Active Life RX

Babydolls became a prominent part of the "Kinderwhore" look during the early-to-mid 1990s due to the popularity of Riot Grrrl and Grunge music performers like Courtney Love and Kat Bjelland.

In the 1820s, fashion changed again, with the waistline lowered back to almost the natural position. Corsets began to be made with some padding and boning. Corsets began to be worn by all classes of society. Some women made their own, while others bought their corsets. Corsets were one of the first mass produced garments for women. Corsets began to be more heavily boned in the 1840s. By 1850, steel boning became popular.

Queen Size Lingerie

For instance, political upheaval and instability can have a negative impact on a nation's economy. The rise of a political faction that is perceived to be fiscally responsible can have the opposite effect. Also, events in one country in a region may spur positive or negative interest in a neighboring country and, in the process, affect its currency.

Flights to quality: Unsettling international events can lead to a "flight to quality," with investors seeking a "safe haven". There will be a greater demand, thus a higher price, for currencies perceived as stronger over their relatively weaker counterparts. The Swiss franc has been a traditional safe haven during times of political or economic uncertainty.

Forex Trading System

LONDON – The only rail link between Britain and France was closed for testing Sunday, after a series of breakdowns trapped thousands in a tunnel for hours in claustrophobic conditions, train company Eurostar said.
The breakdowns of four trains in the Channel Tunnel on Friday evening and ensuing cancellations through the weekend were expected to affect some 50,000 people during the busy holiday travel season.
Passengers were stranded in the dark without food, water or air conditioning for more than 12 hours after the breakdowns, which were initially blamed on severe weather.
The company is running special trains through the tunnels in a bid to pinpoint the problem, press officer Anelle Mouhaddib said Sunday. She declined to say whether any trains had successfully made it through the tunnel, but a series of trains dispatched from London and Paris on Saturday evening were either canceled or broke down.
In addition to the 2,000 people trapped in the tunnel Friday night, a further 31,000 had had their trips canceled Saturday, and 26,000 more were expected to be affected Sunday, Mouhaddib said.
Eurostar's executives have offered apologies, refunds, free travel and more.
Officials have said that the quick transition from the icy cold of France, which is suffering some of its worst winter weather in years, to the relative warmth of the tunnel could have interfered with the trains' electrical systems. But the company's chief operating officer, Nicolas Petrovic, said the exact cause remains unclear.
"It's all a bit of a mystery and the company, and indeed a lot of people, appear baffled by it," said Nigel Harris, the managing editor of Rail magazine.
"What is really puzzling about this is the fact that it is happening now, even though the trains have been exposed to cold weather over the last few years, he said.
Comparable trains in France have "been going even longer than Eurostar without experiencing any of these cold-weather problems," he said.
Eurostar was making no promises to passengers trying to make it to their destinations before Christmas.
Service will be resumed "as soon as possible," Mouhaddib said.

FRIDAY, Dec. 18 (HealthDay News) -- Elderly black Americans use
fewer medications than whites and are more likely to skip taking their
meds, a new study finds.

It included 100 black and 100 white patients, aged 60 and older, who
were interviewed at the start of the study, and again six months and one
year later.

Overall, whites used more medications, had more chronic medical
conditions and used more physicians. Whites were more likely than blacks
to have adequate health literacy skills (58 percent vs. 29 percent) and
less likely to be unable to afford medications (12 percent vs. 28
percent).

The most common problems for both whites and blacks were: medication
non-adherence (42 percent vs. 68 percent), under treatment (83 percent vs.
87 percent), suboptimal drug use (59 percent vs. 66 percent), and
suboptimal dosing (48 percent vs. 56 percent).

The findings support previous research showing that elderly black
patients have higher rates of medication non-adherence than whites. But,
overall, medication-related problems are prevalent and persist in both
races, the researchers said.

"Strategies to better measure the quality of medication use in older
adults are needed, and efforts to improve the quality of medication use in
older adults must account for potential differences in both the number and
types of problems affecting whites and blacks," concluded Dr. Mary Roth
and her colleagues at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The study was published online Dec. 11 in the Journal of General
Internal Medicine.

More information

The AGS Foundation for Health in Aging has more about medications.

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama says he thinks the country is "on the cusp of making health care reform a reality."
Obama spoke at the White House on Saturday not long after Senate Democratic leaders secured the support of Nebraska's Ben Nelson to provide the 60th and deciding vote for health care legislation.
The president said that "it now appears the American people will have the vote they deserve" on this important issue.
He called Saturday's development a major step forward in extending coverage to the uninsured and saving money for businesses and the government in the long term.
Obama also said that overhauling the nation's health care system will save lives.

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) –
U.N. climate talks ended with a bare-minimum agreement on Saturday when delegates "noted" an accord struck by the United States, China and other emerging powers that falls far short of the conference's original goals.

"Finally we sealed a deal," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said. "The 'Copenhagen Accord' may not be everything everyone had hoped for, but this ... is an important beginning."

A long road lies ahead. The accord -- weaker than a legally binding treaty and weaker even than the 'political' deal many had foreseen -- left much to the imagination.

It set a target of limiting global warming to a maximum 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial times -- seen as a threshold for dangerous changes such as more floods, droughts, mudslides, sandstorms and rising seas. But it failed to say how this would be achieved.

It held out the prospect of $100 billion in annual aid from 2020 for developing nations but did not specify precisely where this money would come from. And it pushed decisions on core issues such as emissions cuts into the future.

"This basically is a letter of intent ... the ingredients of an architecture that can respond to the long-term challenge of climate change, but not in precise legal terms. That means we have a lot of work to do on the long road to Mexico," said Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat.

Another round of climate talks is scheduled for November 2010 in Mexico. Negotiators are hoping to nail down then what they failed to achieve in Copenhagen -- a new treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol. But there are no guarantees.

NON-BINDING ACCORD

A plenary session of the marathon 193-nation talks in the Danish capital merely "took note" of the new accord, a non-binding deal for combating global warming finalized by U.S. President Barack Obama, China, India, Brazil and South Africa.

Work on the pact had begun in a meeting of 28 leaders, ministers and officials, including EU countries and small island nations most vulnerable to climate change.

The European Union, which has set itself ambitious emissions cuts targets and encouraged others to follow suit, only reluctantly accepted the weak deal that finally emerged.

"The decision has been very difficult for me. We have done one step, we have hoped for several more," said German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

In the final hours of the talks, which began on December 7 and ended early on Saturday afternoon, delegates agreed to set a deadline to conclude a U.N. treaty by the end of 2010.

At stake was a deal to fight global warming and promote a cleaner world economy less dependent on fossil fuels.

The accord explicitly recognized a "scientific view" that the world should limit warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius -- although the promised emissions cuts were far short of the amount needed to reach that goal.

"We have a big job ahead to avoid climate change through effective emissions reduction targets, and this was not done here," said Brazil's climate change ambassador, Sergio Serra.

A final breakthrough came after U.S. President Barack Obama brokered a final deal with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and leaders of India, South Africa and Brazil that they stand behind their commitments to curb growth in greenhouse gases.

Obama said the "extremely difficult and complex" talks laid the foundation for international action in the years to come.

"For the first time in history, all of the world's major economies have come together to accept their responsibility to take action on the threat of climate change," Obama said at the White House on Saturday after returning from Copenhagen.

The outcome underscored shortcomings in the chaotic U.N. process and may pass the initiative in forming world climate policy to the United States and China, the world's top two emitters of greenhouse gases.

STORMY

In a stormy overnight session, the talks came to the brink of collapse after Sudan, Nicaragua, Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia lined up to denounce the U.S. and China-led plan, after heads of state and government had flown home.

Sources close to the talks told Reuters the Danish hosts and U.N. lawyers had not obtained formal backing from the conference for a smaller group of leaders and ministers to agree a final text, leading to chaos when this was finally presented to a plenary meeting of all 193 countries.

U.N. talks are meant to be concluded by unanimity. Under a compromise to avoid collapse, the deal listed the countries that were in favor of the deal and those against.

An all-night plenary session, chaired by Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, hit a low point when a Sudanese delegate said the plan in Africa would be like the Holocaust.

The document "is a solution based on the same very values, in our opinion, that channeled six million people in Europe into furnaces," said Sudan's Lumumba Stanislaus Di-aping.

"The reference to the Holocaust is, in this context, absolutely despicable," said Anders Turesson, chief negotiator of Sweden.

The conference finally merely "took note" of the new accord.

This gives it the same legal status as if it had been accepted, senior United Nations official Robert Orr said. But it is far from a full endorsement, and it was also condemned by many environmental groups as showing a failure of leadership.

(With reporting by Gerard Wynn, Anna Ringstrom, John Acher, Anna Ringstrom, Richard Cowan, David Fogarty, Pete Harrison, Emma Graham-Harrison and Alister Bull in Washington; Writing by Gerard Wynn and Alister Doyle; editing by Dominic Evans and Janet McBride).

MONTGOMERY, Ala. – Alabama is neither the richest nor the biggest state in the U.S., but it now has the highest paid state attorney general.
The former No. 1, California Attorney General Jerry Brown, took a pay cut that moved Alabama's Troy King into first place. Brown dropped from slightly more than $184,000 to $151,000 on Monday.
A national ranking of pay for attorneys general shows King's is highest, at $168,000.
His chief of staff said King doesn't control his own pay. A 1969 state law makes the attorney general's pay equal to that of the associate justices on the Alabama Supreme Court. It has moved the Alabama attorney general's salary higher than in more populous states, even though Alabama is traditionally among the poorer, low-wage states.

FRANKLIN, N.J. – Police said a Franklin man dressed up as his mother in an attempt to withdraw money from her bank account. Tita Nyambi, 25, was still at the Chase Bank in Franklin, in Somerset County, when police arrived Monday afternoon. Tellers called to report that a man wearing women's clothes and speaking in a high pitched voice was trying to withdraw money through the bank's drive-through window.
Police said Nyambi handed tellers his mother's license and a bank form forged with her signature. Nyambi was arrested and charged with forgery and attempted theft by deception.
Franklin police Sgt. Philip Rizzo said Nyambi was wearing his mother's pink blouse, her black coat and head scarf.
It could not be determined Tuesday whether Nyambi, who was still in jail, has an attorney. No phone listing for him could be found.
___
Information from: The Star-Ledger, http://www.nj.com/starledger

Portland Carpet Cleaning

LYNDON, Kan. – A former Missouri city official previously accused of assaulting his wife was charged Monday with capital murder in the shootings of her and their two teenage daughters in eastern Kansas.
James Kraig Kahler, 46, also was charged with one count of attempted first-degree murder in the shooting of his estranged wife's 89-year-old grandmother and one count of aggravated burglary. Authorities suspect he broke into the grandmother's home near Topeka, where the shootings occurred.
During Kahler's first appearance in Osage County District Court, Judge Phillip Fromme set bail at $10 million and scheduled another hearing for Dec. 10.
Kahler, who often went by his middle name Kraig, declined to comment as sheriff's deputies escorted him in handcuffs from jail to the courthouse. He had been scheduled to appear in court in Columbia, Mo., on Wednesday on a domestic assault charge stemming from an altercation with his wife in March that led to the loss of his job as director of Columbia's Water & Light Department.
A divorce trial for Kahler and his 44-year-old wife, Karen, was scheduled to start Dec. 21, but a settlement hearing was planned for Friday. Court records showed that he complained of financial pressures and the couple had been sparring over their children.
The Kahlers' daughters, Emily, 18, and Lauren, 16, were killed Saturday, along with their mother. His wife's grandmother, Dorothy Wight, 89, was wounded. The couple's 10-year-old son, Sean, was at Wight's house south of Burlingame on Saturday but was uninjured.
Wight remained in critical condition at a Topeka hospital, said Ashley Anstaett, spokeswoman for the attorney general's office. She declined to say where the boy was staying.
Dan Pingelton, a Columbia attorney representing Karen Kahler in the divorce, described her husband as "controlling."
"From the facts I heard, I think he was a misogynist," Pingelton said.
He said Kahler refused to see his daughters. Emily attended the St. Louis College of Pharmacy and Lauren was an honors student at a Columbia high school.
Pingelton said Kahler set up a visit with his son over the Thanksgiving holiday.
"He never was interested in his daughters — only his son," Pingelton said. "And I think that is the reason that little boy is alive today."
A single capital murder count covers the three killings; Kansas law allows the death penalty for multiple murders arising from a single "scheme or course of conduct."
But the Kansas attorney general's office also filed three alternative charges of premeditated first-degree murder in what Deputy Attorney General Barry Disney called a "fallback position" should jurors fail to convict Kahler of the capital charge.
Kahler and his family had moved to Missouri from Parker County, Texas, in July 2008, after he'd been utilities director for the city of Weatherford for nine years. In Columbia, Mo., his $150,000 annual salary made him the city's highest paid employee.
But he was asked to resign in September and was paid two months' salary and one month of severance. In an Oct. 9 court filing, he asked for relief from the temporary monthly payments of $2,030 in child support and $1,500 in maintenance he was required to provide his family.
Kahler said he expected to remain unemployed "for a substantial period of time," adding that he was prevented by court order from withdrawing money from his retirement account pending the divorce.
In court on Monday, Fromme asked Kahler whether he could afford an attorney and Kahler responded that he had "some funds." Nevertheless, the judge appointed the state's death penalty defense unit in Topeka to represent him.

Kahler lived in Columbia until several weeks ago, according to neighbors. On Nov. 25, he notified the Missouri court of his new address in Meriden, Kan., northeast of Topeka.

In her court petition, Kahler's wife described a "history of controlling force" throughout the couple's 23-year marriage. She recounted a New Year's Eve 2008 fight in Weatherford, Texas, during which Kahler pushed her hard enough that she banged her head on the street.

"I'm afraid it will escalate so far that someone is going to be seriously hurt," she wrote.

Pingelton said Karen Kahler believed her husband was hacking into her e-mail and committing minor acts of vandalism around her home.

"Karen was fearful of him, but really she was honestly more afraid he was going to kill himself," he said. "Nobody had any idea he would consider doing this."

___

Associated Press writers Alan Scher Zagier in Columbia, Mo., and Heather Hollingsworth in Kansas City, Mo., contributed to this report.

Statement of Statutory Accounting Principles ("SSAP") 62, issued by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, applies to so-called 'statutory accounting' - the accounting for insurance enterprises to conform with regulation. Paragraph 12 of SSAP 62 is nearly identical to the FAS 113 test, while paragraph 14, which is otherwise very similar to paragraph 10 of FAS 113, additionally contains a justification for the use of a single fixed rate for discounting purposes. The choice of an "reasonable and appropriate" discount rate is left as a matter of judgment.

Gamblers can continue spending, buying more risk than they can afford to pay for. Insurance buyers can only spend up to the limit of what carriers would accept to insure; their loss is limited to the amount of the premium.

Life Insurance

WASHINGTON (AFP) –
President Barack Obama has given fateful orders likely to send thousands more troops to Afghanistan in a political gamble meant to forge an eventual US exit from a costly and gruelling war.

"The commander in chief has issued the orders," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Monday, as Obama briefed world leaders on his new Afghan strategy, a day before making a major televised address to the American people.

The plan emerged from an exhaustive policy review amid extreme weariness of the war among Americans, and as supporters warned Obama could be risking his presidency by deploying thousands more men to a Vietnam-style quagmire.

Obama is expected to order between 30,000 and 35,000 more troops to bolster the US effort to repel a resurgent Taliban, secure major cities and fast-track training for Afghan security forces, alongside a separate civilian aid surge.

The president will also assure Americans and regional leaders he will not underwrite an indefinite and costly stay in Afghanistan for US troops.

"This is not an open-ended commitment," Gibbs said, painting the plan as an eventual pathway for US troops to come home.

"We are there to partner with the Afghans, to train the Afghan national security forces, the army and the police, so that they can provide security for their country and wage a battle against an unpopular insurgency."

The White House said Obama delivered orders marking the most crucial leadership test of his presidency in the Oval Office so far, on Sunday, after telling top aides of his final decision.

He met generals and top security aides in the Oval Office.

He then spoke directly by secure video-link to Afghan war commander General Stanley McChrystal, who warned earlier this year the conflict would be lost without more troops -- and US ambassador to Kabul Karl Eikenberry.

Obama will address Americans in a major televised speech to cadets at the US Military Academy at West Point at 8:00 pm Tuesday (0100 GMT Wednesday).

He will tell a nation weary of years of conflict and humbled by the worst economic crisis in generations, why it must risk yet more lives and wealth in a war launched after the September 11 attacks in 2001.

His message will be compelling listening for voters, lawmakers and soldiers, US allies, leaders in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and Taliban and Al-Qaeda insurgents battling Washington in a bloody eight-year war.

Many of Obama's core political supporters, and key Democrats worried about ballooning budget deficits, are wary of more troop deployments. Republicans have however demanded the president answer the generals' calls for more help.

As he launched a public relations offensive to market the new strategy, Obama called French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Monday.

French newspaper Le Monde said Washington had asked for 1,500 more French troops.

Obama also spoke with by secure video link with Gordon Brown after the British prime minister announced he would increase British regular troop numbers by 500 to 9,500 in December.

Obama will also talk to Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who both will be key players in the new strategy.

The US leader told Australian Prime Minsiter Kevin Rudd of his plans in person, during Oval Office talks.

Rudd pledged send more police trainers and civilian aid experts to Afghanistan, saying his country was in "for the long haul" but did not pledge more troops beyond 1,550 Australia has already committed.

Consultations with key players in Congress, where some Democrats have expressed skepticism about new troop deployments, were taking place on Monday and Tuesday.

Some 35,000 American soldiers were fighting the Taliban-led insurgency when Obama took office. After an initial boost in February there are now about 68,000.

More than 900 American soldiers have lost their lives in Afghanistan and October was the deadliest month since the start of the war in 2001 with 74 US soldiers killed.

Obama Sunday spoke to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by telephone, then met Defense Secretary Robert Gates; Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff; General James Cartwright, the vice chairman of the joint chiefs; White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and General David Petraeus, head of US central command.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) –
The last in a wave of hundreds of shareholder lawsuits over the 2001 AOL-Time Warner merger was dismissed on Monday by a New York judge who found the claim was filed too late and failed to link investor losses to statements made by AOL's auditor, Ernst & Young.

U.S. District Judge Colleen MacMahon granted Ernst & Young's motion to dismiss the complaint brought against it in 2003 by private investigator and former AOL shareholder Dominic Amorosa.

Amorosa filed his case after time limits for securities fraud cases had expired, and failed "to connect specific statements made by the auditor" to stock losses, the judge wrote. Amorosa had originally sued AOL, Time Warner, the merged company, AOL European partner Bertelsmann AG, and 11 executives in addition to Ernst & Young. The other defendants were dismissed from the case in earlier proceedings.

The court also said it was considering sanctions against Amorosa's lawyer, Christopher Gray, over procedural "shenanigans" in the case. Neither Gray nor Ernst & Young could be reached for comment late on Monday.

Amorosa accused Ernst & Young of approving false and misleading financial statements that were incorporated into the merger registration statement and of concealing AOL's improper methods of booking online ad revenue.

Those revenue recognition practices became the focus of investigations by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and Justice Department, and AOL later restated some financial results for 2000 through 2002.

The restatements led to hundreds of investor lawsuits, all but about 200 of which were consolidated into a class action in New York federal court. All have been settled or dismissed.

Ernst & Young contended that Amorosa -- who opted out of the class action to file his own suit -- was a "vexatious litigant pursuing clearly frivolous claims," the judge wrote.

She said she would consider sanctions at a separate proceeding.

The case is Dominic Amorosa vs. Ernst & Young, case no. 03-03902, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

(Reporting by Gina Keating; Editing by Richard Chang)

MIAMI – Federal authorities are seizing two Rhode Island mansions and a New York City apartment from a Florida lawyer accused of masterminding a $1 billion fraud scheme.
An amended forfeiture complaint against attorney Scott Rothstein lists two adjacent multimillion-dollar homes on Rhode Island's Narragansett Bay. The complaint filed last week also lists a $6 million Manhattan apartment and a $7.2 million home in Boca Raton.
The FBI says Rothstein orchestrated a $1 billion fraud scheme involving investments in fake legal settlements.
No criminal charges have been filed, but prosecutors have moved to seize Rothstein's numerous properties, luxury cars, boats and other assets. Investors have filed lawsuits against Rothstein and others.

WASHINGTON — With eight years of blood and treasure already spent and perhaps his presidency hanging in the balance, President Barack Obama will tell the world Tuesday how he'll escalate the war in Afghanistan — and how he hopes his risky decision will lead finally to a path home for U.S. forces.

The stakes of his decision — ordered into effect at 5 p.m. Sunday in the Oval Office — are enormous, and the challenges of making it work are daunting. He'll speak at 8 p.m. EST Tuesday from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y.

Perhaps his toughest task will be balancing his plan to send 30,000 to 35,000 more American troops with talk of new benchmarks for success and the strong signal that U.S. troops will turn over Afghanistan's security to Afghan forces and get out.

His expected talk on the end of the war is meant to spark Afghans to take charge of their own country — and to soothe anti-war Democrats here. Yet it also could suggest to the enemies that all they have to do is wait out an impatient United States , and to Pakistan , Iran , India and others that the U.S. lacks the stomach for a protracted battle.

Beyond that, he has to explain how his new plan can root out the Taliban , deny al Qaida and its allies a sanctuary, straighten out a corrupt Afghan government so people have an alternative to the Taliban and get neighboring Pakistan to fight terrorists that have fled there.

He also has to do it all while making sure that the tinderbox region isn't further inflamed by a belligerent Iran defiantly ramping up nuclear plans, a resurgence of ethnic and religious violence in Iraq or a growing Islamist insurgency in nuclear-armed Pakistan .

"It's probably the most important decision in his career," said Karin Von Hippel , a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies , a center-right research center in Washington . "There are so many moving parts that need to be aligned. ...I think we can do it, but it's a huge challenge."

Obama on Sunday summoned the members of his top military and security team to the White House to give them the final go-ahead on his plan. As McClatchy first reported on Nov. 7 , it would bolster the current 68,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan with another 30,000 to 35,000, to be deployed starting early next year.

The first, officials told McClatchy , will be a brigade of Marines from Camp Lejeune, N.C. , followed by Army brigades from the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Ky. , and the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, N.Y.

After meeting with top officials from the Pentagon and White House staff, Obama spoke with Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal later Sunday evening via teleconference from the White House Situation Room . It was McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan , who requested additional troops to institute a new counterinsurgency strategy that would fight the Taliban while shoring up the Afghan government and Afghan forces.

As part of that, Obama will announce a planned expansion of the Afghan army to 240,000 and the Afghan police to 160,000 by October 2013 .

Obama will acknowledge the added costs of escalating the war, telling the country there are "limits on our resources, both from a manpower perspective and a budgetary perspective," White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday.

While calling for a larger army, Obama may leave out details of how he'd pay the financial cost of the escalation. Gibbs said the White House hadn't discussed a proposal from several liberal Democrats in Congress to impose an income tax surtax to pay for the escalation.

"I know the president will touch on costs. I don't expect to get overly detailed in the speech tomorrow," Gibbs said.

Obama also wants more help from NATO allies. He'll ask for another 7,000 to 10,000 NATO troops, which would come atop the 36,230 already there from U.S. allies, according to the NATO-International Security Assistance Force Web site.

He spoke Monday with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy , both NATO members.

Brown said Monday that his country would send an additional 500 troops, raising the British total to 9,500, according to the NATO-ISAF Web site. "The extra troops will deploy in early December to thicken the U.K. troop presence in central Helmand," Brown told Parliament.

Sarkozy said that France would keep its 3,095 troops in Afghanistan until the country was "pacified and sovereign." He didn't say whether France would send more troops.

Obama also met at the White House with Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and spoke by phone with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev .

Despite the buildup, Obama will strive to assure a country that no longer supports the war that this is not another Vietnam , where President Lyndon Johnson kept escalating the war without success.

"You will hear the president discuss clearly that this is not open-ended," Gibbs said. "This is about what has to be done in order to ensure that the Afghans can assume the responsibility of securing their country."

Thus, Obama again will have benchmarks for success, for measuring how well the Afghan government is cleaning itself up and how well the fight against the Taliban is going. With the escalation of troops spread out — 5,000 additional troops per quarter, according to U.S. military officials _the president will have the option of maintaining that buildup or changing course.

Obama also will talk about Pakistan , and his hopes that better relations with the government will lead it to crack down on the Taliban and other terrorist groups within its borders. Many fled Afghanistan to hide out in Pakistan . Growing political tensions in Pakistan threaten the stability of the regime there.

"A good portion of the president's speech ... will discuss our relationship with Pakistan ," Gibbs said.

"This is all part of what has to be a partnership. ... Without partners that are willing to do stuff in both Afghanistan and Pakistan , no number of American troops can solve all of those problems unless or until those steps are taken inside both of those countries where we see a change in the security situation."

ON THE WEB

How many troops NATO member nations have in Afghanistan

MORE FROM MCCLATCHY

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Another Afghan war: Media leaks spark administration fight

Obama plans to send 34,000 more troops to Afghanistan

Should we pay higher taxes to cover the cost of Afghan war?

Exclusive: U.S. drafts Afghan 'Compact' it hopes will bolster new Karzai government

Taliban gain foothold in once-stable Afghan north

Trainers of Afghan police have work cut out for them

Obama: A good communicator, but not yet a great one

For more McClatchy politics coverage visit Planet Washington

MUNICH, Germany (AFP) –
John Demjanjuk was due to face Holocaust survivors in court on Tuesday on the second day of his Nazi war crimes trial, amid doubts on whether the 89-year-old is as ill as he makes out.

Demjanjuk appeared on the first day of what is likely to be the last major Holocaust trial first in a wheelchair, moaning as he was wheeled out before being brought in for the second session laid out on a stretcher.

At the end of the day's proceedings in Munich, however, after most reporters had left the room, an AFP reporter saw Demjanjuk, wearing a baseball cap and a leather jacket, laughing and joking.

Other journalists and lawyers representing Holocaust survivors had previously also witnessed an apparently much more active Demjanjuk than he appeared in court. Profile: John Demjanjuk

Demjanjuk's family says he suffers from a litany of health complaints including leukaemia and that it is unlikely he will survive the trial.

But Christoph Nerl, a specialist in blood diseases, told the court that the defendant was suffering from a lesser complaint "which is definitely not leukaemia" and that Demjanjuk was "in a low-risk group."

Efraim Zuroff, head of the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Jerusalem, was also unmoved, saying: "It's a pathetic attempt to appear more crippled than he is. He belongs in Hollywood."

"People like Demjanjuk don't deserve any sympathy because he had no sympathy for his victims," he said.

Demjanjuk is accused of helping to kill 27,900 people while a guard at the Sobibor death camp in 1943, one of a network of camps erected by Adolf Hitler's Germany in Eastern Europe with the sole purpose of mass extermination.

He denies the charges, which were due to be formally read out in court on Tuesday, but prosecutors say they have an SS identity card bearing his name and transfer orders.

If convicted, the Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk will almost certainly spend the rest of his days behind bars. If not, he will face an uncertain future as he is stateless, having been stripped of his US citizenship.

Some of the 30 or so plaintiffs in the case, most of whom lost family members at Sobibor, were due to begin giving testimony on Tuesday.

There are no living eyewitnesses who saw Demjanjuk there, so prosecutors will rely heavily on written testimony by people now dead.

One of the co-plaintiffs was set to be Robert Cohen, a gaunt 83-year-old from Amsterdam whose parents and brother died at Sobibor, and who himself survived the Auschwitz death camp.

"If he (Demjanjuk) was there, he killed more than 100 people per day -- per day! That would be the worst crime ever," Cohen told reporters on Monday.

Demjanjuk says he was a Red Army soldier captured in 1942 by the Germans and then moved around various prisoner-of-war camps, but Israeli and US courts have already established he was at Sobibor.

Demjanjuk was sentenced to death in Israel in 1988 for being "Ivan the Terrible", a sadistic Nazi guard, but after five years on death row the conviction was overturned when Israel established this was another man.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim failed Tuesday in his bid to stop his sodomy trial from going ahead in another blow to his fluctuating fortunes since achieving spectacular election results last year.
The Kuala Lumpur High Court rejected Anwar's application to have the case thrown out before it is heard in court, and set the trial date for Jan. 25. Anwar's lawyer Sankara Nair said he will appeal the decision in the Appeal Court.
"I didn't expect anything different," Anwar, 61, told reporters after the ruling by Justice Mohamad Zabidin Diah.
Anwar was charged in August 2008 with allegedly sodomizing a 23-year-old male former aide. He has denied the charge. He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted of sodomy, a crime in this Muslim-majority country.
A medical examination of the aide conducted after the alleged sodomy showed no conclusive evidence of penetration. Therefore, Anwar's lawyers argued, trying him for sodomy would be tantamount to abusing the justice system.
Mohamad Zabidin, however, rejected the argument, saying the prosecution might have other witnesses or evidence to prove its case. He also rejected the defense argument that the case was a "malicious prosecution."
It is the second time that Anwar, a former deputy prime minister, has been accused of sodomy. He spent six years in prison between 1998 and 2004 after being convicted of corruption and of sodomizing his former family driver. Anwar insisted he had been framed and was freed when Malaysia's top court overturned the sodomy conviction.
Anwar maintains that the new sodomy charge is part of a government conspiracy to undermine his three-party opposition alliance, which made massive gains in general elections last year. Government officials have denied any plot against Anwar.

Democratic Rep. John Murtha — just back from a fact-finding trip to Afghanistan — said Monday that he never got a clear definition of what constitutes an “achievable victory” for the United States and fears that American commanders are assuming more time for the war effort than voters at home will allow.
“I am still very nervous about this whole thing,” Murtha told POLITICO. “If you had 10 years, it might work; if you had five, you could make a difference. But you don’t have that long.”
A top Democrat on military matters, the Pennsylvania lawmaker captures the skepticism facing the White House as President Barack Obama prepares to commit up to 35,000 more troops to the war effort. Obama has chosen a military forum, West Point, for his nationally televised speech Tuesday night, but Congress is the real test and a better reflection of the unease among everyday Americans.
Murtha, who chairs the defense appropriations panel in the House, is among the senior lawmakers slated to meet with the president at the White House on Tuesday. A Marine veteran of the Vietnam War and close ally of House SpeakerNancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the Pennsylvanian has worked closely with retired Marine Gen. James Jones, Obama’s national security adviser, who also served in Vietnam.
But it will be next to impossible for Obama to build broad support among Democrats in the House without bringing Murtha along.
“What’s the meaning of victory? I can’t remember a clear answer,” the chairman said of his briefings by military commanders and State Department officials in Afghanistan. And a later stop in Kuwait, where his delegation met with generals managing the withdrawal from Iraq, underscored the time pressures and costs facing Obama.
Delays in Iraq’s elections are already threatening to slow the pace of the withdrawal there, Murtha said, while in Afghanistan, the new U.S. commander charged with training the Afghan security forces — Army Lt. Gen. William Caldwell — estimated he had arrived to find only about half the resources needed for his job.
Obama, as a central part of his strategy, will try to correct this by adding thousands of additional trainers.
The missed opportunities to begin more training in Afghanistan earlier are, in part, a legacy of the Bush administration’s almost single-minded focus on Iraq’s needs. Only $3.5 billion in funding was provided for Afghan security forces from fiscal 2004 through 2006 — about a quarter of what was provided for Iraqi security forces in the same period.
Critics warn that this administration must be more honest about its own training goals, and Obama is paying a price now for stakes last spring when he raised troop levels to 68,000 without a better assessment of the strategy he needed.
“He allowed himself to be rushed into announcing what he said was a strategy but was actually little more than a broad set of concepts,” writes Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The months of effort within the U.S. national security community that have followed have shown the president spoke before there was any meaningful reassessment of the threat.”
Cordesman has been a voice for “strategic patience,” predicting that, even in the best case, “it is unlikely that the insurgency and terrorist threat can be entirely defeated in Afghanistan and Pakistan within the next decade.”
“People always look for a punch line in any very complex situation, and inevitably they are wrong,” he told POLITICO. But he — like the more impatient Murtha — also says Obama must better define what victory means for his new strategy.
Others agree. “What is victory? It’s a good question,” said House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman (D-Calif.). “I’m not as prone to jumping into wars as I used to be. He spent two months deciding,” Berman said of Obama. “I think I can spend a few weeks.”
The same weeks coincide with the health care debate in the Senate and the growing pressure in the House for more action to counter unemployment. New jobless numbers are due Friday, and Obama himself will pivot from West Point to a meeting on the economy at the White House later this week.
A new Democracy Corps poll released Monday warns of eroding support for Obama’s economic message in 60 competitive House districts. “The country is not ready to listen to a narrative about how Democrats have brought the economy ‘back from the brink’ and averted an even worse disaster, as articulated by the president in his joint session address to Congress earlier this year,” reads the accompanying analysis.
Ironically enough, one of the commanders who impressed Murtha most was British Maj. Gen. Nick Carter in Helmand Province, who didn’t hesitate to say that real progress had to be shown by next May to keep political support alive at home.
“All these generals understand it can’t be won militarily. The more people you kill, the more enemies you make,” Murtha said. He credited the U.S. commander, Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, with firmly changing the direction: “He’s trying to switch from killing people to winning their hearts and minds. It’s almost as simple as that.”

“He laid it out. He gave the best explanation he could of how it would work if you have the time, but I don’t think he has the time,” Murtha continued.

“I asked how much time he needed. He said he needs three years. I think he said at least three years. I said, ‘You don’t have three years.’”

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