Pen Farthing was on a flight from Kabul, Afghanistan, to Houston when the news broke: The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was going to stop missions like his for at least the next year.

A Fayetteville soldier got a boisterous homecoming from a dog he rescued from the war-torn streets of Afghanistan, thanks to a charity animal-rescue program run by Internet search engine Dogpile.com.

Inside the ballroom, 383 Afghan men, women and children — fake guests invited to a fake wedding — waited in anxious hope that the ruse might work and they could escape the country with their lives.