N. Korea seeks U.S. ‘sincerity’
Seoul, South Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong Il told a visiting Chinese envoy that his government will return to six-party nuclear disarmament talks if the United States shows “sincerity,” the communist state’s official news agency said Tuesday.
The announcement – the latest in more than two years of conflicting statements over North Korea’s nuclear program – came less than two weeks after Kim flouted Washington and its allies by saying it had nuclear weapons and would boycott the talks.
“We will go to the negotiating table anytime if there are mature conditions for the six-party talks thanks to the concerted efforts of the parties concerned in the future,” Kim said Tuesday.
U.N. peacekeepers accused of rape
Port-Au-Prince, Haiti The United Nations is investigating a woman’s allegations that she was raped by three U.N. peacekeepers from Pakistan, a U.N. official said Tuesday.
The 23-year-old woman made the report to the police over the weekend, said Damian Onses-Cardona, a spokesman for the 7,400-member U.N. force.
The men said the woman was a prostitute and they paid to have sex with her, he said.
The three Pakistanis were ordered to return from northern Gonaives, where the incident allegedly occurred, and remain in the capital of Port-au-Prince until the investigation is concluded this week, said Onses-Cardona.
Kidney transplant recipient dies of rabies
Berlin A man who received a kidney from a woman who was infected with rabies died Monday in northern Germany, a hospital said, the second death of a patient who was given one of the donor’s organs.
The 70-year-old man was believed to have died of rabies, according to the clinic at Hannoversch Muenden in northern Germany. The patient received the kidney Jan. 1.
A woman who received a lung from the same donor died Saturday. A third patient who also received organs from the 26-year-old woman remains hospitalized in critical condition.
The donor showed no symptoms of rabies at the time of her death, health officials have said. How she contracted rabies remains unclear.
Adoptive parents make appeal to Putin
Moscow A group of 7,000 American families who have adopted Russian children appealed to President Vladimir Putin in an open letter Tuesday to reverse recently introduced legislative and bureaucratic hurdles that have dramatically slowed the foreign adoption of Russian children.
The families also asked him to speak out against Russian politicians in the country’s parliament who they said have been battling international adoption for the last year.
“We ask you to tell Russian politicians who obstruct international adoption that the well-being of children is an important priority for your administration, that you believe each child has a right to find a family and that international adoption is the best option for children who are not adopted by Russian families,” read the letter, which was published in the newspaper Izvestia.
The letter was drafted and paid for by a coalition of American adoption agencies in consultation with the Alexandria, Va.-based National Council for Adoption.