WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is nearing a decision to send more than 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan next year, but he may not announce it until after he consults with key allies and completes a trip to Asia later this month, administration and military officials have told McClatchy.

As it now stands, the administration's plan calls for sending three Army brigades from the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Ky. and the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, N.Y. and a Marine brigade, for a total of as many as 23,000 additional combat and support troops.

Another 7,000 troops would man and support a new division headquarters for the international force's Regional Command (RC) South in Kandahar, the Taliban birthplace where the U.S. is due to take command in 2010. Some 4,000 additional U.S. trainers are likely to be sent as well, the officials said. » read more

WASHINGTON — The killings of 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, by an Army psychiatrist who also was a Muslim set off a rancorous debate Friday that once again spotlighted the fear among Muslims in America that they'll be collectively found guilty for the actions of one man.

Vitriolic exchanges filled Internet sites devoted to military affairs, with some posters arguing that Muslims should be barred from the armed services.

News reporters deluged the Silver Spring, Md., mosque where the Fort Hood shooting suspect once worshipped, demanding to know what the Quran, Islam's holy book, has to say about such events. One even asked if the suspect, Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who was born in Virginia and lived his whole life in the U.S., spoke with an "accent." » read more

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama will leave the country for a four-nation tour of Asia starting Wednesday despite a host of domestic concerns, including the massacre at Fort Hood, a sharply rising jobless rate, his health care legislation stalled in the Senate and his Afghanistan troop decision still pending.

He planned his Nov. 11-19 trip around the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Singapore, but added stops in Japan, China and South Korea. The itinerary reflects the growing importance of East Asia — especially China — to everything from financing U.S. debt and powering the global economic recovery to climate change, disease control, and containing nuclear threats from North Korea and Iran.

Asia's importance in global affairs rose over the past decade as U.S. foreign policy was dominated by the war on terror, and as U.S. domestic spending and borrowing from foreign countries spiraled. » read more

WASHINGTON — The Army psychiatrist suspected of a shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, was in the "deployment window" to be sent to Afghanistan, military officials said Friday.

Maj. Nidal Malik Hasasn, 39, shouted "Allahu Akbar," God is great in Arabic, during the shooting spree, the officials quoted witnesses as saying. The cry is a traditional Muslim blessing.

The death toll from the shooting spree rose to 13 Friday, after another of the wounded died. Of the dead, one was a civilian and 12 were soldiers, military officials said Friday. Lt. Gen. Robert W. Cone, the base commander, said that 28 of the 31 wounded remain in the hospital. Half of the wounded required surgery, he said. » read more

ARROYO BARRIL, Dominican Republic -- Maximiliano Calcano is 2 and was born with no arms.

"When I was pregnant, I was dizzy, vomiting and could barely walk,'' said Maximiliano's mother, Anajai Calcaño, 20. ``My tooth cracked and fell out. Then my baby was born like that, without arms. Nothing like that had ever happened here before.''

By "before,'' Calcaño means before a U.S. power company's coal ash arrived at a nearby port, sitting there for more than two years. » read more