The Palestinian people are “long overdue” in their quest for an independent state, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said on Friday, ahead of a Palestinian push for statehood in the UN planned for later this month. Ban’s comments came a day after Palestinian activists launched a campaign for the recognition of a Palestinian state in [...]

New York – A New York City resident has been charged with providing material support to a terrorist organization by plotting to travel to Pakistan to join a radical fighting group. Agron Hasbajrami (ah-GRAHN’ hahs-bah-ruh-MEE’) was charged in an indictment unsealed Friday in federal court in Brooklyn. The indictment said he had exchanged email messages with [...]

Washington – Each day, dozens of U.S. intelligence officials crowd around a conference table in a small, windowless room in a government building across the street from a shopping mall in northern Virginia. At the head of the table sits the man who perhaps more than anyone else affects Americans most tangibly in the sprawling [...]

Havana – Hopes that a U.S. government subcontractor jailed in Cuba might soon be freed were dashed when former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said the Cuban government refused to let him meet with the prisoner. In an exclusive interview with The Associated Press, Richardson described 62-year-old Alan Gross as an “American hostage.” He said he [...]

New York – Standard & Poor’s raised Israel’s sovereign credit rating one notch to A-plus on Friday, citing improvements in economic policy flexibility and robust growth. It said the country had weathered the global financial crisis reasonably well, with per capita growth rates averaging 2.4 percent in the past five years. The outlook on the rating [...]

New York – It’s a name inextricably linked with Sept. 11, with huge, catastrophic loss — Cantor Fitzgerald. Of the companies and organizations that lost people that day, none was harder hit than the financial services firm that occupied the 101st to 105th floors of the north tower at the World Trade Center. Out of 960 [...]

Brussels – Almost two years after an HSBC employee handed to French authorities a list of tens of thousands of HSBC’s private banking clients, ricochets from the affair are hitting Antwerp’s diamond community. The list allegedly contains information revealing massive tax evasions. In 2009, HSBC IT employee Herve Falciani handed to French tax authorities a [...]

San Diego, CA – Utility crews brought electricity back to much of California, Arizona and Mexico on Friday, a day after a power outage left millions in the dark, paralyzed freeways and halted flights at San Diego’s airport. Officials, however, warned that the electrical grid was still too fragile and asked residents and businesses to go [...]

Montreal, Canada – The Quebec government has lost the first round of a fight with the Yeshiva Toras Moshe Jewish school, which refuses to follow education ministry guidelines. Quebec Superior Court refused to grant the government an injunction that would have forced the school to stop teaching its students — because it no longer has a [...]

Freeport, ME – Three days after 9/11, Elaine Greene held an American flag above her on a busy street corner in this small Maine town. Since then, she and two other women have waved the flag on the same corner for an hour every Tuesday in honor of America’s service personnel and to show that [...]