Scotland's leaders feared that the warming of relations between Libya and the United Kingdom would force Scotland to hand over the Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbeset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, documents released by the British government Tuesday indicate. Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond expressed his concerns repeatedly to the central government in London about the issue in June 2007, prompting several replies from then-Lord Chancellor Charles Falconer. "No deal has been done to secure the transfer of Mr al Megrahi to Libya," ...

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown paid a surprise visit to Afghanistan on Saturday, thanking his nation's fighting forces for a job "well done." "This has been the most difficult summer in Afghanistan because the Taliban have tried to prevent the elections taking place and I think our forces who I've been meeting today have shown extraordinary courage during this period," Brown said in a televised interview, taped in Afghanistan and aired in Britain. Brown dropped by Camp Bastion in Helmand ...

Sen. Ted Kennedy will be buried Saturday at Arlington National Cemetery after a private funeral Mass. The senator's funeral is scheduled for Saturday at Boston's Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica in Boston's Mission Hill section. Dozens of Kennedy's fellow senators are scheduled to attend as well as three former presidents -- Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. President Obama, who called Kennedy the "greatest U.S. senator of our time," will deliver a eulogy at the funeral, ...

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 ...

Democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi will spend another 18 months as a prisoner of Burma's military junta, a Rangoon court decreed today. She was found guilty of violating the terms of her house arrest after an American man called John Yettaw swam to her lakeside house in Rangoon in May. Yettaw, who has been in poor health, was sentenced to seven years in prison with hard labor. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate was initially jailed for three years ...

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown defended the military mission in Afghanistan amid tough questions Wednesday from the opposition leader. Speaking the day after eight British soldiers killed in Afghanistan were laid to rest, Brown also defended the volume of equipment -- specifically helicopters -- supplied to troops in Afghanistan. Conservative Party leader David Cameron said the number of helicopters in Afghanistan is "simply insufficient" and is "the basic problem" facing British troops there. "He is right to raise issues of ...

They may live on separate continents, in different countries with differing cultures, but the same message is being echoed by the world's poor, according to a new report by aid agency Oxfam. The report, "Suffering the Science," tells the stories of people who are discovering to their detriment that long-held truths about seasons and rainfall no longer apply. "I travel a lot and people are always saying to me, 'the seasons have changed,'"Oxfam chief executive Barbara Stocking told CNN. ...

If the number of protesters on the streets of Tehran has thinned in recent days — a result of the bloody crackdown by police and militia that continued in parts of the capital on June 24 — there's little sign of a letup in Iran's overseas offensive. British passport holders "had a role" in the violent clashes sparked by Iran's disputed election on June 12, Iranian Intelligence Minister Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei told the Fars news agency on June 24. Foreign ...

The Iranian government is considering whether to downgrade ties with Britain amid growing tensions over the disputed presidential election, the ISNA news agency reported Wednesday. The move comes after Britain expelled two Iranian diplomats Tuesday after Iran asked two of their British counterparts to leave a day earlier. The two British envoys were accused by Iran of "activities incompatible with their status," Britain's Foreign Office said. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told the House of Commons -- Britain's main legislative ...

Britain's Foreign Office is summoning Iran's ambassador over the comments made Friday by Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a Foreign Office spokesman said. The ambassador is expected to meet with the Foreign Office's political director sometime Friday afternoon, said the spokesman, who would not be named in line with policy. Khamenei addressed a crowd at Tehran University in a sermon during Friday prayers. He passionately defended the outcome of last week's presidential election, but he also criticized the United ...