World/Nation Briefs September 21, 2012

Obama: Video an 'excuse' for extremists attack

MIAMI - President Barack Obama said Thursday that extremists used an anti-Islam video as an excuse to assault U.S. interests overseas, including an attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans.

The president's comments came as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton faced questions from members of the House and Senate about the Sept. 11 attack on the consulate in Benghazi in a series of closed-door classified briefings on Capitol Hill.

Republicans have accused the Obama administration of misreading the assault as the outgrowth of widespread demonstrations in the Middle East over the video. They insisted it was a terrorist attack, a term White House spokesman Jay Carney used on Thursday. Obama did not use the phrase.

33,000 U.S. surge troops now out of Afghanistan

AUCKLAND, New Zealand - Nearly two years after President Barack Obama ordered 33,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan to tamp down the escalating Taliban violence, the last of those surge troops have left the country, U.S. officials said Thursday.

The withdrawal, which leaves 68,000 American forces in the warzone, comes as the security transition to Afghan forces is in trouble, threatened by a spike in so-called insider attacks in which Afghan Army and police troops, or insurgents dressed in their uniforms, have been attacking and killing U.S. and NATO forces.

And it's called into question the core strategy that relies on NATO troops working shoulder to shoulder with Afghans, training them to take over the security of their own country so the U.S. and its allies can leave at the end of 2014 as planned.

The number of U.S. forces there peaked around 101,000 last year, and they have been coming out slowly over the past several months.

iPhone 5's launch draws crowds

in Asian stores

HONG KONG - In a now familiar ritual, Apple's Asian fans jammed the tech juggernaut's shops in Australia, Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore to pick up the latest version of its iPhone.

Eager buyers formed long lines at Apple Inc. stores in Australia and Japan to be the first to get their hands on the latest version of the smartphone. In Hong Kong, buyers had to sign up online for the chance to pick up the device at a preset time. The first customers were greeted by staff cheering, clapping, chanting "iPhone 5! iPhone 5!" and high-fiving them as they were escorted through the front door.

The smartphone is also being launched in the U.S., U.K., Canada, France and Germany today and will go on sale in 22 more countries a week later. The iPhone 5 is thinner, lighter, has a taller screen, faster processor, updated software and can work on faster "fourth generation" mobile networks.

- The Associated Press