KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The United States is trying to sell or dispose of billions of dollars in military hardware, including sophisticated and highly specialized mine resistant vehicles as it packs up to leave Afghanistan after 13 years of war, officials said Monday.

But the efforts are complicated in a region where relations between neighboring countries are mired in suspicion and outright hostility.

A statement by the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan said Islamabad is interested in buying used U.S. equipment. The statement said Pakistan's request is being reviewed but any equipment it receives, including the coveted mine resistant vehicles, will not likely come from its often angry neighbor Afghanistan.

An earlier U.S. Forces statement was definite: Pakistan would not get any U.S. equipment being sold out of Afghanistan.

Mark Wright, Department of Defense spokesman, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview that the U.S. would like to sell to "nearby countries" the equipment that is too costly to ship back home.

Among the items for sale are 800 MRAPs, highly sophisticated Mine Resistant Ambush Protected armored vehicles. Selling them off could mean a savings of as much as $500 million and hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues, he said. The computerized MRAPs have been used by U.S. service personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan, as protection against the deadly roadside bombs used relentlessly by insurgents.

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FILE-In this file picture taken Nov. 2, 2013 photo an Afghan scrap dealer checks to see if a head li …

According to an Associated Press count at least 2,176 members of the U.S. military have died in Afghanistan since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001. Many were killed by roadside bombs.

Still it seems certain that Afghanistan's nearest neighbor Pakistan won't be getting any of the excess 800 MRAPs that are up for sale by the departing U.S. military, although roadside bombs have been one of the deadliest weapons used by Pakistani insurgents against an estimated 170,000 Pakistani soldiers deployed in the tribal regions that border Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Earlier this month the head of coalition forces in Afghanistan, Gen. Joseph F. Dunford told a Pentagon briefing that Pakistan would be interested in getting MRAPs.

A statement issued on Monday by the U.S. Embassy said the U.S. is "currently reviewing" Pakistan's request for a variety of items under what the U.S. calls its "excess defense articles" — a category that includes the 800 MRAPs in Afghanistan.

Reports that Pakistan might be interested in the MRAPs raised hackles in Kabul, with the authorities saying all the equipment should stay in Afghanistan.

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FILE- In this file photo taken Sept. 23, 2009, a column of U.S. Army mine-resistant armored vehicles …

"We are strongly opposed to any deal in this regard without consultation with Afghanistan and we have clearly conveyed this to the U.S," Karzai's spokesman Aimal Faizi told the AP on Monday. "It is in contradiction to the cooperative norms between strategic partners, Afghanistan and the U.S."

In a statement last week aimed at easing Kabul's concerns that no military equipment from Afghanistan would go to Pakistan, Dunford said "our commitment to the Afghan people and the Afghan National Security Forces is unwavering."

Afghan President Hamid Karzai routinely lashes out at the United States for not attacking Pakistani territory where he says insurgents waging war against his government have found a safe sanctuary.

He has said the last 12 years of war should not have been fought on Afghan territory, but rather in the areas where insurgents hide, a reference to Pakistan. Islamabad routinely denies Karzai's accusations that it aids insurgents while at the same time saying its tribal areas that border Afghanistan are infested with insurgents.

More than 4,000 Pakistani soldiers have been killed in the protracted battle against Pakistani insurgents hiding in the tribal areas.

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FILE- In this file photo taken Nov. 2, 2013, Afghans load pieces of a a destroyed U.S military armor …

Wright said the United States has also been trying to dispose of $6 billion of non-military hardware — such as desks, chairs, tables and generators — ahead of the final withdrawal of U.S. and NATO combat troops by the end of this year.

He said just this month the U.S. military received approval from Afghanistan's Finance Ministry to sell off the non-lethal items to Afghan vendors. However Wright also said even non-lethal items could pose a threat and as a result some of it would be destroyed and sold to Afghans as scrap.

The U.S. began selling scrapped equipment to Afghans last year and made more than $42 million.

Wright said the reason for junking the equipment first is that "many non-military items have timing equipment or other components in them that can pose a threat. For example, timers can be attached to explosives. Treadmills, stationary bikes, many household appliances and devices, have timers."

As a result they are sold as junk, which has infuriated Afghan vendors who told The Associated Press that they could make more money selling functional equipment. They also said timers are available for the equivalent of $1 making it unlikely insurgents would pay upward of $100 for a functioning treadmill just to get a timer.

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Kathy Gannon is AP Special Regional Correspondent for Afghanistan and Pakistan and can be followed at www.twitter.com/kathygannon

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Oxfam International, a poverty fighting organization, made news at the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this year with its report that the world’s 85 richest people own assets with the same value as those owned by the poorer half of the world’s population, or 3.5 billion people (including children). Both groups have $US 1.7 trillion. That’s $20 billion on average if you are in the first group, and $486 if you are in the second group.

Oxfam’s calculations of the richest individuals are based on the 2013 Forbes Billionaires list. I decided to take a closer look at this group of 85 in search of trends. That’s when I realized that they are by now a much wealthier group. The rich got richer. And it was quite fast and dramatic. For example, while last year it took $23 billion to be in the top 20 of the world’s billionaires, this year it took $31 billion, according to Luisa Kroll, Forbes wealth editor, writing on Forbes.com.

As a result, by the time Forbes published its 2014 Billionaires List in early March, it took only 67 of the richest peoples’ wealth to match the poorer half of the world. (For the purpose of this blog, I will put aside the conversation about the importance of income inequality versus impoverishment. This has recently been skewing strongly toward recognition of the importance of income distribution and its inequality, most recently with the publication of Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty.)

Each of the 67 is on average worth the same as 52 million people from the bottom of the world’s wealth pyramid. Bill Gates, the world’s richest man, with a net worth of $76 billion, is worth the same as 156 million people from the bottom.

Who are the 67? The biggest group—28 billionaires, or 42% of them—is from the United States. No other country comes close. Germany and Russia have the second-highest number, with six each. The rest are sprinkled among 13 countries in Western Europe, APAC and the Americas.

That the biggest group of the super rich comes from the U.S. should not be a surprise, as the country holds almost a third of the world’s wealth (30%), significantly more than any other country, according to the Global Wealth Databook, from Credit Suisse Research Institute. However, Europe, with a slightly bigger chunk of the world’s wealth (32%), produced substantially fewer of the richest. That is due to less dynamic economies, which do not equal the U.S. in how they foster innovation, on which many of the newest U.S. fortunes are based.

When comparing the ratio of the richest to the percentage of the world’s wealth held by each country, it is Russia that comes out the most lopsided, with its holdings skewed to the super rich. As a country, Russia holds only half a percent of the world’s wealth, and yet it has 9% of the 67 richest.

The 67 fortunes come from three main industries: technology (12), retail (12) and natural resources-based sectors such as oil and gas, mining and steel. The geographical split by industry illustrates the state and progression of the various economies. Almost all technology fortunes are recent and from the U.S. (Microsoft MSFT +0.93%, Oracle, Facebook). Retail is dominated by second- or third-generation Western Europeans. The majority of the rich whose money comes from natural resources are from emerging markets, with most of them from Russia.

The majority of the 67—40, or 60%, to be precise—are self-made. This rarified group of people thus shows that there is wealth mobility over time in the highest echelons, among both individuals and countries. Had there been less global mobility, the majority of the richest would necessarily have inherited wealth and come from the countries with the oldest fortunes, which are in Western Europe. Already back in the late 1980s, when Forbes first started to compile its Billionaires list, Western Europe stood apart from the rest of the world, with the majority of its fortunes inherited. That did not provide a long-term edge. Today, just 13 of the 67 come from Western Europe.

Of course, part of the reason behind the high number of self-made fortunes of the 67 lies in economic upheavals, such as the fall of communism or the opening of countries like India, which has allowed for the creation of huge new fortunes over the last couple of decades. And while they are self-made in the sense that they have not been inherited from family members, at least some of them are based on privatizations of formerly state-owned assets, making them the inheritors of their peoples’ wealth.

There will be more mobility among the richest individuals if more of the world’s richest give away their money to philanthropy, expecting future generations to start anew. Out of the 67, eight have signed a giving pledge, promising to leave the majority of their wealth to philanthropy. All but one, Indian billionaire Azim Premji, are from the U.S. That amount pledged to charity comes to at least $150 billion, assuming half of their fortunes are given away. That means that these eight people have pledged to give to philanthropy what some 309 million people (average members of the group of 3.5 billion poorest) today have. Presumably, this philanthropy, which has been increasingly systemic—meaning that it aims to create long-term change instead of alleviating immediate needs—will in the long run help more than 300 million people.

Turning fortunes over to philanthropy will also drastically change the makeup of the richest, making room for more of the self-made. It has to be noted, however, that not every region of the world is on the same wavelength in this respect, with family legacy in business especially important in Europe.

Late breaking: Forbes has just announced it is updating its Billionaires rankings in real time now. The latest counts show that over the last month the number of billionaires whose net worth equals that of the 3.5 billion poorest people has fallen to 66.

Chile's M8.2 quake causes little damage, death

IQUIQUE, Chile (AP) — Hard-won expertise and a big dose of luck helped Chile escape its latest magnitude-8.2 earthquake with surprisingly little damage and death.

The country that suffers some of the world's most powerful quakes has strict building codes, mandatory evacuations and emergency preparedness that sets a global example. But Chileans weren't satisfied Wednesday, finding much room for improvement. And experts warn that a "seismic gap" has left northern Chile overdue for a far bigger quake.

Authorities on Wednesday discovered just six reported deaths from the previous night's quake. It's possible that other people were killed in older structures made of adobe in remote communities that weren't immediately accessible, but it's still a very low toll for such a powerful shift in the undersea fault that runs along the length of South America's Pacific coast.

"How much is it luck? How much is it science? How much is it preparedness? It is a combination of all of the above. I think what we just saw here is pure luck. Mostly, it is luck that the tsunami was not bigger and that it hit a fairly isolated area of Chile," said Costas Synolakis, an engineer who directs the Tsunami Research Center at the University of Southern California.

Chile is one of the world's most seismic countries and is particularly prone to tsunamis, because of the way the Nazca tectonic plate plunges beneath the South American plate, pushing the towering Andes cordillera ever higher.

About 2,500 homes were damaged in Alto Hospicio, a poor neighborhood in the hills above Iquique, a city of nearly 200,000 people whose coastal residents joined a mandatory evacuation ahead of a tsunami that rose to only 8 feet (2.5 meters). Iquique's fishermen poked through the aftermath: sunken and damaged boats that could cost millions of dollars to repair and replace.

Raw: Chile Quake Sends People ScramblingPlay video

Still, as President Michelle Bachelet deployed hundreds of anti-riot police and soldiers to prevent looting and round up escaped prisoners, it was clear that the loss of life and property could have been much worse.

The shaking that began at 8:46 p.m. Tuesday also touched off landslides that blocked roads, knocked out power for thousands, briefly closed regional airports and started fires that destroyed several businesses. Some homes made of adobe also were destroyed in Arica, another city close to the quake's offshore epicenter.

Shaky cellphone videos taken by people eating dinner show light fixtures swaying, furniture shaking and people running to safety, pulling their children under restaurant tables, running for exits and shouting to turn off natural gas connections.

"Stay calm, stay calm! My daughter, stay calm! No, stay calm, be careful, cover yourself," said Vladimir Alejandro Alvarado Lopez as he recorded himself pushing his family under a table. "Shut the gas ... It's still shaking. Let's go," he said as he then hustled them outside.

The mandatory evacuation lasted for 10 hours in Iquique and Arica, the cities closest to the epicenter, and kept 900,000 people out of their homes along Chile's 2,500-mile (4,000 kilometer) coastline. The order to leave was spread through cellphone text messages and Twitter, and reinforced by blaring sirens in neighborhoods where people regularly practice earthquake drills.

Powerful Chile Earthquake Shakes CoastPlay video

But the system has its shortcomings: the government has yet to install tsunami warning sirens in parts of Arica, leaving authorities to shout orders by megaphone. And fewer than 15 percent of Chileans have downloaded the smartphone application that can alert them to evacuation orders.

Alberto Maturana, the former director of Chile's Emergency Office, said Chileans were lucky the quake hadn't caught them in the middle of the day when parents and children are separated, or in the middle of the night.

And he was highly critical of the government's response, citing the need for better access to roads, transportation, health care, coordination and supplies.

Bachelet, who just returned to the presidency three weeks ago, had no margin for error. The last time she presided over a major quake, days before the end of her 2006-10 term, her emergency preparedness office prematurely waved off a tsunami danger. Most of the 500 dead from that magnitude-8.8 tremor survived the shaking, only to be caught in killer waves. Some 220,000 homes were destroyed as large parts of many coastal communities were washed away.

The U.S. Geological Survey said more than 60 significant aftershocks, including one of magnitude 6.2, followed the Tuesday night quake centered 61 miles (99 kilometers) northwest of Iquique.

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Fishing boats washed ashore by a small tsunami, sit in Caleta Riquelme, adjacent to the port, in the …

And seismologists warn that the same region is long overdue for an even bigger quake.

"Could be tomorrow, could be in 50 years; we do not know when it's going to occur. But the key point here is that this magnitude-8.2 is not the large earthquake that we were expecting for this area. We're actually still expecting potentially an even larger earthquake," said Mark Simons, a geophysicist at the California Institute of Technology.

Nowhere along the fault is the pressure greater than in the "Iquique seismic gap" of northern Chile.

"This is the one remaining gap that hasn't had an earthquake in the last 140 years," said Simons. "We know these two plates come together at about 6, 7 centimeters a year, and if you multiply that by 140 years then the plates should have moved about 11 meters along the fault, and you can make an estimate of the size of earthquake we expect here."

The USGS says the seismic gap last saw quakes of more than magnitude 8 in 1877 and 1868.

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Luis Andres Henao reported from Santiago. Also contributing to this report were Eva Vergara in Santiago, Michael Warren in Buenos Aires, Argentina; Frank Bajak in Lima, Peru, and Andrew Dalton in Los Angeles.

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Luis Andres Henao on Twitter: https://twitter.com/LuisAndresHenao

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Chile escapes quake with little damage

The magnitude-8.2 temblor reportedly killed six, which is a low death toll for such a powerful quake.
Experts explain

By Adrian Croft and Sabine Siebold

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - NATO suspended all practical cooperation with Russia on Tuesday in protest at its annexation of Crimea, and ordered military planners to draft measures to strengthen its defenses and reassure nervous Eastern European countries.

Foreign ministers from the 28-nation, U.S.-led alliance were meeting for the first time since the Russian occupation of Ukraine's Crimea region touched off the worst East-West crisis since the Cold War.

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Russia's actions meant there could be no "business as usual".

"So today, we are suspending all practical cooperation with Russia, military and civilian," he told a news conference.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said NATO's future relationship with Russia would depend, among other things, on whether Russia started withdrawing troops from the Ukrainian border.

Ministers also ordered military commanders to draw up plans for reinforcing NATO's defenses to shore up confidence among the alliance's Eastern European members, including former Soviet republics in the Baltics, that NATO is ready to defend them.

The measures could include sending NATO soldiers and equipment to Eastern European allies, holding more exercises, ensuring NATO's rapid-reaction force could deploy more quickly, and reviewing NATO's military plans. Military planners will come back with detailed proposals within weeks, a NATO official said.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said NATO's preference was for a de-escalation and diplomatic route out of the crisis.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, shakes hands with Head of the Russian Interior Ministry' …

"At the same time, it is important for everybody in the world to understand the NATO alliance takes seriously this attempt to change borders by use of force," he said.

Russia's announcement on Monday that it would move a battalion back from close to the Ukrainian border was a small but welcome gesture, he told a news conference.

"The question now is: Is there a way to build on that in order to be able to find a way to move the masses of troops back and truly de-escalate?" he said.

Rasmussen said earlier that NATO had seen no sign Russia was withdrawing its troops from the Ukrainian border.

REINFORCEMENTS

The United States and other NATO allies have already responded to the crisis by offering more planes to take part in regular NATO air patrols over the Baltic States, which were once Soviet republics. The United States has beefed up a previously planned training exercise with the Polish air force.

A Pentagon official told Reuters on Tuesday that the top U.S. general in Europe was looking at options, including moving a U.S. warship to the Black Sea and bolstering scheduled NATO exercises.

General Philip Breedlove, who is both NATO's supreme allied commander Europe and head of the U.S. military's European Command, was "going to look at the full spate of upcoming NATO exercises" to see if there were ways they could be enhanced, the U.S. official said.

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Members of the Ukrainian far-right radical group Right Sector stand outside the parliament in Kiev M …

Germany had offered six Eurofighter jets for Baltic air patrols and one command ship for a mine hunting unit in the Baltic Sea, a NATO source told Reuters.

The suspension of NATO cooperation with Russia would mean Russia could not participate in joint exercises such as one planned for May on rescuing a stranded submarine, a NATO official said.

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But Rasmussen said he expected Russia's cooperation with NATO in Afghanistan - on training counter-narcotics personnel, maintenance of Afghan air force helicopters and a transit route out of the war-torn country - to continue.

Contacts between NATO and Russia at ambassadorial level or higher can also go on, so the two sides can discuss ways out of the crisis.

NATO agreed at a meeting with Ukraine's foreign minister to step up cooperation with training and other programs to help modernize Ukraine's armed forces.

The alliance will offer Ukraine more chances to take part in NATO exercises, Rasmussen said.

Ukraine has given NATO members a wish-list of "technical equipment" it needed for its armed forces but this did not include weaponry, Ukraine's Foreign Minister Andrij Deshchitsya told a news conference after meeting NATO ministers.

He said NATO members would send experts to Kiev next week to see what Ukraine needed.

As NATO ministers convened, Russia warned Ukraine against integration with NATO, saying Kiev's previous attempts to move closer to the defense alliance had unwelcome consequences.

Ukraine's new pro-Western leadership has said it is not seeking membership of the Western alliance.

In another sign of NATO support, Romanian President Traian Basescu said the United States had asked to boost the number of troops and aircraft it has stationed at an air base in his country, which has a border with Ukraine.

But Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Tuesday that the pace at which NATO was increasing its military presence in Poland was unsatisfactory.

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, who said earlier he would be satisfied if NATO located two heavy brigades in Poland, said on arrival at the NATO meeting that he would welcome any NATO forces being stationed there.

Germany's Steinmeier said the basing of a significant NATO force in Poland would not be completely in line with a 1997 treaty on NATO-Russian cooperation.

(Additional reporting by Justyna Pawlak and Lesley Wroughton in Brussels, Phil Stewart aboard U.S. military aircraft; Editing by Andrew Roche, Peter Cooney and Eric Walsh)

No proof of Russian pullback from Ukraine: NATO

Members of the 28-country defense alliance are meeting for the first time since the crisis.
Options they're considering