Talks set with North on naval protocol

SOUTH KOREA

SEOUL -- South and North Korea agreed yesterday to hold military talks on the level of generals for the first time in nearly two years, and the South said the discussions would focus on preventing naval clashes. South and North Korea fought deadly gun battles in 1999 and 2002 near their western maritime border, where fishing boats from the two rivals operate along the poorly marked sea frontier. The talks will be held this month or next in Panmunjom. (AP)

YEMEN

23 Qaeda suspects reportedly escape jail
SANAA -- Twenty-three suspected Al Qaeda members broke out of a prison in this Yemeni capital yesterday, a state-run website said. The site quoted unnamed sources as saying the group escaped from a central prison run by the state security forces. Yemeni officials had no immediate comment. Yemen, the ancestral home of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, joined the US-led war on terrorism after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. (Reuters)

UNITED NATIONS

Groundwork is laid for mission to Darfur
The Security Council approved a first step yesterday toward sending United Nations peacekeepers to Sudan's violent Darfur region. It directed top UN officials to draw up a range of options for the operation, in consultation with the African Union. The 15 council members said they looked forward to a decision by the AU, which has 7,000 monitors and soldiers in Darfur, to hand over its operation to the United Nations. No decision is expected before March. (Reuters)

MEXICO

Suspect said to traffic cocaine by truckload
MEXICO CITY -- Mexican police have arrested a man accused of smuggling more than two tons of cocaine a month into the United States in tractor-trailers. Attorney General Daniel Cabeza de Vaca said federal agents detained Oscar Arreola, who is also wanted in the United States, in the northern state of Coahuila on Thursday. Arreola escaped arrest in 2004. (Reuters)

COSTA RICA

In wake of scandals, polls favoring Arias
SAN JOSE -- Costa Rica, long seen as Central America's most stable and prosperous country, has been rocked by corruption scandals, raising the election prospects for a popular former president and Nobel laureate. Polls indicated that Oscar Arias, president from 1986 to 90, was favored in tomorrow's presidential election. The scion of a wealthy coffee-farming family, Arias won the 1987 Nobel Peace Prize for helping to end civil wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua. (AP)

CANADA

Former Vatican officialsought in abuse caseTORONTO -- An arrest warrant has been issued for a retired Vatican official accused of sexually abusing a 12-year-old altar boy as a parish priest in Canada, police said yesterday. Monsignor Bernard Prince, 71, once the secretary general for the Vatican's Pontifical Society for the Propagation of the Faith, is now retired in Rome. The alleged victim, now in his 50s, said he was molested by Prince in Upper Ottawa Valley in the 1960s. (AP)

Lack of ice imperilsseal pups; 1,500 die OTTAWA -- About 1,500 seal pups were drowned by a tidal surge off Canada's east coast this week after a lack of ice cover forced their mothers to give birth on a small island, environment officials said yesterday. The mother seals frantically tried to push their tiny pups back onto land as they floundered in the storm-tossed water, witnesses said. The gray seals went to Pictou Island to give birth because of a lack of ice in the Northumberland Strait. (Reuters)