Karzai to contractors: Leave in 4 months

Karzai to contractors: Leave in 4 months

KABUL, Afghanistan

Afghanistan’s president is issuing an ultimatum to thousands of private security contractors he says are undermining his nation’s army and police force: Cease operations in four months.

President Hamid Karzai’s strident decision, announced Monday by his spokesman, is expected to meet resistance from NATO officials who rely heavily on private security companies to guard convoys and installations across the country.

With complaints that they are poorly regulated, reckless and effectively operate outside local law, such operators have become a point of contention between the Afghan government and U.S. and NATO coalition forces and the international community.

Weddings on hold

SAN FRANCISCO

Same-sex weddings in California are on hold indefinitely after a federal appeals court blocked the unions Monday while it considers the constitutionality of the state’s gay-marriage ban.

The decision, issued by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, trumps a lower-court judge’s order that would have allowed county clerks to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples Wednesday.

James Kilpatrick dies

WASHINGTON

James J. Kilpatrick’s in-your-face, conservative bickering with liberal commentator Shana Alexander three decades ago was famously parodied — and then copied for years to come on broadcast and cable channels.

Even more lasting: his contributions as the nation’s most widely syndicated political columnist and a dozen books on everything from politics and the U.S. Supreme Court to the use and abuse of the English language.

Kilpatrick, who rose from cub reporter to one of the nation’s most-recognized conservative voices, died Sunday at age 89, said his wife, Marianne Means.

TV watchers in the 1970s knew Kilpatrick as the conservative half of the “Point-Counterpoint” segment of CBS’ “60 Minutes.” Baby boomers, though, would always know the liberal- conservative pairing is what inspired the “Saturday Night Live” parody featuring Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtin — and Aykroyd’s dismissal of Curtin’s opinions with a terse, “Jane, you ignorant slut.”

Target won’t give to gay-friendly causes

MINNEAPOLIS

Target Corp. said Monday it won’t give money to gay-friendly causes to quiet the uproar over a $150,000 donation that helped support a Minnesota governor candidate who opposes gay marriage.

The discount-retailing giant said it was “best to wait” given the controversy stirred by its donation, which prompted Facebook calls for a boycott and scattered protests outside stores. An anti-boycott site also popped up on Facebook from conservatives supporting Target.

In response to Target’s announcement, the Human Rights Campaign, a national gay-rights group, said it will contribute $150,000 of its own money to political candidates in Minnesota who support gay marriage, including Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mark Dayton.

US officials visited American in N. Korea

WASHINGTON

State Department officials made a secret visit to North Korea last week in a failed attempt to secure the release of an imprisoned American who reportedly had attempted suicide in custody, a department spokesman said Monday.

A U.S. consular official, two doctors and a translator were in Pyongyang from Aug. 9 to 11 visiting Aijalon Mahli Gomes in a hospital but were unable to secure his release, spokesman P.J. Crowley said, providing few other details.

North Korea sentenced Gomes in April to eight years of hard labor and fined him $700,000 for entering the country illegally and for an unspecified “hostile act.”

Gomes had been teaching English in South Korea before his Jan. 25 arrest in the North.

Israeli soldier blasted for Facebook photos

JERUSALEM

A former Israeli soldier posted photos on Facebook of herself in uniform smiling beside bound and blindfolded Palestinian prisoners, drawing sharp criticism Monday from the Israeli military and Palestinian officials.

Israeli news websites and blogs showed two photographs of the woman. In one, she is sitting legs crossed beside a blindfolded Palestinian man who is slumped against a concrete barrier. His face is turned downwards, while she leans toward him with her face upturned. Another shows her smiling at the camera with three Palestinian men with bound hands and blindfolds behind her.

The incident was a reminder of the fraught relations between Israeli soldiers and the West Bank Palestinians under their control.

Associated Press