Charges dismissed against Americans

? A Haitian judge said Monday he has dismissed kidnapping and criminal association charges against 10 American missionaries detained for trying to take a busload of children out of the country after the Jan. 12 earthquake.

Judge Bernard Saint-Vil said Laura Silsby, the last of the 10 missionaries jailed in Haiti, still faced a lesser charge for allegedly organizing the effort to transport the 33 children to an orphanage they were setting up in the Dominican Republic.

Silsby faces up to three years in prison if convicted on the remaining charge, the “organization of irregular trips,” from a 1980 statute restricting travel out of Haiti signed by then-dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier.

Drew Culberth, a youth pastor from Topeka, Kan., was among the missionaries who had been detained.