Like many flight attendants, William Conn, 30, of Miami, often took advantage of an airline practice called deadheading, in which employees hitch rides to work assigned flights in other cities. For almost a year, dressed in a Pan Am uniform, using an unauthorized ID number and traveling under the name B. Cohen, he jetted around the world on various Pan Am flights, virtually for free. As is customary, he usually pitched in to help the crew and even received letters of commendation from flight attendants and ...

Guns, money, oil, and an ex-spy chief slinking in the shadows: that's what it came down to Wednesday in Qatar's capital Doha when the NATO-led alliance marshaling air strikes on Libya gathered to defend its actions and brainstorm on how to help a ragtag rebel army finally dethrone Colonel Muammar Qaddafi. The coalition dismissed recent criticism and claims of inner discord with an early statement that the "international community remained united and firm in its resolve." The ...

South African President Jacob Zuma landed in Tripoli Sunday to meet with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to discuss a resolution to the ongoing crisis. The United Nations Security Council mandated no-fly zone was briefly lifted in order to allow Zuma and his entourage to arrive directly in Tripoli, the first high-profile delegation from international leaders since the start of the crisis. Meanwhile, other members of the African Union plan to go to the rebel-held capital Benghazi on ...

You know the government's broken when, in the face of tough fiscal times, the President freezes government spending but gives the military a pass. That's because spending on the military and homeland security, following 9/11 and the launch of two wars in its wake, has become sacrosanct. But it's too bad — because there is plenty of money to be saved by lopping off the well-marbled fat that clings to the $700 billion the U.S. spends annually ...

Libya's beleaguered rebels may have gotten a reprieve. The United Nations Security Council not only passed a resolution imposing a no-fly zone over Libya but authorized ground attacks on regime forces besieging the opposition stronghold of Benghazi. Many of the rebel fighters and residents who have fled the front lines to the eastern city of Tobruk in recent days had said that without speedy international assistance, disaster would unfold within the next 24 hours. At the news ...

To the members of the National Security Council, seated around the coffin-shaped table in the Cabinet Room of the White House, the President of the U.S. said with quiet anger: "I've gone far enough. I've had enough of this." And so, in response to a murderous series of Communist attacks against U.S. military forces and installations in South Viet Nam, President Lyndon Johnson gave the orders that on three different days last week sent American and Vietnamese warplanes smashing ...

Violent protests rocked the southern Afghanistan city of Kandahar on Saturday as more than 2,000 people marched against the burning of a Koran by a radical Christian preacher in Gainesville, Fla., two weeks ago. The demonstration left eight dead and 61 injured, Afghan media reported, as protesters set local businesses and cars ablaze. Saturday's events marked the second aggressive protest in Afghanistan in as many days. The first demonstration, on Friday, turned violent when hundreds of men ...

The 23-year-old son of a banker from Nigeria should have tripped every alarm in the global aviation-security system put in place after 9/11: He bought a $2,831 ticket for flights from Lagos to Amsterdam to Detroit and paid for it in cash. He left no contact information with the airline. He checked no bags. Seven months earlier, he had earned himself a spot on a security watch list in Britain after applying for a visa to attend ...

Heavy gun battles raged around the last bastions of Ivory Coast strongman Laurent Gbagbo as the United Nations warned both sides to rein in their soldiers; the countdown to Gbagbo's exit began. The boom of large weapons rang across the city as forces loyal to President-elect Alassane Ouattara targeted the two official presidential residences and the state broadcaster. The state broadcaster changed hands between the pro-Ouattara Republican Forces and Gbagbo's Republican Guards at least twice overnight, while ...

As Muammar Gaddafi's troops closed in on the rebel stronghold of Benghazi on March 15, President Barack Obama put the fate of the city's 1 million residents in the hands of U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice. At a meeting of the National Security Council that afternoon, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, leery of another war in the Middle East, told Obama a U.N.-proposed no-fly zone would not stop Gaddafi from taking the town. Rice, participating via video teleconference ...