AFGHANISTAN

Japan promised on Thursday to pledge up to $1 billion in aid for cash-strapped Pakistan at a donors conference as allies pressed the country for commitments to fight an Islamist insurgency and implement economic reforms.

A review of defense programs produced every four years could bring big changes in the Pentagon's fiscal 2011 budget, beyond the sweeping overhaul already unveiled for 2010, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Wednesday.

A meeting of Pakistan's allies and donors this week could give Iran a chance to show willingness to play a more active role in stabilizing the region, Japan's special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan said on Wednesday.

U.S. Navy special forces freed an American ship's captain and killed three Somali pirates holding him hostage in a lifeboat, ending a five-day standoff but drawing vows of revenge from pirates.

The Obama administration is seeking $83.4 billion in funding for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, including $75.8 billion for the Pentagon, for the rest of the 2009 fiscal year, a government official said Thursday.

President Barack Obama's eight-day overseas trip yielded success on a top goal: signaling to the world a new U.S. approach that breaks with the go it alone style of President George W. Bush.

President Barack Obama flew to Baghdad on Tuesday to meet U.S. military commanders and Iraqi leaders and assess security there first-hand after announcing a strategy to wind down the six-year war he opposed.

U.S. President Barack Obama plans to visit Kazakhstan as part of a wider tour of Central Asia, Kazakhstan's upper house of parliament quoted him on Tuesday as saying.

U.S. President Barack Obama ended his trip to Muslim Turkey on Tuesday by calling for peace and dialogue with Islam and the creation of a Palestinian state living side by side with Israel.

U.S. President Barack Obama told the Muslim world on Monday the United States was not at war with Islam, using his first international tour to try to repair America's damaged image abroad.

The United States would trim U.S. missile-defense spending, cancel some big-ticket weapons programs and buy more arms for fighting insurgents in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, under a 2010 budget plan.

U.S. President Barack Obama pledged on Monday to help Turkey resolve its differences with Armenia as the United States sought to strengthen ties with a crucial NATO ally in its war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The NATO nations have agreed to boost 5,000 extra troops and $100 million to secure the Afghan presidential election in August and to fight against the Taliban.

President Barack Obama won NATO backing on Saturday for his new approach to Afghanistan but his European allies stopped short of offering long-term troop deployments for the war effort.

NATO named Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen as its next leader on Saturday, averting a damaging split with Turkey at a summit celebrating the 60th anniversary of the military alliance.

From cheering fans lining the streets to an adoring crowd packed into a sports arena, Obama-mania was in full swing in Europe on Friday.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates will unveil his budget recommendations for fiscal year 2010 on Monday in a proposal likely to call for major changes in priorities, a defense official said on Friday.

President Barack Obama told Europe on Friday it must do more to help the United States win the war in Afghanistan, looking to leverage his huge popularity here to wring concessions from NATO allies.

NATO marks its 60th anniversary with a summit late on Friday at which U.S. President Barack Obama hopes to secure NATO backing for a new strategy in Afghanistan.

US President Obama will meet India Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for the first time at G20 summit in London on Thursday.

Demonstrators clashed with riot police and smashed the windows of a bank in London's financial center on Wednesday in protest against a system they said had robbed the poor to benefit the rich.