Americans Abroad

Expatriate Americans favored Dukakis for the Democratic presidential nomination on Tuesday as Democrats living abroad voted in a special primary in London. According to results announced by the Democratic Party Committee Abroad (DPCA) in London, Dukakis won 41.5% of some 2,400 votes cast by U.S. citizens living in 39 countries throughout the world.

Americans are dusting off their passports and seeing the world in big numbers. In the first two months of 2012, 8.1 million U.S. citizens traveled abroad, a 6% increase over the same period in 2011, according to data released Wednesday by the U.S. Office of Travel & Tourism Industries. Europe remains a popular destination for Americans, with travel numbers up 9% in the first two months of the year. But the biggest increases in foreign travel were to Central America (up 25%)

Number of Americans living in European Community nations (excluding Denmark and Luxembourg) in 1988: 1,390,000. Source: State Department Note: Figure excludes Defense Department military personnel but includes their family members and Defense Department noncombattant personnel.

According to media reports, the United States has taken the apparently unprecedented step of authorizing the "targeted killing" of one of its citizens outside a war zone — though the government has not officially acknowledged it. Unnamed intelligence and counter-terrorism sources told reporters that the Obama administration had added Anwar al Awlaki, a Muslim cleric born in New Mexico, to the CIA list of suspected terrorists who may be...

Americans overseas marked the Fourth of July with Big Macs and fries in Beijing, California champagne in Moscow and beer and wurst in Frankfurt. In Manila, anti-American militants observed the day by burning the U.S. flag. A crew from McDonald's in Hong Kong flew to China for the occasion and prepared the coveted burgers and fries on the U.S. Embassy grounds in a tradition begun in 1983.

The State Department issued a warning Wednesday to U.S. citizens abroad to beware of possible anti-American violence worldwide because of recent events in the Middle East and elsewhere. An announcement listed as reasons for caution the convictions this month of two foreigners in U.S. courts for acts of violence, guerrilla attacks in Pakistan and Egypt and "the general situation in the Middle East."

Ann Brandt, a 66-year-old fiction writer in Mexico, last cast a presidential ballot for John F. Kennedy in 1960. Roxanne Bachmann, 52, a voice-over artist in Spain, has never voted in her native America. Nor has David Stern, a 38-year-old graphic designer who moved to Israel two decades ago. But all three U.S. citizens and hundreds of thousands of others who live abroad have demanded absentee ballots for the Nov.

Duane Catton, an American who has worked here for five years, is window-shopping with his wife and two young daughters at some of Rome's fanciest boutiques. They dare not venture inside to actually buy something. A scarf would cost him $200, a simple gray sweat shirt $100, and some lines of jeans more than $100. That's because Catton would have to pay in Italian lira, but Catton's paycheck comes in dollars and they're worth fewer lira these days.

Sort-of fresh air drifted into Bob Shacochis' room at the Century Plaza through terrace doors propped open by his love for cigarettes. His laptop lay at the ready on a table nearby, evidence that only moments before he'd been dissecting his 17-year sojourn with a woman known as Catfish--Miss Fish on second reference. His T-shirt blared the words Bad Behavior , the kind of giddy legend that made all 41 years of him erupt into giggles. Not exactly your typical CIA agent, no?

In a demonstration that the U.S. presidential campaign reaches around the globe, more than 70 Democratic activists, representing Americans living in 30 countries, met in Toronto on Saturday to select delegates to the party's national convention in Chicago this summer. Delegates from the organization Democrats Abroad will have but nine votes at the Aug. 26-29 convention, but that didn't dim enthusiasm here.

Good-government groups and lobbyists like to give letter grades to politicians, but when it comes to President Obama as he marks the end of his first full year in office, we can only assign him an incomplete. Contrary to the expectations of some who voted for him, Obama has not established world peace, ended discrimination or wiped out poverty. Moreover, a man whose campaign hammered the theme of "change" hasn't changed all that much. Notwithstanding a significant rally on Wall Street, the economy isn't in much better shape than it was a year ago, and joblessness has gotten worse.

They were aware of the dangers. Agustin Roberto "Bobby" Salcedo and his wife, Betzy, knew that this town, like much of Mexico, was no longer the tranquil spot it had been. "I've been coming regularly," Salcedo's widow said Saturday of her hometown. "We knew how bad it had become." And yet, the Salcedos ventured out for a few beers the night before New Year's Eve. "We were just going out with a group of friends," Betzy Salcedo said, speaking slowly and casting her eyes downward.

It is a worrisome first: an American accused of going to Europe to plot a terrorist attack there. Recent arrests in Chicago underscore a growing concern among Western officials about the threat posed by U.S. militants who take advantage of their passports to travel easily around the world on violent missions. "We never thought it could be persons from the U.S. coming here to commit attacks," said Hans Jorgen Bonnichsen, a former chief of Denmark's police security intelligence service.

Hollywood may be in for tighter government scrutiny of its overseas operations. Producers Gerald and Patricia Green were found guilty late Friday on charges of bribery and money laundering related to their running of a local film festival in Thailand, a decision that experts say could lead to further investigation into the huge amounts of business film studios do overseas. The two were convicted of conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, eight counts of violating the act and seven counts of money laundering.

Jerry Royster isn't sure whether to laugh or cry: The umps just don't speak his language. Every time he races out of the dugout to argue a play, he has to bring along an interpreter. Last year, the former Dodgers infielder took the helm of this city's wildly popular Lotte Giants, becoming Korea's first foreign manager. From opening day, he was a stranger in a strange baseball land.

The government does not need a search warrant when it taps the phones or checks the e-mails of suspected terrorists who are outside the U.S., even if Americans may be overheard on the calls, a special intelligence court ruled in an opinion released Thursday. The decision confirms what Bush administration officials and some legal experts have long argued. Although the Constitution protects the privacy rights of Americans against "unreasonable searches and seizures," this principle does not bar U.

Bills to end the $70,000 income tax exemption for Americans abroad were introduced in both houses of Congress. Rep. Joe Kolter (D-Pa.) issued a statement saying his bill would save the U.S. Treasury $1.2 billion the first year and $6.7 billion over the next four years. A similar bill was introduced by Sen. William Proxmire (D-Wis.). K1869378661increased from $20,000 to $70,000 to encourage more Americans to work abroad and sell more American products.

Alone in a jail in a foreign country, frightened and confused, unable to understand the language, culture or complicated court system, distrustful of their attorneys and kept from their family--so run the emotions of hundreds of immigrants detained in the U.S. dragnet since the Sept. 11 attacks. So it also has gone for thousands of Americans.

U.S. intelligence analysts eavesdropped on personal calls between Americans overseas and their families back home and monitored the communications of workers with the Red Cross and other humanitarian organizations, according to two military linguists involved in U.S. surveillance programs. The accounts are the most detailed to date to challenge the assertions of President Bush, CIA Director Michael V.

Tuesday's execution of Jose Medellin, a Mexican citizen who was convicted of the 1993 rape and murder of two girls in Texas, ended the life of a vicious criminal. But it also flouted a treaty signed by the U.S. that will now offer less protection to Americans arrested and imprisoned abroad -- unless Congress acts. Medellin was one of 51 Mexican nationals on death row in the United States who weren't informed upon their arrest of their right to meet with consular officials from their home country, a violation of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations ratified by the U.S. in 1969.