US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel has issued a stern warning to China over cyber attacks – while holding out hope for an improved military relationship with Beijing.

The Syrian regime is likely to have used chemical weapons on a “small scale”, US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel says.

North Korea has delivered a fresh round of rhetoric with claims it had “powerful striking means” on standby for a launch, while Seoul and Washington speculated that the country is preparing to test a medium-range missile during upcoming national celebrations.

North Korea has warned that its military has been cleared to attack the US using “smaller, lighter and diversified” nuclear weapons.

North Korea today barred South Korean workers from entering a jointly run factory park just over the heavily armed border in the North, officials in Seoul said.

A suicide bomber on a bicycle struck outside the Afghan Defence Ministry today, killing at least nine Afghan civilians as US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel visited Kabul, officials said.

A US Marine staff sergeant who urinated on dead Taliban insurgents and posed for photographs with the bodies has pleaded guilty to two charges in a military court, the Marine Corps said.

Regime forces strafed rebel-held districts in Aleppo with helicopter gunships and pounded them with shelling on the third day of a pitched battle for Syria’s commercial capital.

Pakistan is reopening supply lines into Afghanistan after the US issued an apology for the November killing of 24 Pakistani troops in a Nato airstrike, the Obama administration said.

A vehicle drove onto the runway of the main British base in Afghanistan then burst into flames at around the same time the US Defence Secretary arrived there today.

US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta has arrived in Baghdad today to formally end the nearly nine-year war in Iraq.

Pakistan’s army chief will convene a special meeting of senior commanders today following US allegations that the military’s spy agency helped militants attack American targets in Afghanistan, the army said.

The US President Barack Obama is to announce his timetable for pulling American troops out of Afghanistan in a TV address to the nation tonight.

Any decision to drawdown international troops from Afghanistan should be based on security conditions on the ground, US Defence Secretary Lim Fox has said.

Nato Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has called on European allies to spend more on defence and work together to reduce the reliance on the United States for high-tech weapons.

Libyan government forces have pounded the outskirts of the rebel-held city of Misrata, killing at least 22 people, a hospital physician said today.

NATO faces a “dim, if not dismal” future, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has warned.

Nato – the cornerstone of US security policy for six decades – faces a “dim, if not dismal” future, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said today.

YEMEN’S president offered to step down by the end of the year yesterday in a bid to appease mounting demands for his resignation, but opposition groups showed no sign of easing up on efforts to force him out.

Libyan rebels are struggling to take advantage of the aerial shield provided by international forces protecting them against most of Muammar Gaddafi's heavy weaponry.

Western forces have carried out another night of attacks in Libya, including one raid which destroyed a building inside the compound where Colonel Gaddafi lives, but authorities say the dictator is not a target.

Libyan warplanes have launched a fresh air strike on rebel positions around a key oil port, trying to block fighters from advancing toward Muammar Gaddafi’s stronghold in the capital, Tripoli.

A criminal investigation into the leak of tens of thousands of secret Afghanistan war logs could go beyond the military, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said, and he did not rule out that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange could be a target.

David Cameron flew into Afghanistan today for his first visit to the country since taking office.

THE US, Russia and France have replied to a proposal by Iran to swap some of its enriched uranium for reactor fuel, dismissing the idea hours before an expected UN Security Council vote yesterday on new sanctions against Iran, diplomats said.

South Korea officially referred North Korea to the UN Security Council today over the sinking of a navy ship that killed 46 sailors, taking its strongest step toward making the communist North face international punishment.

EUROPEAN countries were accused of having an anti-war attitude that is threatening world security by US Defence Secretary Robert Gates yesterday.

European countries were accused of having an anti-war attitude that is threatening world security by US Defence Secretary Robert Gates today.

A team of militants launched a gun, rocket and suicide attack on an intelligence office in central Pakistan today, killing 12 people.

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said the United States has not had good intelligence on the whereabouts of terrorist Osama bin Laden in years.

TALIBAN militants attacked Pakistani forces and recaptured a strategic town yesterday while two suicide bomb blasts at an Islamic university in the capital killed six people and wounded at least 20, officials said.

A top member of President Hamid Karzai’s cabinet threatened to quit after a suicide car bomb targeted him, killing five people, in the latest Taliban attempt to destabilise Afghanistan’s struggling government.

The top commander of US and Nato troops in Afghanistan has finished his 60-day strategic review of the war, officials said today.

US President Barack Obama named a Republican congressman today to be the next Secretary of the Army, bringing another member of the opposition into his administration.

PAKISTANI helicopter gunships and ground troops pounded Taliban fighters yesterday, killing up to 60 militants and destroying a dozen would-be suicide bombers in fierce fighting, the army said.

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has asked for an updated proposal for closing the controversial Guantanamo Bay detention camp in case President-elect Barack Obama asks for one soon after taking office next month, officials said.

The gunmen who attacked Mumbai set out by boat from Pakistan’s port of Karachi, a top police official said, as the US secretary of state headed today to India in Washington’s efforts to defuse tension between the two nuclear rivals.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said today Russia had signalled a new openness towards the controversial missile defence programme.

The top US military commander for the Middle East resigned today amid speculation about a rift over American policy in Iran.

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said today the United States is prepared to share with China some of the information it has about today’s missile strike on an ailing satellite.

A missile from a US Predator drone struck a suspected terrorist safehouse in Pakistan and killed a top al-Qaida commander believed responsible for a bomb attack during a visit last year by Vice President Dick Cheney to Afghanistan, a US official said yesterday.

Afghanistan risks sliding into a failed state and becoming the “forgotten war” because of deteriorating international support and a growing violent insurgency, according to an independent US study.

CHINA and the US agreed on measures yesterday to boost defence co-operation, including setting up a hotline, but clear differences remained over Beijing’s military build-up.

The looming crisis on Turkey’s border with Iraq is likely to dominate a Nato defence ministers summit starting today.