While much of the focus on Tuesday's unveiling of President Obama's revamped Afghanistan strategy will be on the number of U.S. troops he's expected to send, that decision is really a sideshow to the critical battle now under way on the ground. Far more important to prospects of victory in Afghanistan is jump-starting a moribund effort to woo nonideological Taliban fighters to switch sides in exchange for paying jobs. Pentagon officials are hoping to repeat the success of similar ...

If he holds his handy lead in the polls, Porfirio Lobo will be the next President of Honduras. Problem is, the last man elected to that office, Manuel Zelaya, was ousted last summer in a military coup. That makes it unlikely that any nation — except maybe the U.S. — will recognize Lobo if he wins the Nov. 29 election. But as he relaxes in his opulent house near Honduras' capital Tegucigalpa after a day of campaigning, Lobo ...

After more than five months of going it alone, Iran's opposition Green Movement is reaching out to the United States for help. Via public and private channels, the Obama Administration has received several appeals in recent weeks to take a stronger stand against human-rights abuses in Iran, avoid military action and impose more aggressive and rapid-fire sanctions against the Revolutionary Guards and its vast business interests. The opposition's outreach comes as the Administration weighs the next move ...

Among the many hands that Barack Obama will likely shake on his inaugural trip to Asia as U.S. President will be that of a soft-spoken general who happens to represent one of the world's most repressive regimes. Obama's planned joint appearance on Nov. 15 with Burmese Prime Minister Thein Sein, at an Association of Southeast Asian Nations' confab on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Singapore, will mark the first time since the era of Lyndon ...

The naming of an honorary economic advisor to a small Southeast Asian country doesn't usually make news. But Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen's designation of former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra as his financial mentor on Wednesday has sparked an international ruckus, with both countries trading trans-border barbs and recalling their respective ambassadors. Confused Here's the background. After Thaksin was deposed in a 2006 bloodless military coup and sentenced in absentia to two years' imprisonment for a conflict of interest conviction — a verdict he ...

Colombia and the United States signed an agreement Friday that allows U.S. personnel to be stationed at seven military bases in the South American nation.

A crew member aboard a U.S. Navy ship accidentally fired a machine gun into the Polish port city of Gdynia on Wednesday while cleaning the weapon, Navy officials said Friday.

Patrick Swayze's widow Lisa Niemi spoke from the heart Tuesday about losing her husband just six weeks ago, telling a women's conference that the loss "is like an animal all of its own" and the sadness could be felt "on a cellular level."How much can be read into the timing of the attacks It coincides with Hillary Clinton being in the country. It's fundamentally saying: "You've got a high-ranked world leader who's a guest in the country, and we're showing ...

The U.S. secretary of state arrived Wednesday in nuclear-armed Pakistan, a country hit hard by terrorism, economic crisis and rising sentiment that it is paying too high a price for its partnership with the United States in fighting extremists.Clinton said there has been "real progress in creating a base of trust that we are going to build on, but it is still a relatively short period of time. Nine months is not a lot of time to turn around a ...

The most dangerous threat for U.S. troops in Afghanistan has come from roadside bombs -- often referred to as IEDs, short for improvised explosive devices. Metz said Tuesday that IEDs are "much more primitive in Afghanistan" because they use "less military munitions and more homemade explosives." But he said that although the military has been able to disarm many IEDs, the big challenge going forward is detecting devices using tiny wires. But he is confident that the military will soon ...