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U.S. and Afghan authorities investigated Saturday whether a botched NATO airstrike was to blame for the death of Afghan soldiers and police during a search for two American paratroopers missing in a Taliban-infested area of the country's west.

The schoolhouse is so tiny that dozens of pupils have to sit outdoors. They're lucky if their teachers have more than a basic education. And the chanting of math equations and Quranic verses gets so loud that the children have a hard time hearing themselves.

Pushing back against international criticism, Afghanistan's Foreign Ministry said Saturday that the top U.N. official in the country overstepped his authority by giving instructions on how to rid the government of corruption and warlords.

On the day his side lost the Vietnam War, Hung Ba Le fled his homeland at the age of 5 in a fishing trawler crammed with 400 refugees. Thirty-four years later, he made an unlikely homecoming — as the commander of a U.S. Navy destroyer.

Some women strode the catwalk in vicious spiked bracelets and body armor. Others had their heads covered, burqa-style, but with shoulders — and tattoos — exposed. Male models wore long, Islamic robes as well as shorts and sequined T-shirts.

The U.N. says hundreds of its staffers will be temporarily pulled out of Afghanistan in the wake of an Oct. 28 attack that killed five of its workers, but it's still determining exactly how many.

Pakistani soldiers killed 12 militants in gunbattles over the past day, officials said Saturday, as government forces pressed on with their offensive in the mountainous Taliban sanctuary of South Waziristan.

President Barack Obama will meet leaders of Southeast Asian nations, including Myanmar, in a high-level affirmation of Washington's new policy of engaging the military-ruled country despite its dismal human rights record.

Thailand's fugitive former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra has spent much of the past three years roaming the globe, shopping for diamonds in Africa, golfing at Asian resorts — and humiliating the government from a distance.

This remote town in the Himalayan foothills spruced up its monasteries Friday to prepare for the Dalai Lama's arrival, a trip highlighting the growing friction between China and India — two nuclear-armed giants vying for economic and political power in the region.