Americans Abroad

ONE of the most popular movie stars in South Korea admits he speaks Korean like a 12-year-old. Confesses he wouldn't be able to handle a Korean-language script and isn't completely comfortable expressing emotions in a Korean way. Says the nature of Korean family relationships still eludes him. Fortunately for Daniel Henney -- born in the U.S.

A Colombian police officer who fled to freedom after eight years as a hostage said leftist rebels held him with three American military contractors and former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt. Jhon Pinchao Blanco escaped the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, near the southeastern town of Mitu. He walked for 17 days in the jungle before running into a narcotics patrol, said police spokesman Sgt. Alberto Cantillo.

An Iranian American academic who works at a Washington institute is being held in prison after being prohibited from leaving Iran for more than four months, the institute and her husband said. Haleh Esfandiari, director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, was sent Tuesday to Evin prison after appearing at the Intelligence Ministry for questioning, the center said. Iran has not confirmed that it is detaining Esfandiari.

Five Americans who were detained on Mt. Everest by Chinese security guards after calling for Tibetan independence and protesting the Beijing Olympics said they feared for their lives and were deprived of sleep, food and water. The members of Students for a Free Tibet arrived in Katmandu after being detained for three days. China's plans to take the Olympic torch to the top of Mt. Everest is seen by some as a way for the government to underscore its claims to Tibet.

A tour group of U.S. senior citizens killed a Costa Rican mugger by breaking his neck after he pulled a gun, a local police official said Thursday. The cruise ship passengers told police they jumped on Wagner Segura, 20, to defend themselves when he pointed a .38-caliber revolver at them Wednesday near the Caribbean port of Limon, regional police director Luis Hernandez said. One of the dozen tourists, a retired Marine about 70 years old, reportedly put Segura in a headlock.

Three American women were kidnapped in the West Bank city of Nablus and released later in the evening, Palestinian security officials said. A man identifying himself as Hadi Saud said he was the kidnapper. He demanded to be given a job in the Palestinian security forces and medication for a shooting injury. He provided no proof that he had kidnapped the women. The three arrived unharmed at the office of the governor of Nablus. Two were identified as Janet Miller and Gillian Rose, both 26.

On their first date, Michael Hastings and Andrea Parhamovich met for milkshakes. Fifteen months later, she followed him to Iraq. Hastings hoped they would spend their lives together. But on Wednesday, Parhamovich died in a hail of bullets, ambushed outside a Sunni Arab political office in Baghdad. Sunni Muslim insurgents linked to Al Qaeda in Iraq claimed responsibility Thursday for the attack that took the lives of the 28-year-old and three bodyguards -- a Hungarian, a Croat and an Iraqi.

An American woman working for a U.S. nonprofit organization in Iraq to help strengthen the fledgling government was among four people killed Wednesday in a roadside ambush. The woman, whose name was withheld pending notification of her family, worked for the National Democratic Institute, a Washington organization that advises political parties around the world.

The government enacted a law that requires visiting U.S. citizens to be fingerprinted upon arrival, an official said. Conservatives drafted the law in retaliation for a U.S. measure requiring fingerprinting of visitors from Iran and other countries, which was implemented after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had opposed the bill, saying, "We do not have a problem with American people. We oppose only the U.S. government's bullying and arrogance."