Opposition lawmakers Tuesday ridiculed President Nicolas Sarkozy for taking France back into NATO's military command after more than 40 years, but were unable to stop the move when it came to a vote. The National Assembly voted in favor of Sarkozy's plan, 329-238. Socialist Laurent Fabius, a former prime minister, told Prime Minister Francois Fillon: "You tell us this would mean more independence and more influence. It would probably mean less independence and less influence." The move did not technically ...

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has never hidden his infatuation with celebrities. In recent years Sarkozy has burst with pride while being photographed with the stars he likes to count as both political supporters and personal friends. In 2007, he even went and married one. But as Sarkozy's government tries to crack down on illegal Internet downloads of music and movies, suspicions have surfaced that the proposed regulation could be just another case of the President protecting his famous friends. ...

North Korea has informed an international organization that it plans to launch a satellite April 4 to 8, South Korea's state news agency reported Thursday, citing an unnamed intelligence official. North Korea's official news agency reported earlier that the nation had notified the International Maritime Organization of its plans. That report did not indicate a date. U.S. and South Korean officials have long said the communist nation is actually preparing to test-fire a long-range missile under the guise of ...

She goes by "Hinda," but that's not her real name. That's what she's called by the many Iraqi sex traffickers and pimps who contact her several times a week from across the country. They think she is one of them, a peddler of sexual slaves. Little do they know that the stocky, auburn-haired woman is an undercover human rights activist who has been quietly mapping out their murky underworld since 2006. That underworld is a place where nefarious female pimps ...

Two human-rights activists were shot and killed in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, on Thursday evening, leading a U.N. investigator to call for an independent investigation to prove that Kenyan police were not involved. The shootings spurred a protest by students that led police to fatally shoot a student, police said. A U.N. investigator called the killings of the human-rights workers an assassination. "It is extremely troubling when those working to defend human rights in Kenya can be assassinated in broad daylight ...

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown promised the U.S. Congress on Wednesday to "work tirelessly with you for peace in the Middle East." But Britain clearly has some ideas of its own about how to move the process forward, and those ideas clash with the orthodoxies still in place in Washington. Even as Brown spoke on Capitol Hill, his government announced that it has scrapped its boycott of Hizballah, and would hold talks with the Iran-backed Lebanese Shi'ite movement, whose militia ...

Money will not fix the problem in Gaza, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas warned on Monday, despite the largesse of donors in Sharm al-Sheikh, Egypt. Abbas was addressing a donor conference at which Western and Arab governments arrived bearing pledges of $5.2 billion for the territory devastated by Israel's 22-day offensive — almost double the amount requested by the Palestinian Authority. But the beleaguered leader pointed out that rebuilding Gaza was fundamentally a political challenge. Indeed, facilitating any progress for the ...

— Conservative evangelical leader James Dobson has resigned as chairman of Focus on the Family but will continue to play a prominent role at the organization he founded more than three decades ago, The Associated Press has learned. Dobson notified the board of his decision Wednesday, and the 950 employees of the Colorado Springs, Colo.-based ministry were informed Friday morning at a monthly worship service, said Jim Daly, the group's president and chief executive officer. ...

A financial analyst who studied public documents about Stanford International Bank for a friend who was considering investing in it said Thursday that it took only a cursory look to determine something was wrong. "It was kind of shocking, but then I began to think about who would actually be looking at this and who should be looking at this," Alex Dalmady told CNN. "And I came to realize that there weren't many people who had to look at this." ...

The only surviving suspect accused of taking part in the deadly terror attacks in Mumbai, India, was formally charged Wednesday with attempted murder and damage to public property, a prosecutor said. Special Public Prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam told reporters that Mohammed Ajmal Kasab did not attend the court session because of security reasons. Nikam, speaking outside Qila Court in Mumbai, said Kasab will face other charges. The next hearing is set for March 9. Also charged Wednesday were two men, Fahim ...