A hoax video purporting to show Michael Jackson hopping out of a coroner's van alive was produced by a German television station as an experiment, the broadcaster told CNN Monday. It was made to show how easy it is to spread rumors online, said Heike Schultz, a spokeswoman for RTL, the leading private broadcaster in Germany. "We sent out a press release before we did the video to alert everyone that it was fake, but once posted it spread really ...

A Sri Lankan court sentenced a journalist Monday to serve 20 years in prison for articles that criticized the military, according to the Asian Human Rights Commission. "The AHRC is not surprised by this judgment because at the very inception of this case, the AHRC pointed out that this is purely a political case," the commission said in a statement. J.S. Tissainayagam, the editor of a monthly magazine, was arrested in March 2008 for printing articles critical of the Sri ...

Former Vice President Dick Cheney on Sunday said his claim that enhanced interrogation techniques -- including waterboarding -- produced critical post-9/11 information was supported by a pair of intelligence reports released last week. "The enhanced interrogation techniques were absolutely essential in saving thousands of American lives," he told "Fox News Sunday." However, the two dossiers that were declassified at Cheney's request do not disclose what kinds of techniques were used to elicit the intelligence. The only method occasionally cited by ...

Switzerland's top private bankers are convinced they can avoid a damaging witch-hunt over their activities by U.S. authorities, in the wake of UBS's tax row. In interviews with the Financial Times, senior executives of Credit Suisse and Julius Baer, the country's number two and number three private bank businesses after UBS, both said they were sanguine. The comments came shortly before Éric Woerth, France's budget minister, claimed in media interviews on Sunday that the authorities there had gained access to ...

In many respects, Jaycee Dugard and her two daughters lived an unremarkable public life -- one that belied the horrifying circumstances that have since made front-page news. Dugard, kidnapped 18 years ago in South Lake Tahoe, California, helped manage the small printing company her alleged captor, Phillip Garrido, ran from his home in Antioch, east of San Francisco. Her two daughters, fathered by 58-year-old Garrido, attended birthday parties and, like many girls their age, shared a love for the TV ...

Hurricane Jimena -- a powerful Category 4 storm with winds of 145 mph (230 kph) -- moved across the Pacific Monday toward the southern portion of Baja California, forecasters said. As of early Monday, Jimena was about 395 miles (635 kilometers) south-southeast of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, according to the National Hurricane Center. The storm is expected to continue in a north-northwest motion and approach the southwestern tip of Baja California early Tuesday, forecasters said. "It's not expected to change ...

The Dalai Lama -- on a visit to Taiwan that includes prayers for recent typhoon victims -- has rebutted China's claims that he is there for political reasons. In a Monday interview with CNN's Sara Sidner, the Tibetan spiritual leader said he was visiting the island to comfort victims of Typhoon Morakot. He added that he would not meet Taiwan's President Ma Ying-jeou, to avoid politicizing the trip. The Dalai Lama was in southern Taiwan on Monday to meet and ...

Monday marks the end of August, a month with both good and bad news out of Afghanistan — and the approach of a key turning point. Civilian casualties caused by Western attacks have fallen dramatically under a new edict from General Stanley McChrystal barring air strikes that risk innocent deaths . That's designed to show the Afghan people that the U.S. military is a force for good in their country. But at the same time, U.S. troop deaths ...

Following up her bestselling book Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls with The Curse of the Good Girl: Raising Authentic Girls with Courage and Confidence, author Rachel Simmons argues that girls are taught early on to suppress their emotions and not to live as loudly as they might be inclined to. TIME talked with Simmons about how to raise girls who aren't afraid to be assertive and even a little less than perfect. Could you ...

Rescue crews will resume their search Tuesday for an Australian state minister who went missing while hiking alone on a rugged, icy mountain. Tim Holding, the water and tourism minister for the southeastern state of Victoria, was last heard from on Saturday. He had gone to hike to the summit of Mount Feathertop, Victoria's second-highest peak. "I am advised that Tim did not arrive home from the hike as planned at 4 p.m. yesterday and that he has not been ...