Surviving the irreversible trauma of US Military Service: Voice of ...

In 2010, a reported 19 thousand service members were sexually assaulted or raped. Is the US government doing enough to eliminate sexual related violence in the armed services? We ask one ex-Navy woman what is being done for victims trying to soothe their emotional wounds and scars.

The numbers say it all; an anonymous survey of Navy recruits about theirsexual assault history made an unnerving discovery, about 39 percent of women had been victims of sexual assault while 13 percent of men admitted to initiating a sexual assault of some kind. The 2008 survey was split between named and anonymous participants but researchers believe the figureswere more accurate when Navy personnel were unidentified.

What?s worse is that a different study, which focused on rape, found even more shocking results. 120 men raped women who were known to them, a total of 483 times, 439 of those attacks were by committed by more than half of those same men. The study clearly demonstrates that serial rapists do exist more often than not. It also proves that a man who has assaulted once, may well do so again.

The survey is not the only evidence of criminals joining the military and then repeatedly committing the same violent acts.

It may be hard to understand the reasons that some men continually behave that way but it?s harder still to comprehend the tackling strategies being employed by the Department of Defense (DoD). Take for instance their RAINN alliance (an acronym for Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network). The organization insists on anonymity, supporting victims, and being available worldwide. One ex-Navy member is far from convinced though that this is enough.

?They keep rehashing the same old policies: we?re going to have more training, we?re going to have more oversight and then we?re going to have more training again, that?s pretty much what they do. And then they say that they?re going to punish people and they punish one or two people, they give a whole bunch of other people a slap on the wrist and then we?re back to business as usual,? explained Jenny McClendon, who was subjected to crude abuse and sexually assaulted while serving in the Navy.

It doesn?t seem to matter how many new systems or networks are created, the DoD looks to be caught between a rock and a hard place. New regulations have been introduced to the chain of command countless times, but apparently to no avail. The DoD, along with several military units, has now been sued twice, once in 2011 and again this year, over allegations of sexual assault. In both cases the suits were brought, not by individual women, but by several.

?Every new policy, I mean the most recent policy proposed by the Department of Defense was that we?re going to have sexual harassment training before you?ve been in the military for 14 days. Okay, there?re two problems with that. First of all if you need to be told not to harass people, you need to be somewhere other than the US Military. The second problem with that is it shouldn?t matter how soon you get the training, you just shouldn?t do it,? said McClendon to the Voice of Russia.

McClendon is talking about the SHARP (Sexual Harassment/Assault Response & Prevention) Program, which aims to educate rookie soldiers on the types of behavior that will not be tolerated in the US Military. Among the goals they list is to encourage victims to report, which is often perceived as a ?catch-22? situation. Reporting can be taken at face value or simply ?lost in translation?. Even though both genders speak the same language, the prime objectives may be different; the victim wants to report while the higher ranks may simply want to cover it up. Additionally, if the victim doesn?t immediately file a complaint, the temptation to report it might disintegrate under intimidation from their attacker.

?To be honest, I would also say that when victims report they usually wait quite a while to report because they want to make sure. I can?t imagine I mean most of the cases, I wanted to make sure that I never misunderstood anything, and that?s why it got as far as it went,? said McClendon and continued.. ?The reason that I didn?t report him the very first time that he ever did anything stupid is that I wanted to make sure that he wasn?t just an idiot.?

After-effects for victims include symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder even if they have not seen combat. One example shows that certain military personnel don?t know how to treat their soldiers; Katie told her story on the ?Protect Our Defenders? web-site and claims her sergeant told her? ?If you can?t handle getting raped private, then you don?t belong in the military?. Healing and counseling measures are vital for serving and former soldiers to restore their emotional health.

The US Armed Forces have made significant contributions in time and money to improve the situations for abused soldiers and yet the numbers revealed by the latest reports are ample proof that more assistance and support is needed. The destruction of a person?s self-confidence, replaced with insecurity and paranoia, is a hard process to reverse. But with daily guidance, little by little, people can rebuild their lives out of the fragments left behind from a living nightmare.

Source: http://english.ruvr.ru/2012_12_26/Surviving-the-irreversible-trauma-of-US-Military-Service/

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White House Dragging Feet On Car Tech Known For Saving Kids

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - In the private hell of a mother's grief, the sounds come back to Judy Neiman. Her SUV door slamming. The slight bump as she backed up in the bank parking lot. The emergency room doctor's sobs as he said her 9-year-old daughter Sydnee, who previously had survived four open heart surgeries, would not make it this time after being backed over by her Mother's hulking SUV.

Her own cries of: How could I have missed seeing her?

The 53-year-old woman has sentenced herself to go on living in the awful stillness of her West Richland, Wash., home, where she makes a plea for what she wants since she can't have Sydnee back: More steps taken by the government and automakers to help prevent parents from accidentally killing their children, as she did a year ago this month.

"They have to do something, because I've read about it happening to other people. I read about it and I said, 'I would die if it happens to me,'" Neiman says. "Then it did happen to me."
There is, in fact, a law in place that calls for new manufacturing requirements to improve the visibility behind passenger vehicles to help prevent such fatal backing crashes, which the government estimates kill some 228 people every year - 110 of them children age 10 and under - and injures another 17,000.

Congress passed the measure with strong bipartisan backing, and Republican President George W. Bush signed it in 2008.

But almost five years later, the standards have yet to be mandated because of delays by the U.S. Department of Transportation, which faced a Feb. 28, 2011, deadline to issue the new guidelines for car manufacturers. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has pushed back that deadline three times - promising in February that the rules would be issued by year's end.

With still no action, safety advocates and anguished parents such as Neiman are asking: What's taking so long to remedy a problem recognized by government regulators and automakers for decades now?

"In a way, it's a death sentence, and for no good reason," said former Public Citizen president Joan Claybrook, who once directed the federal agency responsible for developing the rules.
The proposed regulations call for expanding the field of view for cars, vans, SUVs and pickup trucks so that drivers can see directly behind their vehicles when in reverse - requiring, in most cases, rearview cameras and video displays as standard equipment.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, charged with completing the new standards, declined requests to discuss the delays. Spokeswoman Karen Aldana said the agency would not comment while the rulemaking process was ongoing but was on track to meet LaHood's latest cutoff date. In a letter to lawmakers in February, LaHood said his agency needed more time for "research and data analysis" to "ensure that the final rule is appropriate and the underlying analysis is robust."

Others insist the issue is money, and reluctance to put any additional financial burdens on an industry crippled by the economic crisis. Development of the new safety standards came even as the Obama administration was pumping billions of dollars into the industry as part of its bailout package.

"They don't want to look at anything that will cost more money for the automobile industry," said Packy Campbell, a former Republican state lawmaker from New Hampshire who lobbied for the law.

"This about money, but it is also about politics," says AOL Autos editor-in-chief David Kiley. "The Obama White House has been lobbied hard by automakers to either delay or eliminate the regulation because of costs the automakers are incurring to meet the new fuel economy regulations."

NHTSA has estimated that making rear cameras standard on every car would add $58 to $88 to the price of vehicles already equipped with dashboard display screens and $159 to $203 for those without them.

The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a lobbying group that represents automakers, puts the total cost to the industry at about $2 billion a year that would largely be passed on to consumers. Last December, the group met with White House budget officials to propose a less expensive alternative: reserving cameras for vehicles with extra-large blind zones and outfitting the rest with curved, wide-angle exterior mirrors.

Before the delays, all new passenger vehicles were to carry cameras and video displays by September 2014. The industry has now asked for two more years after the final rules are published to reach full compliance.

Despite its resistance, the industry on its own has been installing rearview cameras, a feature first popularized two decades ago in Japan and standard on nearly 70 percent of new cars produced there this year. In the United States, 44 percent of 2012 models came with rear cameras standard, and 27 percent had them as options, according to the automotive research firm Edmunds. They come either as standard equipment on premium and luxury vehicles, or as options on lower priced vehicles.

Nine in 10 new cars had console screens available, according to market research firm iSuppli, which would put the price of adding a camera on the low end of the NHTSA's estimates.
These backing crashes are hardly a new phenomenon. Emergency room doctors, the National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the NHTSA have produced dozens of papers on the problem since the 1980s.

Researchers at the University of California, Irvine, started looking into the issue in the 1990s after noticing toddlers showing up in hospital databases of injured child pedestrians. They found that many of those children had been killed or hurt by vehicles backing out of home driveways.
In 1993, the NHTSA sponsored several studies that noted the disproportionate effect of backup accidents on child victims. One report explored sensors and cameras as possible solutions, noting the accidents "involve slow closing speeds and, thus, may be preventable." Still another 1993 report estimated that 100 to 200 pedestrians are killed each year from backing crashes, most of them children.

Three years later, Dee Norton, a reporter at The Seattle Times, petitioned the NHTSA to require improved mirrors on smaller commercial trucks and vans after his 3-year-old grandson was killed by a diaper delivery truck that backed over him.

Adding to the scrutiny were studies by Consumer Reports magazine, which started measuring "blind zones" to determine how far away a toddler-sized traffic cone had to be before a driver looking though the rear window could see it. The research found an overall trend of worsening rear visibility - due in part to designs favoring small windows and high trunk lines, said Tom Mutchler, the magazine's automotive engineer.

"Cameras are basically the only technology that is going to let you see something right behind the bumper," he said.

While no one doubts that cameras could help reduce deaths, they aren't regarded as a perfect solution either. One recent study by a researcher at Oregon State University found that only one in five drivers used a rearview camera when it was available, but 88 percent of those who did avoided striking a child-sized decoy.

In its proposed rule, the NHTSA estimated that rearview video systems could substantially reduce fatal backing crashes - by at least 95 a year - and result in at least 7,000 fewer injuries.

Judy Neiman's 2006 Cadillac Escalade didn't have any cameras installed. They weren't added as an optional package until the following model year. Instead, her vehicle was equipped with a "rear parking assist system" - bumper sensors, an alarm and lights that are supposed to go off within five feet of objects or people. Neither Neiman nor the 10-year-old neighbor boy who had accompanied her and her daughter to the bank on Dec. 8, 2011, would recall hearing any alert, according to a police report.

Sydnee was carrying her purple plastic piggy bank and account book, so she could deposit $5 from her weekly allowance. After the transaction, Neiman slid behind the wheel and waited for the children. She heard the door slam, then saw the boy sitting on the right side of the back seat as she put the car into reverse.

She figured Sydnee was seated behind the driver's seat. Instead, the boy had gotten in first, telling Sydnee to go around and get in from the left side. He would later tell a police investigator that the girl had dropped her piggy bank on her way around the SUV.

Even if she were upright, at 4-feet-3-inches tall, Sydnee would have been practically invisible through the rear window, the bottom edge of which was a few inches taller than she was.
As the first anniversary of her daughter's death passed, Neiman hoped that sharing her story might spare other parents from enduring the pain she feels every day.

She tortures herself by replaying a conversation she had with Sydnee the summer before she died. Her daughter always had taken her heart condition, a congenital defect, in stride. She never complained or showed fear, despite her many surgeries.

Then one night Sydnee started crying, and she wouldn't tell her mother what was troubling her until the next morning.

"She said, 'I don't want to die, Mom,' and when she died, that's all I could think about. She didn't want to die," Neiman says. "She survived four open heart surgeries. If God had taken her at that time, I could accept it. But who could take her with her being hit by my car? And my hitting her?"

Associated Press writer Joan Lowy in Washington, D.C., contributed to this story.

NOW CHECK OUT

Source: http://autos.aol.com/article/back-up-cameras-law/

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AP: 'Odd Couple,' 'Quincy' star Jack Klugman dies

Nina Prommer / EPA file

Jack Klugman in Santa Monica, Calif., in June 2008.

By Anthony McCartney, The Associated Press

LOS ANGELES -- Jack Klugman, the prolific, craggy-faced character actor and regular guy who was loved by millions as the messy one in TV's "The Odd Couple" and the crime-fighting coroner in "Quincy, M.E.," died Monday, a son told the Associated Press. He was 90.

Klugman, who lost his voice to throat cancer in the 1980s and trained himself to speak again, died with his wife at his side.

"He had a great life and he enjoyed every moment of it and he would encourage others to do the same," son Adam Klugman said.

Adam Klugman said he was spending Christmas with his brother, David, and their families. Their father had been convalescing for some time but had apparently died suddenly and they were not sure of the exact cause.

"His sons loved him very much," David Klugman said. "We'll carry on in his spirit."

Never anyone's idea of a matinee idol, Klugman remained a popular star for decades simply by playing the type of man you could imagine running into at a bar or riding on a subway with?-- gruff, but down to earth, his tie stained and a little loose, a racing form under his arm, a cigar in hand during the days when smoking was permitted.

The Odd Couple TV series intro.

His was a city actor ideal for "The Odd Couple," which ran from 1970 to 1975 and was based on Neil Simon's play about mismatched roommates, divorced New Yorkers who end up living together. The show teamed Klugman?-- the sloppy sports writer Oscar Madison -- and Tony Randall?-- the fussy photographer Felix Unger -- in the roles played by Walter Matthau and Art Carney on Broadway and Matthau and Jack Lemmon in the 1968 film. Klugman had already had a taste of the show when he replaced Matthau on Broadway and he learned to roll with the quick-thinking Randall, with whom he had worked in 1955 on the CBS series "Appointment with Adventure."

"There's nobody better to improvise with than Tony," Klugman said. "A script might say, 'Oscar teaches Felix football.' There would be four blank pages. He would provoke me into reacting to what he did. Mine was the easy part."

Reuters file

Actors Jack Klugman, left, portraying Oscar Madison, and Tony Randall, portraying Felix Unger, in a scene from their 1970's television series "The Odd Couple."

They were battlers on screen, and the best of friends in real life. When Randall died in 2004 at age 84, Klugman told CNN: "A world without Tony Randall is a world that I cannot recognize."

In "Quincy, M.E.," which ran from 1976 to 1983, Klugman played an idealistic, tough-minded medical examiner who tussled with his boss by uncovering evidence of murder in cases where others saw natural causes.

"We had some wonderful writers," he said in a 1987 Associated Press interview. "Quincy was a muckraker, like Upton Sinclair, who wrote about injustices. He was my ideal as a youngster, my author, my hero.

"Everybody said, 'Quincy'll never be a hit.' I said, 'You guys are wrong. He's two heroes in one, a cop and a doctor.' A coroner has power. He can tell the police commissioner to investigate a murder. I saw the opportunity to do what I'd gotten into the theater to do?-- give a message.

"They were going to do cops and robbers with 'Quincy.' I said, 'You promised me I could do causes.' They said, 'Nobody wants to see that.' I said, 'Look at the success of "60 Minutes." They want to see it if you present it as entertainment.'"

For his 1987 role as 81-year-old Nat in the Broadway production of "I'm Not Rappaport," Klugman wore leg weights to learn to shuffle like an elderly man. He said he would wear them for an hour before each performance, "to remember to keep that shuffle."

"The guy is so vital emotionally, but physically he can't be," Klugman said.

"We treat old people so badly. There is nothing easy about 80."

Getty, Reuters, Getty

The son of Russian Jewish immigrants, he was born in Philadelphia and began his acting career in college drama (Carnegie Institute of Technology). After serving in the Army during World War I, he went on to summer stock and off-Broadway, rooming with fellow actor Charles Bronson as both looked for paying jobs. He made his Broadway debut in 1952 in a revival of "Golden Boy." His film credits included Sidney Lumet's "12 Angry Men" and Blake Edwards' "Days of Wine and Roses" and an early television highlight was appearing with Humphrey Bogart and Henry Fonda in a production of "The Petrified Forest." His performance in the classic 1959 musical "Gypsy" brought him a Tony nomination for best featured (supporting) actor in a musical.

He also appeared in several episodes of "The Twilight Zone," including a memorable 1963 one in which he played a negligent father whose son is seriously wounded in Vietnam. His other TV shows included "The Defenders" and the soap opera "The Greatest Gift."

In a 1987 interview in the New York Daily News, he said, "once I did three hourlong shows in 2? weeks. Think we'd do that now? Huh! But then it was great. I did summer stock, played the classics. Me!"

Throat cancer took away his raspy voice for several years in the 1980s. When he was back on the stage for a 1993 revival of "Three Men on a Horse," The Associated Press review said, "His voice may be a little scratchy but his timing is as impeccable as ever."

"The only really stupid thing I ever did in my life was to start smoking," he said in 1996. Seeing people smoking in television and films, he added, "disgusts me, it makes me so angry?-- kids are watching."

In his later years, he guest-starred on TV series including "Third Watch" and "Crossing Jordan" and appeared in a 2010 theatrical film, "Camera Obscura."

Klugman's hobby was horse racing and he eventually took up raising them, too.

"I always loved to gamble," he said. "I never got close to a horse. Fate dealt me a terrible blow when it gave me a good horse the first time out. I thought how easy this is.

"Now I love being around them."

Klugman's wife, actress-comedian Brett Somers, played his ex-wife, Blanche, in the "Odd Couple" series. The couple, who married in 1953 and had two sons, Adam and David, had been estranged for years at the time of her death in 2007.

In February 2008, at age 85, Klugman married longtime girlfriend Peggy Crosby.

In 1997, Klugman was sued by an ex-girlfriend, Barbara Neugass, who claimed he had promised to support her for the rest of her life. But a jury rejected her claim.

-- Biographical material in this story was written by former AP staffer Polly Anderson.

Related content:

Source: http://todayentertainment.today.com/_news/2012/12/24/16132005-jack-klugman-star-of-the-odd-couple-quincy-me-dies-at-90?lite

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Congress Has Outsized Influence Over Obama's Cabinet

Robert Bork's 1987 nomination to the Supreme Court, and the uproar over his ideology that ultimately led to his defeat, forever changed the process by which the Senate confirms judges. In the 25 years that have followed Bork's nomination, the two parties have fought increasingly bitter battles over high court picks in an effort to tilt the third branch of government their way. In 2002, the Oxford English Dictionary added the verb "to bork" -- to systematically defame or vilify a person, especially in the mass media -- to their lexicon.

Now there are signs that amid a growing atmosphere of poisonous partisanship, what happened to Bork, who died last week at the age of 85, is beginning to bleed into fights over other nominees.

In just the past two weeks, President Obama's first choice to head the State Department after Hillary Clinton retires has withdrawn her name from consideration, while the candidate most likely to be named Secretary of Defense is left twisting in the wind, his impending nomination losing momentum fast.

There has long been a general consensus on Capitol Hill that, barring a nominee's significant legal, ethical or moral pothole, a president should be able to run his administration with the personnel he chooses. But as he builds a team for his second term, President Obama has allowed Congress to influence his choices.

While Supreme Court nominees now must undergo all but guaranteed political fights, Cabinet nominees have rarely had to sweat out a close Senate vote. And almost none have had to overcome a filibuster; even arch-conservative Republican John Ashcroft, picked to become George W. Bush's attorney general, avoided a filibuster and won confirmation with just 55 votes. In American history, before Obama took office, only seven Cabinet appointees have been rejected, and another thirteen have been withdrawn before the Senate turned them away.

But the pace is picking up; seven of those unlucky 20 nominees have occurred under Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama. Clinton tried four times to pick an attorney general after his first choice, Zoe Baird, withdrew just five days after she was nominated; his second and third picks demurred even before they were officially nominated. Anthony Lake, Hershel Gober, Linda Chavez, Bernie Kerik, Bill Richardson and Tom Daschle all pulled the plug on their own nominations.

The increasing frequency of a president's personnel picks who can't win confirmation could be a symptom of an increasingly partisan Senate, where 60 votes are required to overcome more common filibusters, said Sarah Binder, a senior fellow of governance studies at the Brookings Institution and The George Washington University.

"The pattern of challenging would-be nominees is consistent with Republicans' willingness to exploit their procedural rights across the president's agenda," Binder said. "When the parties aren't so polarized, it's easier to find a nominee acceptable to your own party and to some centrist members of the opposition. When the parties polarize, it's not so easy to find acceptable nominees, particularly if senators are willing to flex their parliamentary muscles."

As Clinton prepared to leave her perch in Foggy Bottom, all signs suggested Obama was leaning toward appointing Susan Rice, his ambassador to the United Nations, to take over. But Rice's misinformed comments in the immediate aftermath of the attack on a consulate in Libya that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens made her a target for Republican senators angry at the administration's handling of the situation. Rice's own abrasive style hurt her relations with those senators -- personal meetings with Sens. John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Kelly Ayotte and even moderate Susan Collins failed to assuage their concerns. After initially defending his potential nominee, Obama ultimately accepted her decision to withdraw from consideration in the face of an almost-certain filibuster.

And with Leon Panetta preparing to leave the Pentagon, Obama appeared set to tap former Sen. Chuck Hagel, the Republican Vietnam veteran who left the Senate in 2008. But Hagel has come under assault for his past comments about what he termed the "Israel lobby" and for his comments about an openly gay nominee he opposed in 1998. But the White House has left Hagel's not-yet-nomination twisting in the wind as President Obama delays a final decision. And the opposition, from gay rights activists and Israel's closest allies in Congress, has gone from a whisper to a roar. A once-certain nomination now looks tenuous at best, and dead in the water at worst.

In both cases, the nominees-in-waiting have come under fire for their ideology and public positions, rather than for any personal sins. Susan Rice does not have an undocumented worker for a nanny, and Chuck Hagel is current on his taxes, as far as anyone can tell.

In both cases, it's not simply Republicans standing in the way of President Obama's nominees. Some on the left began to question Rice's tenure overseeing African affairs during Bill Clinton's administration, a time when the United States stood by while dictators and militias hacked a bloody path through their countries. And the harshest blow to Hagel's potential nomination came Sunday, when New York Democrat Charles Schumer pointedly refused to endorse his old colleague's nomination on NBC's Meet The Press.

And in both cases, a qualified alternative who has his or her own allies in Congress has waited in the wings. With Rice out of the picture, Obama turned to Sen. John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who won praise from McCain, Graham and other colleagues even while Rice looked like the more likely pick. And if Hagel isn't Obama's pick, he would likely turn to Michele Flournoy, the former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, who has her own fans on Capitol Hill and within the defense and military communities.

Whether by dint of an unwillingness to fight for his nominees, because he has other priorities or because he sees more important fights coming down the pike, President Obama is allowing the personnel moves that will become critical in forming his foreign policy legacy to be influenced -- even decided -- by Congress. But unlike Baird, or Kerik, or Daschle, Rice and Hagel are in trouble for their policy views, not their personal sins. The borking, in other words, is no longer confined to the Supreme Court.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/congress-outsized-influence-over-obamas-cabinet-084221623--politics.html

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Pakistan, Afghanistan trying to turn Taliban into political movement

KABUL (Reuters) - Pakistan is genuine about backing the nascent Afghan peace process and shares the Kabul government's goal of transforming the Taliban insurgency into a political movement, a senior Afghan government official told Reuters.

"They have told us that they share the vision contained in our roadmap which is basically to transform the Taliban from a military entity into a political entity to enable them to take part in the Afghan political process and peacefully seek power like any other political entity in Afghanistan, he said.

"This is the vision that they share."

The official, who is closely involved in reconciliation efforts, said recent face-to-face talks between senior Taliban members and Afghan officials in France were an "enormously helpful" step in building a wider environment for peace.

Until now, the Taliban and Afghan officials only made indirect contacts.

The official's remarks signaled unprecedented optimism from Afghanistan that Pakistan - long accused of backing Afghan insurgent groups - was now willing to put its weight behind reconciliation efforts, which are still in early stages and are vulnerable to factionalism.

"We are very optimistic. We believe that they are genuine in this discussion with us," said the senior government official.

The senior official cautioned, however, that in order to sustain that optimism, Pakistan would need to take further concrete steps after releasing some mid-level Afghan Taliban members from detention, who may be useful in promoting peace.

The nuclear-armed South Asian nation, a strategic U.S. ally, is seen as critical to U.S. and Afghan efforts to stabilize the country before most NATO combat troops withdraw by the end of 2014.

WARRING FACTIONS

Pakistan's powerful army chief has made reconciling warring factions in Afghanistan a top priority, Pakistani military officials and Western diplomats told Reuters, the clearest signal yet that Islamabad means business in promoting peace with the Taliban.

General Ashfaq Kayani, arguably the most powerful man in Pakistan, is backing dialogue partly due to fears that the end of the U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan in 2014 could energize a resilient insurgency straddling the shared frontier, according to commanders deployed in the region.

The senior Afghan government official has a similar assessment.

"I think there is a sense that we are also getting, that cooperation from Pakistan now is bound to be meaningful, substantive," he said.

"The reason is frankly, most in Pakistan, in our view, have reached the conclusion that time is running out. That it is no longer just about Afghanistan's instability and Afghanistan's insecurity but it's very much a question of security for themselves."

The Haqqani network -- which has far more experience in guerrilla warfare than the Afghan Taliban - would be welcomed to the peace process as long as it met certain conditions, said the official.

"From our point of view, the door of peace is open to anyone. The Haqqanis are a pretty challenging group of people," he said.

"But if they choose to come over to the peace process, then I am sure the peace process will include them."

Pakistan's intelligence agency denies Afghan accusations that it uses the Haqqani network and other militant groups as proxies to counter the influence of rival India in Afghanistan.

The Haqqanis are blamed for a number of high-profile attacks on Western targets, including embassies, in Kabul, highlighting the resilience of insurgents after years of fighting Western forces equipped with superior firepower and technology.

(Additional reporting by Mehreeen Zahra Malik in WANA and Matthew Green in ISLAMABAD; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/pakistan-genuine-backing-afghan-peace-efforts-afghan-official-040032861.html

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Daily Share ? How Do I Handle THIS Relationship? - The Daily Love

Hello

I came here because I?ve been receiving The Daily Love emails and they are always inspiring. I wanted to share my story because I simply am just incredibly confused right now, and I?d like advice on how to approach and think about this situation coming from a place of love. Here we go.

My boyfriend of 1.5 years is slowly recovering from cancer. Going through treatment was difficult on him, me, and our relationship. We have been friends for about 6 years and had a relationship in the past, but maintained the friendship until we found each other single again. We are incredibly attracted to each other and get along really well, we simply enjoy one another?s company. A few weeks ago, he came to me confused, depressed and upset, saying that he needed a break from our relationship. We spent the entire night crying and talking together, about cancer, our relationship, missed opportunities. He is struggling with a huge amount of depression and just isn?t sure where he will be when he comes out the other end. He cares for me but he doesn?t want me to go through this. It?s not you, it?s me.

After that night, we seemed to have reconnected again and are not talking much over the phone, but have been texting and have been seeing each other once a week, which typically turns into sex. It has now been a month and I?m not sure what to do. Our relationship isn?t what it was, I?m craving for him to call me, to want to see me more often. It is very hard for me to have this connection with someone but to be held at a distance. We are both very busy ? him with two jobs and health issues and me with two jobs and grad school. I try to make space for him in my life but I?m not sure he can focus on a relationship right now.

Today I told him that we can last through the holidays like this (one month) but then we really need to make a decision about our relationship, that I am feeling insecure with the way things are right now.

I want to be with him, he is the love of my life, but I don?t know if he can be with me. I?ve been maintaining this thinking that he is going through a life changing situation (cancer) and that I need to stick by and hold the space for him. But it?s hard, and I am not sure if he will one day reject me again or push me away.

What to do? How do I handle this?

Any & all advice welcome.

Thanks!

A TDL Reader

Source: http://thedailylove.com/daily-share-how-do-i-handle-this-relationship/

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