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TOKYO (Reuters) - The United States and Japan will agree this week to review their decades-old security alliance to tighten ties long term, a Japanese newspaper said Wednesday, as the two countries struggled to keep a feud over a U.S. military base from spoiling their leaders' summit. Tokyo and Washington are expected to turn down the heat in the row during President Barack Obama's two-day  ...

By Glenn Somerville TOKYO (Reuters) - Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Wednesday he believes strongly in the need to maintain a strong dollar and said the United States was determined to get its budget deficit down. The dollar's decline has been a source of concern in the export-heavy region, especially since top exporter China keeps its currency's value closely managed ag ...

By Jonathan Stempel NEW YORK (Reuters) - It's still not cheap, but Livin' La Vida Madoff may now cost a bit less. Asking prices for homes once occupied by now imprisoned Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff in Manhattan's Upper East Side and in Palm Beach, Florida, have been cut, after about two months on the market. Madoff's 4,000-square-foot duplex Manhattan penthouse, "perched atop a dist ...

LONDON (Reuters) - NATO's secretary-general said on Wednesday he expected alliance members to provide more resources for training Afghan troops and police, but would not comment on exact troop numbers. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told parliament he expected U.S. President Barack Obama to announce a decision "in a few days" on troop numbers for Afghanistan, but the White House said O ...

By Mohammed Assadi RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - The Palestinian president on Wednesday resisted U.S. pressure for a resumption of peace talks with Israel, repeating his demand for a complete halt to West Bank settlement building before negotiations. Mahmoud Abbas also offered no clarity over his own political future by saying he did not want to talk again about his declared wish n ...

The horrors of previous wars are even more personal to those whose own families took part, in conflicts such as the nightmarish trench warfare of World War I. And according to Anthony Richards, archivist at the Imperial War Museum, interest in researching family military history is now more popular than ever. A major aspect of genealogy is often the involvement of family members in one or other of the two world wars. "Considering the global scale of both conflicts, it is quite rare to f ...

By Bill Tarrant SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Asia-Pacific ministers warned on Wednesday that the global economic crisis was far from over and a current upturn was a respite rather than recovery. Ministers from the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEC) have gathered in Singapore for meetings that will culminate in a weekend summit that U.S. President Barack Obama will attend.  ...

By Barbara Liston ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - Former NASA astronaut Lisa Nowak pleaded guilty to reduced charges on Tuesday and avoided jail time for her infamous 2007 cross-country pursuit and attack on a romantic rival. Nowak, 46, apologized in court to her victim, former Air Force Captain Colleen Shipman, before being sentenced to a year on probation. "I am sincerely sorry ...

By Dmitry Solovyov MOSCOW (Reuters) - The designer of the Kalashnikov, sometimes called the world's most lethal weapon, was named a "Hero of Russia" on Tuesday by President Dmitry Medvedev who lauded him for creating "the brand every Russian is proud of." "In our country, such phenomena do not happen every day," Medvedev told Mikhail Kalashnikov after decorating him with a gold medal ...

By Mohammed Assadi and Douglas Hamilton RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - Voter registration for a Palestinian election failed to get under way as scheduled on Tuesday, adding to signs that President Mahmoud Abbas might be bluffing about a make-or-break vote in January. If that turned out to be the case, he may also be bluffing about quitting the presidency. His real aims may be to rep ...