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Gains reported in bid to disarm North Korea

By TIMES WIRES
Published August 18, 2007

AUSTRIA

The U.N. atomic watchdog agency and the U.S. government both reported progress Friday in the international effort to eliminate North Korea's nuclear program. The International Atomic Energy Agency, based in Vienna, said the communist regime is cooperating with U.N. experts overseeing the mothballing of key nuclear facilities, while a senior American diplomat said talks with the communist regime had produced a basic "consensus on the way forward." The two assessments suggested that efforts to do away with the North's nuclear weapons threat remained on track since the process resumed in July, when the reclusive country made good on promises to shut down a plutonium-producing facility.

- Also: The United Nations. warned Friday that North Korea's food supplies will dwindle as a result of record downpours that wracked the country's agricultural heartland. An aid group said the number of dead and missing had risen to more than 300.

CHINA

Flooding traps 172 in coal mine

Flooding set off by torrential rains trapped 172 men deep underground in a coal mine in eastern China, the government's Xinhua News Agency reported today. Rescuers freed 584 other miners Friday evening. The trapped miners' chances of survival were uncertain. In a similar drama two weeks ago, miners trapped for several days emerged after rescuers dug through mud to set them free.

GERMANY

Ex-radical wins parole from prison

A former radical leftist convicted in the murder of a U.S. soldier and bombing of a U.S. military base poses no more danger to the public and will be released on parole, a German court ruled Friday. Eva Haule, 53, a former member of the Red Army Faction, will be released Tuesday after serving 21 years of a life sentence for the 1985 attacks, the Frankfurt state court said. She will be the second member of the group to win parole this year.

Elsewhere

Russia: The British Broadcasting Corp. said Friday that its Russian-language FM broadcasts have been taken off the air by its Moscow distributor, which called the programs "foreign propaganda."

United Nations: The Netherlands has agreed to host the tribunal that will prosecute suspects in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, the United Nations announced Friday.

Britain: British authorities on Friday disclosed four new London locations at which investigators have found the kind of radiation that killed former Russian intelligence agent Alexander Litvinenko last November, bringing the total to 27.

Taiwan: A powerful typhoon slammed into Taiwan today, killing at least one person and forcing thousands to evacuate, officials said.

[Last modified August 18, 2007, 00:54:01]