A British couple has been detained at Margarita Airport in Venezuela after 24 kilograms of cocaine was allegedly found in their luggage, according to press reports. "This bank does not have any problem, is a healthy financial institution," Edgar Hernandez Behrens, Venezuela's superintendent of banks, said of Stanford Bank Venezuela, the state-run ABN news agency reported. An estimated $2.5 billion to $3 billion has been invested in the bank, he said. The bank recorded "extraordinary withdraws" on Tuesday and Wednesday ...

Politicians and banking regulators across Latin American and the Caribbean called for calm Wednesday after panicked investors pulled their money from banks owned by the Stanford Group, whose owner is accused in a multibillion dollar investment and sales fraud scheme. "This bank does not have any problem, is a healthy financial institution," Edgar Hernandez Behrens, Venezuela's superintendent of banks, said of Stanford Bank Venezuela, the state-run ABN news agency reported. An estimated $2.5 billion to $3 billion has been invested ...

Having just upped the ante in Afghanistan by 17,000 troops, the United States will look for greater commitments from its NATO partners this week, but isn't expecting much of a response. "I think the likelihood of getting the allies to commit significant numbers of additional troops is not very great,' U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on his way to Krakow, Poland. "To give credit where credit is due, the allies have increased the number of non-U.S. troops by about ...

A shootout in a border city that leaves five alleged drug traffickers sprawled dead on the street and seven police wounded. A police chief and his bodyguards gunned down outside his house in another border city. Four bridges into the United States shut down by protesters who want the military out of their towns and who officials say are backed by narcotraffickers. That was Mexico on Tuesday. What is most remarkable is that it was not much different from Monday ...

A federal appeals court panel ruled Wednesday that 17 native Chinese Muslims in military custody at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, cannot be released into the United States. The three-judge panel concluded by a 2-1 vote there is no legal or constitutional authority for the detainees to be immediately freed, even though they are unlawfully detained and no country is willing to accept them. The 17 men are Uighurs, an ethnic group from western China. They are accused of receiving weapons and ...

A Colorado solar-energy company has high hopes for the economic stimulus bill that President Barack Obama will sign Tuesday in Denver. Obama touts that the stimulus bill will help create up to a half a million so-called "green" jobs in the field of alternative energy. Colorado has a growing green energy industry. Executives of AVA Solar, based in Fort Collins, Colorado, are among green energy industry representatives invited to the bill signing. AVA Solar has its plant in Longmont, ...

President Barack Obama has approved a significant troop increase for Afghanistan, Pentagon officials told CNN Tuesday. The new troop deployment is expected to include 8,000 Marines headquartered from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, as well as 4,000 additional Army troops from Fort Lewis, Washington. "This increase is necessary to stabilize a deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, which has not received the strategic attention, direction and resources it urgently requires," Obama said in a written statement. "The Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan, ...

President Obama takes his first foreign trip Thursday, but domestic politics will loom large as he tackles the explosive issue of protectionism in a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the leader of the United States' largest trade partner. At issue is a controversial so-called "Buy American" provision requiring the use of U.S.-produced iron, steel, and other manufactured goods in public works projects funded by the $787 billion economic stimulus bill. Several Democratic-leaning unions and domestic steel and ...

The judge has been dead for 15 years, and no one has been able to find the criminal case file since 2004. Yet a 1977 sex scandal involving famed director Roman Polanski and a 13-year-old girl continues to stalk the courts of Los Angeles. Attorneys for the 75-year-old Academy Award-winning director will ask a judge Tuesday to put the matter to rest once and for all. Lawyers Douglas Dalton and Chad Hummel last month filed a 239-page dismissal "request," citing ...

The Sudanese government and a rebel faction in the country's troubled Darfur region have agreed to embark on talks that many hope will eventually end a six-year conflict that has killed about 300,000 people, Qatari media reported Tuesday. The government and representatives of Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) will sign an initial agreement Tuesday on confidence-building measures, Qatar's official news agency, SUNA, quoted the country's prime minister as saying. The sides will then begin detailed talks in two weeks, Sheikh ...