In brief: U.S. envoy likely to visit N. Korea

SEOUL, South Korea – President Barack Obama’s special envoy on North Korea is likely to visit the communist nation next month for the first nuclear negotiations between the two countries under his presidency, a news report said today.

North Korea recently invited special envoy Stephen Bosworth and chief nuclear negotiator Sung Kim to Pyongyang, and the U.S. government is strongly considering their trip to the North next month, Seoul’s JoongAng Ilbo daily reported.

The U.S. diplomats may be able to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il during the visit, considering Pyongyang’s recent conciliatory attitude, the report said, citing an unidentified high-level diplomatic source in Washington.

The trip would mark the first nuclear negotiations between the U.S. and North Korea under the Obama administration.

Cocaine found inside live turkeys

LIMA, Peru – Peruvian police expecting to find a shipment of cocaine hidden in a crate holding two live turkeys were surprised to discover the drug surgically implanted inside the birds.

Acting on a tip, officers stopped a Turismo Ejecutivo SRL bus outside the city of Tarapoto in the central jungle state of San Martin, officials said Monday.

Police were puzzled when they found the turkeys but no cocaine, Tarapoto’s anti-drug police chief, Otero Gonzalez, told the Associated Press. They then noticed that the birds were bloated.

“Lifting up the feathers of the bird, in the chest area, police detected a handmade seam,” he said.

A veterinarian extracted 11 oval-shaped plastic capsules containing 4.2 pounds of cocaine from one turkey and 17 capsules with 6.4 pounds from the other, he said.

Both turkeys survived the removal.

History textbook omits conquest

MEXICO CITY – A new sixth-grade world history textbook is causing a stir in Mexico because it leaves out any mention of the Spanish Conquest.

Few events have shaped Mexico’s culture, ethnicity and history more than the 1521 conquest.

But it doesn’t appear in the government- published world history text, which ends in the age of exploration with a reference to the rising world powers of Spain and Portugal.

Assistant Education Secretary Fernando Gonzalez told the Mexican newspaper El Universal on Monday there was no intention of covering up Spain’s brutal conquest of indigenous societies. He said middle-school history texts would address the topic.