Obama visits Afghanistan

Obama visits Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan — Barack Obama visited Saturday with U.S. troops and Afghan officials in this war-weary nation, the focal point of his proposed strategy for dealing with threats to the U.S. if elected president.

While officially a part of a congressional delegation on a fact-finding tour expected to take him to Iraq, Obama was traveling Saturday amid the publicity and scrutiny accorded a likely Democratic nominee for president rather than a senator from Illinois.

The area where the meeting took place is not far from where Osama bin Laden escaped U.S. troops in 2001 after his al-Qaida terrorist group led the attacks on Sept. 11.

Al-Qaida shifts focus

BAGHDAD, Iraq — After intense U.S. assaults, al-Qaida may be considering shifting focus to its original home base in Afghanistan, where American casualties are running higher than in Iraq, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, told The Associated Press in an interview Saturday at his office at the U.S. Embassy.

He said there are signs that foreign fighters recruited by al-Qaida to do battle in Iraq are being diverted to the largely ungoverned areas in Pakistan from which the fighters can cross into Afghanistan.

Military families suffering

FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. — Far from the combat zones, the strains and separations of no-end-in-sight wars are taking an ever-growing toll on military families despite the armed services’ earnest efforts to help.

Divorce lawyers see it in the breakup of youthful marriages as long, multiple deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan fuel alienation and mistrust. Domestic violence experts see it in the scuffles that often precede a soldier’s departure or sour a briefly joyous homecoming.

Teresa Moss, a counselor at Fort Campbell’s Lincoln Elementary School, hears it in the voices of deployed soldiers’ children as they meet in groups to share accounts of nightmares, bedwetting and heartache.

Mandela celebrates

QUNU, South Africa — Songs, laughter, teasing and tender words marked Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday celebration Saturday as presidents, village elders and African royalty joined him for a festive luncheon on his rural homestead.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner celebrated privately with his family in this rural southeastern village Friday, the day he turned 90. Saturday was a grand occasion, held in a tent outside his homestead in Qunu, 600 miles south of Johannesburg, where as a boy he herded cattle in the hills.

Iran still stonewalling

GENEVA — A U.S. decision to bend policy and sit down with Iran at nuclear talks fizzled Saturday, with Iran stonewalling Washington and five other world powers on their call to freeze uranium enrichment.

In response, the six gave Iran two weeks to respond to their demand, setting the stage for a new round of U.N. sanctions.

Iran’s refusal to consider suspending enrichment was an indirect slap at the United States, which had sent Undersecretary of State William Burns to the talks in hopes the first-time American presence would encourage Tehran into making concessions.

King’s children feud

ATLANTA — For years, they were the picture of solidarity: the four children of Martin Luther King Jr. carrying on the legacy of the civil rights icon.

But a lawsuit over how their father’s estate is being run has left a rift in one of the world’s most famous families. And it may now be up to a judge to get the King children in the same room.

The lawsuit filed July 10 claims that Dexter King, the youngest King child and administrator of his father’s estate, has failed to provide his surviving siblings with essential documents, including financial records and contracts.

Storm brings rains

CHARLESTON, S.C. — Tropical Storm Cristobal churned off the Southeast seaboard after it formed Saturday, the first storm to threaten the U.S. this hurricane season, forecasters said.

The storm strengthened from a tropical depression, promising to bring much-needed rains to the parched eastern Carolinas.

Flood advisories were posted for coastal counties and Wilmington, N.C., received 21‚Ñ2 inches of rain Saturday, said Stephen Keebler, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service there.

Associated Press