A Michigan teacher's aide says she was suspended for refusing to allow school administrators access to her Facebook account to examine a picture she posted.Kimberly Hester, an aide at Frank Squires Elementary School in Cassopolis, Mich., found herself in trouble with the Lewis Cass Intermediate School District after posting a picture in April 2011 of a co-worker's pants around her ankles and a pai

DAKAR (AP) ― Senegal’s former leader took office in 2000 before thousands gathered at a sports stadium. New President Macky Sall, by comparison, held his short inauguration ceremony Monday in a tent on a hotel lawn.As Senegal faces rising unemployment and frustration with government spending, Sall said he wanted to hold his event “in the simplicity that is called for by the situation in the country.’’Sall has promised that his administration will mark a “new era’’ in Senegal, and Monday’s festiv

A group of sixth-graders scooping trash out of a California lake discovered sunken treasure, including rings, coins and brooches.Richard Bailey, executive director of the Lake Merritt Institute, said the students from the St. Paul's Episcopal School in Oakland were pulling trash out of Lake Merritt Thursday when a girl discovered two bags that were too heavy for her pull out with her net, the San

Syria told international envoy Kofi Annan that its military will withdraw troops and heavy weapons from populated areas by April 10, in what could be a first step toward ending the bloody yearlong conflict, U.N. diplomats said Monday.The announcement came as Syrian troops hunted down activists and destroyed their homes in the country's rebellious areas, and the United States remained skeptical of

Efforts to resolve the two-year-old European debt crisis swung back to world leaders after euro-area policy makers boosted a firewall designed to overcome doubts about their crisis response and to lure additional emergency aid. Finance ministers from the 17-member monetary union unveiled a package over the weekend including 500 billion euros ($667 billion) in fresh bailout funds on top of 300 billion euros already committed to rescue programs, which together topped the symbolic $1 trillion mark.

Thousands of young schoolchildren in southern Andhra Pradesh state will get to use a low-cost electronic educational tablet developed in Singapore when school reopens in June.Called the I-slate, the tablet took the Rice-NTU Institute for Sustainable and Applied Infodynamics (Isaid) in Singapore about two years to develop. The institute is jointly set up by Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University and Houston’s Rice University.Some 50,000 of these devices, each costing about $45, will be used

A passenger plane carrying 43 people crashed in Siberia shortly after taking off Monday morning, and Russian emergency officials said at least 32 were confirmed dead..The ATR-72, a French-Italian-made twin-engine turboprop, operated by UTair was flying from Tyumen to the oil town of Surgut with 39 passengers and four crew.The aircraft went down outside Tyumen, a major regional center in Siberia. T

HONG KONG (AFP) ― Thousands of people in Hong Kong noisily protested on Sunday against the city’s incoming leader and decried Beijing’s alleged interference in the election that propelled him to office.Holding banners and chanting slogans such as “One person, one vote” and “Leung step down,” demonstrators marched through the busy city centre to the office of Beijing’s representative in the semi-autonomous territory.There were chaotic scenes outside the tightly guarded office as police used peppe