Longtime Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detainee Mohammed Jawad has been returned to his native Afghanistan, the Justice Department announced Monday. The coalition, named the Iraqi National Alliance, was formed to compete in the country's national elections in January. It includes top Shiite parties, but not Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Dawa party. Senior political leaders who announced the alliance in a televised meeting said they still are holding talks with Dawa and other parties. The coalition replaces the powerful Iranian-backed ...

Iraq's main Shiite parties Monday announced the formation of a new alliance that excludes the prime minister -- at least for now. The coalition, named the Iraqi National Alliance, was formed to compete in the country's national elections in January. It includes top Shiite parties, but not Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Dawa party. Senior political leaders who announced the alliance in a televised meeting said they still are holding talks with Dawa and other parties. The coalition replaces ...

Lawyers for the U.S. government and Swiss banking giant UBS AG have told a U.S. federal judge in Miami an agreement has been reached in a case involving secret bank accounts and Swiss banking laws. The agreement was announced Wednesday morning during a telephone conference with Judge Alan Gold that lasted just long enough for lawyers to say that a deal had been "initialed," but they indicated it would be a few days before the documents were officially signed. No ...

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Friday stood by South Africa's much-criticized quiet diplomacy with neighboring Zimbabwe. "South Africa is very aware of the challenges in that country," she said, referring to Zimbabwe. "South Africa is deeply involved in trying to complete adherence to the global political agreement." Clinton addressed reporters' questions shortly after meeting with her South African counterpart, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, in Pretoria, South Africa's administrative capital. After last year's disputed elections in Zimbabwe, the parties ...

It was only a few years ago that an up-and-coming member of the House Democratic leadership pointed to a cozy arrangement in the Republican-written Medicare prescription-drug program as a symptom of everything wrong with Washington. The 2003 bill barred the government from negotiating for lower drug prices for its 43 million Medicare recipients. Instead, that task was delegated to private insurers and their agents, whom Democrats argued — and still argue — don't have the muscle to get the steep ...

On July 30, Russian president Dmitri Medvedev sat down for talks with the leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan, two countries that sit in the crosshairs of the U.S.-led war on terror. The meeting with Afghan president Hamid Karzai and his Pakistani counterpart, Asif Zardari, took place in Dushanbe, capital of Tajikistan. Reportedly on the table were plans to beef up trade ties as well as improve cooperation in the fight against Islamist extremism — clear signs, experts say, that ...

A suburban Philadelphia swim club has invited children from a largely minority day-care center to come back after a June reversal that fueled allegations of racism against the club, a spokeswoman said Sunday. The development came during a hastily called Sunday afternoon meeting of the Valley Club in Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania. Club members voted overwhelmingly to try to work things out with the day-care center, which accused some swim club members of making racist comments to black and Hispanic children ...

Polls closed across Indonesia on Wednesday after citizens cast ballots to elect their next president and vice president. Preliminary election results were expected within a few hours, with official results expected no sooner than next week. Indonesia has 175 million registered voters spread over 17,000 islands. It was the country's second direct election since the authoritarian regime of dictator Suharto fell in 1998, in the wake of the Asian financial crisis. Analysts and polls, ahead of the vote, ...

Indonesians head to the polls on Wednesday to elect their next president and vice president -- only the second time such a vote has occurred in the young democracy's history. Three familiar faces are vying for the top spot: incumbent Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono; his vice president, Yusuf Kalla; and former President Megawati Sukarnoputri. Analysts and polls have Yudhoyono -- riding high on the country's economic strength -- widely expected to win a second five-year term. "He has positive global image; ...

Michael Jackson avoided a much-anticipated appearance in London's High Court by reaching an out-of-court settlement with Sheik Abdulla bin Hamad Al Khalifa, the prince of Bahrain, who was suing him for $7 million. "As Mr. Jackson was about to board his plane to London, he was advised by his legal team to postpone his travels since the parties had concluded a settlement in principle," Celina Aponte, Jackson's London-based spokeswoman, said late on Sunday. Jackson was scheduled to testify ...