Enlisted

WASHINGTON -- A new and classified U.S. military proposal outlines an intensified effort to enlist tribal leaders in the frontier areas of Pakistan in the fight against al-Qaida and the Taliban as part of a broader effort to bolster Pakistani forces against an expanding militancy, U.S. military officials said. If adopted, the proposal would join elements of a shift in strategy that would likely expand the presence of U.S. military trainers in Pakistan, directly finance a separate tribal paramilitary force that until now has proved largely ineffective, and pay militias that agreed to fight al-Qaida and foreign extremists, officials said.

"We want to help kids more than you do." That's what the Democrats have been saying in the battle for children's health insurance this fall, and it's not working. So it's time for them to try a new strategy and stress the real advantage of the State Children's Health Insurance Program: It favors working parents and the businesses that employ them. SCHIP targets the group of people most likely to be uninsured: families that earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but can't get health care through their jobs.

Facebook wants to put your face on advertisements for products that you like. Facebook.com is a social networking site that lets people accumulate "friends" and share preferences and play games with them. Each member creates a home page where he or she can post photographs, likes and dislikes and updates about their activities. Yesterday, in a twist on word-of-mouth marketing, Facebook began selling ads that display people's profile photos next to commercial messages that are shown to their friends about items they purchased or registered an opinion about.

FORT DRUM, N.Y. -- With bursts of gunfire, insurgents ambushed the American patrol on a lonely road in eastern Afghanistan. Army Spc. Winnshwe Vertley watched his best friend, Sgt. David Hierholzer, charge at the enemy. "He died protecting me," said Vertley, who is of Burmese descent. Vertley, 24, was sickened by the loss and deeply fatigued as he returned home this summer with almost two and a half years of combat time - more than many World War II infantrymen. But he didn't quit. Like tens of thousands of soldiers whose lives are seared by war and whose families endure stress unimaginable to most Americans, he re-enlisted.

The recent National Intelligence Estimate painted a troubling picture. While al-Qaida is resurgent, with an "undiminished" intent to attack the U.S. homeland, international counterterrorism cooperation is likely to wane as 9/11 grows more distant. Revitalizing the United Nations' counterterrorism role would be an important step to bolster the international effort against al-Qaida. The United Nations has demonstrated that it can play a significant counterterrorism role. Indeed, for the first few years after 9/11, it was at the center of the fight against terrorism.

Aboard Flight Reach-5107 Heavy -- Boring through darkness at 30,000 feet toward Iraq, Air Force Staff Sgt. Eric Erbaugh, a loadmaster on this C-17 flying combat supplies, did a quick calculation and grinned. In a few hours, he would avoid paying Uncle Sam the taxes on $41,161.50. Erbaugh is based at Charleston Air Force Base in South Carolina and flies regularly on cargo missions to the Middle East. After eight years in the Air Force, he was re-enlisting for another five. That earned him a $41,161.

PARIS -- The CIA held suspected al-Qaida militants in secret prisons in Poland and Romania, enlisting top officials in those countries to create and conceal the facilities, a European intergovernmental agency alleged yesterday. Current and former intelligence officials in Europe and the United States told the Council of Europe that the interrogation facilities were hubs of a global anti-terror campaign that used torture, clandestine flights and extrajudicial abductions known as extraordinary rendition, according to a report by the council, which is based in Strasbourg, France.

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. -- Children don't often yell in excitement when they are let into class, but as the doors opened to the upper level of the gym at South Middle School here one recent Monday, the assembled students let out a chorus of shrieks. In they rushed, past the pingpong table, past the balance beams and the wrestling mats stacked unused. They sprinted past the ghosts of gym class past toward two TV sets looming over square plastic mats on the floor. In less than a minute, a dozen seventh-graders were dancing in furiously kinetic union to the thumps of a techno song called "Speed Over Beethoven."

War was Lloyd Brown's chance to get out of the Ozarks. It was 1918. The 16-year-old Missouri boy lied about his age to get into the Navy. Before he knew it, he was on the gun crew on the battleship USS New Hampshire, climbing 50-foot-tall masts, peering into the waters of the Atlantic for German U-boats and helping capture one. Mr. Brown, the last surviving Navy veteran of World War I, died Thursday at the Charlotte Hall Veterans Home in St. Mary's County....

In 1916, Charlotte L. Winters called on the secretary of the Navy and asked why women weren't allowed to enlist. A year later, she had begun her military career. This week, Mrs. Winters - the nation's oldest female military veteran - died in her sleep at the Fahrney-Keedy life care community in Boonsboro. She was 109. "She is the last female World War I veteran," American Legion spokeswoman Ramona E. Joyce said yesterday. With Mrs. Winters' death, there are only four surviving U.S. veterans from the "war to end all wars," according to the Scripps Howard News Service, which tracks living veterans of that war. Since the beginning of the year, six - including Mrs. Winters on Tuesday - have died.