The Marine Corps on Friday laid the groundwork for deciding what, if any, disciplinary action will be taken in the case of an Internet video purporting to show Marine snipers urinating on dead bodies in Afghanistan.
Japan is poised to declare its crippled nuclear plant virtually stable, nine months after a devastating tsunami.
Voicing cautious optimism, the top NATO commander in Afghanistan said Tuesday that he's seeing signs of a possible lifting of Pakistan's communications blackout imposed on the U.S.-led coalition after NATO airstrikes killed two dozen Pakistani forces last month.
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta arrived in Afghanistan on Tuesday to meet with commanders as the U.S. grapples with an eroding relationship with Pakistan that has complicated supply routes and helped fuel insurgents in the east.
The U.S. military is working around a Pakistani government border blockade by shipping small amounts of some supplies for the Afghan war through other countries, U.S. defense officials said.
China's leader-in-waiting, Vice President Xi Jinping, met Myanmar's military chief on Monday and pledged stronger ties, days before Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton starts a historic trip to the closed state.
U.S. Marines will march out of Afghanistan by the thousands next year, winding down combat in the Taliban heartland and testing the U.S. view that Afghan forces are capable of leading the fight against a battered but not yet beaten insurgency in the country's southwestern reaches, senior U.S. military officers say.
Pakistan on Saturday blocked vital supply routes for U.S.-led troops in Afghanistan and demanded Washington vacate a base used by American drones after coalition aircraft allegedly killed 24 Pakistani troops at two posts along a mountainous frontier that serves as a safe haven for militants.
Two suicide bombers targeted worshippers on a key Muslim festival in northern Afghanistan, killing seven, including two local police commanders, officials said Sunday.
