North Korea sends nuclear envoy to China

North Korea send his top nuclear envoy to Beijing on Tuesday to discuss restarting nuclear disarmament meeting, a day after pledging Pyongyang's commitment to a nuclear-free Korean peninsula.

Kim made the disarmament assurance during a summit Monday with a high-level envoy from Beijing at the start of a week of diplomacy intended to get the six-nation nuclear talks back on track. A high-level U.N. envoy also flew to Pyongyang on Tuesday for a four-day trip.
North Korea walked away from the talks last year during a confrontation over its nuclear and missile programs. The disarmament progression includes the two Koreas, China, Russia, Japan and the United States.

However, has been reaching out to Washington, Seoul and Beijing in recent months, and has taken unsure steps toward discussing how to get the progression going again.

North Korea has made clear it wants U.N. sanctions lifted and a serenity treaty with Washington officially ending the 1950-1953 Korean War before it returns to the disarmament meeting. Pyongyang cites the U.S. military existence in South Korea as its main reason for building up its nuclear weapons program.

Washington says Pyongyang must come back to the talks first before any conversation about political and economic concessions.

UN appeals for $538M in Pakistan charitable aid

Aid groups in Pakistan need nearly $538 million more than the next six months to help hundreds of thousands of people displaced by army clashes against the Taliban, the U.N. said in an international appeal Tuesday.

The appeal comes as much of the world's notice is focused on helping earthquake-devastated Haiti and as security ruins tenancy along Pakistan's northwest border with Afghanistan.
A largely successful army offensive in the Swat Valley and surrounding districts has intended some 1.7 million people have returned home since being displaced last year, according to the U.N. Still, security in parts of the semiautonomous ancestral belt and other areas is weakening, leading to new internal refugees.

An estimated 1 million Pakistanis wait displaced. The majority of the refugees are staying with host families, but tens of thousands are in relief camps.

The U.N. came up with the $538 million outline after assessing the needs and goals of dozens of local and international aid agencies and the Pakistani administration. The biggest chunk of aid they requested, about $195 million, will pay for food for the displaced.

Last year, when the displacement crisis in Pakistan was at its peak, the U.N. and compassionate groups in the country managed to get $485 million of the $680 million they needed, the U.N. said.

The U.N. itself has not escaped the violence in Pakistan. Several of its employees have been killed or kidnapped over the past two years, leading it to suspend long-term progress work in Pakistan's northwest and shift some of its emigrant staff out of the country.

At least 28 Kill in Afghan avalanches

Avalanches on a mountain get ahead of north Kabul have killed at least 28 people, with another 1,500 trapped in their vehicles on snow-blocked roads.

The Afghan Defense Ministry released a statement saying another 70 people have been injured and transported to hospitals as the military and police continued rescue efforts to dig out those trapped in the snow.

The avalanches took place Monday subsequent heavy snows in the Salang Pass that links the Afghan capital with the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.

In a statement, Karzai ordered the ministries of public works, defense and disaster control to "use all possible means to get the roads unblocked and rescue those trapped and stranded in the heavy snow."

About 100 Afghan soldiers were mobilized to join police and others in the rescue hard work, along with four helicopters, a number of ambulances and several bulldozers.
Rescuers worked throughout the night to save more than 200 people.

Military helicopters were tumbling food packages to people jammed on snow-blocked roads.
Earlier, Afghan reports said some 300 cars and buses were trapped on the mountain pass.

China finds 170 tons of infected milk powders

China has found another 170 more tons of infected milk powder in an emergency clearout that has made it increasingly clear many products revealed in the country's 2008 milk scandal were repackaged for sale as an alternative of destroyed.

The increasing number of cases in recent weeks challenges the government's previous promise to renovate its approach to food safety after hundreds of thousands of children in that scandal were dismayed by milk products infected with an industrial chemical. At least six children died.
Contaminated milk products have recently emerged in China's largest city, Shanghai, and in the provinces of Shaanxi, Shandong, Guizhou, Liaoning, Jilin and Hebei.

In the most recent discovery, officials recalled more than 170 tons of milk powder contaminated by the industrial chemical melamine and closed two dairy companies in the northern district of Ningxia, the China Daily newspaper reported Monday.

The report said officials detained 72 tons of the powder but were still looking for the rest, which had been repackaged by the Ningxia Tiantian Dairy Co. Ltd. and sold to factories in the neighboring region of Inner Mongolia and the bustling southern provinces of Guangdong and Fujian.

Instead, it issued guidelines on how to destroy the contaminated products, suggesting they be burned in incinerators or buried in landfills.

First woman president in Costa Rica landslide

Costa Ricans have selected their first woman president as the ruling party candidate won in a landslide after confrontation to continue free market policies in Central America's most stable nation.

With most of the votes from Sunday's election counted, Laura Chinchilla held a 22-point lead over her closest rival. Her 47 percent share of the vote was well beyond the 40 percent required to avoid a run-off.

The closest contender, Otton Solis of the Citizens Action Party, got 25 percent of the votes. He and the other main opponent, Libertarian Otto Guevara, rapidly conceded defeat.

It was unclear, however, whether Chinchilla's National Liberation Party would gain a majority in congress.

Iran official said - increase uranium enrichment

A senior Iranian envoy says he has officially told the U.N. nuclear agency that his country will enrich uranium to high levels.

Ali Asghar Soltanieh says Tehran will begin enriching up to 20 percent from its present stock of lower enriched uranium.

Soltanieh is Iran's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency. He told that the manufacture is meant for fuel for Iran's research reactor, which produces medical isotopes. World powers fear higher enrichment could ease the way for the manufacture of nuclear weapons.

Iran has disregarded five U.N. Security Council resolutions that it freezes its enrichment program.

15 soldiers, 17 injured, 53 rescued - Indian army training center - Kashmir

At least 15 soldiers have been killed and 17 others seriously injured after a massive avalanche hit an Indian army training center at a ski resort township in Indian-controlled Kashmir.

Senior police officer Qayoom Manhas tells 53 troops have been rescued six hours after the speeding mass of snow and ice struck the middle high on a Himalayan slope.

Manhas says rescuers are looking for two more soldiers gone and feared buried under the snow.
The accident occurred near Gulmarg, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) northwest of Srinagar, the main city in Indian Kashmir.