Catholic Church officials announced that Fr Thadeus Nguyen Van Ly was released from jail on Friday morning, AFP reported.

President Obama started a three-day visit to Vietnam on Monday.

"Thadeus Nguyen Van Ly has returned to the mother diocese on Friday morning after his years and months in (northern) Nam Ha jail," Hue archdiocese announced.

The archdiocese's website ran several photos of the ageing priest, dressed in a loose white shirt and baseball cap, being welcomed by church members.

Neither church nor government officials were immediately available for comment.

Fr Ly, who is in his early 70s, is often compared to Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi.

Both are veteran dissidents who have spent years in pursuit of greater democratic freedoms.

Fr Ly was jailed three times for a total of 14 years before his fourth and latest imprisonment in March 2007.

This came after he was charged for spreading propaganda against the communist state.

He had been accused of helping to found "Bloc 8406", considered one of the Vietnam's first organised pro-democracy coalitions.

He gained prominence with his anti-government actions, including hunger strikes and several widely circulated missives calling for a multi-party system.

Fr Ly was briefly released from jail in March 2010 to seek treatment for a brain tumour and was placed under house arrest.

He was returned to jail more than a year later, sparking calls from the United States and international rights groups for his release.

Priorities for President Obama's visit to Vietnam are believed to be trade, security and human rights issues.

Several political prisoners remain in jail in Vietnam.

Sources

• AFP
• ABC News
• Image: (Catholic Archdiocese of Hue via AP)

Francesca Immacolata Chaouqui, 33, and Msgr Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda, 54, were arrested by the Vatican Gendarmerie following an investigation.

Their arrests came days before the publication of two books about Vatican finances and associated scandals.

But while the priest was held in a Vatican prison, Dr Chaouqui was released after being detained for a day and a half, as she had reportedly begun to collaborate with the investigators.

Her detention was reportedly in a convent for women religious inside the Vatican, not in a jail cell, as other accounts reported.

America magazine has learned that her rapid release may be connected to the fact that she is two months pregnant.

America reported sources as saying that Pope Francis did not want Dr Chauoqui held in a prison because of her condition.

Dr Chaouqui reportedly asked Pope Francis to pray that she and her husband would have a child.

Msgr Vallejo Balda is in the same prison cell that was occupied by Benedict XVI's butler, Paolo Gabriele, 3 years ago.

After Dr Chaouqui's release, she has maintained her total innocence in conversations with journalists, and on Facebook and Twitter she stated: "I am not a mole. I have not betrayed the Pope. I never gave a page to anybody."

She blames Msgr Vallejo Balda for dragging her into all this.

Both were members of the Pontifical Commission for Reference on the Organisation of the Economic-Administrative Structure of the Holy See (COSEA) set up by Pope Francis in July, 2013, but which is now defunct having completed its work.

The priest was secretary of that commission and she was one of its members.

Both had access to the confidential financial and organisational information that appears in the two books just published.

Since her release, Dr Chaouqui has been interrogated on at least one occasion by Vatican investigators.

A source close to Pope Francis told Italian newspaper La Stampa that "the Holy Father is saddened by the betrayal of the two disloyal collaborators".

On Sunday, Francis said the leaks were "deplorable act that does not help" and "a mistake", but added that he is continuing with reform.

Sources

• America
• The Times
• Vatican Insider
• Catholic News Agency
• Image: Strettoweb

Mary Anne Grady Flores took photos from a road outside Hancock Field Air National Guard Base last year.

About 20 activists took part in the protest on February 13, 2013, which was Ash Wednesday.

Mrs Grady Flores, 57, was under court orders to stay off base property and to stay away from the base commander.

Police said she entered base property, so they arrested her and charged her with disorderly conduct for blocking a roadway.

She was also charged with violating court orders.

Nine people were arrested at the protest.

Before her sentencing, Mrs Grady Flores said she was going to be fine in jail and would find a community of faith there.

In February, Mrs Grady Flores served seven days in jail for a previous arrest at the base.

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I follow his case with interest. Nobody who was at university at the same time as Rick could forget him, in part because he was a top English literature student, in part because of his vocals in local bands, and partly because he was there in the great late 60s rush into dope, which back then was a novelty.

I'm not breaking confidence here, since Rick has admitted to a long-standing use of cannabis.

He has now been jailed twice for drug crimes, has 14 previous drug convictions, and is three months into a two-year sentence for having cannabis to sell, along with having small amounts of cannabis oil, ecstasy and cocaine at his place.

My point is not about him in particular - I'm sorry to see he's in this position - but about the attitudes among middle-class people of that era that surface when they run into difficulties with the police.

They adopt a posture that's part aristocratic disdain, and part disbelief: police exist to hassle other people, surely, not people who've read Dostoevsky and know how to hold a knife and fork. You get this, too, with fraudsters who are suddenly called to account, and with bad drivers.

Perhaps it was this instinctive understanding that made ACT leader Don Brash, keen to slash Government spending, moot legalising cannabis and making dope-dealing OK.

That might be the one politically appealing idea Brash will ever come up with that could attract old stoners, though unfortunately they're the last people who would vote for him.

Rick wants home detention, and who can blame him? He has a music room at home, and creature comforts, and could easily pretend the whole darn court thing had never happened. Prison is not a nice place: he knew that already: its unpleasantness is meant to be its point.

But his arguments could only have been dreamed up by a white middle-class offender who'd woken from a bad dream only to discover he was living it.

No Maori, let's say, the 12 per cent of the population who make up half this country's prison population, would dream of appealing on the grounds - among other things - of not belonging there because you don't get enough sunshine, and you don't like air conditioning.

What made me think about this is Hone Harawira, who snarled about the appalling Maori rate of imprisonment on TV7 the other night. I wonder how successful Maori are at getting home detention.

Harawira is hard to take, but often right.

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• Source: Rosemary McLeod in The Press
• Image: topnews.net.nz