Posted: Nov 10, 2012 4:00 PM
Updated: Nov 11, 2012 4:01 AM
FBI, CIA to explain how they discovered emails that exposed Petraeus' career-ending affair
WASHINGTON (AP) The career of David Petraeus, the CIA director and a renowned military general, was derailed by allegedly vicious emails his paramour sent to another woman. Now the CIA, FBI and White House face questions from Congress about Petraeus' love life and how his emails came under investigation.
Petraeus quit his post Friday after acknowledging an extramarital relationship.
He had been scheduled to appear before congressional intelligence committees on Thursday to testify on what the CIA knew, and what it told the White House, before, during and after the attacks that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans in Benghazi on Sept. 11. His former deputy, Michael Morell, will now have to answer lawmakers' questions about the Islamist militant attack on a U.S. Consulate and CIA base in Libya.
Morell, and FBI deputy director Sean Joyce, will also face tough questions the day before. Both are scheduled to meet with House intelligence committee chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., and ranking member Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md., who want to know how the FBI investigation that led to Petraeus' downfall came about, according to a senior congressional staffer who spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly.
Members of the Senate intelligence committee have similar questions, added another congressional aide. Also at question is when the White House was first made aware of the investigation.
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Indianapolis blast and fire devastates residential neighborhood, 1 dead; like a 'war zone'
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) A deafening explosion that leveled two homes and set two others ablaze forced about 200 people from a devastated Indianapolis neighborhood overnight. Authorities said one body was recovered after the flames were extinguished from the blast that shattered windows, crumpled walls and did other damage to dozens of other homes.
Two people were taken to a hospital with minor injuries, said Lieut. Bonnie Hensley, with the Indianapolis Fire Department. But she cautioned authorities were going through the rubble and conducting a house-by-house search for anyone else in the hours before dawn.
"This looks like a war zone; it really does," Hensley told The Associated Press. "Police officers and fire department officials remain at the scene searching for other possible victims. They've brought in search lights as they look through the ruined homes."
She declined to identify the only confirmed fatality, saying only that the body was found in one of the leveled homes.
The explosion at 11 p.m. Saturday destroyed two houses that were side by side and spread fire to two other nearby homes in the neighborhood on the south side of the city, she said. The blast was heard for miles all around.
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Afghan girl, 7, says she hid behind father during massacre, as gunman shot, killed him
JOINT BASE LEWIS-McCHORD, Wash. (AP) Little Robina took her seat wearing a deep-red head covering and a nervous smile, ready to tell her story. She giggled as any 7-year-old in the spotlight might.
But when the questions began, what she recalled seemed impossibly dark: how she hid behind her father when the gunman came to their village that night, how the stranger fired, and how her father died, cursing in pain and anger.
"I was standing behind my father," she testified simply, by video feed from Afghanistan Saturday night during a hearing for the soldier accused of killing 16 civilians, including nine children, in Kandahar Province. "He shot my father."
One of the bullets struck her in the leg, but she didn't realize it right away, she said.
Her testimony came on the second overnight session of the preliminary hearing for Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, who prosecutors say slipped away from his base to attack two villages. The slayings drew such angry protests that the U.S. temporarily halted combat operations in Afghanistan, and it was three weeks before American investigators could reach the crime scenes.
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BBC chief resigns after network wrongly implicated politician in sex abuse scandal
LONDON (AP) The BBC's top executive resigned Saturday night after the prestigious broadcaster's marquee news magazine wrongly implicated a British politician in a child sex-abuse scandal, deepening the crisis that exploded after it decided not to air similar allegations against one of its own stars who police now say was one of the nation's worst pedophiles.
In a brief statement outside BBC headquarters, George Entwistle said he decided to do the "honorable thing" and step down after just eight weeks in the job.
"The wholly exceptional events of the past few weeks have led me to conclude that the BBC should appoint a new leader," he said.
It was a rapid about-face for Entwistle, a 23-year BBC veteran who earlier Saturday had insisted he had no plans to resign despite growing questions about his leadership and the BBC's integrity in the wake of the scandals.
Lawmaker John Whittingdale, who chairs a parliamentary committee on the news media, said Entwistle had no choice but to go, as the BBC's management appears to have "lost their grip" on the publicly funded organization.
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From a more West-leaning generation, next China premier a cautious bureaucrat, former enforcer
BEIJING (AP) The man in line to oversee China's massive but rapidly slowing economy for the coming decade speaks English and comes from a generation of politicians schooled during a time of greater openness to liberal Western ideas than their predecessors.
But Li Keqiang also has been a cautious career bureaucrat who rose through, and is bound by, a consensus-oriented Communist Party that has been slow to reform its massive state-owned enterprises while reflexively stifling dissent and he has played the role of enforcer to keep a lid on bad news.
Li, to be promoted within the leadership's top council after a pivotal party congress closes later this week and expected to take the economy-focused post of premier from outgoing Wen Jiabao next spring, was governor of the agricultural province of Henan in 1998 during an unusual explosion of AIDS cases.
Tens of thousands of people had contracted HIV from illegal blood-buying rings that pooled plasma and re-injected it into donors after removing the blood products. But Beijing hadn't acknowledged the problem yet, and Li oversaw a campaign to squelch reporting about it, harass activists and isolate affected villages.
When the government finally did go public four years later, Li showed canny political instincts with a rapid course reversal, channeling government assistance to victims and making public shows of compassion.
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Across the US, Veterans Day commemorations, memorials, parades get under way
Saturday marked the first of what will be three days of Veterans Day commemorations across the United States.
The holiday falls on a Sunday, and the federal observance is on Monday. It's the first such day honoring the men and women who served in uniform since the last U.S. troops left Iraq in December 2011.
It's also a chance to thank those who stormed the beaches during World War II a population that is rapidly shrinking with most of those former troops now in their 80s and 90s.
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At the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, a steady stream of visitors arrived Saturday morning as the names of the 58,000 people on the wall were being read over a loudspeaker.
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Strong earthquake strikes northern Myanmar; bridge, gold mine collapse, up to 12 feared dead
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) A strong earthquake struck northern Myanmar on Sunday, collapsing a bridge and a gold mine, damaging several old Buddhist pagodas and leaving as many as 12 people feared dead.
No casualties or major damage were reported in the nearest major population center, Myanmar's second-biggest city of Mandalay, about 117 kilometers (72 miles) south of the quake's epicenter near the town of Shwebo.
An official from the Meteorological Department in the capital, Naypyitaw, said the magnitude-6.8 quake struck at 7:42 a.m. local time.
The area surrounding the epicenter is underdeveloped, and casualty reports were coming in piecemeal, mostly from local media. The region is a center for mining of minerals and gemstones, and several mines were reported to have collapsed.
The biggest single death toll was reported by a local administrative officer in Sintku township on the Irrawaddy River near the quake's epicenter who told The Associated Press that six people had died there and another 11 were injured.
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A plan to help blighted suburbs meets French resistance due to suspicions over benefactor
PARIS (AP) When the blighted housing projects ringing major French cities exploded in nationwide riots, France pledged quick action to fix them. Seven years on, the suburban projects remain islands of despair, lofty promises of rebirth largely forgotten. So a new plan to spend millions to help residents turn their neighborhoods around seemed cause for celebration.
Instead, it met a wall of resistance and outright hostility. The reason: the benefactor was the wealthy Arab emirate of Qatar.
The oil-rich state less than the size of Connecticut has exerted an outsized influence as a global bankroller, putting it at the cutting edge of an accelerating power shift between traditional Western powers and emerging economies. As Europe is engulfed in crisis, Qatar has been on a global spending spree, buying stakes in luxury brands, acquiring soccer club Paris St. Germain and financing London's "Shard" the EU's tallest building. Now, to the consternation of the French, the emirate wants to make a major humanitarian investment in the West.
It all started a year ago when 10 enterprising local officials from the heavily immigrant suburbs bypassed France's sleek diplomatic machine and knocked on the door of Qatar's emir with a request for help to fund the dreams of budding entrepreneurs without means.
In fairytale fashion, their wish was fulfilled beyond their expectations: The emir pledged a euro 50 million ($65 million) investment fund.
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Sick, frail struggle most in storm's aftermath as support networks disintegrate
NEW YORK (AP) Some of society's most vulnerable people the elderly, the disabled and the chronically ill have been pushed to the brink in the powerless, flood-ravaged neighborhoods struggling to recover from Superstorm Sandy.
The storm didn't just knock out electricity and destroy property when it came ashore in places like the Far Rockaway section of Queens. It disrupted the fragile support networks that allowed the neighborhood's frailest residents to get by.
Here, the catastrophe has closed pharmacies, kept home care aids from getting to elderly clients and made getting around in a wheelchair impossible. The city has recorded at least two deaths of older men in darkened buildings.
For some living in the disaster zone, it has all been too much.
When a team of medics and National Guardsmen turned up at Sheila Goldberg's apartment tower in Far Rockaway on Friday to check on the well-being of residents, floor by floor, the 75-year-old burst into tears and begged for help caring for her 85-year-old husband.
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Manziel, No. 15 Texas A&M stun No. 1 Alabama 29-24 to shake up national title picture
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. (AP) Johnny Football and the SEC newbies from Texas A&M took down the biggest bully in their new neighborhood and left No. 1 Alabama with badly bruised national championship hopes.
Johnny Manziel, better known around Texas as Johnny Football, staked the 15th-ranked Aggies to a three-touchdown lead in the first quarter, and Texas A&M held on to beat the Crimson Tide 29-24 on Saturday.
The Aggies (8-2, 5-2), playing in the Southeastern Conference for the first season after ditching the Big 12, also might have ended the league's run of BCS titles at six years.
The defending national champion Crimson Tide (9-1, 6-1), who have been No. 1 almost all season and had won 13 straight, didn't go quietly.
AJ McCarron nearly pulled off a second straight scintillating comeback. He threw one touchdown pass and motored the ball downfield before Deshazor Everett stepped in front of his fourth-down pass at the goal line with 1:36 left.