U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said that he would return to the Middle East later in May for separate talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Reuters reported May 8.

North Korea has taken two Musudan intermediate-range ballistic missiles off launch-ready status and moved them from their position on the country's east coast, unnamed U.S. officials said May 6, Reuters reported.

Bill Richardson, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and a member of former President Bill Clinton's Cabinet, said U.S. President Barack Obama is leaning toward aerial strikes in Syria rather than a ground invasion, Israel News reported May 5, citing Richardson's interview on U.S. television network ABC.

A bomb killed five U.S. soldiers in southern Afghanistan, a spokesman for the U.S. Armed Forces said May 4, Reuters reported.

Indonesia will host an ASEAN Plus Eight joint counterterrorism training exercise in Bogor, West Java, in September, the Indonesian Defense Ministry said May 4, Xinhua reported.

The White House is rethinking its opposition to arming Syrian rebels, U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said at a news conference with British Defense Secretary Philip Hammond on May 2, AP reported.

Kenneth Bae, an American detained for nearly six months in North Korea, has been sentenced to 15 years of "compulsory labor" for unspecified crimes against the state, Pyongyang announced May 1, AP reported.