Chuck Hagel will travel to Hawaii next week to convene a meeting of defense ministers from Asia, then stop in Japan and travel for the first time as defense chief to China and Mongolia, the Pentagon said.

Army Pvt. Isaac Aguigui, 22, of Cashmere, Wash., was convicted and sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole after his court-martial at Fort Stewart, Ga., in the strangulation of his 24-year-old pregnant wife, Deirdre, so he could pocket $500,000 in benefit money.

Jordan Graham, 22, was sentenced in Montana to more than 30 years in prison for killing Cody Johnson, 25, her husband of eight days, by pushing him from a cliff in Glacier National Park after they argued over her regrets about the marriage.

Jimmy Carter, the former president, said in Washington that he would consider a pardon for Edward Snowden, the former contractor who leaked classified information about the National Security Agency, but said he was not certain he would grant one.

Hassan Rouhani made his first visit to Afghanistan as Iran’s president and called for unity as regional leaders celebrated the Persian New Year.

Mogomotsi Mogodiri, spokesman for South Africa’s culture department, said a bronze rabbit that artists added as a signature on a 29-foot-tall statue of former President Nelson Mandela, erected in Pretoria, has been removed.

Warren Jeffs, 58, the polygamist sect leader serving life for sexually assaulting two children he took as brides, is no longer hospitalized and has been returned to prison, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice said.

Jonathan Pendleton, 31, of Alexandria, Va., was charged with abduction and assault with a caustic material, accused of walking into a George Mason University classroom, announcing a citizen’s arrest and pepper-spraying a professor.

Richard “Dickie” Scruggs, 67, the disbarred attorney and chief architect of the multibillion-dollar tobacco litigation of the 1990s, was released to home confinement in Oxford, Miss., after serving time in a federal prison in Montgomery, Ala., for a judicial corruption conviction.

Latin Patriarch Fouad Twal, a top Roman Catholic official in the Holy Land, said a trip to Israel by Pope Francis in late May is now in doubt because of a strike by Israeli diplomats.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 03/28/2014