The British are coming, the British are coming -- to Brooklyn? By subway? New York's struggling Metropolitan Transportation Authority has sold the naming rights to the second-busiest subway stop in Brooklyn. The Atlantic Avenue-Pacific Street Station will now have the name of a British bank, Barclays, added to it. Several subway riders are outraged that Barclays has purchased the naming rights to this subway stop, which sees about 10 million people go through it each day. One straphanger said, "A ...

As prosecutors asked to jail Bernard Madoff for 150 years, a U.S. District Court judge Friday entered a preliminary order calling on the convicted Ponzi schemer to forfeit more than $170 billion in assets, prosecutors announced. Madoff's wife, Ruth, will be allowed to keep $2.5 million in funds "in settlement of the claims she would have otherwise brought against the property," acting U.S. Attorney Lev Dassin said. Madoff, who pleaded guilty to 11 counts, including fraud, money laundering and perjury, ...

A Guantanamo Bay detainee indicted in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa arrived in New York on Tuesday to face criminal charges. Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani is the first detainee held at Guantanamo to be transferred to the United States to face criminal prosecution. The Tanzanian national has been held at the camp in Cuba since September 2006. Ghailani's arrival in New York comes amid mounting tension between Congress and President Obama over the planned closing of Guantanamo. ...

In a gallery at the Art Institute of Chicago, there's a painting from 1913 by the German Expressionist Franz Marc called The Bewitched Mill. A waterfall spills down the center of the canvas between a scene of machines and houses on one side and trees and animals on the other. It's a fantasy of magical reconciliation between the natural and man-made worlds — always a nice trick if you can do it. Somebody who can do it and then ...

The most telling reaction I have encountered in the row over excessive expenses claims by British lawmakers came from a London taxi-driver. "I am sick and tired" he said "of hearing them excuse themselves by saying that what they did was OK because it was within the rules. Whatever the rules said, didn't they ever stop to ask themselves if what they were doing was right?" Now of course it is payback time. It is payback time in the sense ...

Sheila Wash greets her son and daughter, 13-year-old Cecil and 9-year-old Sheliah, every day when their school buses arrive "home." They talk about the school day, their homework and even joke that Sheliah can't remember what she ate for lunch. The fourth-grader wonders aloud, "What did we have We had something good." But it's hardly a homecoming for any of them. The Wash family has been homeless since 2007, after Sheila lost her government job. She says unemployment benefits ...

About 50,000 anti-government demonstrators amassed Wednesday in the capital in a push to topple Thailand's prime minister. The "Red Shirt" protesters -- named for the color of their shirts -- had gathered outside Government House in Bangkok, according to the chief of the Metropolitan Police Bureau. Demonstrations have intensified in recent weeks to destabilize the government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva. The Red Shirt protesters have declared Wednesday their D-Day, claiming they will draw up to 300,000 people ...

Scattered demonstrations were taking place around East London as the G-20 summit got under way Thursday, but they were far smaller than the protests seen a day earlier. A total of seven people had been arrested by the early afternoon, police said. By contrast, 88 people were arrested in protests on Wednesday, when demonstrators swarmed the area outside the Bank of England and broke the windows of a Royal Bank of Scotland bank branch. Police estimated a total of 4,000 ...

At least 22 civilians were killed and 38 other people were wounded Thursday in a Baghdad car bombing, the Iraqi Interior Ministry said. The number of protesters outside Government House had grown sharply since the afternoon, said Worapong Tuepreecha, the chief of the Metropolitan Police. He said they set up a stage and tents in front of the building. The red-shirted protesters are with the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD). They have been protesting since December to oust ...

Nearly seven years after the remains of federal intern Chandra Levy were found in a Washington park, a jailed laborer from El Salvador faces a murder charge in her death, authorities said Tuesday. A judge on Tuesday signed an arrest warrant for Ingmar Guandique, 27, who is serving a 10-year sentence for two assaults in Rock Creek Park that occurred around the time of Levy's disappearance. Her remains were found in Rock Creek Park about a year after she ...