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CAMP PENDLETON — The Pentagon said Friday that it will investigate a Marine’s sworn statement that guards at Guantanamo Bay bragged about beating detainees and that they described it as common practice. The Marine, a paralegal who was at the U.S. Navy station in Cuba last month, alleges that several guards she talked to at the base club admitted routinely hitting detainees.

"From the whole conversation, I understood that striking detainees was a common practice,” the sergeant wrote. "Everyone in the group laughed at the others’ stories of beating detainees.” The woman’s name was blacked out of a copy of a two-page affidavit provided to the Associated Press by a civilian defense attorney working with Lt. Col. Colby Vokey, the Marine Corps’ defense coordinator for the Western United States and based at Camp Pendleton.

Hungary’s prime minister wins parliament’s

vote of confidence

BUDAPEST, Hungary — Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany, whose admission that he lied to the country about Hungary’s economy led to huge street protests, won a vote of confidence in parliament Friday.

The motion in support of Gyurcsany passed 207-165. He needed 193 votes to win. Even as parliament voted, however, tens of thousands of people gathered on Kossuth Square just outside the legislature and demanded Gyurcsany’s dismissal.

U.S. commander: 4,000 Iraqi police killed in past two years

BAGHDAD, Iraq — About 4,000 Iraqi police have been killed and more than 8,000 wounded in the past two years, the U.S. commander in charge of police training said Friday, but he said the force’s performance was improving and officials are working to weed out militiamen.

Beefing up Iraq’s security forces is a cornerstone of efforts to stop the violence that has torn the country since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Police have been a prime target for attacks by Sunni insurgents.

Sunnis accuse the Shiite-led police of helping fuel sectarian violence that has killed thousands this year.