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 ...

Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi was found guilty of violating the terms of her house arrest by a military court Tuesday -- and sentenced to serve 18 more months in home confinement. The court initially sentenced Suu Kyi to three years in prison before the head of the country's ruling junta commuted it to a year-and-a-half of house arrest. The sentence is significantly less than the maximum five-year prison sentence the Nobel laureate faced for the charges. The ...

Two people were killed and four wounded in a suspected U.S. drone attack in northwestern Pakistan early Wednesday, Pakistani intelligence and Taliban sources said. "They are en route to Los Angeles, where Laura and Euna will be reunited with their families," spokesman Matt McKenna said in a written statement. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed relief at the release of the two journalists. "Obviously I am very happy and relieved to have these two young women, Laura Ling and ...

Israel's foreign minister will resign from the post if he is indicted on corruption charges, he said Monday. Israeli police Sunday recommended charging Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman with a slew of crimes following a lengthy corruption probe. Investigators "believe there is sufficient evidence to charge him with the crimes of bribery, fraud, obstruction of justice, harassing a witness, breach of trust and money laundering offenses," the police spokesman's office said in a statement. The alleged crimes date back to before ...

Israeli police Sunday recommended charging Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman with a slew of crimes following a lengthy corruption probe. Investigators "believe there is sufficient evidence to charge him with the crimes of bribery, fraud, obstruction of justice, harassing a witness, breach of trust and money laundering offenses," the police spokesman's office said in a statement. Police allege that crimes date back to before Lieberman became foreign minister earlier this year. Over the years, Lieberman has held various government posts. He ...

Boris Worm, a marine biologist at Dalhousie University in Canada, made a startling prediction in the pages of Science in 2006: if overfishing continued at then-current rates, he said, the world would essentially run out of seafood by 2048. Worm's bold analysis whipped up controversy in the usually pacific world of marine science — one colleague, Ray Hilborn of the University of Washington, called the Science study "mindbogglingly stupid." But Worm held fast to his predictions: that the oceans ...

Sunday was a day of commemoration in Cuba -- the 56th anniversary of the start of the Cuban Revolution -- but the message from President Raul Castro was not all celebratory. The island nation will face a second round of belt-tightening as a result of the global financial crunch, Castro said in a speech marking Revolution Day. He said that on Tuesday he would hold a meeting of the Council of Ministries "dedicated to the analysis of the second cost ...

Britain on Monday downgraded its international terror threat level from "severe" to "substantial." The notice was issued by The Joint Terrorism Analysis Center (JTAC), which operates independently of ministers. According to the British Home Office Web site, the change means that a terrorist threat remains a strong possibility and an attack might occur without further warning. JTAC assesses the threat from international terrorism by considering all relevant intelligence and information. Its decision is based on a broad ...