FBI and CIA face questions from Congress about Petraeus 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.

Petraeus' sudden departure made news before House and Senate intelligence committees were briefed, catching lawmakers who oversee the intelligence community off guard, officials said.

FBI officials have explained the committees weren't informed, one official says, because the matter started as a criminal investigation into harassing emails sent by Paula Broadwell, a 40-year-old graduate of the U.S. Military Academy and an Army Reserve officer, to another woman.

The identity of the other woman and her connection with Broadwell were not immediately known, but that probe led agents to Broadwell's email, which uncovered the relationship with Petraeus, a 60-year-old retired four-star general, according to an official who spoke to The Associated Press on Saturday.

Concerned that the emails he exchanged with Broadwell raised the possibility of a security breach, the FBI brought the matter up with Petraeus directly, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to publicly discuss the investigation.

Petraeus decided to quit, though he was breaking no laws by having an affair, officials said.

"He decided he needed to come clean with the American people," said Steve Boylan, a retired army officer and former Petraeus spokesman who talked with him Saturday.

In a phone call, Petraeus lamented the damage he'd done to his "wonderful family" and the hurt he'd caused his wife, Boylan said. Petraeus has been married for 38 years to Holly Petraeus.

"He screwed up, he knows he screwed up, now he's got to try to get past this with his family and heal," said Boylan.

Broadwell interviewed the general and his close associates intensively for more than a year to produce the best-selling biography, "All In: The Education of General David Petraeus," which was written with Vernon Loeb, a Washington Post editor, and published in January.

The CIA did not comment on the identity of the woman with whom Petraeus was involved.

Broadwell is married with two young sons. She has not responded to multiple emails and phone messages. She'd planned to celebrate her 40th birthday in Washington this weekend, with many reporters invited. Her husband emailed guests to cancel the party.

CIA officers long had expressed concern about Broadwell's unprecedented access to the director. She frequently visited the spy agency's headquarters in Langley, Va., to meet Petraeus in his office, accompanied him on morning runs around the CIA grounds and often attended public functions as his guest, according to two former intelligence officials.

Petraeus' staff when he was overseeing the war in Afghanistan similarly had been concerned about the time she spent with their boss.

In the preface to her book, Broadwell said she first met Petraeus in the spring of 2006 while she was a graduate student at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

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Associated Press writer Adam Goldman contributed to this report.

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US computer graphics scientist wins Kyoto Prize

TOKYO (AP) — An American regarded as a father of computer graphics, an Indian literary critic and a Japanese molecular cell biologist have received the Kyoto Prize, Japan's highest private award for global achievement.

The Inamori Foundation awarded its advanced technology prize on Saturday to U.S. computer scientist Ivan Sutherland, who developed the graphic interface program Sketchpad in 1963.

Gayatri Chakrovoty Spivak , an Indian literary critic and professor at Columbia University, won the arts and philosophy prize.

Yoshinori Ohsumi, a molecular biologist at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, received the basic sciences prize for his work on autophagy, a cell-recycling system that could be used to help treat neurodegenerative and age-related diseases such as Alzheimer's and cancer.

The Kyoto-based Inamori Foundation was set up in 1984 by Kyocera Corp.'s founder, Kazuo Inamori.

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Justice Department antitrust chief Wayland to step down next week

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The acting head of the U.S. Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, Joseph Wayland, will step down as of November 16, a department spokeswoman said on Thursday.

No one has been named to be the acting assistant attorney general for antitrust, said the spokeswoman, Gina Talamona.

The position has been without a confirmed chief since Christine Varney left in mid-2011. Since then, the nomination of William Baer to succeed her has stalled in the Senate.

Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican Senator, has opposed Baer’s nomination but has not publicly said why.

Baer, a prominent attorney with the law firm Arnold & Porter LLP, was nominated in early February.

Wayland, whose family lives in New York, will return there, according to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported he was leaving. Before coming to the Justice Department, he specialized in complex business litigation, including antitrust and securities cases.

The Justice Department recruited Wayland in September 2010 to lead litigation efforts at the division, a hire that appears to have paid off.

President Barack Obama‘s Justice Department successfully opposed AT&T Inc’s planned $ 39 billion deal to acquire wireless rival T-Mobile USA and stopped NASDAQ OMX Group and IntercontinentalExchange Inc from buying NYSE Euronext.

But the department reached compromises on other deals, such as Ticketmaster’s purchase of Live Nation in 2010, Google Inc’s acquisitions of ticketing software company ITA and smartphone handset maker Motorola Mobility, and Verizon Wireless’ controversial plan to buy airwaves from cable operators.

The division is looking at price-fixing in industries as disparate as auto parts, optical disk drives and the derivatives market, as well as interest-rate manipulation and whether cable companies are trying to prevent the rise of Internet video as an alternative to television.

It has also sued Apple and two publishers – Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH’s Macmillan and Pearson Plc’s Penguin Group – accusing them of fixing prices of electronic books.

(Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez call it quits

NEW YORK (AP) — A source confirms to The Associated Press that Justin Bieber is no longer Selena Gomez's "Boyfriend."

The source is not authorized to discuss the split with the press and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The breakup apparently happened last week, and distance and their busy schedules were cited as factors.

The 18-year-old "Boyfriend" singer is touring to promote his latest album, while 20-year-old Gomez is filming a "Wizards of Waverly Place" reunion for the Disney Channel.

The pair first stepped up publicly in February 2011.

E! News was the first to report the split.

Bieber seems to be doing OK, at least publicly. On the red carpet of Wednesday's Victoria's Secret fashion show he said, "I'd rather be here than anywhere in the world."

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Online:

http://www.justinbiebermusic.com/

http://www.selenagomez.com/

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Malaria vaccine a letdown for infants

LONDON (AP) — An experimental malaria vaccine once thought promising is turning out to be a disappointment, with a new study showing it is only about 30 percent effective at protecting infants from the killer disease.

That is a significant drop from a study last year done in slightly older children, which suggested the vaccine cut the malaria risk by about half — though that is still far below the protection provided from most vaccines. According to details released on Friday, the three-shot regimen reduced malaria cases by about 30 percent in infants aged 6 to 12 weeks, the target age for immunization.

Dr. Jennifer Cohn, a medical coordinator at Doctors Without Borders, described the vaccine's protection levels as "unacceptably low." She was not linked to the study.

Scientists have been working for decades to develop a malaria vaccine, a complicated endeavor since the disease is caused by five different species of parasites. There has never been an effective vaccine against a parasite. Worldwide, there are several dozen malaria vaccine candidates being researched.

In 2006, a group of experts led by the World Health Organization said a malaria vaccine should cut the risk of severe disease and death by at least half and should last longer than one year. Malaria is spread by mosquitoes and kills more than 650,000 people every year, mostly young children and pregnant women in Africa. Without a vaccine, officials have focused on distributing insecticide-treated bed nets, spraying homes with pesticides and ensuring access to good medicines.

In the new study, scientists found babies who got three doses of the vaccine had about 30 percent fewer cases of malaria than those who didn't get immunized. The research included more than 6,500 infants in Africa. Experts also found the vaccine reduced the amount of severe malaria by about 26 percent, up to 14 months after the babies were immunized.

Scientists said they needed to analyze the data further to understand why the vaccine may be working differently in different regions. For example, babies born in areas with high levels of malaria might inherit some antibodies from their mothers which could interfere with any vaccination.

"Maybe we should be thinking of a first-generation vaccine that is targeted only for certain children," said Dr. Salim Abdulla of the Ifakara Health Institute in Tanzania, one of the study investigators.

Results were presented at a conference in South Africa on Friday and released online by the New England Journal of Medicine. The study is scheduled to continue until 2014 and is being paid for by GlaxoSmithKline and the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative.

"The results look bad now, but they will probably be worse later," said Adrian Hill of Oxford University, who is developing a competing malaria vaccine. He noted the study showed the Glaxo vaccine lost its potency after several months. Hill said the vaccine might be a hard sell, compared to other vaccines like those for meningitis and pneumococcal disease — which are both effective and cheap.

"If it turns out to have a clear 30 percent efficacy, it is probably not worth it to implement this in Africa on a large scale," said Genton Blaise, a malaria expert at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute in Basel, who also sits on a WHO advisory board.

Eleanor Riley of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said the vaccine might be useful if used together with other strategies, like bed nets. She was involved in an earlier study of the vaccine and had hoped for better results. "We're all a bit frustrated that it has proven so hard to make a malaria vaccine," she said. "The question is how much money are the funders willing to keep throwing at it."

Glaxo first developed the vaccine in 1987 and has invested $300 million in it so far.

WHO said it couldn't comment on the incomplete results and would wait until the trial was finished before drawing any conclusions.

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How 'poor judgment' felled military star Petraeus

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - David Petraeus was a star on the battlefield, commanding the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, but was undone by "poor judgment" in engaging in an extramarital affair that led to his downfall as CIA director.

Just two days after his 60th birthday, Petraeus stepped down from the spy agency where he had held the top office since September 6, 2011.

"After being married for over 37 years, I showed extremely poor judgment by engaging in an extramarital affair. Such behavior is unacceptable, both as a husband and as the leader of an organization such as ours. This afternoon, the President graciously accepted my resignation," Petraeus told the shadow warriors he commanded at CIA.

It was a stunning downfall for a revered military man who was seen as one of the top American leaders of his generation and was once considered a potential contender for the White House.

Petraeus was credited with pulling Iraq from the brink of all-out civil war and for battlefield successes in Afghanistan after overseeing a surge of 30,000 troops ordered by President Barack Obama in late 2009. He became known for counter-insurgency strategies that were seen as gaining ground against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

"I don't think he was professionally overrated. His were genuine accomplishments," said James Carafano, a war historian with the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank.

At the time of his nomination to the CIA post, some Washington insiders had said the White House wanted to find a prominent position for Petraeus to ensure he would not be recruited by Republicans as a challenger to the 2012 Obama-Biden ticket.

When he was nominated to lead the CIA there were some concerns in intelligence circles that the high-profile four-star Army general might not be able to lead from the shadows as appropriate for a spy chief.

But once he took over the head office at the U.S. spy agency, Petraeus kept a decidedly low public profile.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, expressed regret about the resignation of "one of America's best and brightest" and said it was an "enormous loss" for the country.

"At CIA, Director Petraeus gave the agency leadership, stature, prestige and credibility both at home and abroad. On a personal level, I found his command of intelligence issues second to none," she said.

RESIGNATION ACCEPTED

After accepting his resignation about a year-and-a-half after nominating Petraeus to the CIA post, Obama said: "By any measure, he was one of the outstanding General officers of his generation, helping our military adapt to new challenges, and leading our men and women in uniform through a remarkable period of service in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he helped our nation put those wars on a path to a responsible end."

Earlier this week, in a Newsweek article entitled "General David Petraeus's Rules for Living," he listed 12 lessons for leadership. Number 5 was: "We all will make mistakes. The key is to recognize them and admit them, to learn from them, and to take off the rear­ view mirrors - drive on and avoid making them again."

In 2010 Petraeus stepped into the breach as the new commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan to replace General Stanley McChrystal who was fired by Obama in a scandal over an article in which McChrystal and his aides made mocking comments about the president and some of his top advisers.

In 2009 Petraeus was diagnosed with early-stage prostate cancer and underwent radiation treatment. The media-friendly general joked at that time at a Washington event that reporters were only gathered "to see if the guy is still alive."

Petraeus, born in Cornwall, New York, lives in Virginia with his wife Holly. They have two grown children, a son who was an Army Ranger who served in Afghanistan, and a daughter.

Petraeus's wife, Holly, is an activist and volunteer who champions military families, and she continued that work after her husband retired from the military and moved to the CIA.

She currently is assistant director of the office of servicemember affairs at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, where she tries to keep unscrupulous lenders from taking advantage of military personnel. The bureau was championed by Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren, who was elected to the Senate from Massachusetts this week.

Holly Petraeus is the daughter of four-star General William Knowlton, who was superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point when Petraeus was a cadet.

She briefed the press at the Pentagon on her efforts recently and was introduced by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who called her "a true friend of the Department of Defense and a dedicated member of our military family."

Petraeus has four Defense Distinguished Service Medal awards, three Distinguished Service Medal awards, the Bronze Star Medal for valor, and the State Department Distinguished Service Award.

He has a doctorate in international relations from Princeton University.

(Additional reporting by David Alexander, Matt Spetalnick and Diane Bartz; Editing by Warren Strobel and Jackie Frank)

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NATO: 2 international troops die in Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — NATO says two service members with the U.S.-led military coalition have died in Afghanistan.

One service member was killed in an insurgent attack in eastern Afghanistan. Another died as a result of a non-battle related injury in the country's south.

NATO did not release any other information about Friday's deaths pending notification of family members.

So far this year, 371 international troops have died in Afghanistan.

Fighting is winding down with the advent of cooler weather but the Taliban still continue to target coalition and Afghan forces, especially with roadside bombs.

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Roger Waters plays with band of wounded veterans

NEW YORK (AP) — Roger Waters honored wounded veterans in New York by performing with them at the annual Stand Up for Heroes benefit, Thursday night.

The founding member of Pink Floyd took to the stage of the Beacon Theater with 14 wounded soldiers he met recently at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. He rehearsed with them at the hospital, and for the past few days in New York.

The event benefited the Bob Woodruff Foundation, which helps returning veterans and their families, and featured Waters, Bruce Springsteen, Ricky Gervais, Robin Williams, and others.

Before the show, Waters chatted with veterans and called the experience "fantastic." He says he's "looking forward to pulling for the rest of these guys with their comrades" during the healing process.

He says that he shares "enormous empathy with the men."

"I lost my grandfather in 1916 and my father in 1944, so I've been around the sense of loss and what loss from war can do to people," Waters said.

"I never talk about the politics because it's not relevant to me. I'm not interested in it," he said. "What I am interested in is the burdens these guys bear and would never question motive or even dream of talking about any of the politics."

He added: "If any of us have a responsibility in our lives it is to tear down the walls of indifference and miscommunication between ourselves and our fellow men."

Waters said he rehearsed with many of the soldiers at the hospital in between their medical procedures. Before the show, he walked the red carpet with Staff Sgt. Robert Henline, who was not in the band. In 2007, Henline was the sole survivor of a roadside bombing north of Baghdad. As a result, he suffered burns over 38 percent of his body and his head was burned to the skull.

Henline, who fought for his life after the attack, has endured more than 40 surgeries.

Still, he maintains a sense of humor. On the open red carpet on a chilly night, Waters pushed closer to Henline for warmth.

"Get next to the burn guy. I'm good. I'm heated up," Henline joked.

No surprise. The retired soldier says he's been doing stand-up comedy for the past year and a half.

Waters performed three songs with the veterans, including the Pink Floyd classic, "Wish You Were Here."

Waters said he didn't think there would be a reunion with his former band.

"I think David (Gilmour) is retired by and large. I shouldn't speak for him. But that's the impression I get."

Waters then added: "Hey whatever. All good things come to an end."

While his mammoth tour of "The Wall" ended this summer, Waters promised the theatrical version would hit the Broadway stage in the near future.

The Bob Woodruff Foundation has supported more than 1 million veterans, service members, and their families since it began in 2008.

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John Carucci covers entertainment for The Associated Press. Follow him at —http://www.twitter.com/jcarucci_ap

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Calif. city plans to provide transgender surgeries

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — San Francisco is preparing to become the first U.S. city to provide and cover the cost of sex reassignment surgeries for uninsured transgender residents.

The city's Health Commission voted Tuesday to create a comprehensive program for treating transgender people experiencing mental distress because of the mismatch between their bodies and their gender identities. San Francisco already provides transgender residents with hormones, counseling and routine health services, but has stopped short of offering surgical interventions, Public Health Director Barbara Garcia said Thursday after the vote was announced.

The idea for a new program that included surgeries came out of conversations between public health officials and transgender rights advocates who wanted mastectomies, genital reconstructions and other surgeries that are recommended for some transgender people covered under San Francisco's 5-year-old universal health care plan.

At the urging of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and the San Francisco-based Transgender Law Center, the commission agreed this week to drop sex reassignment surgery from the list of procedures specifically excluded from the Healthy San Francisco plan.

But Garcia described the move as "a symbolic process" for now because the city currently does not have the expertise, capacity or protocols in place to provide the surgeries through its clinics and public hospital.

"The community felt the exclusion on Healthy San Francisco was discriminatory and we wanted to change that as the first step," she said.

Instead of expanding the existing plan, the Health Commission approved the establishment of a separate program that covers all aspects of transgender health, including gender transition. Garcia hopes to have it running by late next year, but said her department first needs to study how many people it would serve, how much it would cost, who would perform the surgeries and where they would be performed.

"Sex reassignment surgery is not the end all. It's one service that some transgender people want and some don't," she said. "We can probably manage this over the next three years without much of a budget increase because we already have these (other) services covered."

San Francisco in 2001 became the first city in the country to cover sex reassignment surgeries for government employees. Last year, Portland, Ore. did the same. The number of major U.S. companies covering the cost of gender reassignment surgery for transgender workers also doubled last year, reflecting a decades-long push by transgender activists to get insurance companies to treat such surgeries as medically necessary instead of elective procedures.

Kathryn Steuerman, a member of a transgender health advocacy group in San Francisco, said the city's latest move would help residents avoid going into debt to finance operations related to gender transition, as she did.

"I am filled with hope and gratitude that we are achieving this level of support for the well-being of the transgender community," Steuerman said.

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11,000 flee Syria in huge one-day exodus

DEAR ABBY: My brother lost his wife, the love of his life, three years ago. He has three children. His oldest, a 25-year-old daughter, "Jenny," told him that "when you marry, it is for life." She has threatened that if he dates someone or sees anyone, she will be out of his life and he won't be able to see his future grandchildren. (Jenny is getting married next summer.)My brother is very upset. He wants to settle this argument before she is married. He hasn't dated anyone, but feels she shouldn't be trying to control his life. Please help, Abby. ...

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