World in brief

U.S. base relocation teams visit Eastern Europe this week

FRANKFURT, Germany - U.S. military experts are traveling to Poland, Bulgaria and Romania this week to look at potential sites for new American facilities in eastern Europe as part of a worldwide redrawing of the U.S. military's structure, officials said Monday.

Pentagon plans have been in the works since last year to cut the number of U.S. troops in Europe and close some Cold War-era bases in Germany in favor of smaller, more limited operations closer to the Middle East and Asia.

The U.S. teams will scout locations in the three former Soviet bloc countries and report to their superiors, an official at the U.S. military's European Command in Stuttgart, Germany, said on condition of anonymity. He declined to give details.

MOSCOW - The mystery over the disappearance of a presidential candidate deepened Monday.

The Moscow's prosecutor's office announced that it had opened a murder investigation in the case of the candidate, Ivan Rybkin, only to have federal prosecutors overrule them and close the case within an hour, saying there was no evidence yet to suggest foul play in his disappearance.

Rybkin, one of five challengers to President Vladimir Putin in the election on March 14, has not been seen or heard from since Thursday night, the police and campaign advisers said.

BEIJING - The World Food Program has suspended rations to 6.5-million famished North Koreans in the middle of a bone-chilling winter because of depleted supplies.

A quarter of North Korea's population, which was receiving the rations, must survive on its own until the end of March, when emergency grain shipments from Russia and the United States arrive, Masood Hyder, the coordinator for the Rome-based agency of the United Nations, said Monday.

Hyder said the suspension of the global food-relief program reflects concern among donor countries about how the Kim Jong Il regime blocks food deliveries from being fully monitored.

Some donors suspect that North Korea's military siphons off the aid.

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