Ukraine

Niger official says no missiles seized DAKAR, Senegal - Niger's minister of defense denied on Friday that his country had seized the surface-to-air missiles Moammar Gadhafi's retreating army had left behind, which military experts now fear are being sold to terrorist organizations. "We have not found any surface-to-air missiles yet," Minister of Defense Mahamadou Karidio told the Associated Press by telephone from Niamey, the capital of Niger. Niger, one of the world's poorest countries, shares a border with Libya.

Two Ukrainian brothers were found guilty Wednesday of running a ring that used Eastern European immigrants as slaves to clean suburban big-box stores. Omelyan Botsvynyuk, 52, and Stepan Botsvynyuk, 36, were on trial for a month in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia on federal charges of conspiring to engage in racketeering and extortion. Both men were found guilty of one count of conspiracy. Omelyan Botsvynyuk was also found guilty of one count of extortion. The jury found Stepan Botsvynyuk not guilty of extortion.

KIEV, Ukraine - Ukraine's former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko was sentenced to seven years in prison Tuesday on charges of abuse of office in signing a gas deal with Russia, a verdict the European Union and the United States condemned as politically motivated. Tymoshenko, the driving force of the 2004 pro-democracy Orange Revolution and now the nation's top opposition leader, denounced the trial as rigged by President Viktor Yanukovych to get rid of a political opponent. The case has galvanized the opposition.

"Band of brothers," the U.S. Department of Justice calls them. But if you're thinking World War II, parachutes behind enemy lines, battlefield heroics - wrong band. These brothers number just five, hail from Ukraine, and stand charged with one of the most insidious crimes in the illegal immigrant underground: human trafficking. Omelyan Botsvynyuk, 52, and Stepan Botsvynyuk, 36, are set to go on trial Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia. Two more are in Canada pending extradition.

KIEV, Ukraine - A Ukrainian court Monday rejected lawyers' requests to free former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko from jail during her abuse-of-office trial, a case that the West has condemned as selective justice. Thousands of supporters and opponents - some claiming they had been paid to show up - broke a police chain outside the security-heavy hearing for the country's top opposition leader. Tymoshenko has criticized the trial as an attempt by President Viktor Yanukovych to bar her from future elections, refusing to rise when addressing the court and routinely insulting the judge.

KIEV, Ukraine - A week of meetings on the world's worst nuclear accident has highlighted a key message: The Chernobyl cleanup will remain expensive and anxiety-provoking for decades. Still, differences over the true consequences of the April 26, 1986, calamity meant that no formal conclusions were issued as the meetings ended Friday. The Ukrainian government organized four days of conferences in the capital, Kiev, to mark the 25th anniversary of the blast that sent radioactive fallout over much of Europe.