Military officials have released the names of the gunman and two victims killed at a Marine base in Quantico.
Lance Cpl. Sara Castromata, Corporal Jacob Wooley and Sgt. Eusebio Lopez were killed in the shooting.
Authorities have identified Sgt. Lopez as the alleged shooter.
FULL STORY[Updated at 8:16 a.m. ET] A Marine shot and killed two of his fellow service members at a Virginia base on Thursday night and then apparently killed himself, base officials said.
The incident took place at Marine Corps Base Quantico. The shooter gunned down a man and a woman, the spokesmen said. All are Marines - permanent personnel assigned to the officer candidate school.
Authorities did not disclose a motive and were investigating the incident. The identities of the victims were not immediately disclosed as authorities work to notify next of kin.
FULL STORYThey came from all across America - from Connecticut to Florida to Illinois, and many points in between.
One had been in the Marines for nearly four and a half years, another for just a few months. Many served in Afghanistan, earning numerous honors before making it safely back home to the United States.
On Wednesday, the military released the names of the seven Marines killed Monday night during a training exercise at Hawthorne Army Depot in western Nevada.
FULL STORYThe U.S. Marine Corps has released the identities of the seven Marines killed in Monday's explosion at the Hawthorne Army Depot in Nevada. They are:
• Pfc. Joshua M. Martino, 19, Clearfield, Pennsylvania;
• Lance Cpl. David P. Fenn II, 20, Polk City, Florida;
• Lance Cpl. Roger W. Muchnick Jr., 23, Fairfield, Connecticut;
• Lance Cpl. Joshua C. Taylor, 21, Marietta, Ohio;
• Lance Cpl. Mason J. Vanderwork, 21, Hickory, North Carolina;
• Lance Cpl. William T. Wild IV, 21, Anne Arundel, Maryland;
• Cpl. Aaron J. Ripperda, 26, Madison, Illinois.
The cause of the Monday night blast was a 60 mm round that detonated inside a mortar tube, Brig. Gen. James W. Lukeman, commanding general of the 2nd Marine Division, told reporters.
The Marines said in a statement Tuesday evening that all 60 mm mortar rounds and tubes used to fire them are being pulled pending an investigation.
FULL STORYThe Marines general who was in line to become NATO's supreme allied commander is retiring instead.
President Barack Obama announced the retirement of U.S. Marine Corps Gen. John Allen, the former leader of coalition forces in Afghanistan, on Tuesday.
"I met with General John Allen and accepted his request to retire from the military so that he can address health issues within his family," Obama said in a statement.
Allen was caught up in a scandal over embarrassing e-mails with Tampa socialite Jill Kelley that came to the public's attention during the same investigation into an extra-marital affair that brought down former CIA Director David Petraeus. Allen was cleared of wrongdoing, and the White House initially indicated that Obama would proceed with the nomination for the supreme commander spot.
FULL STORYIt apparently takes more than a few good men, according to the U.S. Marine Corps. It takes all kinds of people to support military families, including same-sex spouses of service members.
CNN published a story this week about a woman married to a female lieutenant colonel at Fort Bragg who believes she was rejected from an officers' spouse club because she's gay. Less than a day later, Maj. Gen. Vaughn Ary advised Marine Corps legal staff such clubs conducting business on its bases must admit same-same spouses. If they do not, the clubs will be barred from meeting on any Marine Corps installation.
Relatives of a former U.S. Marine jailed in Iran for allegedly spying for the CIA say they are pleading with the leaders of the Islamic Republic to show mercy and set Amir Mirzaei Hekmati free.
"I just want to ask President (Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad and the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, these two are our only hope. These two can bring Amir home," pleaded Behnaz Hekmati, Amir's mother.
"We just want (him) to come home, I think one year is enough. If you want to punish us, if you want to punish Amir, for whatever reason he is there, just one year is enough. Please let him come home," his mother added.
With reluctance and much apprehension, the Hekmati family opened their home to CNN and sat down for an exclusive interview, their first since Hekmati was arrested on August 29, 2011.
Three U.S. Marines were injured in a shooting south of Mexico City on Friday morning, a Mexican military official told CNN Mexico.
The motive behind the attack on the American servicemen, who were on a diplomatic mission, was not immediately known.
Unknown gunmen inside what was described as a Mexican federal police vehicle fired upon a U.S. Embassy vehicle that carried the U.S. servicemen, said the official, who declined to be named for security reasons.
The injured Marines were transported to a hospital in Cuernavaca, Mexico.
FULL STORYA U.S. Air Force officer hopes to soon release a database of bombs dropped from American military aircraft since World War I - a tool he says can be used to shed new light on old conflicts and perhaps even help locate unexploded ordnance.
Lt. Col. Jenns Robertson says he began working on THOR, or Theater History of Operations Reports, in his spare time in 2006. It combines information from numerous sources - thousands of paper reports, punch cards and magnetic tape records for older conflicts, and digital databases for others - across nearly 100 years.
The database, already being used by the Defense Department and other government agencies, for the first time allows users to search and find on a map nine decades of U.S. bombings. THOR was first reported on this week by The Boston Globe.
Robertson started the database when he was part of a briefing team for the Air Force’s chief of staff at the Pentagon.
“What drove the development of THOR was ... the data may have been out there, but it was a pain in the rear end to find it and make it useful,” Robertson said by phone Tuesday.
On Memorial Day this Monday, the United States will remember troops who died serving their country. The holiday originally started in Waterloo in 1866 to honor those who died in the Civil War.
The last U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq in December. Just days ago, NATO agreed on a withdrawal of U.S.-led international military forces from Afghanistan by 2014. In honor of the contributions that U.S. troops have made to the country, watch some of our favorite military homecomings.
Military homecomings bring out lots of feelings among family members. This compilation of reunions will tug at your heartstrings. Which one is your favorite?
When a soldier returns after being in Iraq, he shows up at his children’s elementary school to surprise them. See the son’s emotional reaction at :25 and the daughter’s response at 1:20.
A boy with cerebral palsy was told that he wouldn’t walk, but he surprises his Marine dad by walking to him at his homecoming. The son had been working on it for months, but the family kept the new ability a secret from his dad.
Humans aren’t the only ones who miss military members while they’re away. Watch how macho soldiers are reduced to baby talk with their dogs.
Some 9,000 U.S. Marines will be transferred off the Japanese island of Okinawa under an agreement reached by U.S. and Japanese officials, a U.S. Defense Department official said.
As this third week in January starts, we're learning three things about the U.S. military aircraft carrier program:
- The Pentagon may be looking at reducing the number of carriers in the U.S. fleet from 11 to 10 to save money.
- The military's new F-35C Joint Strike Fighter may not be suitable for carrier use.
- Aircraft carriers make fine automobile transports.
On the first point, The Washington Times reports, citing unnamed sources, that the U.S. Navy may be trying to cut one of its 11 carriers to save money.
Congress has mandated by law that the Navy maintain 11 carriers. But the Pentagon is also under orders from the Obama administration to cut $488 billion from its budget within the next 10 years, Rowan Scarborough reports in the Times.
Cutting a carrier, along with the other forces that make up and support a carrier battle group, could save the Navy billions of dollars, according to the Times report.
Military officials have interviewed two of four Marines in a video that shows them urinating on dead bodies sprawled out on the ground, a Marine Corps official told CNN Friday.
The Marines were not detained after the interview, the official said.
The names are not being made public, said the official, who did not want to be identified because the investigation is ongoing.
The identities were determined as officials in the United States and Afghanistan expressed shock and outrage regarding the video, which was posted Wednesday on a number of websites.
FULL STORYEditor's note: This post is part of the Overheard on CNN.com series, a regular feature that examines interesting comments and thought-provoking conversations posted by the community. Due to the provocative nature of this story, comments on this post will be disabled at the end of the day.
The story of a video purporting to show U.S. Marines urinating on dead bodies has generated thousands of fiery comments. Our readers were split between those who were outraged by this action on the deceased, and those who felt we should not be too quick to condemn the soldiers. One one hand, the commenters suggested we could be arming oppositional groups with fodder for anti-U.S. rhetoric. But there were many who said the video is a coarse reflection of the brutality of war and didn't want people to feel negatively about the military.
Shock, outrage over Marine urination video
We've seen a pretty even split of comments, with outrage and frustration expressed on all sides. Here's some of them. For example, this reader says this video, if real, shows an isolated event.
Dhamre: "A handful of young Marines did something really stupid and decided to film it. This isn't the defining moment of our history, or a reflection of all men and women in uniform."
Below is a sampling of some of the discussion we saw about whether the stresses of war help explain the Marines' actions.
Wilburchitow: "To all those who want to try and morally equivocate please stop. Yes we know the enemy has done far worse, but it is no excuse to partake in these types of actions. Our military is better than this and I know when found they will face justice!"
Allfight: "Maybe. But I hope they go very easy on them because they are doing a job that few can do let alone will do. They probably lost friends along the way. Like it or not. It's natural to hate someone that is trying to kill you. Anyone who says otherwise probably was never in that situation."
The following reader said she had lost a loved one in war, and felt the urination incident was an insult to the sacrifices the military makes. FULL POST
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