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.
The Pakistani prime minister lifted a moratorium on the death penalty on Wednesday, a day after Taliban gunmen attacked a school, killing 132 students and nine teachers, a government spokesman said.
It began like any other morning in Pakistan's Army Public School in the northwestern city of Peshawar. Students pored over their books. Teachers ruffled through their notes and gave lectures.
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.
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.
The United States has handed to Pakistan three prisoners including a senior Taliban militant held in Afghanistan, as Washington rushes to empty its Afghan prison before losing the legal right to detain people there at the end of the year.
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.
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.
A former Russian army officer pleaded not guilty on Friday to terrorism charges for a 2009 attack on U.S. and Afghan forces, and a U.S. District Court judge set trial for April 2015.
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.
The scion of Pakistan's leading political dynasty, emerging from the shadow of his mother and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto seven years after she was assassinated, has vowed to resurrect her party's flagging fortunes.
Pakistani teenager Malala Yousafzai, who was shot in the head by the Taliban in 2012 for advocating girls' right to education, and Indian campaigner against child trafficking and labor Kailash Satyarthi won the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.
Taking aim at Islamic State, Saudi Arabia has mounted a battle for hearts and minds at this year's haj, warning pilgrims that the hardline group is "evil" and seeking to recruit their children to fight in Iraq and Syria.
Afghanistan inaugurates its first new president in a decade on Monday, swearing in technocrat Ashraf Ghani to head a power-sharing government just as the withdrawal of most foreign troops presents a crucial test.
American-led and Arab-backed air strikes carrying the fight against Islamic State from Iraq into Syria have dragged Washington into a new Middle East war - exactly the kind of conflict Barack Obama spent his presidency trying to avoid.
Former Afghan finance minister Ashraf Ghani was named president-elect on Sunday after he signed a deal to share power with his opponent, ending months of turmoil over an election that destabilized the country as most foreign troops prepare to leave.
The rival candidates in Afghanistan's messy election for a new president finally struck a power-sharing deal on Saturday, aides said, after more than two months of tension over a vote in which each side accused the other of fraud.
President Barack Obama has chosen retired Marine Corps General John Allen, who served as the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, to coordinate international efforts to fight Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria, a U.S. official said on Friday.
The U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to condemn President Barack Obama for failing to give Congress a 30-day notice before exchanging prisoner of war Bowe Bergdahl for five members of the Taliban who were being held at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Afghanistan handed the death penalty to seven men on Sunday for raping and robbing a group of women returning from a wedding in a rare case of sexual assault that has shaken the capital and raised concerns over public security at a time of transition.
Journalists and right activists lost over a US Supreme Court decision to reject the hearing of a case that challenges a law that allows the US government to detain individuals who were found to have substantially supported al Qaeda, the Taliban or forces associated with the two groups, Reuters said.
