COLOMBO, Sri Lanka – The Maldives government says the prosecutor general will appeal the former president’s 13-year jail sentence after finding irregularities in the terrorism case against him. The government statement issued Friday said the prosecutor general found “procedural irregularities, including the violation of some fundamental rights,” in the case …

LOS ANGELES – A Cathay Pacific Boeing 777 bound from Hong Kong to Los Angeles International Airport has diverted to a U.S. air base in the Aleutian Islands. Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor says Flight 884 declared an emergency and landed early Wednesday morning at Eareckson Air Station in …

CUMBERLAND, Md. – A dispute has erupted in Cumberland over the distribution of a brochure that purports to explain the history of the Confederate battle flag in Allegany County public schools. At a closed-door meeting of the school board Tuesday, Cumberland Historic Cemetery Organization President Edward Taylor appealed Superintendent William …

EAST MEADOW, New York – A Michigan man says pictures he found online led him to believe he could be the 2-year-old boy who vanished more than a half-century ago from a bakery on New York’s Long Island. John Robert Barnes of Kalkaska told The Associated Press on Wednesday that …

Pakistan ordered its army to go after the country’s top Taliban commander, a feared Al Qaeda-allied militant whose remote stronghold could prove a difficult test for troops but whose demise would remove a major threat to the country’s stability. The announcement Sunday of the operation in South Waziristan, rumored for …

PORTLAND, Ore. – The holidays may not be so sweet this year. Nestle — which sells nearly all the canned pumpkin in the U.S. — says poor weather hurt its harvest, creating a potential shortage of its Libby’s pumpkin pie products through the holidays. In a statement to customers this …

KABUL – International troops and Afghan police seized 250 tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer — enough to make up to a couple hundred roadside bombs, the Taliban’s most lethal weapon in what has been the deadliest year of the war, NATO announced Tuesday. Separately, video footage emerged of insurgents brandishing …

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Authorities in Ohio say a turkey fryer caused a house to catch fire as the homeowner was preparing a Thanksgiving meal. Columbus firefighters say no one was injured in the fire Thursday. They contained it to the back of the two-story house. The turkey fryer was set …

KABUL – Afghanistan’s election commission canceled Saturday’s presidential runoff and proclaimed President Hamid Karzai the victor of the war-ravaged nation’s tumultuous ballot for another five-year term. Independent Election Commission chairman Azizullah Lodin announced Karzai as the victor during a news conference in Kabul on Monday. President Hamid Karzai had already …

CLEVELAND – Investigators trying to identify the bodies of six women found in the home of a sex offender are focusing the inquiry on eight or nine missing women, the coroner said Monday. It could take days or weeks to identify the bodies using dental records or DNA mouth-swab samples …