More than 200 Afghan election officials implicated in Afghanistan's tainted presidential election will be replaced before the runoff election in less than three weeks, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told CNN's Christiane Amanpour. "We will make sure that first of all, the Independent Election Commission will have to visit all the polling stations throughout Afghanistan," Ban said Tuesday. "And we will make sure that those polling stations from which we have received complaints will be reviewed. "And we will try ...

Americans Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson won the Nobel Prize for economics for work on how community institutions can prevent conflict, the Nobel Committee announced Monday. Ostrom becomes the first woman to win the prize in its 40-year history. The award was a "great surprise... I'm still a little bit in shock," she said by phone at the news conference announcing the prize. Ostrom, a professor of political science at Indiana University, was praised "for ...

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, who is scheduled to give a rare interview to CNN's Christiane Amanpour Thursday, is one of the most controversial world leaders of recent times. For many years Mugabe was viewed as an African liberation hero -- much like South Africa's Nelson Mandela. But more recently political rivals in Zimbabwe, as well as critics around the world, have accused Mugabe of turning a nation once known as the breadbasket of southern Africa into one wracked by hunger ...

More resources and personnel are needed to train Afghan security forces so they can become "masters in their own house," NATO's secretary-general said Tuesday. "We can't allow Afghanistan once again to become a safe haven for terrorists. Therefore, we must succeed," Anders Fogh Rasmussen told CNN's Christiane Amanpour in an interview. The United States now has about 62,000 troops in Afghanistan, with NATO and other allies contributing about 35,000 more. The Pentagon currently plans to add 6,000 troops by year's ...

Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Monday that he backs a recommendation from the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan to boost American troop levels in the embattled Islamic nation. The call for more U.S. soldiers is "the right approach ... and we back it," Karzai said during an interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour. He also criticized military allies for failing to attack al Qaeda and other extremists in sanctuaries beyond Afghanistan's borders. Karzai emphasized the need for greater protection of Afghan ...

"I am praying every day that I will see my parents before I die," the Lockerbie bomber wrote in a plea to be set free from a Scottish jail, previously secret documents released Tuesday by the Scottish government show. The handwritten letter from Abdelbeset al Megrahi to Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill was published as the Scottish and British governments fight back against allegations al Megrahi was released as part of a deal involving Libyan oil. Al Megrahi was released ...

Nearly 40 people were killed and up to 80 wounded Tuesday night when a truck bomb exploded in front of a construction company in Kandahar, Afghanistan, chief police commander Fazel Ahmed said. "I have to tell you that I was both angry and I was repulsed by the reception that a convicted bomber, guilty of a huge terrorist crime, received on his return to Libya," Brown said. Abdelbeset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi was released from custody last week on compassionate ...

John Yettaw, the American who had been sentenced to seven years of hard labor in Myanmar, was handed over to U.S. Embassy officials in the Southeast Asian nation on Sunday, an information ministry official said. U.S. Sen. Jim Webb obtained Yettaw's release a day earlier. The two are expected to fly to Bangkok, Thailand, aboard a military aircraft sometime Sunday. Yettaw, 53, a former military serviceman from Falcon, Missouri, was sentenced last week for a May 3 incident when he ...

A black politician campaigning in eastern Germany has become the victim of a racist campaign by a far-right party. The National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) says it is trying to persuade Zeca Schall, a German citizen who came from Angola 21 years ago, to leave the country. Schall is a member of the Christian Democratic Union, the party led by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and has been named as a CDU expert for the integration of minorities. The NPD's ...

The White House criticized the sentencing of Myanmar's opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi to 18 more months of house arrest Tuesday, joining a chorus of condemnation from figures ranging from the Dalai Lama to the U.N. secretary-general. "This is not somebody that should be tried and not somebody certainly that should have been convicted," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said, adding that President Barack Obama was likely to make a statement later. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he ...