Twin explosions strike southern Syrian city

BEIRUT (AP) — Syria‘s state-run news agency says two large explosions have struck the southern city of Daraa, causing multiple casualties and heavy material damage.

SANA did not immediately give further information or say what the target of Saturday’s explosions was.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says the blasts went off near a branch of the country’s Military Intelligence in Daraa.

The Observatory, which relies on a network of activists on the ground, says the explosions were followed by clashes between regime forces and rebels fighting to topple President Bashar Assad.

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Review: iPad Mini charms, but screen is a letdown

NEW YORK (AP) — I bet the iPad Mini is going to be on a lot of wish lists this holiday season. I also bet that for a lot of people, it’s not going to be the best choice. It’s beautiful and light, but Apple made a big compromise in the design, one that means that buyers should look closely at the competition before deciding.

Starting at $ 329, the iPad Mini is the cheapest iPad. The screen is a third smaller than the regular iPads, and it sits in an exquisitely machined aluminum body. It weighs just 11 ounces — half as much as a full-size iPad — making it easier to hold in one hand. It’s just under 8 inches long and less than a third of an inch thick, so it fits easily into a handbag.

The issue is the screen quality. Apple has been on the forefront of a move toward sharper, more colorful screens. It calls them “Retina” displays because the pixels — the little light-emitting squares that make up the screen — are so small that they blend together almost seamlessly in our eyes, removing the impression that we’re watching a grid of discrete elements.

The iPad Mini doesn’t have a Retina screen. By the standards of last year, it’s a good screen, with the same number of pixels as the first iPad and the iPad 2. The latest full-size iPad has four times as many pixels, and it really shows. By comparison, the iPad Mini’s screen looks coarse. It looks dull, too, because it doesn’t have the same color-boosting technology that the full-size model has.

This is not an entirely fair comparison, as the full-size iPad starts at $ 499 and weighs twice as much. The real issue is that this year, there are other tablets that are cheaper than the iPad Mini, weigh only slightly more and still have better screens.

Amazon.com Inc.’s Kindle Fire HD costs $ 199 and has about the same overall size as the Mini. While the Kindle’s screen is somewhat smaller (leaving a bigger frame around the edges), it is also sharper, with 30 percent more pixels than the Mini. Colors are slightly brighter, too.

Barnes & Noble Inc.’s Nook HD costs $ 229 for a comparable model with 16 gigabytes of storage and has a screen that’s even sharper than the Kindle HD’s. It’s got 65 percent more pixels than the iPad Mini. (There’s a $ 199 model with half the memory, and the storage space can be expanded with inexpensive memory cards.)

Why do tablets from two companies chiefly known as book stores beat Apple’s latest for screen quality?

Sharper screens are darker, requiring a more powerful backlight to appear bright. That, in turn, would have forced an increase in the battery size. That’s the reason the first iPad with a Retina display was thicker and heavier than the iPad 2. So to keep the iPad Mini thin while matching the 10-hour battery life of the bigger iPads, Apple had to compromise on the display.

This can’t last, though. By next year, it will likely be even more obvious that Apple is seriously behind in screen quality on its small tablet, and it will have to upgrade to a Retina display somehow. That means this first-generation iPad Mini will look old pretty fast.

The display causes a few other problems, too. One is that when you run iPhone apps on the Mini, it uses the coarsest version of the graphics for that app — the version designed for iPhones up to the 2009 model, the 3GS. You can blow the app up to fill more of the screen, but it looks pretty ugly. The full-size iPad uses the higher-quality Retina graphics when running iPhone apps, and it looks much better.

Some apps adapted for the iPad screen don’t display that well on the Mini screen, either, because of the smaller size. Buttons can be too small to hit accurately, bringing to mind Steve Jobs’ 2010 comments about smaller tablets. The late Apple founder was of the vociferous opinion that the regular iPad was the smallest size that was also friendly to use.

In some apps, text on the Mini is too small to be comfortably read — the section fronts in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal apps are examples of this.

Of course, in some other respects, the iPad Mini outdoes the Fire and the Nook, so it isn’t just the tablet for the buyer who needs the prettiest and the thinnest. In particular, the Mini is a $ 329 entry ticket to the wonderful world of iPad and iPhone apps. For quality and quantity, it beats all the other app stores. (Oddly, there’s an inverse relationship between screen quality and app availability in this category — the Nook HD has the best screen and the fewest apps, while the second-best Kindle Fire HD has middling access to apps.)

The Mini also has front- and back-facing cameras, for taking still photos and video and for videoconferencing. The Kindle Fire HD only has a front-facing camera for videoconferencing. The Nook HD doesn’t have a camera at all.

In short, the iPad Mini is more versatile than the competition, and I’m sure it will please a lot of people. But take a look at the competition first, and figure that by next year, we’ll see something from Apple that looks a lot better.

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Peter Svensson can be reached at http://twitter.com/petersvensson

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About the iPad Mini:

The base model of the iPad Mini costs $ 329 and comes with 16 gigabytes of storage. A 32 GB model goes for $ 429 and 64 GB for $ 529. Soon, you’ll be able to get versions that can connect through cellular networks, not just Wi-Fi. Add $ 130 to the price.

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How Oscar entry “La Source” launched a campaign for clean water across Haiti

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – The documentary “La Source” was originally conceived to be the tale of a single project, the efforts by a Princeton University janitor to bring clean water to a single village in rural Haiti.

Now, the film’s exposure has spawned a soccer field, two schools and 20 more villages with sanitary water.

The Oscar-nominated film, which follows Haiti-born Josue Lajeunesse as he fulfills his dream of bringing bacteria-free water to his native village, launched a regional project by the nonprofit Generosity Water to improve the lives of rural Haitians.

“We’re hoping that we can really continue to build on what this film was about,” producer Jordan Wagner told TheWrap’s Steve Pond at Thursday night showing of “La Source,” which is part of TheWrap’s annual Award Screening Series.

Seated at Los Angeles‘ Landmark Theatre alongside director Patrick Shen, producer Brandon Vedder and Lajeunesse, Wagner, the nonprofit’s director, said his organization has already carved out a spot in the film’s namesake village for a school and soccer field.

“We’re putting a plan together to use the film at screenings to mobilize people,” Wagner said. “We figured out which plot of land we’d buy, we’re going to build a primary school and a secondary school.”

Wagner met Lajeunesse after he was filmed in Shen’s “The Philosopher Kings,” a movie about the stories behind college custodians.

He began raising money after hearing the janitor’s lifelong desire to pipe clean water down from a mountain spring and into his village. Students and faculty at Princeton, where Lajeunesse worked after coming to the United States in 1990, held benefit concerts and donated money to help fund the project.

For Lajeunesse, the plan was decades in the works.

“I was seven or eight years old, but I had in my mind that I have to go to school in order to do something to take the people and the town out of the situation,” Lajeunesse told Landmark Theatre audience. “Day by day, day by day, I save, I save, I save but we didn’t know how we were going to start it.”

Then, in January 2010, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti, killing more than 250,000 people and destroying the impoverished nation’s infrastructure.

“The first time we went was about a month after the earthquake,” Vedder said, adding that the humidity in the Caribbean country nearly destroyed the cinematographers’ cameras. “It was hard to be another camera sticking in these people’s faces, right in their lives.”

The troubles didn’t end there. After the pipeline was built and Lajeunesse and his brother installed the spigots, it was clear how the film would begin and finish, but the meat of the story was harder to pare down.

“We knew where it would end, but the whole kind of middle part of the narrative was what was tricky,” Shen said. “We had to have discussions every night about the strategy for the next day.”

And, with $ 30,000 going toward the actual water project, the filmmakers quickly ran out of cash to support themselves during the months of editing.

“The story was happening whether we decided to make this film or not,” Wagner said. “We were scrambling to make this happen. We have the money for the project and this is happening and now we don’t have money for the film.”

Still, the filmmakers raised enough to keep the film alive after its spring-to-fall shooting schedule in 2010, working through the footage for a year and creating a few different cuts of the film before finding its final shape.

The movie premiered at Washington’s Silverdocs festival – the same festival where Wagner first met Shen at a screening of “The Philosopher Kings,” beginning a relationship that led directly to “La Source.”

The film was also a selection in the International Documentary Association’s annual DocuWeeks showcase, which qualified it for the Academy Awards via week-long engagements in Los Angeles and New York in August.

And though Lajeunesse hasn’t been back to Haiti since July 2010 – his janitorial and taxi jobs, plus four kids, make travel difficult – he said he gets phone calls from his family frequently, updating him on how the town is improving.

“Everyone there is so happy,” he said, drawing applause from the audience. “They have water and they don’t know what to say. All the town, they say, ‘tell everyone thank you for me.’”

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Beer after work at the bar: a U.S. tradition is getting stale

MILWAUKEE (Reuters) – A tattooed man with a goatee shakes five dice in a black cup, slams it down on the bar and watches as they come to rest among half-full beer bottles and empty shot glasses.

“Nothin,” he says in disgust as he quickly slaps down a $ 20 bill to buy another round of drinks, in a U.S. ritual of beer drinking after work that is undergoing a gradual decline.

“I used to get the third-shift Allen Bradley guys in the morning, but they have cut and cut jobs,” said Terry Zadra, owner of the 177-year-old Zad’s Roadhouse on the south side of Milwaukee.

The bar is just blocks from an industrial plant owned by Rockwell Automation, which bought Allen Bradley, a factory equipment company, in 1985.

One result of the 2008-2009 recession that reduced manufacturing jobs in places such as Milwaukee has been slower traffic at some bars, and sluggish beer sales nationwide over the past four years, according to industry analysts.

“Contrary to the myth that people go out and drown their sorrows, the truth is that beer drinkers are pretty responsible people and when they have to cut back, they’re cutting back on their pleasures,” said Chris Thorne, vice president of communications at the Beer Institute, a Washington-based trade group.

According to the institute, beer drinkers last year in the United States drank 203.4 million barrels, about 5 percent less than in 2008.

More concern about healthy living, stiffer drunk-driving laws and measures that ban smoking in places such as taverns have hit beer sales during the last couple of decades in Milwaukee and throughout the country.

“There has been a definite shift from the on-premise to the off-premise consumption,” said Pete Madland, executive director of the Tavern League of Wisconsin. “The smoker, for instance, is going to the liquor store, buying a 12-pack of beer and going home.”

Over the past few decades, it has become much less acceptable in the business community to have a drink during lunch or tip a few after work with colleagues.

“Society looks at that person that has a glass of beer with his burger like he has a drinking problem,” Madland said.

HIGH-END HOPES

A glimmer of hope for the industry is the high-end craft beer segment, which has seen sales increase by 14 percent during the first half of 2012 compared with the same period last year, according to the Beer Institute.

These regional and local brews are more expensive and tend to be more recession-proof than mass-consumption brands like Miller Lite and Bud Light.

“Those occupations that weathered the storm of the Great Recession and then a very weak recovery … they were always able to afford a high-end beer,” Thorne said. “We would still like to see that American pilsner part of the brewing market get back its share.”

Despite the cultural and economic pressures, beer remains synonymous with Milwaukee, where brewers such as Fred Miller, Joseph Schlitz, Val Blatz and Frederick Pabst built their empires more than a century ago.

Even after heavy manufacturing of farm equipment, marine diesels and cranes became the dominant force in Milwaukee’s economy, MillerCoors remains an institution, brewing about 10 million barrels of beer each year on the city’s west side.

The love affair the city has for beer remains strong, evident in its Major League baseball team – the Milwaukee Brewers – paying homage to the city’s beer makers while playing in Miller Park, sponsored by MillerCoors.

While beer consumption nationwide may be down, in Wisconsin it has increased a bit. In the first eight months of 2012, about 2 percent more beer was sold than the same period of 2011, the state revenue department said.

Milwaukee also remains a blue-collar town with a fair number of neighborhood taverns such as Zad’s Roadhouse still serving a shot and a beer to the working class from early morning until late into the night, according to Milwaukee historian John Gurda.

“The scene is far from gone. I’m talking about saloons and bars being the communal living rooms of Milwaukee, and in many neighborhoods, that’s still very much the case,” Gurda said.

(Editing by Greg McCune and Eric Walsh)

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FBI probe of Petraeus began with 'suspicious emails'

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The FBI investigation that led to the discovery of CIA Director David Petraeus' affair with author Paula Broadwell was sparked by "suspicious emails" that initially did not contain any connection to Petraeus, U.S. law enforcement and security officials told Reuters on Saturday.

But the CIA director's name unexpectedly turned up in the course of the investigation, two officials and two other sources briefed on the matter said.

It was "an issue with two women and they stumbled across the affair with Petraeus," a U.S. government security source said.

The Washington Post reported on Saturday that the FBI probe was triggered when Broadwell sent threatening emails to an unidentified woman close to the CIA director.

The woman went to the FBI, which traced the threats to Broadwell and then uncovered explicit emails between Petraeus and Broadwell, the Post said.

Attempts by Reuters and other news media to reach Broadwell, an Army reserve offer and author of a biography of Petraeus, have not been successful.

The FBI and CIA declined comment on Saturday.

Many questions in the case remain unanswered publicly, including the identity of the second woman; the precise nature of the emails that launched the FBI investigation; and whether U.S. security was compromised in any way.

Nor is it clear why the FBI waited until Election Day to tell U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who oversees the CIA and other intelligence agencies, about its investigation involving Petraeus.

The CIA director announced his resignation suddenly on Friday, acknowledging an extramarital affair and saying he showed "extremely poor judgment.

The developments likely ended the public career of one of the United States' most highly regarded generals, who was credited with helping pull Iraq out of civil war and led U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, new details emerged on Saturday about developments in the final days leading to Petraeus' departure from atop the CIA.

Clapper was notified by the FBI on Tuesday evening about 5 p.m. - just as returns in the U.S. presidential election were about to come in - about "the situation involving Director Petraeus," a senior intelligence official said. Clapper and Petraeus then spoke that evening and the following morning.

WHITE HOUSE NOTIFIED WEDNESDAY

"Director Clapper, as a friend and a colleague and a fellow general officer, advised Director Petraeus that he should do the right thing and he should step down," the official said.

Clapper is a retired Air Force lieutenant general; Petraeus served nearly four decades in the U.S. Army.

On Wednesday, Clapper notified the National Security Council at the White House that Petraeus was considering resigning and President Barack Obama should be informed, the official said.

U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officials agreed to discuss the Petraeus matter only on condition of anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity and because it is the subject of a law enforcement investigation.

Once Petraeus' name turned up in the investigation, the importance of the FBI inquiry was immediately escalated, as investigators became concerned the CIA chief somehow might have been compromised, the law enforcement official said.

However, the official and two sources briefed on the matter said no evidence has turned up suggesting Petraeus had become vulnerable to espionage or blackmail. At this point, it appears unlikely that anyone will be charged with a crime as a result of the investigation, the official said.

The FBI investigation began fairly recently - months ago rather than years ago, when Petraeus would still have been in uniform as one of the U.S. Army's top field commanders, the official said.

Representative Peter King, Republican chairman of the House of Representatives' Homeland Security Committee, said in an interview on MSNBC the FBI was "investigating or monitoring ... the director of the CIA for four or five months."

Several officials briefed on the matter said senior officials at the Pentagon, CIA and Congress knew nothing of the FBI's investigation of Petraeus until Thursday afternoon at the earliest, and some key officials were not briefed on the details until Friday.

There is no evidence at this time that anyone at the White House had knowledge of the situation involving Petraeus prior to the U.S. presidential election on Tuesday, which saw Obama elected to a second four-year term.

Another U.S. government security source said it was not until Friday afternoon that some members of the House and Senate intelligence oversight committees were notified about Petraeus' resignation by Clapper's office.

The congressional committees were told that it was a personal issue that Petraeus had to discuss with his wife. When pressed, a representative of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said it involved another woman.

(Writing by Warren Strobel; Additional reporting by Doug Palmer and Matt Spetalnick; Editing by Todd Eastham)

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Syria opposition bloc elects Christian as leader

DOHA, Qatar (AP) — Syria‘s main opposition group in exile has elected a Christian Paris-based former geography teacher as its new president.

George Sabra said Friday that his election as head of the Syrian National Council is a sign that the opposition is not plagued by sectarian divisions.

Sabra says the SNC‘s main demand is to receive weapons from the international community. The U.S. and some other foreign backers of rebels fighting the regime of President Bashar Assad have so far refused to send weapons for fear they can fall into the wrong hands.

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Jimmy Kimmel’s Family Members Are Apparently Fair Game

We realize there’s only so much time one can spend in a day watching new trailers, viral video clips, and shaky cell phone footage of people arguing on live television. This is why every day The Atlantic Wire highlights the videos that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention. Today:

RELATED: The Roots Take on ‘Call Me Maybe’ (and Win)

Watch this video, bookmark it, and watch it the next time you think you’d rather go home than wait in a long line to vote. Seriously, Time‘s look at the Rockaways on the election night hits the matrix where heart-break and optimism meet and it makes you really appreciate a right we shouldn’t take for granted: 

RELATED: Cookie Monster Batman and the Dog You Wish You Had

RELATED: Behold the Power of ‘Gangnam Style’

The best part of Louis C.K.’s SNL appearance was his “Lincoln” skit. Six days later, here we are with a new video: the director’s cut of the Lincoln-Louie parody—it’s funnier, dirtier, and one really awesome look at what NBC think is too offensive for network television. 

RELATED: The Robot That Performs Gangnam Style Better Than You

RELATED: The Uncle You Wish You Had and the Joy of Human Jukeboxes

Children, we’ve learned, are not safe from the pranks of Jimmy Kimmel. Neither is Jimmy Kimmel‘s aunt. 

And finally, the weekend is here. We’re talking like one hour away. This baby elephant video is clear evidence of that: 

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Stradivarius dealer gets six years for embezzlement

VIENNA (Reuters) – A dealer in rare Stradivarius violins coveted by the world’s top violinists was sentenced on Friday to six years in prison for embezzlement after his glittering global empire crumbled.

Dietmar Machold, 63, built his Bremen-based family business into a juggernaut with branches in Zurich, Vienna, New York and Chicago to serve elite musicians and collectors of the instruments that can command prices of several million dollars.

But the business collapsed in 2010, triggering claims against him worth tens of millions of euros (dollars) from creditors and clients who say they were bilked.

“I am a failure. I have lost everything,” Machold said in a Vienna court as he was sentenced after being convicted of embezzling client funds and hiding assets from creditors.

“You played for high stakes and you lost a lot, but you understand you have to take the responsibility for this,” Judge Claudia Moravec-Loidolt told him.

Prosecutor Herbert Harammer had traced the career of the fifth-generation violin expert who became one of the world’s most influential dealers in instruments crafted by 18th-century masters like Antonio Stradivari, whose workshop in Cremona, Italy produced some of the finest violins and cellos ever made.

“This ascent was built on sand,” Harammer had told the court, accusing Machold of leading a lifestyle that was a facade for a business that had actually been insolvent since mid-2006.

FIXTURE OF HIGH SOCIETY

A fixture of high society, Machold lived in an Austrian castle, had a fleet of expensive cars and collected watches and cameras. His global network of rare instrument dealerships let him move in the highest circles of music, fame and money.

His former wife and her mother got one-year suspended sentences for helping him hide precious musical instruments and a valuable watch collection as his business imploded.

Machold admitted from the start that he embezzled money made from the sale of instruments entrusted to him by his customers, but denied fraud charges that are being handled separately.

“I did what I did and I am to be punished for it. That is the way it has to be,” the German native told the court before sentencing, his voice calm before he teared up and had to pause.

Machold, who told the court he did not deserve a mild sentence given the magnitude of his misdeeds, had faced a sentence of up to 10 years. His lawyer did not say if he would file an appeal.

Machold said he acted in desperation after losing a lawsuit brought by a construction company which meant his Eichbuechl castle was at risk.

The high-profile dealer had at times given contradictory testimony, at one stage saying he built personal relationships with the instruments in his care that he called “my children”.

But later he said he “simply forgot” one expensive violin that he failed to report to administrators.

($ 1 = 0.7857 euros)

(Editing by Michael Roddy)

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Smokers may fare worse after colorectal surgery

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Smoking has long been linked with slower recovery in general from injuries and surgeries, and now a new study finds that smokers face more complications and higher chances of death following major surgery for colorectal cancers and other diseases.

“We wanted to see if smoking has a specific effect on these patients… and really wanted to know if patients who stopped smoking had better results,” said lead author Dr. Abhiram Sharma, who was at the University of Rochester in New York during the study.

Smoking constricts the flow of blood throughout the body and is thought to prevent oxygen from getting to tissues that are trying to heal, according to the authors.

In September, a review of surgeries to repair knee ligaments found that smokers tended to have worse outcomes, including not being able to get back full knee function. (See Reuters Health article of September 26, 2012: http://reut.rs/Xqf6is)

For the new report, published in the Annals of Surgery, Sharma and his colleagues studied patients included in a nationally representative database of U.S. surgeries between 2005 and 2010.

Overall, 47,574 patients were included in the analysis. All had part of their colon or rectum removed, a surgery known as a colorectal resection, either because of cancer, diverticular disease or inflammatory bowel disease.

About 60 percent of the patients had never smoked, 19 percent were former smokers and 20 percent were current smokers.

The researchers looked at the 30 days after surgery to see how many patients in each group suffered either a major complication – such as severe infection, heart or breathing problems or death – or a minor complication, such as an infection at the surgical site or in the urinary tract.

Sharma’s team found that current smokers had a 30 percent greater risk of having a major complication compared to patients who never smoked, and an 11 percent greater risk than ex-smokers.

Among 9,700 current smokers, for example, there were 1,497 major complications and 1,448 minor ones, whereas the 9,136 ex-smokers had 1,374 major and 1,386 minor complications. Never smokers, the largest group numbering 28,738, had 3,316 major complications and 3,462 minor ones.

Current smokers were also 1.5 times as likely to die within 30 days of surgery as never smokers.

In addition, the longer someone had smoked – that is, the greater their number of “pack years” – the stronger their chances of complications, the researchers note.

“We were not completely surprised (by the results). We know smoking is not good and there have been other studies that show smoking is a problem,” Sharma said.

There were, Sharma’s team acknowledges, some limitations in the study.

For example, ex-smokers were defined as patients who had not smoked in at least one year, therefore some more recent ex-smokers may have been included with current smokers, leading the benefits of quitting to be underestimated.

Nonetheless, Sharma told Reuters Health, the results show it’s never too late to stop smoking.

“The sooner the better,” he said.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/XqnA9h Annals of Surgery, online October 10, 2012.

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CIA chief admits affair, resigns

CIA Director David Petraeus resigned his post on Friday, confessing to having shown "extremely poor judgment by engaging in an extramarital affair." The former Army general rocketed to global prominence as the man in charge of the "surge" in Iraq and later the commander of American forces in Afghanistan.

President Barack Obama said Petraeus had led the Central Intelligence Agency "with characteristic intellectual rigor, dedication and patriotism."

"I am completely confident that the CIA will continue to thrive and carry out its essential mission, and I have the utmost confidence in Acting Director Michael Morell and the men and women of the CIA who work every day to keep our nation safe," the president said in a written statement.

"Going forward, my thoughts and prayers are with Dave and Holly Petraeus, who has done so much to help military families through her own work. I wish them the very best at this difficult time," Obama continued.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper issued a statement that did not specify a reason for Petraeus' departure but praised his colleague extensively.

"From his long, illustrious Army career to his leadership at the helm of CIA, Dave has redefined what it means to serve and sacrifice for one's country," said Clapper.

Petraeus went to work as CIA chief in September 2011 after heading up the war in Afghanistan. He had drawn fire in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attack on the American compound in Benghazi, Libya. His departure comes barely a week before he was scheduled to testify about the assault in closed-door sessions with the intelligence committees of the Senate and House of Representatives. Morell was expected to take his place, congressional aides said.

Petraeus' resignation letter, quoted by several news outlets, centered on his personal behavior.

"Yesterday afternoon, I went to the White House and asked the President to be allowed, for personal reasons, to resign from my position as D/CIA. After being married for over 37 years, I showed extremely poor judgment by engaging in an extramarital affair. Such behavior is unacceptable, both as a husband and as the leader of an organization such as ours," he said. "This afternoon, the President graciously accepted my resignation."

Petraeus, 60, has been described as the father of the military's counterinsurgency doctrine. The charismatic officer had been cited as a possible future presidential or vice presidential prospect.

His wife, Holly, has worked inside the Obama administration, serving at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Arizona Sen. John McCain, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee and one of Petraeus' most outspoken admirers, said the general "will stand in the ranks of America's greatest military heroes."

"His inspirational leadership and his genius were directly responsible—after years of failure—for the success of the surge in Iraq," McCain said in a statement. "Our thoughts and prayers are with him and his family."

In a statement, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, said, "I very much regret the resignation of David Petraeus. This is an enormous loss for our nation's intelligence community and for our country.

"I wish President Obama had not accepted this resignation, but I understand and respect the decision," Feinstein added.

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