WASHINGTON (AP) — Islamic extremists grab parts of Iraq and Syria. Yemen slides into civil war. Iran's nuclear program strains U.S. relations with Israel. Ukraine fights Russian-backed separatists.

At a time of crisis across the Middle East and beyond, the Obama administration is trying to keep its focus on a widely advertised shift to Asia.

The administration has pursued the strategy since 2011, arguing that no region is more important to the United States' long-term interests, particularly as the rise of China brings concern in other Asian capitals.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter will visit Japan and South Korea this week, part of a series of planned trips to the region during his first year as Pentagon chief. He will visit India and attend an international security conference in Singapore in May, and he may visit China later in the year.

Before he became defense secretary in February, Carter was a supporter of what the Obama administration calls its "rebalance" to Asia. That term meant to rebut the implication that by giving more attention to Asia, Washington is pivoting away from its traditional allies in Europe and its extensive commitments in the Mideast.

While serving as the deputy secretary of defense, Carter said in May 2013 that international terrorism, persistent Mideast turmoil, nuclear proliferation and cyberthreats would continue to require Pentagon attention.

"We also see great opportunities: Among them, to shift the great weight of the Department of Defense, both intellectual and physical, that has been devoted to Iraq and Afghanistan, to the Asia-Pacific region, where America will continue to play its seven-decade-old pivotal stabilizing role into the future," Carter said then.

His Tokyo visit beginning Tuesday is meant in part to smooth the way for Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's visit to Washington in late April. That trip will coincide with a historic reworking of the guidelines that govern U.S.-Japan defense cooperation in a way intended to give Japan's self-defense forces a more active role in Asian security.

Japan's post-World War II constitution limits the country's use of force, but Abe last year approved a reinterpretation of the constitution, and his government has proposed legislation to enable defense changes.

A strategic goal shared by Tokyo and Washington is for Japan to participate in what is known as collective self-defense, meaning that it could come to the aid of an ally under attack even if that did not entail a direct attack on Japan or its own military.

Carter plans to cap his week in Asia with meetings with South Korean government officials in Seoul and visit U.S. troops.

Among the hottest defense topics in South Korea is the prospect of deploying an advanced U.S. missile defense system, called the Theater High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD. The U.S. is thought to want to place the weapon system in South Korea as a defense against North Korean ballistic missiles, but Seoul has balked, in part out of concern that China opposes the move.

U.S. relations with Japan and South Korea are strong, but the alliances are sometimes tested by differing views on how to handle North Korea's periodic provocations and China's rapid military modernization.

A new assessment of the outlook for Asian security, released Thursday by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, argues that although Asian "hot wars" cannot be ruled out, a continuation of the status quo is a more likely scenario over the next five to 25 years. This would likely mean a mix of economic cooperation and intensifying military competition and rivalry.

The assessment was requested by the Pentagon and is part of a larger study sponsored by the U.S. Pacific Command.

"Allies remain concerned about the sustainability of U.S. predominance in the region," the study said. "Many assume the United States will not retain its predominance — or that it already is lost — and expect increased U.S. demands on allies for important security functions."

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Beirut (AFP) - Islamist fighters on Monday kidnapped some 300 Kurdish civilians at a checkpoint in northwestern Syria, Kurdish officials and a local journalist told AFP.

It was not immediately clear which group was responsible for the kidnapping, though Kurdish officials accused Al-Qaeda's affiliate Al-Nusra Front, which is active in Idlib province.

"A group of 300 people on five coaches and a mini-bus coming from Afrin were kidnapped at a checkpoint as they went to Aleppo to collect their salaries," said Newaf Khalil, a spokesman for the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD).

The kidnapping was confirmed by a second official from the PYD, the main Kurdish party in Syria, and a journalist in Afrin, who said the women in the group had been freed but the men and children taken.

"There were 300 people on five buses, and they were kidnapped in Dana, which is under the control of Islamist factions and Al-Nusra Front," said journalist Ali Abdul Rahman.

The PYD officials accused Al-Nusra of being behind the kidnapping, but Abdul Rahman and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said it remained unclear which group was responsible.

The Observatory reported similar details on the kidnapping, but said it was not immediately clear how many people were being held.

The Observatory said the captors had demanded, through the released women, that three men arrested by authorities in Afrin be freed.

There was no immediate confirmation of those demands from PYD officials or residents of Afrin, which is under Kurdish control.

The kidnapping occurred in northwestern Idlib province, where Al-Nusra and its allies wield considerable influence.

The Al-Qaeda affiliate helped capture the provincial capital Idlib city on March 28 along with a coalition of other opposition groups.

The incident is not the first mass kidnapping in Syria, where large groups of Kurds and Christians have been held, mostly by Al-Nusra's extremist rival, the Islamic State group.

IS fighters are accused of kidnapping over 200 Assyrian Christians from Hasakeh province, and last year held more than 150 Kurdish schoolchildren kidnapped in Aleppo province.

Al-Nusra has also been implicated in kidnappings.

It has been accused of holding journalists and aid workers and in 2013 kidnapped a group of 13 nuns who were later released in a prisoner exchange.

More than 215,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began in March 2011 with anti-regime protests that spiralled into a bloody civil war after a government crackdown.

There is an unprecedented reset coming to world financial markets and if you’ve been paying attention it’s impossible to ignore the signs. In fact mega-investment funds, governments and central banks have been secretly buying up and storing physical gold in anticipation of an event that will leave the U.S. dollar effectively worthless and governments around the world angling for a new global currency mechanism, according to mining executive Keith Neumeyer.

But before the reset can happen Neumeyer, who recently founded First Mining Financeand has partnered with billionaire alternative asset investors like Eric Sprott and Rick Rule, says that foreign creditors must first deleverage their U.S. dollar debt, a move that is happening right now and is evidenced by the recent strength of the U.S. dollar.

Once these U.S. debt holders unwind their positions, however, the dollar will be allowed to crash and we should prepare for a total financial, economic and monetary realignment.

(Watch the full interview at Future Money Trends)

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — NATO aircraft scream across eastern European skies and American armored vehicles rumble near the border with Russia on a mission to reassure citizens that they're safe from Russian aggression.

But these days, ordinary people aren't taking any chances.

In Poland, doctors, shopkeepers, lawmakers and others are heeding a call to receive military training in case of an invasion. Neighboring Lithuania is restoring the draft and teaching citizens what to do in case of war. Nearby Latvia has plans to give university students military training next year.

The drive to teach ordinary people how to use weapons and take cover under fire reflects soaring anxiety among people in a region where memories of Moscow's domination — which ended only in the 1990s — remain raw. People worry that their security and hard-won independence are threatened as saber-rattling intensifies between the West and Russia over the conflict in Ukraine, where more than 6,000 people have died.

In Poland, the oldest generation remembers the Soviet Army's invasion in 1939, at the start of World War II. Younger people remain traumatized by the repression of the communist regime that lasted more than four decades.

It's a danger felt across the EU newcomer states that border Russia.

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FILE - In this Nov. 21, 2014 file photo, Polish and British troops take part in a joint military exe …

"There's a real feeling of threat in our society," Latvian defense ministry spokeswoman Aija Jakubovska told The Associated Press. Military training for students is a "way we can increase our own defense capabilities."

Most people are still looking to NATO's military umbrella as their main guarantor of security. Zygmunt Wos waved goodbye to a detachment of U.S. armored vehicles leaving the eastern Polish city of Bialystok with apprehension: "These troops should be staying with us," he said, "not going back to Germany."

Poland has been at the forefront of warnings about the dangers of the Ukraine conflict. Just 17 hours by car from the battle zone, Poland has stepped up efforts to upgrade its weapons arsenal, including a possible purchase of U.S.-made Tomahawk missiles. It will host a total of some 10,000 NATO and other allied troops for exercises this year. Its professional army is 100,000-strong, and 20,000 reservists are slated for test-range training.

It's the grassroots mobilization, however, that best demonstrates the fears: The government has reached out to some 120 paramilitary groups with tens of thousands of members, who are conducting their own drills, in an effort to streamline them with the army exercises.

In an unprecedented appeal, Parliament Speaker Radek Sikorski urged lawmakers to train at a test range in May, while Defense Minister Tomasz Siemoniak called on men and women aged between 18 and 50, and with no military experience, to sign up for test-range exercise. So far, over 2,000 people have responded.

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FILE - In this Nov. 21, 2014 file photo, Polish soldiers, center, and British troops, left and right …

"The times are dangerous and we must do all we can to raise Poland's ability to defend its territory," President Bronislaw Komorowski said during a recent visit to a military unit.

The Poles believe they have grounds for feeling particularly vulnerable because they have been invaded by Russia repeatedly since the 18th century. Russian leader Vladimir Putin seems to have singled out Poland, a staunch U.S. ally, as a prime enemy in the struggle over Ukraine, accusing it of training "Ukrainian nationalists" and instigating unrest.

Recently Moscow said it will place state-of-the-art Iskander missiles in its Kaliningrad enclave, bordering Poland and Lithuania, for a major exercise.

Last week, over 550 young Polish reservists were summoned on one hour's notice to a military base for a mobilization drill. In their 20s and 30s, in jeans and sneakers, the men and women arrived at a base in Tarnowskie Gory, in southern Poland for days of shooting practice. One of them, 35-year-old former soldier Krystian Studnia, said the call was "absolutely natural."

"Everyone should be willing and ready to fight to defend his country," he said.

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In this photo taken in Tarnowskie Gory, Poland, March 24, 2015, one of some 550 reservists who were …

In Warsaw, Mateusz Warszczak, 23, glowed with excitement as he signed up at a recruitment center. "I want to be ready to defend my family, my relatives, from danger," he said.

Even older Poles feel obliged to take responsibility for their own safety.

In September, Wojciech Klukowski, a 58-year-old medical doctor, and his friends organized a civic militia group of about 50 men and women of various ages, and called it the National Guard. They practiced skirmishes and shooting, with the aim of becoming citizen-soldiers in their hometown of Szczecin, on the Baltic Sea coast.

"We do not feel fully safe," Klukowski said. "Many people ... want to be trained to defend their homes, their work places, their families."

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Rayyan Sabet-Parry in Riga, Latvia and Jari Tanner in Tallinn, Estonia contributed to this report.

North Korea Video Tells More Truth Than Our Fake News!