US Marines from 1st Battalion 8th, Bravo patrol during an operation near Zalmabad village in Musa Qala district of Helmand province, Jan. 23. A 140,000-strong force of NATO-led international troops stationed in Afghanistan currently fighting Taliban-led insurgency is now entering its tenth year.

A Romanian border police oficer inspects a train car coming from Moldova at the Ungheni train border with Moldova on Jan. 18. Romanian border police are tightening controls at the border with Moldova in order to fulfill requirements to enter the border-free Schengen zone in March 2011, but France and Germany have publicly opposed such a move. Bucharest insists that formerly Schengen enlargements were made only on the basis of technical criteria like the implementation of a secure border control system and warns against an "unfair change of the rules".

A Romanian border police officer patrols a railway border crossing point between Romania and Moldova in Ungheni, Romania, Tuesday, Jan. 18. Romania has accused France and Germany of "discrimination" after the EU's two most powerful countries joined forces to block the Balkan country from joining Europe's Schengen open borders zone.