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November 21, 2013 | | TERMS OF WITHDRAWAL In an abrupt about-face, Afghan President Hamid Karzai tabled a security pact to govern the withdrawal of U.S. troops in Afghanistan—an agreement reached just hours earlier by Secretary of State John Kerry. "My trust with America is not good," Karzai said at a meeting of tribal elders and political leaders in Kabul. "I don't trust them and they don't trust me." The deal, which would have left a small residual force after combat missions come to a close at the end of 2014, was praised by Gen. John Allen, the former commander of U.S. and NATO forces, in an interview with The Daily Beast. "The agreement respects the sacrifice of our forces who served in Afghanistan." Allen said, "and it acknowledges that we as a people and the Afghan people are bound together in a common future." KEY TARGET Early Thursday morning, a suspected U.S. drone strike killed six people, including two members of the Taliban-linked Haqqani network, at an Islamic seminary in northwest Pakistan. Police say two of the dead include Mufti Hameedullah and Mufti Ahmad Jan. This is the first drone strike in Pakistan since Nov. 1. The Haqqanis are one of the main groups fighting U.S. troops in Afghanistan. The incident comes just days after the assassination of Nasiruddin Haqqani, a top member of the violent Islamist faction.
OUT OF CONTROL How is he a threat? North Korea detained an 85-year-old American veteran of the Korean War last month as he returned to California from a tourist trip, according to the man's son. Merrill Newman had boarded a plane on Oct. 26 when a North Korean officer told him to leave the plane. "My dad got off, walked out with the stewardess, and that's the last he was seen," said his son, Jeffrey Newman. The reason for his detention is unclear, and the U.S. State Department won't confirm it to the press due to privacy concerns. Less than a year ago, another detention of an American prompted a State Department formal notice against traveling to the country. BLOODY SEQUEL Bringing an end to a two-day manhunt, French authorities tracked down the alleged gunman who terrorized the city of Paris this week, critically injuring a 23-year-old newspaper assistant and possibly others. As more details emerge about the alleged shooter, Abdelhakim Dekhar, the shooting spree looks to be one hell of a sequel. An accomplice to a murderous pair of students dubbed the "Natural Born Killers" of France in 1994, the now 49-year-old spent four years in prison after failing to persuade the court that his part in their brief rampage was part of an undercover operation for the Algerian secret services. Christopher Dickey on the bloody aftermath. CUTTING-EDGE Call him the Boy Wonder! The body of a young boy buried in eastern Siberia roughly 24,000 years ago has unlocked a couple of genetic surprises for anthropologists. The boy's DNA matches both Western Europeans as well as living Native Americans. The first shows that people from modern-day Europe traveled farther east than previously thought. The second discovery challenges the assumption that the first Native Americans descended from Siberian populations related to East Asians. The boy was 3 to 4 years old when buried, and was wearing an ivory diadem, a bead necklace, and a bird-shaped pendant. His remains had been in a museum in St. Petersburg since being excavated in 1958. | | 
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