A Yale University employee has been released from police custody after investigators detained him Tuesday night to collect DNA, said a spokeswoman for the city of New Haven. Police took Raymond Clark, 24, into custody after obtaining a search warrant for his home and a body warrant that allowed them to collect DNA samples as authorities probed the death of Yale graduate student Annie Le. Le's body was discovered in the basement wall of an off-campus medical research building on ...

The Iraqi man who threw his shoes at former U.S. President George W. Bush last year, Muntadhar al-Zaidi, was freed from jail Tuesday, his brother told CNN. Udey al-Zaidi confirmed the release of his brother, who was serving a one-year sentence. Under Iraqi law, a "conditional discharge" allows for the release of a prisoner after he serves three-quarters of his sentence, on good behavior. Al-Zaidi has been in jail since the December 14 news conference, during which he threw his ...

The Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at then-President George W. Bush at a news conference in December could be released from jail as early as next week, his attorney told CNN on Friday. Muntadhar al-Zaidi is serving one year in prison after his original three-year sentence was reduced by an appellate court in April. Dhiyaa al-Saadi, head of Iraq's Bar Association and al-Zaidi's chief defense attorney, said he had submitted a petition about two months ago to authorities requesting ...

Vehicles began streaming across the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge early Tuesday -- a day ahead of schedule -- after the completion of repairs to a crack in the structure's east span. Commuters began driving over the bridge around 6:40 a.m. PT (9:40 a.m. ET), shortly after Randy Iwasaki, director of the California Department of Transportation, announced the reopening at a news conference. "The bridge has been inspected, and it is safer than when we closed it on Friday," Iwasaki ...

Construction crews working on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in California discovered a crack that could keep the heavily traveled bridge closed beyond the planned Labor Day weekend shutdown. During inspection of the east span of the bridge, workers found a crack in one of the eyebars on the side of the structure, said Bart Ney, spokesman for the California Department of Transportation. "It's a significant crack -- significant enough to have closed the bridge on its own," he said ...

A judge has ordered mediation in the case of a teen girl who says her family threatened to kill her for converting from Islam to Christianity. The 17-year-old girl, Rifqa Bary, ran away from her family in Columbus, Ohio, in July and took refuge in the home of the Rev. Blake Lorenz with the Global Revolution Church in Orlando, Florida. Bary's parents want her back home. At a court hearing Thursday in Orlando, the girl's parents denied all the allegations ...

Vice President Joe Biden promised Thursday that President Obama will delve into specifics when he tackles health-care reform in a highly anticipated speech to a joint session of Congress next week. The president will be "laying out in understandable, clear terms" what the administration wants for health care when he addresses Congress on September 9, Biden told an audience at the Brookings Institution. Biden also promised success on the administration's top domestic legislative priority. "I think the prospects for success ...

While Western governments have been worrying about bearded men with bombs in caves, a new jihad has quietly gained strength in the Muslim world: Islamic feminism. Earlier this week, 350 women and men gathered in Malaysia to launch Musawah — "Equality" in Arabic — a movement for justice in the Muslim family. Organized by the Malaysian Muslim feminist group Sisters in Islam, the conference, two years in the planning, is a kick-off to a campaign to enshrine Muslim women's ...

President Barack Obama has concluded that Israel and the Palestinians are unlikely to achieve peace unless they're under external pressure to make the requisite compromises. Believing that a two-state solution is in the best interests of both parties and that time is running out for such a solution, the President is stepping up the pressure on both sides. That was Obama's message at a White House meeting on July 13 with representatives of leading Jewish-American organizations, some of whom ...

As Apple kicks off a much-anticipated developers' conference Monday in San Francisco, California, much of the buzz is about the possibility of a new iPhone release. The tech company says it will discuss a new version of software for the revolutionary smartphone, which will let users copy and paste messages, search their iPhones, and write e-mails and text messages from a wide-screen view. Tech bloggers are hoping for something more: a 3.0 version of the iPhone hardware. An iPhone 3.0 ...