The Group of 20 summit opened on Saturday with appeals by the world's most powerful leaders to collectively chart a way forward as the coronavirus pandemic overshadows this year's gathering.

Lt. Col. Devender Anand called the incident "an unprovoked violation" of a 2003 cease-fire accord and said that Indian troops retaliated.

Analysis

On Nov. 10, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan held parliamentary elections. Despite the nation's rising numbers of covid-19 cases, Jordanians weren't offered the chance to vote early or remotely. As a result, many asked whether voting was worth the risk of infection.

Under Donald Trump, Saudi Arabia got all the attention it could have wanted from the U.S. — and more. While a Biden presidency looks certain to end the love-fest, the kingdom's leaders may not mind as much as one might think.

Iran on Saturday shuttered businesses and curtailed travel between its major cities, including the capital of Tehran, as it grapples with the worst outbreak of the coronavirus in the Mideast region.

After drawing down to 4,500 troops this fall, the number of U.S. forces in the country is expected to be further reduced to 2,500 in January. Some have said that cut, ordered by President Donald Trump this month, could leave a security vacuum.

A trio of foreign policy experts told the House Armed Services Committee that without continued U.S. military support — especially air power — the Afghan national security forces were unlikely to win the ongoing war with the Taliban, which would likely return to power.

The Trump administration intensified pressure Friday on Iraq and Iran by reducing the length of a sanctions waiver that allows Iraq to power its already overstretched energy grid.

In addition to a 41-month imprisonment, Larry J. Green was ordered to pay nearly $180,000 in restitution by a Virginia court on Thursday, the Justice Department said in a statement Thursday.

A 27-year-old Syrian man accused of taking part in executions carried out by the Islamic State group was arrested Thursday at a refugee camp in Greece's capital.

Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command, said there is no military means of solving the problem of Mideast refugees and internally displaced persons, or IDPs, who await repatriation or resettlement and represent what he called an unfortunate byproduct of armed conflicts.

The U.S. airstrikes were "the only reason the Taliban was pushed back," said Lt. Col. Niaz Mahmad Majahad, the national police commander in Arghandab whose forces fought the Taliban until the military arrived. "If it weren't for the airstrikes, the Taliban would not have fallen."

An Army doctor on his first overseas assignment and three veterans of the Afghanistan War were among the five Americans killed in a helicopter crash in Egypt, the Pentagon said Saturday.

Movie audiences can experience one of America’s most decorated battles of the ongoing war in Afghanistan as “The Outpost,” a veteran-directed film on the 2009 Battle of Kamdesh, hits theaters and on-demand streaming services July 3.

Mark Frerichs, a civilian contractor, was abducted in Afghanistan in January and hasn't been heard from since.

The 32-year-old flier is said to have killed more Taliban than any other pilot in the Afghan Air Force during thousands of flight hours, Afghan and U.S. military officers told Stars and Stripes.

Afghan air force personnel will no longer receive training in the United States on flying and maintaining their A-29 Super Tucano turboprop attack aircraft, the Air Force said.

The decision would give military officials about 10 weeks to remove about 2,500 troops from Afghanistan and about 500 from Iraq.

Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard said it launched a heavy warship Thursday capable of carrying helicopters, drones and missile launchers amid ongoing tensions with the U.S.

Hundreds of airmen and more than 10 F-16 fighter jets from Spangdahlem Air Base have deployed to the Middle East to support combat operations and train with regional allies, Air Force officials said Tuesday.

“When we started this, people asked why I was going, and my response was, ‘So my sons don’t have to fight this war,’” said Master Sgt. Trevor deBoer, who has deployed to Afghanistan three times.

New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick on Wednesday called for the U.S. government to take action against Turkey and Azerbaijan for what he called “for their unprovoked and deadly attacks on Armenians.”

An adviser to Iran's supreme leader who is a possible 2021 presidential candidate is warning that any American attack on the Islamic Republic could set off a “full-fledged war” in the Mideast in the waning days of the Trump administration.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wrapped up a trip to Israel on Friday with a visit to a museum in Jerusalem that honors Christian Zionists and was founded by a prominent evangelical adviser to the Trump administration.

Khadim Hussein Rizvi, a radical Pakistani religious scholar who this week led thousands of supporters into a sit-in in Islamabad over the republishing in France of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, which they deem blasphemous, died on Thursday. He was 54.

An American woman who helped her husband and brother-in-law join the Islamic State in Syria by smuggling cash and gold overseas has been sentenced to 6 ½ years in prison after pleading guilty to financing terrorism.

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan met with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on his first official visit to Kabul on Thursday, focusing on the ongoing peace talks with the Taliban as well as on building trust and strengthening relations between the two often acrimonious neighbors.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday became the first top American diplomat to visit an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank as the State Department in a major policy shift announced that products from the settlements can be labeled "Made in Israel."

Azerbaijani forces entered the war-ravaged ghost town of Aghdam on Friday, regaining a once-beloved city over a quarter of a century after being driven out by Armenian forces.

A shocking Australian military report into war crimes has found evidence that elite Australian troops unlawfully killed 39 Afghan prisoners, farmers and civilians.

A leading international human rights group and an Afghan envoy on Thursday urged nations whose militaries have served as part of the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan — including America and Britain — to follow Australia's example and probe their own soldiers' conduct in the 19-year war.

ANALYSIS

Republican and Democratic lawmakers agree that returning to sprawling counterinsurgency campaigns is no longer in the United States' interest, but there are divisions even within the parties over what the government should do next in the longest war in American history.

Nearly every day, workers sort through shipping containers from Kandahar Airfield in hopes of finding anything that U.S. and NATO troops withdrawing from Afghanistan don’t want that Afghans can sell.

U.S. President-elect Joe Biden may look to keep a residual counterterrorism force in Afghanistan, a move expected to face resistance from the Taliban, analysts have said.

“Red-badged” employees of U.S.-based Fluor Corp., which the military contracts with for services, have been confined to temporary lodging quarters at Bagram Airfield, several contractors said. One contractor took his own life after waiting two months to return home, colleagues said.

Reports this week of potential U.S. troop cuts met with warnings from Afghanistan security officials that a rapid drawdown would embolden terrorists and hamper Afghan military efforts to fight its enemies.

Held online this year because of the coronavirus, the gathering of leaders of the world's preeminent rich and developing nations will not be an opportunity for kings, presidents and prime ministers to conduct the intimate diplomacy of closed-door meetings or pose for memorable photo-ops.

A supervisor at an office that issued security badges drafted false paperwork that allowed unvetted Afghan workers to enter the base to pick up stolen goods to be sold to locals off base, court documents said.

The Islamic State group fired several rockets at Bagram Airfield on Thursday, the latest in a string of recent attacks targeting the largest U.S. base in Afghanistan.

An Iraqi Counter-Terrorism Service raid in Fallujah that captured a suspected Islamic State child recruitment ringleader without firing a shot last week was one of many successful recent Iraqi operations, coalition officials said.

The USS Nimitz was the first U.S. aircraft carrier to put the Navy’s coronavirus-related port call procedures to the test in Bahrain.

Sunday marks the longest span between U.S. combat deaths of the nearly 19-year war in Afghanistan, even while fighting continues between the Taliban and U.S.-allied Afghan government forces.

Cpl. Eloiza Zavala, 20, a native of Sacramento, was a motor vehicle operator with Combat Logistic Battalion 13 out of Camp Pendleton, Calif.

Foreign Minister Abdullatif bin Rashid Alzayani flew into Tel Aviv on a Gulf Air passenger plane and was to hold meetings in Jerusalem with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other top officials.

Rockets struck Iraq's capital Tuesday with four landing inside the heavily fortified Green Zone, Iraq’s military said, killing a child and wounding at least five people, signaling an end to an informal truce announced by Iran-backed militias in October.

An Afghan-born U.S. Army veteran has turned to the military and online communities for help after years of waiting for officials to act on asylum applications he filed for his family in Afghanistan.

Locals haven’t been shown how to run the air traffic control tower, man the radar or perform a number of other crucial tasks handled by NATO personnel at Kandahar’s Ahmad Shab Baba International Airport, said the facility’s director of civil aviation.

Six Afghans who worked at Bagram Airfield were shot dead Thursday just outside the base, an Afghan official said.

COVID-19 infections in the last opposition-controlled territory in Syria have been increasing rapidly. Spared until July, the region is now recording 300-500 infections a day, and the number is rising fast.

American officials consistently have said U.S. troop reductions in Afghanistan are conditional on whether the Taliban fulfill commitments they made under a withdrawal deal.

A video shows a C-17 in Afghanistan landing on a runway with its nose landing gear up at Ahmad Shah Baba International Airport on the morning of Oct. 18.

Nineteen years after the attacks of 9/11, some American veterans of the war in Afghanistan wrestle with the idea that the pull-out of U.S. troops from the country was born out of a deal struck with the very enemy more than 2,400 of their brothers and sisters died fighting.

The U.S. military has ordered contractors in eastern Afghanistan to leave base as part of coronavirus prevention measures, forcing the closure of Morale, Welfare and Recreation facilities and other nonessential services.

The summer moves were announced as the Pentagon continues to make wide-ranging adjustments, including canceling exercises and delaying troop movements, to try to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

Some 2,500 Army paratroopers who were rushed to the Middle East just days after Christmas remain separated from their friends and families indefinitely as the rapidly spreading coronavirus prevents them from returning home.

The Trump administration is expected to cut the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan almost in half to 2,500 by Jan. 15, a U.S. official said Monday. The Pentagon also expects to cut the number of troops in Iraq to 2,500, a reduction of more than 500.

Iraq's foreign minister Wednesday condemned a rocket attack in the capital a day earlier, calling it a "terrorist act," and said combat operations by the U.S.-led coalition will cease once troop withdrawals take place in the coming weeks.

An Afghan rights watchdog and a tribal leader are cautiously welcoming an Australian government report into suspected war crimes by its special forces in Afghanistan following a four-year investigation.

NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu said Jens Stoltenberg held talks with Christopher Miller on Friday about the 30-nation U.S.-led military alliance's "agenda, including the situation in Afghanistan."

A Bahrain royal family Boeing 747 brought Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa's body home from Minnesota on Thursday.

Eight people were on board the helicopter. The only survivor, an American, was medically evacuated.

A new investigative agency is being formed after a four-year investigation into allegations surrounding behavior of Australian special forces in Afghanistan.

A bomb attached to the vehicle of a radio journalist in southern Afghanistan exploded and killed him.

The U.S. military in Afghanistan did not comment after being asked whether Trump’s tweet represented a change in policy.

American soldiers have been cleared to wear combat patches for serving in Saudi Arabia since September’s rebel attack on oil infrastructure there.

An Islamic State militant fired mortars at U.S. and international troops at Bagram Airfield in what security officials said was the third attack on the base since the U.S. signed a peace deal with the Taliban last month.

The sanctions announced Wednesday target Iran's Mostazafan Foundation and roughly 160 of its subsidiaries, which are alleged to provide material support to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for malign activities, including the suppression of dissent.

A prominent rights group condemned Iraq on Tuesday for the mass execution of 21 people, some with suspected links to the Islamic State group, who had been convicted on terrorism charges.

The operation, first reported Friday by the New York Times, further slims the leadership ranks of al-Qaida and removes the accused mastermind of the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa that killed more than 200 people.

No one immediately claimed responsibility, though suspicion immediately fell on the Taliban.

The U.S. Embassy in Pakistan on Wednesday apologized for retweeting an anti-government statement from an opposition leader who suggested Prime Minister Imran Khan would fall from power in the wake of President Donald Trump's election defeat.

Bahrain’s Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa, one of the world’s longest-serving prime ministers, died Wednesday.

A bomb blast in southern Afghanistan wounded two Romanian soldiers, NATO Resolute Support said.

The Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan has suffered heavy losses in the past year but could spoil the country’s peace process by attacking cities and recruiting Taliban splinter groups angered by the negotiations.

The lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit that sought the release of 1,400 Iraqi Americans was sworn in as a United States citizen on Friday after winning his immigration case.

The U.N. ‘s top official for refugees said Tuesday that if the Afghan peace process collapses and violence continues, there will be a humanitarian disaster as thousands of displaced people struggle to survive the pandemic amid the harsh winter.

Speaking to the Global Security Forum hosted in part by Qatar, Robert O’Brien several times mentioned the transition and referred to recent normalization deals that Bahrain, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates struck with Israel as “a great legacy for the president to have as he leaves office.”

Turkey’s parliament on Tuesday granted President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government permission to deploy peacekeepers to Azerbaijan to monitor a cease-fire deal between Azerbaijan and Armenia that aims to end the conflict in the region.

Armenia's foreign minister submitted his resignation Monday amid political turmoil that has engulfed the country following a cease-fire deal for the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh that calls for ceding territory to longtime adversary Azerbaijan.

Syria's Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem, a career diplomat who became one of the country's most prominent faces to the outside world during the uprising against President Bashar Assad, died Monday. He was 79.

Israel and Hamas have fought three wars and several smaller skirmishes since 2007.

Azerbaijan on Sunday postponed taking control of a territory ceded by Armenian forces in a cease-fire agreement, but denounced civilians leaving the area for burning houses and committing what it called "ecological terror."

Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, along with military spokesman Maj Gen. Babar Iftikhar, said that Indian intelligence agents were operating out of neighboring Afghanistan to plan attacks within Pakistani borders.

Several thousand protesters gathered outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's official residence in Jerusalem on Saturday night in what has become a weekly demonstration calling for the Israeli leader to resign.

Austin Tice is a former Marine who has reported for The Washington Post, McClatchy Newspapers, CBS and other outlets, and disappeared shortly after his 31st birthday.

The move gripped its 600 people with fear and anger so deep that they destroyed the homes they once loved.

Iran-backed militias have so permeated parts of Iraq's security apparatus that personal identifying information of Iraqis working with the U.S. has been widely shared.

Pakistani and Indian troops clashed anew in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, leaving 12 people dead, including three Indian and one Pakistani soldier, and wounding at least 36 on both sides, officials said Friday.