Expulsions

A few weeks ago, 19 Ecuadorean citizens detained on these world-renowned islands were marched onto a plane and sent back to the continent under armed guard. Their crime? Illegal migration. So far this year, the government has expelled 1,000 of its citizens from the Galapagos -- a living laboratory of unique animal and plant species -- who were there without residency and work permits. It has also "normalized" 2,000 others, in effect giving most of them a year to leave.

Gambia ordered the expulsion of the top United Nations official in the country after she criticized assertions by President Yahya Jammeh that he was curing AIDS patients with herbs, government sources said. Fadzai Gwaradzimba, a Zimbabwean who is the resident coordinator of U.N. operations in Gambia, was given 48 hours to leave the country, the sources said. Gwaradzimba's office declined to comment.

The Navy expelled the former quarterback at the U.S. Naval Academy who was cleared of rape but found guilty of lesser offenses. Navy Secretary Donald C. Winter called Lamar Owens Jr.'s conduct "unsatisfactory" and ordered the 23-year-old to reimburse the school $90,797, or two-thirds of his education expenses. A military jury acquitted Owens in July of raping a female midshipman in her academy room in early 2006.

Fifteen cadets were expelled from the Air Force Academy in a cheating scandal and three others resigned, school commanders said. Thirteen others were placed on probation. The cadets, all freshmen, either confessed or were found guilty by an honor board of sharing answers to a test of knowledge about the Air Force. Officials at the academy near Colorado Springs said the cadets forwarded answers through an Internet social group and private computer messages.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's government ordered the expulsion of four Russian diplomats Monday over the Kremlin's refusal to extradite the key suspect in the fatal poisoning of a former KGB spy. Alexander Litvinenko died Nov. 23 in a London hospital after ingesting radioactive polonium-210. In a deathbed statement, the 43-year-old accused Russian President Vladimir V. Putin of being behind his killing.

Three British journalists have been ordered expelled from the country because their newspaper published an editorial that used a mild expletive in describing President Pervez Musharraf. The Pakistani government gave the journalists 72 hours to leave the country, Pakistan's deputy information minister, Tariq Azim, said Saturday.

An Associated Press correspondent left Ethiopia Sunday under an expulsion order after the government called his reporting "hostile" to its interests. The Ethiopian government in recent weeks has cracked down on other journalists. Independent writers and editors were among 129 people arrested in November and December and charged with treason, genocide and other offenses.

President Hugo Chavez said Thursday that Venezuela was expelling a U.S. Navy officer accused of passing secret information from the Venezuelan military to the Pentagon. He also accused Navy Cmdr. John Correa of encouraging Venezuelan officers to consider overthrowing the government, which weathered a brief coup in April 2002. Chavez warned that he would throw out all U.S. military attaches if further suspected espionage occurred. The U.S.

The parents of a Thousand Oaks middle school student lost their bid Friday to purge their son's academic record of an expulsion he received last fall for inadvertently bringing a knife to school. Jorge and Rose Bautista asked the Ventura County Board of Education to expunge the black mark, arguing that their son Daniel's punishment was too severe.

Mexico City authorities Wednesday lifted a closure order on a Sheraton hotel, a day after they demanded that it be shut amid a dispute over the U.S.-ordered expulsion of a group of Cubans meeting there. "We are confident that in these few hours the hotel has rectified practically all the irregularities," city official Virginia Jaramillo told reporters after hotel managers met with government officials and the local American Chamber of Commerce.