Robert Burns

WASHINGTON -- Pentagon leaders outlined a plan Thursday for absorbing $487 billion in defense cuts over the coming decade by announcing a new round of base closures, shrinking U.S. ground forces, slowing the purchase of a next-generation stealth fighter and retiring older planes and ships.

WASHINGTON -- Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Thursday condemned as "utterly deplorable" a video that purports to depict four U.S. Marines urinating on the corpses of Taliban fighters, saying such behavior is "entirely inappropriate for members of the United States military" and those responsible will be held accountable.

WASHINGTON — Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney promised in his first major foreign policy speech to reverse “massive defense cuts” that actually have not happened. And he pledged to deploy missiles and ships that already are largely in place.

WASHINGTON — After years of debate and months of final preparations, the military can no longer prevent gays from serving openly in its ranks.

WASHINGTON -- A Pentagon inquiry into a Rolling Stone magazine profile of Gen. Stanley McChrystal that led to his dismissal as the top US commander in Afghanistan has cleared him of wrongdoing.

The probe's results released Monday also called into question the accuracy of the magazine's report last June, which quoted anonymously people around McChrystal making disparaging remarks about members of President Barack Obama's national security team, including Vice President Joe Biden.

The office of the Defense Department inspector general said it reviewed an unpublished Army investigation of the case, and interviewed numerous eyewitnesses. It concluded that the evidence was insufficient to substantiate a violation of any applicable legal or ethics standard by McChrystal or any of his staff.

WASHINGTON -- In full accord on a global threat, world leaders Tuesday endorsed President Barack Obama's call for securing all nuclear materials around the globe within four years to keep them out of the grasp of terrorists. They offered few specifics for achieving that goal, but Obama declared "the American people will be safer and the world will be more secure" as a result.

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration is poised to adopt a new policy potentially restricting the nation's use of nuclear arms, U.S. officials said, and hopes to persuade Russia to agree to mutual cuts in nuclear arsenals that go beyond the arms treaty both sides will sign this week.