FOUR US Marines refused to answer rape charges against them yesterday in the Philippines, prompting the judge to enter a not guilty plea for them in a case that has stirred emotions about the US military presence in the ex-American colony.

Four US Marines were charged with rape in the Philippines today.

Hundreds of protests and vigils will be held across the United States today to mark the 2,000th US military death in Iraq.

The US government has charged a US Army staff sergeant with murder in connection with the deaths of two US Army officers at a base north of Baghdad, the military said today.

The US military said tonight that no American soldiers have been reported missing in Iraq, after Iraqi militants claimed in a web statement to have taken an American soldier hostage and threatened to behead him.

TOP Pentagon officials and the military command in Iraq contributed to an environment in which prisoners were abused at Abu Ghraib prison, a high-level panel investigating the detentions has concluded, a defence official said yesterday.

A US Army reservist charged with abusing Iraqi detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison is to plead guilty to some offences.

DEFENCE lawyers for soldiers on trial in the Iraqi prisoner abuse case won permission yesterday to question two top American generals, and the military judge ordered that the Abu Ghraib prison not be torn down because it is a crime scene.

An American soldier was jailed today for his part in the torture of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib jail in Baghdad.

As President George Bush appeared on Arabic television today in a bid to limit the damage caused by photographs of American soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners, a new image emerged which would shock the world.

The chief of the US Army Reserve said he has ordered a study of whether reservists are sufficiently trained in ethical conduct and how to treat prisoners following the release of photographs allegedly showing Iraqi PoWs being abused by US soldiers.

GUNMEN opened fire on an opposition rally in Haiti yesterday, killing at least six people, including a journalist, and wounding 34 more, as Haitians awaited the naming of a government.

TWO British soldiers whose bodies were shown on Iraq television “may well have been” executed, Downing Street insisted yesterday.

Two British soldiers whose bodies were shown on Iraq television “may well have been” executed, Downing Street insisted today.

More than 2,000 demonstrators marched in the rain shouting ‘‘Free the people, not the market’’ and ‘‘G8, shut it down!’’ at the end of a G8 summit in Canada, free of the kind of violence that left a protester dead last year.