House Arrest

A Los Angeles prosecutor urged a judge on Friday to deny Roman Polanski's request to be sentenced in a three-decade-old child-sex case without surrendering to U.S. authorities. In papers filed in Superior Court, Deputy Dist. Atty. David Walgren wrote that sentencing in absentia was "absolutely inappropriate" given Polanski's continued refusal to return to the United States. Polanski, "as a fugitive and convicted child rapist, must not be permitted to instruct this court how to proceed."

Sherry Johnston is back in her Wasilla home after a judge agreed to let her serve her three-year sentence with an ankle-monitoring device, according to her attorney. Johnston is the mother of Levi Johnston, the father of former Gov. Sarah Palin's grandson, Tripp. She was sentenced last month to jail, to be followed by three years' probation, for dealing the prescription painkiller OxyContin. She had been jailed at Hiland Mountain Correctional Center in Eagle River, Alaska, since August.

It'd be hard to find an isolation as splendid as this one. The mountains are swathed in snow, the trees are flecked with white and the ski lodges are getting ready for high season. Film director Roman Polanski traded prison for a veritable winter wonderland Friday as he began an indefinite period of house arrest up in the Swiss Alps. Instead of a jail cell, Polanski now has free run of his three-story villa here in Gstaad. Instead of fellow inmates, the people around him include his wife and their two children.

Fighting resumed Saturday in northeastern Myanmar between government troops and an ethnic rebel militia, in instability that has led thousands of refugees to flee into nearby China. At least one person was killed and dozens injured in a bomb blast near the border. Aung Din, executive director of the U.S. Campaign for Burma, said Myanmar's military regime has attacked Kokang militia members in the area along the border with China with tanks, artillery and up to 7,000 troops, prompting many to take refuge in southern China and surrender their weapons to Chinese authorities.

Over the objections of law-enforcement organizations and Republican legislators, the state Senate this afternoon approved a plan to reduce the state's prison population by 37,000 inmates over two years. The proposal, supported by Democrats and the governor, now heads to the state Assembly for a vote planned for later today. The controversial proposal would reduce the prison population through such measures as allowing thousands of inmates to serve their time under house arrest during the last year of their sentence, easing penalties for some nonviolent crimes and expanding opportunities for inmates who complete rehabilitation programs to reduce their time in prison.

A military court in Myanmar today declared pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi guilty of violating the terms of her house arrest and extended her sentence by a year and a half -- well past the date for national elections scheduled for 2010. Thousands of supporters and security personnel gathered outside the courtroom at Yangon's Insein Prison for the culmination of the stop-start trial that has drawn harsh criticism from Western governments, rights groups and the United Nations.

A Myanmar court convicted pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi today of violating her house arrest, but the head of the military-ruled country said that she could serve a 1 1/2-year sentence under house arrest. The court initially sentenced Suu Kyi to three years in prison. But after a five-minute recess, the country's home minister entered the courtroom and read aloud a special order from junta chief Than Shwe. The order said that Than Shwe was cutting the sentence in half to 1 1/2 years and that it could be served under house arrest.

A court's decision Friday to postpone the much-awaited verdict in a politically sensitive case against opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi fits into a broader pattern of Myanmar's military rulers using timing, leverage and blunt force in the interest of political survival, analysts said. Suu Kyi, 64, faces up to five years in prison on charges of harboring an American who swam across a lake in May and stayed for two days at her home, where she is under house arrest.

Iran's capital erupted in violence and civil disobedience for a second day Sunday, as protesters angered by what they consider rampant vote fraud in Friday's presidential election hurled rocks, set fire to storefronts and shouted anti-government slogans. As security forces fought off the demonstrators, an assertive President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad defended his government- certified victory as the legitimate will of the people and derided the demonstrators as unimportant.

Huge swaths of the Iranian capital erupted in fiery riots that stretched into the early hours today as hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared victory in his quest for a second term amid allegations of widespread fraud and reports that his main challenger had been placed under house arrest.