A Russian writer who contradicted some authorities by suggesting that the hijacked cargo ship Arctic Sea was carrying something other than timber was fired after he fled Russia because of threats, he told CNN Friday. Mikhail Voitenko said in multiple media interviews that he caught the first flight to Istanbul, Turkey, this week to escape possible lawsuits or worse for his comments on the Arctic Sea saga. On Friday, he told CNN by cell phone that he had moved from ...

About 20 people were wounded Tuesday when a car bomb exploded near a Buddhist restaurant in southern Thailand, police said.

John Yettaw, the American convicted in Myanmar of illegally entering the country to visit pro-democracy leader and Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, left Thailand Wednesday, authorities and government officials said. Yettaw, a 53-year-old former military serviceman from Falcon, Missouri, was sentenced last week for a May 3 incident when he swam, uninvited, to the house of Suu Kyi and stayed for two days. U.S. Sen. Jim Webb obtained Yettaw's release on Saturday in Myanmar. There Webb met ...

John Yettaw, the American who had been sentenced to seven years of hard labor in Myanmar, was handed over to U.S. Embassy officials in the Southeast Asian nation on Sunday, an information ministry official said. U.S. Sen. Jim Webb obtained Yettaw's release a day earlier. The two are expected to fly to Bangkok, Thailand, aboard a military aircraft sometime Sunday. Yettaw, 53, a former military serviceman from Falcon, Missouri, was sentenced last week for a May 3 incident when he ...

The United Nations Security Council on Thursday expressed "serious concern" over the conviction of Myanmar pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi while the European Union adopted additional sanctions against the nation. "The members of the Security Council express serious concern at the conviction and sentencing of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, and its political impact," John Sawers of Britain, Security Council president for the month of August, told reporters. Members of the council noted that the Myanmar government reduced Suu ...

Last month two famous defendants — one adored, the other despised — appeared in courts nearly 10,000 km apart. Charles Taylor, the former President of Liberia, is being tried by a special tribunal in The Hague for murder, rape, torture and other war crimes allegedly committed during the decade-long conflict in neighboring Sierra Leone. Taylor — known as "Pappy" to child soldiers who, say prosecutors, were abducted, drugged and dispatched to commit atrocities on his orders — used his ...

Padraig Harrington returned to top form ahead of his defense of the PGA Championship with a six-under-par 64 to lead the Bridgestone International. The Irishman has endured a miserable year after reshaping his swing, but his first round showing at Firestone Country Club in Ohio showed his hard work may be paying off. "Compared to the first six months of the year it's obviously my low score of the year, my best score of the year," he told reporters. ...

Shortly after former President Bill Clinton finished having dinner with Kim Jong Il on August 4 in Pyongyang, the North Korean state run news agency issued a release saying that the two men had met, and that Clinton had brought a message to the North Korean leader from President Barack Obama. In a flash, the White House issued its own statement: No, he hadn't. And with that, the questions about the former President's visit to Pyongyang — and ...

Life can be complicated enough for members of the transgender community — the last thing they need is to have to choose between two bathroom doors: male or female. Fortunately for students at the Kampang high school in rural northern Thailand, there's now a third option. Introduced in May, the third bathroom features a symbol on its door of a human figure divided vertically, its blue side wearing pants and its red side sporting a skirt. The Kampang school's principal says he decided to ...

North Korea launched a scathing personal attack on U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday after she likened the leadership in Pyongyang to "small children and unruly teenagers and people who are demanding attention." At a meeting of southeast Asian nations in Phuket, Thailand, a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman blasted Clinton for what he called a "spate of vulgar remarks unbecoming for her position everywhere she went since she was sworn in," according to the state-run KCNA news ...