World: Afghan leader Hamid Karzai is refusing to take part in peace talks with the Taliban unless the process is “Afghanized”. Peace talks were announced only yesterday. Karzai is angry that the US took the lead in setting up peace talks and that the Taliban set up a high profile office in Qatar under the name Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, as if they were a government in exile.

• National Security Agency chief Gen. Keith Alexander told a House committee that homeland surveillance has prevented 50 terrorist attacks since 9/11, including a plot to blow up the NY Stock Exchange. He declined to say what the other plots were or exactly how they were cracked.

National: Boston mobster Whitey Bulger’s partner testified that he took part in 20 murders but, “I never liked it. I didn’t like doing any of it.” Justifying his killings, John Martorano, 72, said, “I was always taught to defend your family and friends,” although some of the people he killed for Bulger were friends. He denied that he was a hit man or mass murderer. Martorano said he preferred to be known as “a nice guy.”

Weeds: In an instance of life imitating art, a mother of three in the tony NY suburb of Scarsdale has been indicted on charges that she was a major marijuana grower and dealer. It’s like the plot of the Showtime series “Weeds”. Andrea Sanderlin, 45, is accused of running a grow warehouse in Queens with 2,500 plants in it and finished product worth about $3 million.

9 to 5: Seventy percent of American workers are “checked out” or “actively disengaged from their jobs’, meaning they hate what they do, according to a Gallup survey. The study says unhappy workers cost businesses $550 billion a year in lost productivity, but says nothing about the toll a lousy job takes on a human being.

B-ball: With 28 seconds left on the clock, Miami came from six points down to force San Antonio into overtime. They won 103-100. Game seven is tomorrow. LeBron James called it the greatest game he was ever part of.

The Obit Page: Michael Hastings, the journalist whose Rolling Stone article about Gen. Stanley McChrystal cost the officer his command and career, died at age 33 in a Los Angeles car accident. Hastings quoted the general and his entourage trash talking the administration. In 2007 Hastings’ then fiancé, aid worker Andi Parhamovich, was killed in an Iraq bombing. He leaves his wife, writer Elise Jordan.

Options: Porsche has released a $900 go-cart for kids. If you want seat heaters and leather you have to get the full electronics package with GPS.   

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