The massive amount of garbage in the ocean likely complicates the search for the remains of an Air France flight that went missing Monday near Brazil, oceanographers who spoke with CNN said. Earlier this week, investigators said they had located pieces of the plane in the southern Atlantic Ocean, which might have given them clues to the origin of Air France Flight 447's crash. But on Thursday, Brazilian officials said what they had found was nothing more than ...

Most people across Muslim and Arab lands viewed President Obama's speech in Cairo, Egypt, as "excellent," a spokesman for the hard-line Palestinian movement Hamas said. But the official, Ahmed Yousef, interviewed on CNN's "American Morning" from Gaza City, said there's a question on the street: Is the American president "ready to walk the way he talks" "This is the question," said Yousef, the senior adviser for former Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya. In his address to Muslims, Obama called for ...

The atmosphere was tense in Cape Town on Friday after xenophobic violence that has left more than 40 dead in Johannesburg spread to South Africa's largest city. Clashes overnight resulted in one death and 15 arrests and the evacuations of 420 foreign nationals, a police official in Cape Town said. "Crowds of people went on a rampage, looting and carrying out acts of violence," said Cape Town Police Superintendent Billy Jones. They were charged with public violence and are to ...

North Korea threatened military action Wednesday after South Korea joined a U.S.-led effort to limit the trafficking of weapons of mass destruction, the official Korean Central News Agency said. South Korea said Monday that it was joining the 6-year-old Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) because of "the grave threat WMD and missile proliferation is posing to global peace," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Moon Tae-young. The effort is aimed at halting shipments of weapons technology, a rare source of hard currency for ...

More than two dozen Mexican public servants, including 10 mayors and several police chiefs, allegedly linked to illicit drugs and organized crime were arrested in simultaneous raids in Michoacan state, its governor said. The secrecy leading up to the arrests was so extensive, Gov. Leonel Godoy said, that even he did not know about them until after they began. A major drug cartel, the Michoacan Family, was a focus of the six-month investigation, a spokesman for the federal attorney ...

The Pakistani Taliban says it wants to return to a peace deal that recently collapsed, sparking an ongoing massive military operation, a spokesman said Tuesday. Taliban militants in Swat Valley have announced that they are willing to disarm if the government allows sharia, or Islamic law, to be implemented in the region, a spokesman for Taliban mediator Sufi Mohammed said. Mohammed negotiated the previous deal between the Pakistani Taliban and the government, which called for the same arrangement. ...

Rap star T.I. threw himself a going-away party Sunday night, less than two days before he was scheduled to begin serving a prison sentence on federal weapons charges. The Grammy-winning rapper performed at Atlanta's Philips Arena before a packed house. He is scheduled to head to prison Tuesday to start a 366-day sentence. During Sunday's concert, the 28-year-old reiterated a message that's become familiar in recent weeks: He wants others to learn from his mistakes. "I'm doing the ...

Indonesian Islamic clerics say they have not called for a ban on popular social networking sites like Facebook, and that they are avid users themselves. According to media reports, the clerics in East Java had banned the faithful from gossiping and flirting on social networking Web sites such as Facebook and Friendster. They also demanded an end to "lewd and pornographic" content, the reports said. However, Muchammad Nabil Haroen, a spokesman for the Liboryo Islamic Boarding School, told CNN Monday ...

Aung San Suu Kyi declared herself innocent of charges she finally heard in court for the first time Friday, the fifth day of her trial on allegations of subversion. "I'm not guilty," the Myanmar opposition leader told the court, according to a spokesman for her party. When the court asked why she claimed innocence, she replied, "I didn't break any law," said the spokesman, Nyan Win. Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, has been under house arrest for years ...

Britain's House of Lords voted Wednesday to suspend two of its members over corruption claims -- the first time a lord has been barred from the chamber since 1642, a spokesman for the chamber said. Lord Taylor of Blackburn and Lord Truscott allegedly agreed to use their influence to get a loophole into a proposed tax law in exchange for cash, but the person offering the bribe turned out to be an undercover reporter. The Sunday Times newspaper ...