Hundreds of U.S. Marines and Afghan soldiers have moved into southern Afghanistan to protect citizens during upcoming elections, military officials said. Afghans will go to the polls on August 20 to vote in second presidential election since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001. Provincial elections also will be held that day. About 400 Marines and 100 Afghan soldiers moved to the Now Zad district in Helmand province Wednesday morning, a U.S. military statement said. "Our mission ...

You might think childbirth would be a topic too personal, too beautiful or way too graphic to write about on Twitter. But, as Sara Williams showed on Tuesday when she posted Twitter updates about giving birth to her child, online social networking has pushed its way into the delivery room. It's now a trend for expectant moms to post to sites such as Twitter from the time they conceive to the moment they deliver a baby into the world. ...

Iraq dreams of what is called sustainable peace — a qualified condition that allows life to go on with an acceptable level of tumult. And so, with a measure of bravado, the government recently announced the imminent removal of most of the concrete blast walls that separate warring neighborhoods and protect citizens traveling on main and secondary roads. As it tries to put the bad days of Sunni vs. Shi'ite violence behind it, Baghdad is rewarding post-sectarian behavior, giving ...

As recently as last month, drinking parents seemed to be all the rage. On the bookshelves: Stefanie Wilder-Taylor's Naptime Is the New Happy Hour, Robert Wilder's Daddy Needs a Drink, and Chris Mancini's Pacify Me, the cover of which shows a six-pack consisting of five beers and one milk bottle. A pacifier dangles from one of the brews. Well, goodbye to all that — thanks, at least in part, to the fallout from a horrifying drunk-driving incident that has ...

You could almost hear the sighs of relief in the hushed, thickly carpeted corridors of high-powered media executives on Aug. 6, when News Corp. chairman and managing director Rupert Murdoch announced that he was going to start charging for online news content by July 2010. At last, they exulted, somebody was jumping in and demanding that consumers pay for a product that has been given away for nothing on the Web. And even better, that somebody was not them. ...

Kuwaiti security forces arrested six Kuwaitis linked to al Qaeda who planned to attack a U.S. military installation, the country's state-run news agency reported Tuesday. The suspects had planned to bomb Camp Arifjan during the upcoming Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Kuwaiti security sources said. It is unclear when the arrests took place. The plot also involved an attack on Kuwait's State Security Service headquarters and other government facilities, according to the Kuwait News Agency, which cited a statement ...

Michael Jackson's autopsy is done, but its release is on hold, as is the court case over the iconic singer's estate. The autopsy results will not be released indefinitely because of the ongoing investigation into the singer's death, according to authorities. The Los Angeles coroner's office said Monday that it would abide by a request from the police department to keep Jackson's cause and manner of death confidential. Investigators are trying to determine whether anyone should be charged in Jackson's ...

Chinese leaders Monday mourned the death of Zhuo Lin, wife of former national leader Deng Xiaoping. Zhuo, a former consultant of the Central Military Commission General Office, died July 29 at age 93 and was cremated Monday, state-run news agency Xinhua reported. She was "an excellent Communist Party of China member and time-honored loyal communist fighter," the party said in a written statement. Zhuo stood by Deng through decades of what CNN once described as "amazing comebacks" from "political purges." ...

It's been a successful few days in the war on terror. On Aug. 5 Baitullah Mehsud, leader of Pakistan's Taliban, was apparently killed in a strike by a U.S. drone. And on Saturday Aug. 8, Indonesian authorities reported that Noordin M. Top, the country's most wanted terrorist, was probably killed during a police raid, ending a years-long manhunt for the Malaysian believed responsible for a string of bomb attacks in Jakarta and Bali in recent years. In a dramatic ...

Ronnie Biggs, the former fugitive who helped stage Britain's "Great Train Robbery" in 1963, has been released from prison, marking the end of a criminal saga that has played out over 40 years and across four continents. Biggs and 14 other men robbed a Royal Mail train of 2.6 million pounds . The gang, which included an antiques dealer, a boxer and a florist, beat the train's driver unconscious with an iron bar; the victim never worked again and ...