In the World

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - One of two U.S. Baptist missionaries still held on kidnapping charges in Haiti was released yesterday, but the group's leader remained in custody.

Charisa Coulter was freed more than a month after she and nine other Americans were arrested for trying to take 33 children out of Haiti after the earthquake.

Defense attorney Louis Ricardo Chachoute said she was released because there was no evidence to support the charges of kidnapping and criminal association. She also is diabetic and had medical difficulties during confinement.

Chachoute predicted Laura Silsby, the leader of the Idaho-based missionary group, would be released soon as well.

- AP

MOGADISHU, Somalia - A British yachting couple seized by Somalian pirates and held in separate locations have been temporarily reunited after months apart, a doctor who treated the two said.

Paul and Rachel Chandler were suffering from severe anxiety brought on by their separation and captivity in war-ravaged Somalia, Dr. Abdi Mohamed Elmi Hangul said in an interview Sunday. The two were seized from their yacht in October.

Hangul said the pirates had phoned him Sunday and said the couple had been temporarily reunited.

In talks in London yesterday, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown urged Somalian President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed to press for the couple's release. - AP

JOHANNESBURG - South African officials yesterday announced the nomination of its tourism minister for the top U.N. climate post.

Marthinus van Schalkwyk will be a candidate to direct the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. The current leader of the post, Yvo de Boer, announced his resignation in February and will step down July 1.

Van Schalkwyk was South Africa's former minister for environmental affairs and tourism and is well-regarded in climate-change circles.

His chances of being appointed are bolstered by the high likelihood that South Africa will host U.N. climate-change talks in 2011. - AP

AMSTERDAM - A campaign to give elderly people in the Netherlands the right to assisted suicide said yesterday that it had gathered more than 100,000 signatures, hoping to push the boundaries another notch in the country that first legalized euthanasia.

The signatures are enough to force a debate in parliament, where it is certain to face resistance. Even if widely approved, the proposal would normally go through a lengthy committee process.

Supporters propose training non-doctors to administer a lethal potion to people over the age of 70 who "consider their lives complete" and want to die. The assistants would be certified and ensure patients were not acting on a whim or under depression. - AP