For Officer Joshua Vandop, Friday was special on many levels. For one, his graduation from a police training program featured President Obama as the commencement speaker. "To have the president show up for graduation, it's a pretty cool thing," Vandop said. The president's visit came at the end of a nerve-racking month for Vandop and 24 other graduates of the police training program in Columbus, Ohio. A few weeks ago, they all seemed to be headed for the unemployment line. ...

Two former New York Police Department detectives were sentenced to life in prison without parole Friday for operating as Mafia hit men while employed by the NYPD.

An elderly British couple who died together at an assisted suicide clinic in Switzerland died "peacefully" after receiving "wonderful and humbling care" from their doctors, the couple's family said. The 66-year-old Chilean man had an actual fracture of two bones below the knee, but the police suspect that he, or accomplices, may have intentionally fractured it, so that the cocaine cast could be applied. The plan, police say, was to get past police controls because of the leg cast, meant ...

There's little affection in a "Glasgow kiss." Typically preceded by some variation of the growled question "Whit ya [expletive] lookin' at?" the term refers to a vicious headbutt, as delivered all too often in the bars and on the streets of Scotland's largest city. Alcohol-fueled violence and binge-drinking are endemic across Britain, but the phenomenon is especially acute north of the border — and it's getting worse. That's why Scottish ministers this week announced radical plans to curb excess drinking. ...

Ukraine's Security Service launched a raid on the country's state-run gas company Wednesday, searching for documents related to a gas deal with Russia, a spokesman for the company said. A group of about 30 gunmen wearing masks and carrying machine guns entered the offices of Naftogaz and took control of every floor of the company's building in the capital of Kiev, Naftogaz spokesman Valentyn Zemlyansky said. Operatives from the security service then began a search for various company documents, including ...

Correction Appended: March 3, 2009 The call rang out through Washington early on the morning of March 2: the biggest act of civil disobedience against global warming in American history would not, in fact, be snowed out. Environmental groups, led by Greenpeace and the Rainforest Action Network, had enlisted eco-celebrities such as Robert Kennedy Jr. and Bill McKibben and registered more than 2,000 youth protesters from around the country for a march on the coal-fired Capitol Power Plant, which supplies steam ...

Sri Lanka's cricket team returned home to Colombo early Wednesday, as police in Pakistan searched for at least 12 gunmen believed responsible for the attack that left seven people dead. Police in Lahore on Wednesday confirmed six police officers and a driver of a van carrying umpires were killed after earlier reports had put the death toll at eight. Six team members were wounded by glass and shrapnel, and two -- Tharanga Paranavitana and Thilan Samaraweera -- were shot ...

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 ...

Nonnie Dotson, a nurse in the U.S. Air Force, was decompressing from a hard-fought child support battle when she disappeared hundreds of miles from her home base. Dotson, 33, was staying with her brother at his home outside Denver, Colorado, when she vanished on November 19, 2006. She was supposed to meet friends at the mall for a smoothie. She never showed. The single mother and her 16-month-old daughter, Savannah, lived in San Antonio, Texas, where Dotson worked on ...

Bruce Windsor is known as many things: church deacon, soccer coach, father of four. But facing potential financial problems, he's now known as something else: suspected bank robber. Police say the 43-year-old owner of a real estate company walked into the Carolina First Bank in Greenville, South Carolina, late Thursday with a mask and a handgun. In court documents filed Friday, police said he forced two bank employees into an office at gunpoint and demanded money. Police arrived minutes later ...