Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and John McCain, R-Ariz., told ABC's Jon Karl Wednesday that they would oppose Obama's hypothetical nomination of Rice to Secretary of State, with Graham saying he didn't "trust her."

President Obama responded to this opposition Wednesday at his first press conference since taking reelection, defending the U.N. ambassador.

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

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China's new leadership faces obstacles to rule

BEIJING (AP) — Months of sharp behind-the-scenes jostling reach a climax Thursday with the announcement of a new Chinese leadership that almost regardless of its makeup is likely to be much like the one it replaces: divided, deliberative and weak.

All but officially announced, Xi Jinping is expected to head the new leadership as Communist Party chief, joined by Li Keqiang, the presumptive prime minster, in a choreographed succession that began five years ago when the two were anointed as successors. Alongside them at the apex of power, the Politburo Standing Committee, will be a handful of senior politicians drawn from top positions in the provinces and bureaucracies.

Their ascent was nudged along Wednesday when a weeklong party congress closed by naming Xi, Li and the other leading candidates to the Central Committee, a 205-member body which appoints the new leadership Thursday. Left off the list was Hu Jintao, who is retiring as party chief after 10 years. A top general told reporters that Hu is also relinquishing his sole remaining powerful post, as head of the military, a significant break from the past that would give Xi leeway to establish his authority.

Leadership lineups typically strike a balance between different interest groups in the 82 million-member party. None of new leaders owe their positions to Xi, but to other political patrons. Decisions are made largely by consensus, forcing Xi to bargain with his colleagues who have their own allegiances and power bases. Party elders, with Hu being the newest, exert influence over major policies through their proteges, further constraining Xi.

While China's leadership may have an image in the rest of the world as decisive and all-powerful, the reality is that decision-making tends to be a slow-going affair.

"It's a power game," said Zheng Yongnian, a China politics expert at the National University of Singapore. "The Standing Committee doesn't function well. They all have to agree, and there are too many checks on each other, so nothing gets done."

If not gridlock, the incremental, step-by-step policy-making of the past comes as China confronts slowing growth, a cavernous rich-poor gap and a clamor for change, in protests and on the Internet, for better government and curbing corruption and the privileges of the politically connected elite.

"Even for a coherent leadership, those problems are challenging, not to mention a divided leadership, which hasn't consolidated its own power base," said Zhu Jiangnan of Hong Kong University.

Unlike the stiff, ultra-reserved Hu, the 59-year-old Xi exudes a comfort with his authority, as befits the son of a hero of the revolution born into the Communist elite. Like Xi, the rest of the leadership came of age as China reopened universities and reached out to the world after the isolation of Mao Zedong's radical rule. As such, their educational backgrounds are more varied than those of Hu and the engineers he led, and they're believed to be more open to ideas.

Charisma is feared by the party, which promotes capable administrators. Bo Xilai, a telegenic top politician once considered a candidate for the leadership, was purged this year in a scandal that buffeted the party. Though he is accused of corruption and aiding the cover-up of his wife's murder of a British businessman, his crime may have been his populist rhetoric and policies that gave him a popular following, but alienated other leaders.

"The system discourages people of unique personalities. It often results in those with colorful characteristics losing out," said Wang Zhengxu of Britain's University of Nottingham.

China's long march to collective leadership marked a concerted attempt to move away from the ruinous later years of Mao when he was worshipped as infallible and factions battled each other like street gangs. Millions of Chinese died or saw their lives and careers upended in the persecution.

The victor in the struggle for power after Mao's death, Deng Xiaoping, sought to end the cult of personality and put China on the path of market-oriented reforms. He was the last strongman from the revolutionary generation, able to summon alliances across the party, the government and the military and impose his vision on others. Ever since, each successive generation of leaders has been forced into painstaking coalition-building to get things done.

The most rumored leadership lineup among Beijing's political watchers seems to favor allies of Jiang Zemin, the 86-year-old former party supremo who stepped aside for Hu a decade ago. Aside from Xi, a Jiang protege, and premier-in-waiting Li, who is Hu's man, the contenders include Zhang Dejiang and Zhang Gaoli, two technocrats who worked with Jiang, and Liu Yunshan, the strict propaganda czar who counts Hu as an early career ally and Jiang as a later mentor.

Certain to be included is Wang Qishan, a longtime trouble-shooter who was named to the party's internal watchdog agency on Wednesday. Also in the running is Yu Zhengsheng, Shanghai's party secretary whose main qualification is his family's ties to long-dead reformist patriarch Deng, another sign of the lingering influence of party elders.

If true — and bargaining continued to take place over the past week, according to party-connected academics in Beijing — the roster leaves out key Hu allies. It's also heavy on older politicians who under current practice would have to retire at the next congress in five years. That's a recipe for continued wrangling as Hu's proteges, feeling left out, resist Xi's rule and campaign for the next leadership, political analysts said.

"China's not a democracy but the leadership is a not a monolithic group," said Cheng Li, a Chinese elite politics expert at the Brookings Institute in Washington. "Balance is important because it's in everyone's interests."

Even with unity in its ranks, Xi's collective leadership will need the better part of a year to assemble a full team. Government offices, like the prime minister or the ceremonial state presidency Hu still holds, do not change hands until the legislature meets in March, delaying the transition.

Should Hu give up his role as head of the military commission, he can still count on the commanders he has promoted across the services of the People's Liberation Army. Proof of that muscle came on the eve of the congress. A general whom Hu appointed to manage the military parade for the 60th anniversary of Communist rule in 2009, Fang Fenghui, was named chief of the general staff and a vice chairman of the commission.

___

Associated Press writer Christopher Bodeen contributed to this report.

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Facebook stock up as lock-up expires on largest block of shares

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Shares of Facebook Inc jumped 10 percent in early trading on Wednesday, even as the biggest block of shares held by insiders became eligible for sale for the first time since the social media company’s disappointing debut in May.

In heavy morning trading, Facebook gained $ 2.02 to $ 21.89.

“While the lock-up is expiring, there is nothing requiring anybody to sell,” said Tim Ghriskey, chief investment officer at Solaris Group in Bedford Hills, New York. “Given the low price, these long-term holders are deciding to hold the stock and that is lifting it here as the fear of the expiration subsides.”

Roughly 800 million Facebook shares could begin trading on Wednesday after restrictions on insider selling were lifted on the biggest block of shares since the May initial public offering.

The lock-up expiration greatly expanded the 921 million-share “float” available for trading on the market until now.

Facebook, the world’s No. 1 online social network, became the only U.S. company to debut with a market value of more than $ 100 billion. But its value has dropped nearly 50 percent since the IPO on concerns about its long-term money-making prospects.

Insider trading lock-up provisions started to expire in August, and the rolling expirations have added to the pressure on Facebook’s stock.

Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Wieser said he didn’t expect Facebook insiders to sell all of their shares as the lock-ups expired.

“I would expect heavy volumes over the next few weeks, but not undigestible volumes,” said Wieser. By his estimates, roughly 486 million of the nearly 800 million newly freed Facebook shares will be sold.

There is some evidence that the heavy interest in shorting the stock was dissipating, given the poor performance since it first sold shares in May.

According to Markit’s Data Explorers, about 28 percent of the shares available for short-selling were being borrowed for that purpose, down from a high of more than 80 percent in early August.

Similarly, SunGard’s Astec Analytics, which also tracks interest in shorting, noted in a comment on Tuesday that the cost of borrowing Facebook shares is down more than 50 percent since the beginning of the month.

“Everything would seem to indicate the market is losing its appetite to short Facebook,” wrote Karl Loomes, market analyst at Astec.

Several members of Facebook’s senior management have sold millions of dollars worth of shares in recent weeks through pre-arranged stock trading plans as lock-up restrictions expired.

Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg has sold roughly 530 million shares this month, netting just over $ 11 million, though she still owns roughly 20 million vested shares in Facebook.

In August, Facebook board member Peter Thiel sold roughly $ 400 million worth of Facebook stock, the majority of his stake, when an earlier phase of lock-up restrictions expired.

Facebook’s 28-year-old chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, has committed to not sell any shares before September 2013.

(Reporting by Alexei Oreskovic; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Petraeus affair and the role of biographers

NEW YORK (AP) — The affair between retired Army Gen. David Petraeus and author Paula Broadwell is but an extreme example of the love/hate history between biographers and their subjects.

Even before their outing led to Petraeus' resignation as CIA director, Broadwell had been criticized for the rosy tone of "All In," which The Associated Press described in 2011 as "part hagiography and part defense" of his strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan. But as long as biographies are written by and about human beings, scientific precision will remain an ideal. The stories of famous women and men often are colored by rapture and disenchantment, confusion and bias.

"As with psychiatrists, same with biographers, you shouldn't sleep with your subject," Blake Bailey, the prize-winning biographer of authors John Cheever and Richard Yates, said with a laugh.

"The ideal case is to have no assumptions. ... But it is possible to write a great book and have strong opinions. ('Eminent Victorians' author) Lytton Strachey, the father of all modern biographers, had a very distinctive voice and a very distinctive perspective — a person looking down from the world at a great distance, quite disparagingly, but with vast humor that informs every word."

Broadwell conducted extensive interviews with both critics and supporters of Petraeus, but the finished story was overwhelmingly positive. She is far from alone in allowing personal or professional regard to shape a biography, especially when the subject cooperates. Flattering books come out all the time, whether a biography of Dick Cheney by Weekly Standard writer Stephen Hayes or Chris Matthews' "Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero."

Years spent together, as Broadwell had with Petraeus in Afghanistan, can make the biographer's experience intensely personal, whether sexual or not. Walter Isaacson did not avoid the unpleasant side of Steve Jobs, but acknowledged he had bonded strongly with the dying Apple CEO. Doris Kearns Goodwin was an aide to Lyndon Johnson who sometimes took notes while the ex-president lay in her bed, a relationship that she called platonic and described in her book on him, "Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream."

Some relationships end in court. Jimmy McDonough spent years working on an authorized biography of Neil Young, only to have Young withdraw support and attempt to stop publication, leading to mutual lawsuits and delay in the release of "Shakey," which came out in 2002. Some biographers seem energized by perceived sins, like the late Albert Goldman and his takedowns of Elvis Presley and John Lennon. Others use scholarship to build up or pick apart a figure from the distant past. Jon Meacham's new biography of Thomas Jefferson praises him as a subtle and effective politician, while a competing book, Henry Wiencek's "Master of the Mountain," faults Jefferson as a calculating slave holder who tolerated brutality.

David McCullough has likened the biographer's choice to picking a roommate, one you must live with for years. McCullough himself abandoned a Picasso book out of distaste for the painter's private life and chose men he related to for his two Pulitzer Prize winning presidential biographies, Harry Truman and John Adams. Former JFK aide Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. won a Pulitzer for "A Thousand Days," his book on the Kennedy administration. But his reverence for the late president led Gore Vidal to dismiss "A Thousand Days" as a "political novel."

Biography often is the art of reconciling opposites. Robert Caro, the prize-winning biographer of New York municipal builder Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson, has taken on men who have both inspired and dismayed him. A former investigative journalist, Caro sees his job as collecting as much information as possible and only then forming opinions. There is no such thing as "objective truth," he says, but there are enough "objective facts" to bring you close.

For his Moses and Johnson books, Caro has relied upon countless documents and interviews. He has labeled his Johnson series, begun soon after the president's death and still going, as a narrative of darkness and light, of the basest cruelty and the noblest achievement. His Moses book, "The Power Broker," was another epic of greatness and destruction and even more complicated to write because he actually interviewed Moses.

"You were awed by seeing the scope of his vision as he talked about it to you and explained it to you. You see him standing in front of this map, with a yellow pencil and sharp point, just gesturing toward this tri-state area that he sees as one entity and has a vision for it," says Caro, whose book was harshly criticized by Moses, but won the Pulitzer in 1975 and is now standard reading.

"But I was simultaneously talking to the people he had displaced, hounded them out of their homes. You have to show both of these things, his genius and its effect on people."

Authors have followed paths they never imagined before starting a book or encountering the subject. Edmund Morris was a prize-winning biographer of Theodore Roosevelt, but the chance to write about a living president led him to take unusual license. Granted years of access to Ronald Reagan, Morris was left so mystified that he inserted a fictionalized version of himself into the book, "Dutch," as a way of making sense out of the president.

Jane Leavy, author of a well-regarded biography on Mickey Mantle, said she had a hard time starting the book because of her childhood worship for the New York Yankees star. She decided the best way to move ahead was to acknowledge up front her memories, and map out the life of the flawed and troubled man she came to know and to hear about.

"He was multidimensional and far more complicated than the hagiographic biographies I read in school or the dark stories about him being a womanizer and an offensive drunk," she says. "No one is one way or another. The fact he was horrible to his wife doesn't invalidate his skill. So the task became why he treated people the way he did. And that's the biographer's job."

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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 miscarrying woman suffering from blood poisoning was refused a quick termination of her pregnancy and died in an Irish hospital.

Prime Minister Enda Kenny said he was awaiting findings from three investigations into the death of Savita Halappanavar, a 31-year-old Indian who was 17 weeks pregnant. Her case highlights the bizarre 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 continued 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.

In practice 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.

University Hospital Galway in western Ireland declined to say whether doctors believed Halappanavar's blood poisoning could have been reversed had she received an abortion rather than wait 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 national 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 Halappanavar's husband, Praveen, said doctors determined she was miscarrying within hours of her hospitalization for severe pain on Sunday, Oct. 21. He said that over the next three days doctors refused their requests for an abortion to combat her surging pain and fading health.

"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, Praveen Halappanavar said, his wife was placed under sedation in intensive care with blood poisoning and he was never able to speak with her again. By Saturday her heart, kidneys and liver had stopped working and 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 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 required 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.

Coincidentally, the government said it received a long-awaited expert report Tuesday night 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.

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.

Yet the World Health Organization 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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FBI finds classified docs in Petraeus' lover's house

Paula Broadwell, the author who allegedly had an affair with former CIA
Director David Petraeus, is suspected of storing significant amounts of
military documents, including classified material, at her home,
potentially in violation of federal law.

A source familiar with case told ABC News that Broadwell admitted to the
FBI she took the documents from secure government buildings. The
government demanded that they all be given back, and when federal agents
descended on her North Carolina home on Monday night it was a
pre-arranged meeting.

Prosecutors are now determining whether to charge Broadwell with a
crime, and this morning the FBI and military are poring over the
material. The 40-year-old author, who wrote the biography on Gen.
Petraeus "All In," is cooperating and the case, which is complicated by
the fact that as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Military Reserve
she had security clearance to review the documents.

FULL COVERAGE: David Petraeus Scandal

The FBI found classified material on a computer voluntarily handed over
by Broadwell earlier in the investigation. Prosecutors will now have to
determine how important the classified material is before making a final
decision. Authorities could decide to seek disciplinary action against
her rather than pursue charges.

Senior FBI officials are expected to brief the House and Senate
Intelligence Committees today on their handling of the Petraeus
investigation. The officials are expected to lay out how the case was
developed and argue that there were no politics involved.

The case is so critical that FBI Director Robert Mueller may attend to
defend the bureau, ABC News has learned. Members of Congress have been
angry that they were not informed about the case before the story was
reported by the media, but FBI officials maintain that their guidelines
forbid them from discussing ongoing criminal cases.

This summer, Florida socialite and "honorary ambassador" to the military Jill Kelley
received anonymous emails accusing her of flaunting a friendly
relationship with military brass in Tampa. Kelley then called the FBI,
which traced those emails back to Broadwell's computer. Investigators
are said to have then found emails in Broadwell's inbox that pointed to
an intimate affair with Petraeus, who on Friday admitted to the affair
and announced his resignation as CIA director.

See the timeline of the Petraeus/Broadwell affair HERE.

The FBI has now uncovered "potentially inappropriate" emails between
Gen. John Allen, the commander of American forces in Afghanistan, and
Kelley, according to a senior U.S. defense official who is traveling with
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. The department is reviewing between
20,000 and 30,000 documents connected to this matter, the official said.
The email exchanges between Kelley and Allen took place from 2010 to
2012.

The U.S. official said the emails were "innocuous" and mostly about
upcoming dinner parties and seeing him on TV. Allen denies he was
involved in an affair, a Pentagon official said. An intermediary for
Allen told ABC News that Allen and his wife are friends with Kelley and
her husband and most of the emails were sent from Kelley to Allen's
wife.

A U.S. official said Allen may have triggered the investigation when he
got an anonymous email a few months ago that was traced to Broadwell.
The email had a "Kelley Patrol" return address or subject line and
painted Kelley as a seductress, which Allen found alarming and mentioned
to Kelley in a subsequent email, the official said.

The official described Kelley as a "nice, bored rich socialite who drops
the honorary from her title... and tells people she is an ambassador.
She gets herself in anything related to Centcom and all the senior
people and has been for years."

MORE: Jill Kelley and Twin Closely Tied to Top Brass

Leon Panetta: 'No One Should Leap to Any Conclusions' Regarding Gen. Allen

Panetta cautioned that "no one should leap to any conclusions" about allegations against Allen over the investigation.

Panetta said he supports Allen, who has been in command in Kabul since
July 2011. He took over that summer for Petraeus, who retired from the
Army to take over as the head of the CIA.

"He certainly has my continued confidence to lead our forces and to
continue the fight," Panetta said at a news conference in Perth,
Australia, Wednesday.

Panetta declined to explain the nature of Allen's correspondence with
Kelley, connected to the scandal that led to Petraeus' resignation last
week as director of the CIA.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who appeared with Panetta,
declined to comment on the Allen case, but insured the scandal has not
harmed the war effort.

"There has been a lot of conversation, as you might expect, but no
concern whatsoever being expressed to us because the mission has been
set forth and it's being carried out," Clinton said.

Allen had been nominated as the next commander of U.S. European Command
and the commander of NATO forces in Europe, and despite President
Obama's backing, the nomination has been put on hold. The change of
command at NATO is currently slated to not take place until March at the
earliest.

Allen was supposed to appear before a Senate confirmation hearing this
Thursday alongside his designated replacement, Marine Gen. Joseph
Dunford. Panetta said that while the matter is being investigated by
the Defense Department IG, Allen will remain in his post as commander of
the International Security Assistance Force, based in Kabul.

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General investigated for emails to Petraeus friend

PERTH, Australia (AP) — The career of Gen. John Allen, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, is now in jeopardy due to the investigation of the David Petraeus sex scandal.

The Pentagon said Tuesday that Allen is under investigation for alleged "inappropriate communications" with Jill Kelley, the woman who is said to have received threatening emails from Petraeus' paramour.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in a written statement issued to reporters aboard his aircraft, en route from Honolulu to Perth, Australia, that the FBI referred the matter to the Pentagon on Sunday.

Panetta said he ordered a Pentagon investigation of Allen on Monday.

A senior defense official traveling with Panetta said Allen's communications were with Kelley, who has been described as an unpaid social liaison at MacDill Air Force Base, Fla., which is headquarters to the U.S. Central Command. She is not a U.S. government employee.

Kelley is said to have received threatening emails from Paula Broadwell, who is Petraeus' biographer and who had an extramarital affair with Petraeus that reportedly began after he became CIA director in September 2011.

Petraeus resigned as CIA director on Friday.

Allen, a four-star Marine general, succeeded Petraeus as the top American commander in Afghanistan in July 2011.

He had been nominated by President Barack Obama be the next commander of U.S. European Command. Obama has put that nomination on hold, National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said Tuesday, while urging the Senate to "act swiftly" on his nomination of Gen. Joseph Dunford to succeed Allen as commander in Afghanistan.

The senior military official, who discussed the matter only on condition of anonymity because it is under investigation, said Panetta believed it was prudent to launch a Pentagon investigation, although the official would not explain the nature of Allen's problematic communications.

The official said 20,000 to 30,000 pages of emails and other documents from Allen's communications with Kelley between 2010 and 2012 are under review. He would not say whether they involved sexual matters or whether they are thought to include unauthorized disclosures of classified information. He said he did not know whether Petraeus is mentioned in the emails.

"Gen. Allen disputes that he has engaged in any wrongdoing in this matter," the official said. If Allen was found to have had an affair with Kelley, he could face charges of adultery, which is a crime under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Panetta said that while the matter is being investigated by the Defense Department Inspector General, Allen will remain in his post as commander of the International Security Assistance Force, based in Kabul. He praised Allen as having been instrumental in making progress in the war.

At the NSC, Vietor said Obama "remains focused on fully supporting our extraordinary troops and coalition partners in Afghanistan, who Gen. Allen continues to lead as he has so ably done for over a year."

But the Allen investigation adds a new complication to an Afghan war effort that is at a particularly difficult juncture. Allen had just provided Panetta with options for how many U.S. troops to keep in Afghanistan after the U.S.-led coalition's combat mission ends in 2014. And he was due to give Panetta a recommendation soon on the pace of U.S. troop withdrawals in 2013.

The war has been largely stalemated, with little prospect of serious peace negotiations with the Taliban and questions about the Afghan government's ability to handle its own security after 2014.

At a photo session with Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard shortly after he arrived in Perth, Panetta was asked by a reporter whether Allen could remain an effective commander in Kabul while under investigation. Panetta did not respond.

The FBI's decision to refer the Allen matter to the Pentagon rather than keep it itself, combined with Panetta's decision to allow Allen to continue as Afghanistan commander without a suspension, suggested strongly that officials viewed whatever happened as a possible infraction of military rules rather than a violation of federal criminal law.

Allen was Deputy Commander of Central Command, based in Tampa, prior to taking over in Afghanistan. He also is a veteran of the Iraq war.

In the meantime, Panetta said, Allen's nomination to be the next commander of U.S. European Command and the commander of NATO forces in Europe has been put on hold "until the relevant facts are determined." He had been expected to take that new post in early 2013, if confirmed by the Senate, as had been widely expected.

Allen is in Washington, where he was to testify at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday. Panetta said he asked committee leaders to delay that hearing.

The senior defense official said Panetta has not talked to Allen about the investigation, nor has he discussed the matter with Obama, although he consulted with unspecified White House officials before making the decision to seek a postponement of Allen's confirmation hearing.

Panetta did talk about the Allen matter with Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who happens to also be in Perth for a meeting of American and Australian diplomatic and defense officials. Those talks were starting Tuesday with an official dinner.

With a cloud over Allen's head, it was unclear Tuesday whether he would return to Kabul, even though Panetta said Allen would remain in command. The second-ranking American general in Afghanistan is Army Lt. Gen. James Terry.

NATO officials had no comment about the delay in Allen's appointment.

"We have seen Secretary Panetta's statement," NATO spokeswoman Carmen Romero said in Brussels. "It is a U.S. investigation."

Panetta also said he wants the Senate Armed Services Committee to act promptly on Obama's nomination of Dunford to succeed Allen as commander in Afghanistan. That nomination was made several weeks ago. Dunford's hearing is also scheduled for Thursday.

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Associated Press writer Slobodan Lekic in Kabul, Afghanistan, contributed to this report.

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New Lumia phones seen winning Nokia more time

HELSINKI (Reuters) – Nokia‘s new Lumia smartphones are trickling into the market and early signs suggest they may sell well enough to give the handset maker more time in its fight against industry leaders Samsung and Apple.

But investors shouldn’t expect a quick turnaround for the struggling Finnish cellphone maker, with rival gadgets like mini tablet computers vying for consumers’ attention, analysts said.

“Positive reviews are a great start but as we have seen many times before these won’t deliver strong sales volumes on their own,” said Pete Cunningham, an analyst at research firm Canalys.

Successful sales of the latest Lumia 920 and 820 models are crucial for Nokia’s survival. The former market leader is burning through cash while it loses share in both high-end smartphones and cheaper handsets.

FIM Securities analyst Michael Schroder forecast Nokia will sell 1-3 million of the new models this quarter. It sold 2.9 million older Lumia models in the third quarter, compared to Apple’s sales of around 26.6 million iPhones in the same period.

“In any case the uptake will not be massive,” he predicted.

Lumia’s sales could serve a verdict on Chief Executive Stephen Elop‘s decision in February 2011 to partner with Microsoft instead of using Google‘s Android or continuing to develop Nokia’s own operating system.

Investors had feared poor reviews and weak sales could bring an end to the company’s smartphone business early next year.

So far, consumer reviews seem to favor the feel and look of the new models, which include high-definition cameras and the latest Microsoft Windows Phone 8 software.

“It (the Lumia 920) is very similar in appearance to the Lumia 900, but has curved glass, rounded edges, and curved back so it feels great in your hand. It is a dense device, but if you look at all the pros and cons the heft is worth it,” said a reviewer for tech website ZDNet.

That’s an improvement from the market’s reaction when the new model was first unveiled. The shares slumped 13 percent that day with investors citing a lack of a “wow” factor.

MAKE OR BREAK

Nokia is taking a gradual approach to launching the phones, and availability is expected to vary by market for the next few weeks, compared with Apple’s iPhone models which usually go on sale on the same day to global fanfare.

“While we are very impressed with the hardware features of the Lumia 920 and the improved software functionality of Windows Phone 8, we believe a focused launch to drive steady sales growth is necessary,” said Canaccord Genuity analyst Michael Walkley.

In Canada, one of the earliest launch markets, carrier Rogers Communications has trained its sales staff more to sell the latest Lumias than the previous models, said John Boynton, Rogers’ executive vice president of marketing.

He predicted the phones would be popular with first-time smartphone users, thanks to homescreens with tile-like icons designed to help users navigate applications and functions.

“They’re a little nervous at some of the more complex smartphones that are out there,” he said. “The tile format is a really, really simplified way for people to get comfortable using smartphones.”

In France, retail staff have become more confident in explaining Windows Phones to their customers, according to Laurent Lame, devices marketing chief at SFR which is the country’s second-biggest mobile operator.

“They know the product better after six months of good sales of the Lumia 610,” Lame said, adding he was now more optimistic about the Nokia-Microsoft partnership. “For once, with Windows 8, we are not starting from zero.”

Telefonica Deutschland Chief Executive Rene Schuster said he was “very, very pleased” with the early progress of Lumia sales.

Some retailers were more cautious, however, and in some cities there were no demonstration models for customers to test.

A salesman in an O2 store at the Zeil, Frankfurt’s busiest shopping area, said the store could take orders for the phone but could not show it. Demand was “okay, but not huge,” he said.

Analysts also expect tough competition during the pre-Christmas shopping season from the likes of Samsung’s Galaxy S III and Apple’s iPhone 5. Taiwan’s HTC has also introduced smartphones running Windows Phone 8 software.

Other rival gadgets include Apple’s iPad mini as well as cheaper tablets from Google and Amazon.

The stakes could not be higher for Nokia’s Elop, who said in February 2011 the company’s transition would take two years.

“This is absolutely a make-or-break phone for the Windows Phone strategy,” FIM Securities’ Schroder said. “If it fails, they have to take a whole new course.” (Additional reporting by Allison Martell in Toronto, Leila Abboud in Paris, Harro Ten Wolde in Frankfurt and Tarmo Virki in Helsinki; Editing by Mark Potter)

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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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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