Two weeks ago, as the prosecution made its final points in his corruption trial, a pale Rod Blagojevich listened nervously as his wife, Patti looked on, sullen and indignant, from the bench, the arms of her brother around her. It was as if they could feel what was coming. On Monday, June 27, the jury returned from 10 days of deliberation and everyone gathered to hear its decision. Blagojevich blew an air kiss to his weeping wife and then clasped his hands as ...

Fireworks lit up the skies of the Yemeni capital of Sana'a on Tuesday night as Yemeni government officials claimed that President Ali Abdullah Saleh, recovering from wounds he sustained in an attack on his palace earlier this month, would be returning to the Yemeni capital on Friday, June 24. The president's supporters made a raucous display of their joy by shooting barrages of AK-47 rounds into the air, similar to their display of support when news of ...

Following the conviction of a few low-ranking soldiers for their roles in the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, Lt. Col. Steven Jordan was reprimanded Wednesday by a 10-member jury after his conviction on only a single charge — failing to obey an order. As a result, he will spend no time in jail, after being cleared of all allegations that he abused prisoners or failed to do his duty as a senior officer at the notorious prison. The ...

"WHAT is bothering me is the question what Christianity really is, or indeed who Christ really is, for us today." So wrote the young Lutheran Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer from his Berlin prison cell in April 1944, one year before he was executed by the SS for complicity in the plots against Hitler's life. It is a question that today—for more complicated reasons—concerns countless thousands of U.S. churchgoers, who see about them a Christianity in the midst of change, confusion and disarray.For Roman Catholics, the religious revolution set ...

Even before Dominique Strauss-Kahn announced from New York's Riker's Island prison on Wednesday that he was stepping down as head of the International Monetary Fund , world powers were already jostling over who could replace him. Indeed, since Strauss-Kahn's arrest last Saturday on charges of attempted rape, European officials have been swift to argue that Europe should maintain the hold it has had on the IMF's top job ever since the Washington D.C.-based organization was created in 1945. Europeans, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, say ...

The sentence in the courtroom that day in June 1964 was life in prison. The verdict of history will hardly judge Nelson Mandela a common criminal. Despite the government's determination to lock him away for good and crush his liberation movement, the unrelenting crusade to abolish apartheid that he waged from a prison cell over the decades made him the supreme symbol of the black struggle in South Africa. At 4:15 p.m. local time on Sunday, Feb. 11, Nelson Mandela ...

Wars look better after 40 years, when the old men who were soldiers forget how frightened they were. Perhaps it is merely that survival itself takes on a golden haze: we were being shot at, but we were young, and the bullets missed. Even so, it seems strange that anyone would look back fondly at time spent as prisoner or guard in a military prison. "Why would they do this for us?" wondered Gerhardt Clauss, 61, a former German infantryman ...

American soldiers often have a tough time with Arabic names, so to guards, he was just "Gus.'' To the world outside Abu Ghraib prison, he became an iconic figure, a naked, prostrate Iraqi prisoner crawling on the end of a leash held by Private Lynndie England, the pixyish Army Reserve clerk who posed in several of the infamous photographs that made the name Abu Ghraib synonymous with torture. Now, it emerges, there may be another dimension to Gus' story and ...

The Taliban executed a daring prison break in Kandahar early Monday morning, when at least 476 political prisoners and another 125 other inmates escaped through a 1,050 ft. long tunnel, U.S. Army sources based in the Arghandab River Valley, just north of the restive city, told TIME. The escape threatens security gains made over the winter, coming just weeks before the start of the traditional spring fighting season. Indeed, 60 of the escapees are believed to be ...

More often than not, dictators, like mafia dons, can never retire. It's a rare strongman who can avoid an assassination, coup or revolution and fade into the sunset on his own terms rather than with a prison term. Yet according to members of Burma's newly inaugurated government, Senior General Than Shwe, who ruled the impoverished Southeast Asian country since 1992, has hung up his epaulets and handed over power to chosen successors. Few Burma watchers, and few ...