World/Nation

• Gates: Obama grew frustrated over Afghanistan

WASHINGTON - Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates asserts in a new memoir that President Barack Obama grew frustrated with U.S. policy in Afghanistan and that Vice President Joe Biden has been wrong on nearly every foreign policy and national security issue. He also accuses members of Congress of inquisition-like treatment of administration officials.

"I never doubted Obama's support for the troops, only his support for their mission," Gates writes in the book, "Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War," which was set for release next week by Knopf.

Obama approved the strategy of putting 30,000 additional troops into Afghanistan and placing Gen. David Petraeus in charge, even though some top advisers opposed the so-called surge he announced in December 2009.

In recalling a meeting in the situation room in March 2011, Gates writes: "As I sat there, I thought: The president doesn't trust his commander, can't stand (Afghan President Hamid) Karzai, doesn't believe in his own strategy and doesn't consider the war to be his. For him, it's all about getting out."

Gates also writes that Biden has been "wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades," though he also says Biden is "a man of integrity" - and applies the same assessment to Obama even though he is critical at times of the president's own leadership.

• Surprise Senate compromise on jobless bill

WASHINGTON - Election-year legislation to revive expired federal jobless benefits unexpectedly cleared an early hurdle on Tuesday, offering a hint of bipartisan compromise in Congress and a glimmer of hope to the long-term jobless and their families.

"Let's get this done," implored President Barack Obama at the White House, shortly after six Republicans sided with Democrats on a 60-37 Senate vote to keep the measure alive.

Even so, the fate of the three-month reinstatement remained uncertain in an atmosphere of intense partisanship at the dawn of an election year.

The two parties have made it clear they intend to battle for the support of millions of voters who have suffered economically through the worst recession in decades and the slow, plodding recovery that has followed.

The often-cited phrase is "income disparity" - the gap between the rich and the economically squeezed. Democrats are expected to follow the effort on jobless benefits with another pocketbook measure, a proposal to increase the federal minimum wage.

• Scores of ex-NY police officers charged in scam

NEW YORK - One retired police officer who told the government he was too psychologically damaged to work ran a martial arts studio, prosecutors said. Another claimed his depression was so crippling it kept him house-bound, but he was photographed aboard a watercraft, they said. A third man who said he was incapable of social interactions manned a cannoli stand at a street festival.

All were wrongly receiving thousands of dollars in federal disability benefits, prosecutors said Tuesday in announcing a sweeping fraud case involving scores of retired officers, firefighters and jail guards. The retirees faked psychiatric problems, authorities said, and many falsely claimed their conditions arose after the Sept. 11 attacks.

"The brazenness is shocking," Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. said.

More than 100 people were arrested, including 72 city police officers, eight firefighters, five correction officers and one Nassau County Police Department officer.

Four ringleaders coached the former workers on how to feign depression and other mental health problems that allowed them to get payouts as high as $500,000 over decades, Vance said. The ringleaders made tens of thousands of dollars in secret kickbacks, he said.

• U.S. Air Force helicopter crash kills four

LONDON - A U.S. Air Force Pave Hawk helicopter crashed in the coastal marshes of eastern England during a training mission on Tuesday night, killing all four crew members aboard, officials said.

The helicopter crashed at about 6 p.m. local time near Salthouse on the Norfolk coast, a statement from the U.S. Air Force said. The aircraft was based at the nearby Royal Air Force station in Lakenheath, Suffolk County, which hosts USAF units and personnel.

The helicopter, assigned to the 48th Fighter Wing, was flying low at the time of the crash, the statement added.

In Washington, a U.S. defense official said the accident killed the four U.S. Air Force crew members aboard. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the crash publicly.

Local police in Norfolk County also said they believed all four crew had died. It said family members will be notified before details of the victims can be released.

It is not yet known what caused the accident.

- The Associated Press