Phillip Wallter Wellman

KABUL, Afghanistan -- For more than three years, coalition partners in Afghanistan got free meals at U.S. expense because of billing mistakes made by the military, a new report says. The problem was discovered at NATO's Afghanistan headquarters in Kabul, where the U.S. provides dining facility services for the coalition with the intention of getting reimbursed by 17 member countries each month.

The drug trade in Afghanistan, which helps fund the insurgency and impedes reconstruction efforts, has grown stronger despite billions of dollars spent by the U.S. to fight it, a government watchdog said Thursday. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, said in a report that the U.S. needed a new strategy to fight drugs in the country.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- A U.S. servicemember died in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan's eastern Logar province, NATO said Saturday. Six other American crew members were injured in the Friday night crash and were all sent for medical treatment, NATO said. The helicopter had taken troops to the volatile Kharwar district for a night raid and hit a tree, forcing an emergency landing, Salim Saleh, the provincial governor's spokesman, told Stars and Stripes.