World datelines

Brazil: Rancher freed

SAO PAULO — A Brazilian court has freed an Amazon rancher accused of masterminding the 2005 murder of a U.S. nun and rain forest activist.

The court says it released Vitalmiro Moura while it considers a habeas corpus petition that would order him brought before a judge.

Moura was convicted in 2007 of orchestrating the murder of Dorothy Stang, a nun from Dayton, Ohio. Stang was shot six times in the jungle city of Anapu, where she had worked to keep ranchers from developing public lands.

As a first-time offender sentenced to 30 years in prison, Brazilian law allowed Moura a second trial, and he was acquitted in 2008.

A court overturned that decision this month, ruling that video evidence his defense had used had been illegally gathered.

Britain: No charges

LONDON — British police released the last of 12 suspects rounded up in a series of dramatic anti-terror raids earlier this month, failing to charge any of the men, authorities said Wednesday.

The news was an embarrassment for British authorities, including Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who claimed at the time of their arrests that police had disrupted "a very big terrorist plot" that had been monitored "for some time."

The arrests were rushed in part because a police commissioner inadvertently exposed details of the operation to a photographer outside the prime minister's office.

Mali: Hostages freed

BAMAKO — Kidnappers on Wednesday released a senior U.N. peace envoy and three other Western hostages, following months of captivity, a Malian official said.

Presidential spokesman Seydou Cissouma said Robert Fowler and his U.N. aide Louis Guay were set free along with two female tourists. Both men are Canadians.

Al-Qaida's North Africa branch had claimed it carried out the kidnapping.

The U.N. staffers were captured in December, while the two women were members of a group of four tourists seized a month later. There was no word on the other two tourists.

Paraguay: Third child?