Embassy Staff

Family members of the U.S. Embassy staff returned for an emotional reunion today, more than two months after their diplomatic housing compound came under Chinese artillery fire and they were forced to leave the country. U.S. Ambassador James Lilley and staff members waving American flags and clutching bunches of flowers waited in the arrival lounge of Beijing Airport for a United Airlines flight from Tokyo carrying the first 31 dependents of 260 relatives returning to Beijing.

LONDON - The British Foreign Office announced Tuesday that all embassy staff in Yemen had been temporarily evacuated because of "increased security concerns. " The foreign office also advised against all travel to Yemen, where "the situation remains volatile with continuing unrest and violent clashes. " "There is a high threat from terrorism throughout Yemen," the foreign office said. "Due to increased security concerns, all staff in the British Embassy have been temporarily withdrawn and the embassy will remain closed until staff are able to return.

The State Department ordered the families of U.S. Embassy staff and some nonessential embassy workers to leave Haiti because of recent violence in the Caribbean nation's capital. The order was issued after an unidentified man fired gunshots at an embassy van in Port-au-Prince on Wednesday and amid ongoing violence in the poor nation. "No one was injured [in Wednesday's attack]. We are working closely with the Haitian police to investigate," embassy spokeswoman Mara Tekash-Ball said.

Jenny and Jason Messam couldn't be more different: She is white and Jewish; he is black and Christian. At 38, she is 15 years older. There is one other important difference: Jenny is American, and Jason is Jamaican. They married in January 2010, and Jason applied for a U.S. visa a few months later, hoping to join his wife in Los Angeles. Immigration officials in the U.S. initially approved the petition. But workers at the U.S. Embassy in Jamaica were suspicious and, after interviewing the couple and sifting through phone records, pictures, emails and other documentation, they decided that the marriage was probably a fraud.

U.S. Army helicopters evacuated about a dozen of the 37 Americans at the U.S. Embassy in East Beirut on Friday during a lull in three days of heavy fighting for control of the area near the embassy. As the Americans were flown to Cyprus, the Lebanese army and Christian militiamen fought scattered battles, but a fragile cease-fire appeared to hold in most of East Beirut, where the fighting has killed 60 people.

The Soviet Embassy evacuated 135 dependents and non-essential staff members Friday in response to threats of a suicide bomb attack that followed the abduction of four embassy personnel. A Soviet diplomat evacuated to Damascus said: "We know who the kidnapers are. . . . We will see they pay . . . and very dearly." The four men were kidnaped last Monday and one was found two days later in a West Beirut garbage dump, shot through the head.

In moves that will seriously hamper development and famine relief programs in sub-Saharan Africa, the staffs of at least five U.S. embassies in the region have been wholly or partially cut back because of security concerns related to the Persian Gulf War. In at least one case, Tanzania, the State Department has ordered an evacuation of all non-essential embassy personnel and dependents because authorities received "specific and hard information about Iraqi-sponsored terrorism" threats to U.S.

Three Cubans who camped out in the West German Embassy in Havana for four days demanding that embassy staff help them emigrate to the United States have left the embassy, diplomatic sources said today. The three, two men and a woman, burst into the mission on Monday. An embassy official referred all queries to the Foreign Ministry in Bonn. It was unclear whether the three had left voluntarily, with police or under a Cuban government guarantee.

An Al Qaeda affiliate claimed responsibility for a shooting attack on the Israeli Embassy, saying it was retaliating against Israeli policies in the Gaza Strip, an Arab TV station reported. At least one gunman opened fire in the capital, Nouakchott, setting off a gun battle with guards that wounded three bystanders. No embassy staff were hurt. Al Jazeera reported that Al Qaeda in Islamic North Africa had issued a statement saying it had carried out the attack.

The State Department, responding to complaints that it was slow to react to the violence in China, said Thursday that U.S. Embassy staff members in Beijing did "their damnedest" to evacuate Americans. "The perception is certainly there that the U.S. Embassy in China did not anticipate and, therefore, was not prepared to deal adequately with this crisis in China. We should have known!" California Rep. Mervyn M. Dymally (D-Compton), chairman of a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee, said at a hearing.

Guerrilla fighters set off bombs in central Kabul and fired toward the U.S. Embassy from atop a nearby building under renovation, the local Afghan television channel Tolo reported. The explosions erupted early in the afternoon in Kabul's New Mikrorayon neighborhood, and gunfire could be heard an hour later, according to Tolo and residents reached by phone. An unknown number of gunmen rushed into an empty building that overlooks the U.S. Embassy and the nearby headquarters of the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force for Afghanistan, Tolo and the Pajhwok news agency reported.

As the events leading up to World War II go, Franklin Roosevelt's 1933 appointment of a naïve history professor as ambassador to Germany — and the professor's decision to take his adventurous adult daughter with him — rank pretty low in importance. But in these lives, Erik Larson, author of "The Devil in the White City," finds a terrific storytelling vehicle, as William E. Dodd and his daughter, Martha, are initially taken with Adolf Hitler and his reinvigoration of Germany, and then slowly come to realize that nothing would stop Hitler from waging war and seeking to wipe out Europe's Jews.

Surely a screenplay is already in the works. An American diplomat guns down two men in broad daylight in Lahore, Pakistan. The diplomat, who secretly works for the CIA, is apprehended and turned over to the local police. In his car, according to news reports, is a Glock 9-millimeter handgun, 75 rounds of ammunition, a global positioning system device, a survival kit and a satellite phone. As U.S. officials from the president on down press for his release, he is held in a Pakistani jail, his food sniffed by dogs for fear he will be poisoned.

The U.S. Embassy authorized nonessential staff and family to leave Sudan, saying protests against the indictment of the country's president by the International Criminal Court increased the danger of anti-Western violence. The Sudanese government expelled aid groups from the Darfur region. The embassy said it had received information on terrorist threats aimed at American and European interests in Sudan. It gave no details.

Belarus declared most U.S. Embassy staff members personae non gratae and ordered them to leave the country. The United States is one of the fiercest critics of the former Soviet republic's authoritarian president. The U.S. ambassador left last month after Belarus pulled its ambassador from Washington. The embassy in Minsk, under pressure from authorities, cut its staff by half, reflecting similar cuts made by the Belarusian Embassy in Washington. Charge d'affaires Jonathan Moore, the top U.S. diplomat in Belarus, said only six officials will remain at the embassy after the latest order.

President Evo Morales declared a U.S. Embassy security officer an "undesirable person" after reports that the officer asked an American scholar and 30 Peace Corps volunteers to pass along information about Cubans and Venezuelans working in Bolivia. It was not immediately clear whether Morales intended to seek the expulsion of the official, Vincent Cooper, who according to the U.S. Embassy was recalled to Washington for consultations. Embassy spokesman Eric Watnik insisted that no embassy employee had asked the scholar or Peace Corps volunteers to participate in gathering intelligence.

President Evo Morales declared a U.S. Embassy security officer an "undesirable person" after reports that the officer asked an American scholar and 30 Peace Corps volunteers to pass along information about Cubans and Venezuelans working in Bolivia. It was not immediately clear whether Morales intended to seek the expulsion of the official, Vincent Cooper, who according to the U.S. Embassy was recalled to Washington for consultations. Embassy spokesman Eric Watnik insisted that no embassy employee had asked the scholar or Peace Corps volunteers to participate in gathering intelligence.

"Concerns Grow About U.S. Military Aid to Colombia" (Aug. 17) quotes U.S. officials denying any interest or need for a U.S. invasion. But what are they to say, "Yes, we maintain an option to invade a sovereign nation"? The U.S. is already involved in Colombia. But not in stopping the drug trade exclusively, as government officials claim. The U.S. government clearly is involved in tracking leftist guerrillas, as it does in Mexico and has done in virtually all nation states of the world.

An Al Qaeda affiliate claimed responsibility for a shooting attack on the Israeli Embassy, saying it was retaliating against Israeli policies in the Gaza Strip, an Arab TV station reported. At least one gunman opened fire in the capital, Nouakchott, setting off a gun battle with guards that wounded three bystanders. No embassy staff were hurt. Al Jazeera reported that Al Qaeda in Islamic North Africa had issued a statement saying it had carried out the attack.

Sherrie Saadi, her face reddened by frustration and a day in the sultry Lebanese heat, didn't know where she would go for the night Thursday after American Embassy personnel turned her away and said she would have to return in the morning. Along with her two daughters, the San Antonio nurse had been told only minutes before that the evacuation ship was full.