North Korea believes it's owed bilateral talks with the United States after the communist government released two detained American journalists this month -- a notion that senior Obama administration officials quickly rejected on Wednesday. "They feel, the North Koreans, that by giving us the two American journalists, that they've made an important gesture," New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson told CNN Wednesday after meeting with two North Korean diplomats. "And now they're saying the ball's in our court." But senior Obama ...

North Korea will send a delegation to the funeral of former South Korean President Kim Dae-Jung, who is best remembered for trying to foster better relations between the two neighbors. The communist North sent a letter to Kim's staff members informing them of its plans, an aide to the late president told CNN on Wednesday. Kim, who was president from 1998 to 2003, died Tuesday of heart failure. He had been admitted to Seoul's Severance Hospital more than a ...

Two top North Korean diplomats were traveling to Santa Fe, New Mexico, to hold talks with Gov. Bill Richardson, the governor's spokesman said.

A Russian-crewed cargo ship that went missing for more than two weeks was hijacked by pirates, Russia's defense minister said Tuesday. "The hijackers boarded the Arctic Sea, threatened the crew with weapons and demanded that their orders be followed," Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov told President Dmitry Medvedev, according to the state-run RIA Novosti news agency. Russian authorities announced Tuesday that they had opened a criminal investigation on charges of "kidnapping by an organized group of people," the Prosecutor General's ...

Former South Korean President and Nobel Laureate Kim Dae-jung died of heart failure Tuesday, hospital officials said. He was 83. Kim -- who was president from 1998 to 2003 -- won the 2000 Nobel Peace Prize for fostering better relations between North and South Korea. He died Tuesday afternoon at Seoul's Severance Hospital, where he was admitted more than a month ago for pneumonia.

President Richard M. Nixon and his Brazilian counterpart, Emilio Medici, in 1971 discussed ways their countries could work together to overthrow the socialist government of Salvador Allende in Chile, according to a newly declassified document. During a meeting of the two leaders at the White House on December 9 of that year, Medici was discussing the possibility of a coup by the Chilean military with assistance from Brazilian military officers when Nixon said that it was "very important that Brazil ...

A Russian cargo ship believed to have been hijacked off the coast of Sweden last month has been located, the ship's owner told CNN on Monday. The Arctic Sea's crew is safe and onboard a Russian navy vessel, according to Victor Matveev, the director of Solchart Management AB. The Arctic Sea, which sails under a Maltese flag, was carrying a 6,500-ton cargo of timber from Finland to Algeria when it reported trouble in Swedish waters on July 24. Its crew ...

A warning was issued overnight for a potential tropical storm that may hit the Florida-Alabama border Sunday. It formed in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, according to the National Hurricane Center. A tropical storm warning means that weather conditions will deteriorate in the next 24 hours. The system, still a tropical depression, was about 125 miles south-southeast of Apalachicola, Florida, at 8 a.m. ET, according to the center. It was expected to reach tropical storm strength by Sunday afternoon. ...

The search for a missing Russian cargo ship was "developing quite dramatically" Friday, according to Russia's ambassador to NATO. But exactly what was developing was not made clear. Ambassador Dmitry Rogozin spoke on Radio Echo of Moscow amid reports of progress in the search for the Arctic Sea, a cargo ship whose Russian crew was last heard from after a reported hijacking two weeks ago. Asked about reports that the ship had been located in the Atlantic Ocean, the ambassador ...

Pan Am Flight 103 was 31,000 feet in the air, heading for New York City, when it exploded over Scotland on the longest night of the year, December 21, 1988, killing 259 people on board and 11 people on the ground below. It was the world's deadliest act of air terrorism until the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, according to the FBI. American and British investigators painstakingly pieced together the aircraft's wreckage and found it had ...