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• U.S. commanders in Afghanistan have proposed keeping 6,000 to 15,000 U.S. troops after 2014 to continuing pursuing terrorists and training Afghan security forces. But the White House, which tends to favor lower troop levels than the generals, says Obama would be open to pulling all U.S. forces out of Afghanistan at the end of 2014.
• "We wouldn't rule out any option," said Ben Rhodes, Obama's deputy national security adviser. "We're not guided by the goal of a certain number of U.S. troops in the country. We're guided by the objectives that the president set -- disrupt, dismantle, defeat al-Qaida."
• Beyond troop levels, Obama and Karzai are also expected to discuss preparations for next year's Afghan elections and the prospects for advancing Afghan peace talks with the Taliban.
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• LAS VEGAS (AP) -- Win or lose Saturday, Miss America contestant Allyn Rose will have conveyed a message about breast cancer prevention using her primary tool as a beauty queen: her body.
• The 24-year-old Miss DC plans to undergo a double mastectomy after she struts in a bikini and flaunts her roller skating talent. She is removing both breasts as a preventative measure to reduce her chances of developing the disease that killed her mother, grandmother and great aunt.
• "My mom would have given up every part of her body to be here for me, to watch me in the pageant," she said between dress rehearsals and preliminary competitions at Planet Hollywood on the Las Vegas Strip Wednesday. "If there's something that I can do to be proactive, it might hurt my body, it might hurt my physical beauty, but I'm going to be alive."
• If crowned, the University of Maryland, College Park politics major could become the first Miss America not endowed with the Barbie silhouette associated with beauty queens.
• Rose said it was her father who first broached the subject, during her freshman year of college, two years after the death of her mother
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