Casualties

Always one to look for the silver lining, Grant Cotting found joy in what would have been unbearable for many teenage boys: trailing his friend to 15 stores on a mission to find the perfect accessory. "He got a real kick out of it and thought it was the funniest thing," said Kelsey Kingston, 19, of their hunt for a gold sweater. "He'd laugh at some of the stuff they were trying to sell. He was one of the few guys I could take shopping with me, and he'd tell me if I looked good or not.

They were born 15 seconds apart and were best friends. The Hansen twins were competitors and athletes, and both enlisted in the Marines. "Everything we did, we did together," said Matthew of his slightly older brother, Daniel. "We spent the first nine months huddled up together -- it's hard to separate after that." It took a war to break them apart. Staff Sgt. Daniel Hansen died in Afghanistan on Feb. 14 after his foot patrol was hit by an improvised explosive device.

Every March 17, Sally Wiley would call her son Sean Diamond at 7:38 a.m. and his twin Michael Diamond five minutes later -- the moments of their births -- to sing them "Happy Birthday." Some years, the twins couldn't answer, letting their mother's song go to voice mail. In the last few years, when Sean, an Army staff sergeant, was stationed in Iraq, Wiley couldn't call him. Instead, she would look at the clock on March 17 and feel something missing and then call Michael.

The body was found behind a soccer field in a sunken, weed-choked stream bed. It lay next to a dome tent and a pile of blankets. Matthew Barlow snapped on a pair of latex gloves and hopped out of the coroner's van. A flashlight led him through the inky darkness. Barlow hoped he could stand the smell. Lance Cpl. Barlow, 23, was one of 14 Marines embedded for three weeks last month at the Los Angeles County Department of Coroner.

A suspected U.S. missile attack killed at least eight militants Wednesday, including several foreigners, in the stronghold of Pakistan's top Taliban commander, intelligence officials said. The strike came as the Obama administration prepares to unveil a new strategy to quell Islamist insurgents threatening Pakistan as well as neighboring Afghanistan and to keep the pressure on Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders in the region.

A U.S. aircraft fired on suspected Sunni paramilitary fighters planting a bomb, killing one and wounding two, the U.S. said Friday -- the latest sign of trouble in a program that has been a pillar of the American strategy to stabilize Iraq. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki said he appreciated the contribution of the Sunni paramilitary members in the fight against militants, but warned that he would not tolerate subversives in their ranks. A U.S.

Her colleagues at Naval Medical Center San Diego were not surprised when Lt. Florence B. Choe volunteered for duty in Afghanistan, even though it meant a year away from her husband and their young daughter. Choe was pure Navy. Her father is a retired Navy culinary specialist. She was born at the Navy hospital in San Diego. She met her future husband, a Navy doctor, at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., and the two of them were later assigned to San Diego.