The bill, sponsored by Sen. Patty Murray, authorizes the Department of Veterans Affairs to cover the cost of in vitro fertilization and other advanced reproductive technologies for veterans and their spouses. It cleared the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs.

The latest development in the unfolding sex scandal at San Antonio’s Lackland Air Force Base: An instructor was acquitted of sexually assaulting a boot camp graduate and now awaits sentencing on a lesser charge, a military spokesman said.

Obama, who ordered an increase in security at U.S. facilities overseas, said he "condemns in the strongest possible terms the outrageous and shocking" attack.

The Navy shrank from 390,000 sailors to 320,000 during the past decade while demand for its ships and submarines ballooned. More sailors are needed at sea, requiring a rebalancing, the Navy's chief of personnel said during an all-hands call at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor before about 500 sailors.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has rushed to acquire a new, multibillion-dollar version of the BioWatch system for detecting biological attacks without establishing whether it was needed or would work, according to a new report by a nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress.

Two U.S. generals denied Wednesday that they tried to stop an inspector general's investigation in 2010 into corruption and patient neglect at a U.S.-funded Afghan military hospital.

Updated - U.S. officials and Middle East analysts said Wednesday that an attack that killed four Americans at a U.S. Consulate in eastern Libya may have been planned by extremists and inspired by al-Qaeda.

The U.S. Navy is spending more than $20 million each year sending ships to poorer nations in the Asian-Pacific region to provide cataract surgery, dental fillings and other medical care. The U.S. Pacific Fleet and analysts say the humanitarian missions are key to promoting U.S. national security, with relatively low costs even during a time of shrinking budgets.

A California-based filmmaker went into hiding after a YouTube trailer of his movie attacking Islam's prophet Muhammad sparked angry assaults by ultra-conservative Muslims on U.S. missions in Egypt and Libya. The U.S. ambassador to Libya and three American members of his staff were killed.

When now-Maj. Gen. James L. Huggins Jr. first arrived in Afghanistan in 2002, he said he saw a terrorized, war-weary nation bereft of infrastructure, a formal government or any real security apparatus. Viewed within that context, he considers the transformation during the last 10 years somewhat remarkable.

A team of specially trained U.S. Marines has been dispatched to Libya to beef up security after the killings of U.S. diplomats in Benghazi, officials said Wednesday.

Ineffective screening of military families with special-needs children is straining resources at overseas U.S. base schools, according to a just-released General Accountability Office report.

Space-available flights are likely to decrease as a result of budget constraints and a falling load of worldwide air missions, Defense Department officials said in a recent report studying the feasibility of expanding the free-flight program.

U.S. Ambassador to Libya John Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed Tuesday in an assault on the American consulate in the eastern city of Benghazi, the White House said.

The U.S. Naval Academy's Class of 2002 was just beginning its senior year in Annapolis on Sept. 11, 2001. Eleven years later, many of those seniors-turned-officers are sharing their stories in a new book, "In the Shadow of Greatness: Voices of Leadership, Sacrifice, and Service from America's Longest War."

Stanley Laskowski III and his wife, Marisol, sued the VA in federal court in 2010, claiming the agency's Plains Twp. medical center prescribed him in 2007 an assortment of medications not suitable for effectively treating PTSD.

The detainee found dead in a maximum-security cell at Guantanamo this weekend was a Yemeni captive with a history of suicide attempts who at one time won a federal judge’s release order, only to see his case overturned on appeal and rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The bills would let service members' absentee ballots be counted as long as they're postmarked by Election Day and would allow absentee ballots to be submitted electronically, according to the office of Democratic leader Gretchen Whitmer.

About 30 families participated in the banner-making party, one of many held at New River and nearby Camp Lejeune as troops return from both Iraq and Afghanistan. They're part of a Marine tradition with uncertain roots that's observed from Lejeune on the East Coast to Camp Pendleton in California.

"We often tell people, it's not just about that one day. The spirit here is really about what happened the next day and the next day and every day since," Capt. John Kreitz, the USS New York's commanding officer, said in a telephone interview after the shipboard ceremony. "That spirit pervades this ship."

Four former Army soldiers and a civilian have been charged in new indictments for connections to an anti-government militia that authorities say was led by Fort Stewart troops who stockpiled weapons and talked of ultimately overthrowing the U.S. government.

The world will soon get its first good look at the wreckage of the only U.S. Navy ship sunk in combat in the Gulf of Mexico during the Civil War, thanks to sophisticated 3-D sonar images that divers have been collecting this week in the Gulf's murky depths.

Stars and Stripes coverage, a gallery, and more stories of 9/11 memorials around the world.

Congress is using its relatively few working days before November's general election to send a message of support to the nation's 21 million-plus veterans. No legislative breakthroughs are expected, but lawmakers in both parties hope the late push will help them make their case to a critical voting bloc.

Saving lives set some Army medics up for not much more than minimum-wage work at home. Combat medics, the Army's largest specialty after infantry, are hindered in the job market by a military that doesn't fully document their skills and a hodge-podge of state licensing laws that don't account for armed-forces experience.

“It was a day like this one — a clear blue sky, but a sky that would soon be filled with clouds of smoke and prayers of a nation shaken to its core,” President Barack Obama said during a ceremony at the Pentagon Memorial that was closed to the public.

The U.N. atomic agency has received new and significant intelligence over the past month that Iran has moved further toward the ability to build a nuclear weapon, diplomats tell The Associated Press.

The Obama administration maintains it is unable to say how many times one of the government's most politically sensitive anti-terrorism surveillance programs - which is up for renewal this week on Capitol Hill - has inadvertently gathered intelligence about U.S. citizens.

Reporter's Notebook — On Saturday, Stripes reporter Matt Millham got an e-mail saying a suicide bomb attack outside NATO’s Kabul headquarters killed six people and injured five. Among the dead were children he interviewed or photographed for a story that ran in June about kids who hang out at the spot, selling scarves and trinkets to Western forces. The locale had offered the children, it seemed, a safer place to work.

Veterans advocates are optimistic that Congress will have enough time left this year to pass several meaningful initiatives for their members, starting this week with a law to replace the Stolen Valor Act.

When Adm. James Stavridis flashed on a big screen the image of the Norwegian extremist who killed 77 people last year, Air Commodore Naeem Ur Rehman of Pakistan gave an approving nod as the U.S. European Command chief explained not all terrorists hail from Muslim nations.

Here's our video of Atsugi firefighters and US troops in Japan honoring emergency personnel who died in 9/11 attacks. The group climbed 110 flights of stairs — the same number in the World Trade Center's twin towers that were hit by airplanes hijacked by terrorists on Sept. 11, 2001.

Half a world from Ground Zero, a group of Japanese firefighters and American servicemembers honored the men and women who gave their lives trying to save others when the World Trade Center’s twin towers collapsed 11 years ago.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is suggesting that a retired Navy SEAL be punished for writing a book giving an insider's account of the U.S. raid that killed terrorist leader Osama bin Laden.

Americans paused again Tuesday to mark the 11th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks with familiar ceremony, but also a sense that it's time to move forward after a decade of remembrance.

The Obama administration is preparing an executive order with new rules to protect U.S. computer systems, after Congress failed earlier this summer to pass a cybersecurity bill. The provisions include voluntary standards for companies, a special council run by the Homeland Security Department and new regulations covering especially vital systems, according to a draft proposal obtained by The Associated Press.

A Guantanamo captive was found dead in his cell on Saturday afternoon and an investigation is under way, a spokesman for the U.S. detention center said Monday afternoon.

Federal regulators have failed to implement safeguards to secure radiological materials that could be used in a "dirty bomb" at nearly four out of every five high-risk hospitals and medical facilities nationwide, according to a draft report by congressional investigators.

Watching the men approach, Ahmed Abdullah readied the Glock 9 mm pistol in his lap and waited. His face betrayed no evidence of the fear that was trickling like perspiration down his spine.

The Americans have concerns that suspected members of the Taliban and other insurgent groups may either be released without proper scrutiny or subjected to torture. The Afghans in turn say Americans routinely hold suspects for long periods of time without charging them.

The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said the Air Force is diligently investigating a widening sex scandal at Lackland Air Force Base after he made a personal visit to the Texas installation on Sunday.

The Navy can build a $100 million offshore range for submarine warfare training, despite environmentalists' fears that war games would threaten endangered right whales, a federal judge ruled.

The American POWS sent secret coded messages to Washington with news of a Soviet atrocity: In 1943 they saw rows of corpses in an advanced state of decay in the Katyn forest, on the western edge of Russia, proof that the killers could not have been the Nazis who had only recently occupied the area.

Army Reserve soldiers could be away from home for longer periods of training to maintain the expertise and combat readiness honed during more than a decade of war, said Maj. Gen. Luis Visot, the Army Reserve Command’s new deputy commander for operations.

More than a year and a half ago, Dr. Jeffrey Bordin warned of the growing threat of Afghan troops turning their weapons on their Western counterparts — spurred largely by cultural misunderstandings and anger — and laid out a road map for improving relations in a report commissioned by the U.S. military. Bordin's analysis was ridiculed by military officials, and he was removed from his post as a research team leader.

The watchdog for U.S. spending in Afghanistan says lax accountability in a $1.1 billion program supplying fuel to the Afghan National Army needs "immediate attention" before control of the program is turned over to the Kabul government in less than four months.

U.S. officials handed over formal control of Afghanistan's only large-scale U.S.-run prison to Kabul on Monday, even as disagreements between the two countries over the thousands of Taliban and terror suspects held there marred the transfer.