Former world number one Kim Clijsters made a triumphant return to the U.S. Open at Flushing Meadows as she routed Viktoriya Kutuzova of the Ukraine in their first round match on Monday. The Belgian ace has never lost to a player ranked outside the top 10 at the hard court grand slam and offered Kutuzova little respite during a 54-minute match. Clijsters was later joined in the second round by defending champion Serena Williams, who beat fellow American ...

Search teams have found the flight data recorder from the Yemenia Airways plane that crashed off the Comoros Islands in June, killing 152 people, the chief investigator said Friday. An operation to retrieve the recorder has begun, said a statement from investigator Ali Abdou Mohamed. The Airbus 310 crashed into the Indian Ocean, carrying 142 passengers and 11 crew members. It originated in Yemen's capital, Sanaa, and went down just miles from Moroni, the capital of the Comoros Islands. One ...

In the days following Senator Edward Kennedy's death, his story will be told by friends and admirers, fellow politicians, family members, pundits and critics. But when Kennedy's mammoth memoir, True Compass, is published on Sept. 14, readers will be able to experience his life story as told by the Senator himself. Kennedy was acutely aware of the historical importance of his words and memories. He kept a personal journal for almost 50 years, beginning with his ...

With irresponsible banking practices taking the blame for bringing about the global economic crisis, there has been a surge of interest in Islamic finance. Now, a slew of academic courses are springing up to meet the demand of those wanting to break into an expanding market. According to ratings agency Moody's, the global Islamic finance sector is worth $700 billion and has the potential to be worth $4 trillion. What's more, the ethical principles underpinning Islamic finance are ...

Pakistani forces in the last month foiled a planned attack on the parliament building, the intelligence agency and other federal institutions, the country's interior minister told CNN Sunday. More than 600 firefighters and soldiers -- aided by residents -- used whatever was at their disposal to bring the blaze under control as the flames inched closer to the capital from the northeast edges of the city. "I have ashes on my desk but I'm not smoking. Penteli mountain is," said ...

The following five sites have proven the most consistently useful for the editors of Budget Travel, who do thousands of searches a year. Dohop.com Strictly for booking plane trips entirely outside of the U.S., such as a flight between Paris and Rome. The site runs simultaneous searches of multiple airports serving the same city -- five airports in London, for instance -- and it retrieves fares from no-frills independent carriers like EasyJet and Ryanair, which many better-known travel sites overlook. ...

Seven-times Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong brought a Scottish town center to a standstill on Tuesday when hundreds of people joined him for a group bike ride. The seven-times Tour de France winner used social networking site Twitter to invite fans to take part in the event in Paisley, Scotland and -- as a result -- around 200 people gathered in the town's High Street. Fans took photographs and asked for autographs from the American and the ...

Iran has released a French academic from prison, though it's not clear when Clotilde Reiss can return home, French President Nicolas Sarkozy's office announced Sunday. Reiss, 24, is the second French woman facing charges as part of mass trials in Iran who was released on bond. French authorities are now demanding that Iran drop all charges against Reiss and Nazak Afshar -- an employee of the French embassy in Tehran who was released August 8, the statement from Sarkozy's office ...

Once lost, virginity can never be replaced — but modern medicine now offers women a near-perfect physical simulation of their lost innocence. Hymenoplasty, the surgical reconstruction of the hymen broken during a women's first experience of intercourse, or, increasingly, during demanding exercise or as a result of a collision or fall by women who've never had sex, has prompted a growing number of young betrothed women in France to make a last-ditch attempt to avoid the humiliation, repudiation, and ...

Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal both crashed out of the Montreal Masters at on Friday night as the world's top eight contested the quarte-finals at the same event for the first time in tennis history. But number one Federer and second-ranked Nadal both flunked their lines, admittedly returning to tournament action after layoffs. Federer, who has not played since winning Wimbledon after becoming the father of twin girls, let a 5-1 lead in the final set slip as Jo-Wilfried Tsonga ...