A Yemeni man held by the U.S. military since late 2001 is to be released from custody at the Guantanamo Bay military prison after the Obama administration asked a federal court Monday to postpone his pending case. Still, the release of Ayman Saeed Batarfi, a doctor, will not be an easy matter, officials said. The "hard part" will be finding a country willing to take him, one Justice Department official told CNN. Batarfi, 38, is among the longest-serving suspected terrorists ...

Japan's unemployment rate jumped to 4.4 percent in February, reversing a decline seen the previous month, the government announced Tuesday. "I believe that there will be an opening by this conference that will enable all the countries, including Iran, to come forward," Clinton told reporters aboard her plane en route to The Hague for Tuesday's conference. "The fact that they accepted the invitation to come suggests that they believe there is a role for them to play, and we're looking ...

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was coy Monday about whether she would meet Iranian delegates at an international conference on Afghanistan, and she urged Tehran to play a positive role in helping stabilize its neighbor. "I believe that there will be an opening by this conference that will enable all the countries, including Iran, to come forward," Clinton told reporters aboard her plane en route to The Hague for Tuesday's conference. "The fact that they accepted the invitation to come ...

A California food processing plant is voluntarily recalling up to 1 million pounds of roasted pistachio products that may have been contaminated with salmonella, the Food and Drug Administration announced Monday. The nuts came from Setton Farms in Terra Bella, California, about 75 miles south of Fresno. They were largely distributed in 2,000-pound containers to food wholesalers who would then package them for resale or incorporate them as ingredients in other products, such as ice cream and trail mix. No ...

The mysterious burst of light in the sky and loud booms witnessed Sunday night by residents along the Mid-Atlantic coastline was likely caused by a Russian rocket booster re-entering the atmosphere, said an official at the U.S. Naval Observatory. The exact cause of the flash that caused hundreds of people to call the media, local authorities and the National Weather Service was still unknown Monday afternoon. But eyewitness accounts of the color, shape and timing of the light and ...

Internet-based rip-offs jumped 33 percent last year over the previous year, according to a report from a complaint center set up to monitor such crimes. The total dollar loss from those crimes was $265 million. That's $26 million more than the price tag in 2007, the National Internet Crime Center said. For individual victims, the average amount lost was $931. "This report illustrates that sophisticated computer fraud schemes continue to flourish as financial data migrates to the Internet," said Shawn ...

Vice President Joseph Biden is meeting Monday with Costa Rican President Oscar Arias and other Central American leaders to discuss U.S. aid to the area, the war on drugs and the global economic downturn. Biden arrived Sunday from Chile, where he attended the Progressive Governance Conference. He met with seven Latin American and European heads of state at that two-day gathering. Biden will meet privately with Arias before they are joined by current or incoming heads of state from Guatemala, ...

Two fishing vessels carrying over 600 people sunk off the coast of Libya on Monday, according to Egyptian state television. It was not clear how many injuries or fatalities resulted from the incident. Shortly after President Obama announced he would give Chrysler and General Motors time to "restructure in a way that would justify an investment of additional taxpayer dollars," iReporters let their sentiments be known. "Flushing our money down the toilet," opined one. "GM Motors Forget about them!" barked ...

Americans don't favor handing billions more dollars to U.S. automakers, polls show. To some, it's another example of government helping Wall Street instead of Main Street, but for others, it's simply bailout burnout. Shortly after President Obama announced he would give Chrysler and General Motors time to "restructure in a way that would justify an investment of additional taxpayer dollars," iReporters let their sentiments be known. "Flushing our money down the toilet," opined one. "GM Motors Forget about them!" barked ...

It looked as if a spaceship had landed on the National Mall on Monday as NASA showed off a mockup of its new Orion crew module. Before the next U.S. astronauts go to the moon -- and maybe eventually to Mars -- NASA scientists want to make sure they can return safely. So NASA is testing how best to evacuate its crews from a capsule that has returned to Earth. In April, it will take a mockup of the spaceship ...