Blast kills six NATO troops in Afghanistan. Military officials say Taliban small-arms attacks have nearly doubled.

Blast Kills 6 NATO Troops In Afghanistan

An explosives-packed minibus blew up at the entrance of a joint NATO-Afghan base in southern Afghanistan on Sunday, killing six NATO troops and two Afghan soldiers as they prepared to head out on patrol.

Taliban small-arms attacks nearly double

Taliban small-arms attacks against U.S. and allied troops in Afghanistan are nearly twice what they were a year ago, a reflection of increased coalition penetration of Taliban strongholds and the insurgency’s resilience, military officials and analysts said.

As U.S. assesses Afghan war, Karzai a question mark

KABUL – Afghan President Hamid Karzai had heard enough. For more than an hour, Gen. David H. Petraeus, U.S. Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry and other top Western officials in Kabul urged Karzai to delay implementing a ban on private security firms. Reconstruction projects worth billions of dollars would have to be shuttered, they maintained, if foreign guards were evicted.

Japan Plans Military Shift to Focus More on China

TOKYO — In what would be a sweeping overhaul of its cold war-era defense strategy, Japan is about to release new military guidelines that would reduce its heavy armored and artillery forces pointed north toward Russia in favor of creating more mobile units that could respond to China’s growing presence near its southernmost islands, Japanese newspapers reported Sunday.

NKorea Threatens SKorea With Nuclear War

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea warned Monday that U.S.-South Korean cooperation could bring a nuclear war to the region, as the South began artillery drills amid lingering tension nearly three weeks after the North’s deadly shelling of a South Korean island.

Gates Frustrated as Senate Blocks DADT Repeal

ABOARD A MILITARY AIRCRAFT — The military should not begin preparing troops for a possible repeal of the ban on gay service until Congress takes action, despite worries the prohibition could be overturned by the courts, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday.

Military expands ban of external media on secure networks

STUTTGART, Germany — Troops are now forbidden from using all removable media on the military’s secret network known as SIPRNET, after the military added DVDs, CDs, memory cards and portable hard drives to the list of prohibited items.

GI Sentenced to 50 Years in Bragg Rape

The woman Aaron Pernell raped relives the crime every night in her dreams.

Her husband, too, is haunted. In his nightmare, he is at their Fort Bragg home on that night a year ago, instead of deployed to Iraq. He dreams he is powerless to stop the attack.

WikiLeaks: Cables reveal U.S. military role in Muslim world

BAGHDAD — From the Saudi-Yemen border to lawless Somalia and the north-central African desert, the U.S. military is more engaged in armed conflicts in the Muslim world than the U.S. government openly acknowledges, according to cables released by the WikiLeaks website.