Four Afghans held for over a decade at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been sent home, the Pentagon said on Saturday, the latest step in a gradual push by the Obama administration to close the jail.
Since 2001 the United States has tried virtually every strategy available to persuade Pakistan's army to take the threat of militancy more seriously, but 12 years and $28 billion in aid later, all the American approaches are widely viewed as having failed.
The self-styled sheikh behind a siege at a Sydney cafe had been charged as an accessory to murder and with multiple sexual offences. He also harbored deep grievances against the Australian government and had found little kinship in the city's large Muslim community, where he was seen as deeply troubled.
Pakistani authorities have arrested a man they describe as an important commander in al Qaeda's newly created South Asian wing, police told Reuters on Friday.
President Barack Obama used a holiday season visit to a U.S. military base on Monday to issue a tough warning to Islamic State militants, saying a U.S.-led coalition will permit no safe haven to the group and will destroy it eventually.
Heavily armed Australian police stormed a Sydney cafe early on Tuesday morning and freed a number of hostages being held there at gunpoint, in a dramatic end to a 16-hour siege in which three people including the attacker were killed.
Iran said it had agreed to extend temporary visas for 450,000 Afghan refugees for six months, lifting a threat to send them back home to a country facing attacks by resurgent militants.
One of the two psychologists who devised the CIA's harsh Bush-era interrogation methods said on Wednesday that a scathing U.S. Senate report on the torture of foreign terrorism suspects "took things out of context" and made false accusations.
Recent battlefield successes point to renewed willingness by the United States to work with Pakistan on curbing Islamist militancy, but a promise Islamabad made in return – to bring insurgents to the negotiating table – looks a distant prospect.
A senior leader of al Qaeda in Yemen has criticized beheadings by Islamic State (IS) fighters as un-Islamic, and said his own group had banned such acts.
Divisions among the veto-wielding powers of the U.N. Security Council are harming the world's children and sowing the seeds of future conflicts, the head of the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF) said on Monday.
President Barack Obama on Friday nominated veteran defense expert Ashton Carter as his defense secretary, a job that will require him to tackle messy wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan and try to fend off potentially damaging budget cuts.
The police chief of Afghanistan's capital quit on Sunday, his spokesman said, following a third deadly Taliban attack in 10 days on foreign guest houses in Kabul.
U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel resigned on Monday, leaving under pressure as President Barack Obama faces critical national security challenges, including fighting Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and revising plans to exit Afghanistan.
President Barack Obama has approved plans giving U.S. military commanders broader authority in helping Afghanistan forces repel Taliban fighters after U.S. and NATO combat operations formally end in December, a senior administration official said.
Tunisia's Ennahda party, the first Islamist movement to secure power after the 2011 "Arab Spring" revolts, conceded defeat on Monday in elections that are set to make its main secular rival the strongest force in parliament.
British troops ended their combat operations in Afghanistan on Sunday as they and U.S. Marines handed over two huge adjacent bases to the Afghan military, 13 years after a U.S.-led invasion launched the long and costly war against the Taliban.
A Russian captured while fighting with militants in Afghanistan and held by the U.S. military there, will be flown to the United States to face terrorism charges, U.S. officials said on Thursday.
Funding shortfalls have forced the World Food Program to cut rations for up to 1 million people in Afghanistan, a WFP official said, an early sign that aid money may dwindle as the international combat mission winds down.
A U.S. government watchdog agency is asking the Air Force to explain why it destroyed 16 aircraft initially bought for the Afghan air force and turn them into $32,000 of scrap metal instead of finding other ways to salvage nearly $500 million in U.S. funds spent on the program.
