War

BAGHDAD — The sounds of cars honking, shoppers shuffling and children laughing and playing drums fill the air in Hurriyah, a Baghdad neighborhood where machine-gun fire and death squads once kept terrified residents huddled in their darkened homes.

On the Showtime spectrum of personality disorders, Carrie Mathison, the CIA officer portrayed by Claire Danes in the network's new drama, "Homeland," barely registers.

KABUL, Afghanistan — Gen. David Petraeus handed over command of American and coalition forces to Gen. John Allen on Monday, ending a year that saw the costly counterinsurgency strategy he espoused and implemented coming under increasingly heavy criticism.

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan — Three suspected U.S. missile strikes in northwestern Pakistan in less than 12 hours killed at least 38 alleged militants, an unusually heavy barrage at a time when relations between the two countries are badly strained, Pakistani intelligence officials said Tuesday.

WASHINGTON — Nasir Ahmad Ahmadi was hired to work as an interpreter alongside American troops in Afghanistan. But soldiers were alarmed by his strange behavior, his inability to do the job and the foul condition of his living quarters, and they suspected he used drugs.

DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. -- The C-17 Globemaster waited on the tarmac, its tail painted with an American flag and a fierce-looking eagle.

Minutes earlier, the giant cargo jet had arrived from the U.S. airbase at Ramstein, Germany -- carrying the flag-draped casket of a Marine killed in combat in Afghanistan.

Seven enlisted Marines were on the flight line to serve as a white-gloved "carry team," ready to lift the casket from the plane and gingerly walk it down a ramp and to a large unmarked white van for the slow journey to the base mortuary.

WASHINGTON  — President Barack Obama is expected to bring 10,000 U.S. troops home from Afghanistan by the end of the year, and set a target of recalling 20,000 additional forces by the end of 2012.