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KABUL (Reuters) - A joint news conference that had been scheduled for Afghan President Hamid Karzai and U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has been canceled over security concerns, U.S. officials said.

The officials declined to cite the nature of the security threat. But it comes a day after a suicide bombing in Kabul that killed nine civilians, about a kilometer away from where Hagel was holding a morning meeting.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)

An investigator for the United Nations, Marzuki Darusman, is expected to present a report to the council on Monday urging the creation of an international commission of  inquiry to follow up the abuses recorded in the eight years that a United Nations rapporteur has monitored human rights in the North.

 "An inquiry mechanism could produce a more complete picture, quantify and qualify the violations in terms of  international law, attribute responsibility to particular actors or perpetrators of  these violations, and suggest effective  courses of international action," Mr. Darusman said in the report.

His recommendation will be taken up  in a resolution sponsored by Japan  and the European Union that the 47-member council was expected to adopt when it votes later in March. The  proposal, backed by the United Nations human rights chief, Navi Pillay, as well as various human rights organizations, is expected to  draw on concerns about  North Korea's conduct that prompted  both the council and the General  Assembly to pass resolutions last year  condemning Pyongyang.

 "We are in effect ramping up international political pressure on this unparalleled, systemwide failure in respect to  human rights," Eileen Chamberlain  Donahoe, the American ambassador to the  Human Rights Council, said by telephone. "We're hoping that even if it  doesn't crack the whole system that on  some of these issues we might see some  opening and some change because of  this pressure."

 Japan has been a strong supporter of a human rights investigation  into North Korea. The alleged kidnappings of Japanese citizens by North Korea remains a popular human rights and  political cause in Japan.

 The creation of a commission of inquiry would be a victory for defectors from North Korea, including a  handful of people said to be survivors of  the isolated country's infamous prison  camps who have resettled in South Korea and elsewhere. Some of them have  become the most vocal campaigners for  human rights in North Korea, holding  rallies, testifying about starvation and torture in prison gulags and arguing that  the international community must  break its silence about the people living  under one of the world's most systematic repressions of human rights.

 That argument has not always been  popular in their new home, South Korea. Many South Koreans believe that without an effective means of pressuring  North Korea, which has defied and survived decades of international sanctions, an open challenge against its human rights record would only make it more paranoid and repressive.

 South Korea used to abstain from any   United Nations vote on human rights  resolutions on North Korea. But after a  conservative party took power five  years ago, Seoul began voting for and even  leading such moves. It also supports the  creation of the commission of inquiry.

 Coupled with the new set of United Nations sanctions, the human rights report was expected to increase the pressure on   Mr. Kim's government. Reports of a  guarded relaxation of state control on  the economy in North Korea have been  alternating with signs of renewed  crackdown on outside influence.

Concern over its nuclear program has  sharpened international attention to  North Korea, but human rights activists  say that it had sidelined attention to  systemic abuses and that a commission of inquiry would help to give them greater visibility  that was long overdue.

 "Increased scrutiny by international  inquiry affords a measure of protection, especially when coupled with the prospect of future criminal investigations  and the deterrent effect such a prospect  may have on individual perpetrators,"  Mr. Darusman's report states.

In a report that takes stock of the United Nations   investigations to date, Mr. Darusman  identifies nine "patterns" of human  rights violations including denial of access to food, arbitrary detention in prison camps estimated to hold up to  200,000 people, and abductions of foreign nationals. Many, if not all, of these  patterns "may amount to crimes  against humanity, committed as part of  systematic and/or widespread attacks  against civilian populations," the report says.

With the information accumulated in  the past eight years, investigators had  reached a tipping point that called for  greater resources to take their research  forward, Mr. Darusman said in a telephone interview. Like other investigators, he  has worked with a single assistant, limiting the possibilities of sustained investigation. A commission of inquiry is  likely to have three members, including Mr. Darusman, supported by researchers and a full-time  secretariat.

Even if an inquiry is commissioned, it  remains unclear how effective it will be, except in political symbolism. North Korea does not allow outside investigators. And the international community has  few means to force Pyongyang to provide access. Despite numerous testimonies by gulag survivors, no outsider has ever had  a glimpse of a prison camp in North Korea.

North Korea has not so far reacted to  the assessment but rejected the General  Assembly resolution in December as a  "political plot" that escalated confrontation. The abuses alleged "cannot be  allowed to exist in our country where  human rights and the fundamental freedom of the people are formally guaranteed by the legal system," said Kim  Song, the North Korean ambassador to  the United Nations.

In eschewing a speech for a day of shoe-leather campaigning, Ms. Quinn, a Democrat, is opting for an intimate approach to a high-profile moment of her mayoral bid, a contrast to the businesslike style of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, her political ally and the man she hopes to replace in City Hall.

Yet the Christine Quinn who appears in the highly polished video is a far cry from the head-clunking, hard-nosed deal maker who maintains an iron rule over the City Council. Here, she is seen in a warm, welcoming pose, clad in a fuzzy fuchsia blazer and floral necklace, chatting amiably at the counter of a 1950s-style diner complete with a covered glass cake stand.

Accompanied by piano music, Ms. Quinn, 46, reminisces about her father's union activism and middle-class upbringing on Long Island. She names legislation she shepherded through the Council, highlighted by on-screen graphics like "good public schools" and "affordable child care." She becomes misty-eyed as she describes her mother's death from breast cancer when Ms. Quinn was a teenager.

"My mother's life and death left me with the belief that our obligation is to use every moment we have on this earth to make it a better place," Ms. Quinn says.

Ms. Quinn, who married her longtime partner, Kim Catullo, last year, has attracted national attention for the historic nature of her bid to become New York City's first openly gay mayor.

But the five-minute video, despite its personal touch, includes no reference to Ms. Catullo, or even that Ms. Quinn is gay.

The announcement on Sunday was essentially a formality for Ms. Quinn, who has spent years preparing a bid for mayor. Early polls show her with an advantage over her Democratic rivals, but that lead could prove illusory as more voters begin to pay attention to the race in the months leading up to the primary contests, which are expected to be held in September.

Ms. Quinn, a former housing activist who has shifted to the political center over the course of her career, has aggressively courted the city's business and real estate industries while also angling for labor support. She is hoping to win over residents outside of Manhattan who may be skeptical of her close ties with Mr. Bloomberg, a relationship that has allowed her to be caricatured by rivals as an elite Manhattanite.

On Sunday, Ms. Quinn plans to plunge into neighborhoods far from her Manhattan home bases of Chelsea and City Hall, making stops to greet residents in all five boroughs. The day serves to inaugurate a campaign effort that she calls "Walk and Talk" — or, as Ms. Quinn pronounces it in the video, "wawk and tawk," in a thick Long Island accent.

"It's a great way to hear directly from New Yorkers, what's going on in your homes, what's going on in their lives, so I can make sure when I'm mayor, my focus is their focus," Ms. Quinn says in the video, as she urges New Yorkers "to put those sensible shoes on" and join her for a local stroll.

The tour is a deliberate nod by the Quinn campaign to the "How'm I doin'?" routine of Mayor Edward I. Koch, who charmed voters with his brash talk and larger-than-life personality. Ms. Quinn's aides believe their candidate possesses a similar set of retail skills, and they plan to emphasize those attributes as she strives to separate herself from her rivals.

The video, which resembles the expensive ads of national political campaigns, was produced by Ms. Quinn's high-powered political consulting firm, SKD Knickerbocker, which has created political commercials for Mr. Bloomberg. Quinn campaign officials would not disclose the cost for the video.

Officials said the number of ministries under the State Council, China's cabinet, would be reduced to 25 from 27. The plan was submitted Sunday at a session during the annual meeting of the National People's Congress, a legislative body that generally approves policy already made by senior Communist Party officials. The changes were presented by Ma Kai, secretary general of the State Council.

The Ministry of Railways, long criticized as being a haven of corruption, will be split into administrative and commercial arms. China Railway will oversee the commercial duties, while the actual network of trains and railways will fall under the Ministry of Transport.

The railway ministry has come under particularly harsh criticism in recent years. In February 2011, Liu Zhijun, the minister at the time, was placed under investigation on corruption accusations. He was expelled from the party months later and now awaits a formal trial. In July 2011, China's ambitious plans for high-speed rail construction across the nation were called into question after a fatal high-speed train crash near the eastern city of Wenzhou.

Among the other changes announced Sunday, the Ministry of Health will merge with the National Population and Family Planning Commission, according to a report by Xinhua. The family planning commission manages China's one-child policy, which some economists now say is meaningless, given demographic changes taking place in the country. The policy has led to widespread abuse and corruption by family planning officials at local levels — forced sterilizations and abortions still take place — and has resulted in a stark gender imbalance across China, in which men outnumber women.

The Xinhua report also said that the State Food and Drug Administration would be elevated to a general administration, giving it more power to combat tainted food and drugs.

Two agencies that manage and censor the media, the General Administration of Press and Publication and the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, will be merged into one.

The government will also streamline the National Energy Administration to change the way the energy industry is regulated.

Xinhua reported that at the legislative session on Sunday, Mr. Ma, the member of the State Council, said, "Departments of the State Council are now focusing too much on microissues. We should attend to our duties and must not meddle in what is not in our business."

The gun ownership rate has fallen across a broad cross section of households since the early 1970s, according to data from the General Social Survey, a public opinion survey conducted every two years that asks a sample of American adults if they have guns at home, among other questions.

The rate has dropped in cities large and small, in suburbs and rural areas and in all regions of the country. It has fallen among households with children, and among those without. It has declined for households that say they are very happy, and for those that say they are not. It is down among churchgoers and those who never sit in pews.

The household gun ownership rate has fallen from an average of 50 percent in the 1970s to 49 percent in the 1980s, 43 percent in the 1990s and 35 percent in the 2000s, according to the survey data, analyzed by The New York Times.

In 2012, the share of American households with guns was 34 percent, according to survey results released on Thursday. Researchers said the difference compared with 2010, when the rate was 32 percent, was not statistically significant.

The findings contrast with the impression left by a flurry of news reports about people rushing to buy guns and clearing shop shelves of assault rifles after the massacre last year at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.

"There are all these claims that gun ownership is going through the roof," said Daniel Webster, the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research. "But I suspect the increase in gun sales has been limited mostly to current gun owners. The most reputable surveys show a decline over time in the share of households with guns."

That decline, which has been studied by researchers for years but is relatively unknown among the general public, suggests that even as the conversation on guns remains contentious, a broad shift away from gun ownership is under way in a growing number of American homes. It also raises questions about the future politics of gun control. Will efforts to regulate guns eventually meet with less resistance if they are increasingly concentrated in fewer hands — or more resistance?

Detailed data on gun ownership is scarce. Though some states reported household gun ownership rates in the 1990s, it was not until the early 2000s that questions on the presence of guns at home were asked on a broad federal public health survey of several hundred thousand people, making it possible to see the rates in all states.

But by the mid-2000s, the federal government stopped asking the questions, leaving researchers to rely on much smaller surveys, like the General Social Survey, which is conducted by NORC, a research center at the University of Chicago.

Measuring the level of gun ownership can be a vexing problem, with various recent national polls reporting rates between 35 percent and 52 percent. Responses can vary because the survey designs and the wording of questions differ.

But researchers say the survey done by the center at the University of Chicago is crucial because it has consistently tracked gun ownership since 1973, asking if respondents "happen to have in your home (or garage) any guns or revolvers."

The center's 2012 survey, conducted mostly in person but also by phone, involved interviews with about 2,000 people from March to September and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

Gallup, which asks a similar question but has a different survey design, shows a higher ownership rate and a more moderate decrease. No national survey tracks the number of guns within households.

Andrew Arulanandam, a spokesman for the National Rifle Association, said he was skeptical that there had been a decline in household ownership. He pointed to reports of increased gun sales, to long waits for gun safety training classes and to the growing number of background checks, which have surged since the late 1990s, as evidence that ownership is rising.

"I'm sure there are a lot of people who would love to make the case that there are fewer gun owners in this country, but the stories we've been hearing and the data we've been seeing simply don't support that," he said.

Tom W. Smith, the director of the General Social Survey, which is financed by the National Science Foundation, said he was confident in the trend. It lines up, he said, with two evolving patterns in American life: the decline of hunting and a sharp drop in violent crime, which has made the argument for self-protection much less urgent.

According to an analysis of the survey, only a quarter of men in 2012 said they hunted, compared with about 40 percent when the question was asked in 1977.

Mr. Smith acknowledged the rise in background checks, but said it was impossible to tell how many were for new gun owners. The checks are reported as one total that includes, for example, people buying their second or third gun, as well as those renewing concealed carry permits.

"If there was a national registry that recorded all firearm purchases, we'd have a full picture," he said. "But there's not, so we've got to put together pieces."

The survey does not ask about the legality of guns in the home. Illegal guns are a factor in some areas but represent a very small fraction of ownership in the country, said Aaron Karp, an expert on gun policy at the Small Arms Survey in Geneva and at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va. He said estimates of the total number of guns in the United States ranged from 280 million to 320 million.

The geographic patterns were some of the most surprising in the General Social Survey, researchers said. Gun ownership in both the South and the mountain region, which includes states like Montana, New Mexico and Wyoming, dropped to less than 40 percent of households this decade, down from 65 percent in the 1970s. The Northeast, where the household ownership rate is lowest, changed the least, at 22 percent this decade, compared with 29 percent in the 1970s.

Age groups presented another twist. While household ownership of guns among elderly Americans remained virtually unchanged from the 1970s to this decade at about 43 percent, ownership among young Americans plummeted. Household gun ownership among Americans under the age of 30 fell to 23 percent this decade from 47 percent in the 1970s. The survey showed a similar decline for Americans ages 30 to 44.

As for politics, the survey showed a steep drop in household gun ownership among Democrats and independents, and a very slight decline among Republicans. But the new data suggest a reversal among Republicans, with 51 percent since 2008 saying they have a gun in their home, up from 47 percent in surveys taken from 2000 through 2006. This leaves the Republican rate a bit below where it was in the 1970s, while ownership for Democrats is nearly half of what it was in that decade.

Researchers offered different theories for these trends.

Many Americans were introduced to guns through military service, which involved a large part of the population in the Vietnam War era, Dr. Webster said. Now that the Army is volunteer and a small fraction of the population, it is less a gateway for gun ownership, he said.

Urbanization also helped drive the decline. Rural areas, where gun ownership is the highest, are now home to about 17 percent of Americans, down from 27 percent in the 1970s. According to the survey, just 23 percent of households in cities owned guns in the 2000s, compared with 56 percent of households in rural areas. That was down from 70 percent of rural households in the 1970s.

The country's changing demographics may also play a role. While the rate of gun ownership among women has remained relatively constant over the years at about 10 percent, which is less than one-third of the rate among men today, more women are heading households without men, another possible contributor to the decline in household gun ownership. Women living in households where there were guns that were not their own declined to a fifth in 2012 down from a third in 1980.

The increase of Hispanics as a share of the American population is also probably having an effect, as they are far less likely to own guns. In the survey results since 2000, about 14 percent of Hispanics reported having a gun in their house.

A total of 1,672 eligible voters — vastly outnumbered by the islands' estimated population of one million penguins and 700,000 sheep — will be asked to answer yes or no to a straightforward proposition: "Do you wish the Falkland Islands to retain their current political status as an Overseas Territory of the United Kingdom?"

The alternative would be to begin a transition to Argentine control, perhaps by a period of shared sovereignty, as Argentina has suggested. The vote comes three decades after Argentina tried to settle the issue by force, invading the islands and losing a 10-week war with Britain that cost the lives of 255 British and 649 Argentine soldiers, sailors and airmen, as well as 3 civilians on the islands.

For those inclined to a wager, the referendum is a lead-pipe cinch. The majority of the islands' residents are British citizens, and local pundits expect the vote for retaining the status quo will run a few points short, if that, of 100 percent. About the only uncertainty is whether the fog that sweeps over the Falklands will ground the aircraft that carry the ballots from eight separate islands to Stanley, the capital.

The benchmark is a 2002 referendum in Gibraltar, another British dependency, where the vote for retaining the British link or accepting a new status tying the isthmus on which Gibraltar stands to Spain was 98.5 percent. That, too, was not much of a cliffhanger, since many of those eligible to vote were of British descent.

For Argentina and Britain, the 1982 conflict was a shock — enough to lead, in time, to the collapse of the Argentine military junta that mounted the invasion, and to propel Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, in deep political trouble at home when the war gave her an opportunity to play the "Iron Lady," to a second election victory in 1983. The hope, sustained for years after the war, was that both countries would put the bitterness behind them and build a relationship on interests like trade that pragmatists on both sides saw as more important than the Falklands.

But in the last few years the old virulence has returned, driven by a surge of Argentine nationalist fervor stirred by President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who has adopted a number of measures intended to place economic pressure on the islanders, including banning cruise ships that stop at the islands from Argentine ports.

Both countries have historical claims on the islands, the British one bolstered by their continuous habitation there since the 1830s, the Argentine by the fact that Stanley lies barely 300 miles from the Argentine coast and nearly 8,000 miles from Britain. To the argument of proximity, Argentina has added in recent times the contention that Britain intends, by keeping control of the Falklands, to rob Argentina of the newly discovered deep-sea oil reserves and rich fisheries within the Falklands' territorial waters.

The referendum has been dismissed by Mrs. Kirchner, who has said that islanders are "colonial implants" from Britain whose preferences count for nothing against the fact that the islands, known as Las Malvinas to the Argentines, were "stripped" from Argentina by a British naval flotilla that expelled an Argentine settlement in 1833. That event followed on a convoluted colonial history going back to the 16th century that saw rival claims to the islands, at one point or another, by Britain, France, Portugal and Spain.

The Argentine foreign minister, Héctor Timerman, calling the islanders "settlers," has been equally blunt. "The Falkland Islanders do not exist," he has said.

The aggressive Argentine stand, accompanied at times by belligerent hints from Argentine military and political leaders that they do not exclude another attempt to take the islands by force, has been rejected by the British prime minister, David Cameron.

His aides have said he knows that losing the islands to a new Argentine invasion would be likely to doom his government at the polls. He has led an intensive review of British defenses on the islands, including a 1,200-member military detachment, a new military airfield, the year-round deployment of four Typhoon fighter-bombers, and, some British reports have said, a nuclear-powered attack submarine stationed in the South Atlantic.

But Mr. Cameron's response has been as much political as military. Although the referendum was formally called by the Falklands' popularly elected government, the move came in close consultation with London. Officials at the Foreign Office have said they see a vote by the islanders to remain British as a means to shift the terms of international debate to one of their right to self-determination in place of the colonial struggle depicted by Mrs. Kirchner.

Mr. Cameron describes the Argentine rejection of the referendum as "shouting down the islanders' ability to speak for themselves," and he has vowed to defend them in whatever choice they make for their own future.

In this, he has had the support of all the main political parties in Britain, though some politicians, including a number in his own Conservative Party, have questioned how long Britain, with a $50 billion defense budget that is already severely overstretched, can continue to make such substantial outlays on faraway, thinly populated islands with scant strategic value.

To British frustration, their claim to sovereignty over the islands has failed to win American backing under the Obama administration just as it did under the Reagan administration at the time of the war in 1982. With an eye to the strong support Argentina has won for its claim among Latin American states, the United States has urged London and Buenos Aires to reach a negotiated settlement, a position American officials said was quietly reiterated last month when Secretary of State John Kerry, on his first trip abroad in the post, met Mr. Cameron.

Argentina has other powerful diplomatic cards to play, including the backing of China and Russia, who have joined Argentina in rejecting the right to self-determination by the Falklanders, seeing it as a possible precedent for separatist groups in their own territories.

Agustín Romero, a foreign affairs specialist who sits on a congressional committee on the Falklands in Buenos Aires, said international acceptance of the Falklands vote could open the floodgates to separatist movements around the world.

"What no one wants is a precedent," Mr. Romero said, "which is why none of the world's superpowers will recognize this referendum."

The Taliban suspended the talks one year ago, blaming "shaky, erratic and vague" U.S. statements.

The U.S. government has said it remained committed to political reconciliation involving talks with the Taliban but progress would require agreement between the Afghan government and the insurgents.

"Senior leaders of the Taliban and the Americans are engaged in talks in the Gulf state on a daily basis," Karzai told a gathering to mark International Women's Day.

But the Taliban spokesman in Afghanistan, Zabihullah Mujahid, denied that negotiations with the United States had resumed and said no progress had been made since they were suspended.

"The Taliban strongly rejects Karzai's comments," he said.

U.S. officials could not be immediately reached for comment.

The Kabul government has been pushing hard to get the Taliban to the negotiating table before most U.S.-led NATO combat troops withdraw by the end of 2014.

Afghan officials have not held direct talks with the militants, who were toppled in 2001 and have proven resilient after more than a decade of war with Western forces.

U.S. diplomats have been seeking to broaden exploratory talks with the Taliban that began clandestinely in Germany in late 2010 after the Taliban offered to open a representative office in Qatar.

U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is in Afghanistan to visit U.S. troops.

Hagel, who arrived on Friday for his first trip abroad as defense secretary, is also due to hold talks with Karzai, whose recent orders to curtail U.S. military activity highlights an often tense relationship with the 66,000 American forces here.

Hagel's visit also coincides with the passing of a deadline imposed by Karzai for U.S. special forces to leave the province of Wardak, after Karzai accused them of overseeing torture and killings in the area.

U.S. forces have denied involvement in any abuses and it was not clear if they were leaving Wardak by the deadline.

Regional power Pakistan indicated a few months ago that it would support the peace process by releasing Afghan Taliban detainees who may help promote the peace process.

But there have been no tangible signs the move advanced reconciliation.

(Additional reporting by Hamid Shalizi; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Robert Birsel)