Highway planned on Mt. Everest

BEIJING -- China will build a $20 million blacktop highway on Mount Everest as part of the route for the Olympic torch relay, state media reported today. Xinhua News Agency said the construction would turn a rough, 67-mile road stretching from the foot of the mountain to a base camp at 17,060 feet into a paved "highway fenced by undulating guardrails." Mount Everest, the world's tallest mountain, is 29,035 feet tall. Construction will start next week and take about four months. In April, organizers for the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics announced ambitious plans for the longest torch relay in Olympic history -- an 85,000-mile, 130-day route that would cross five continents and scale Mount Everest. Taking the Olympic torch to the top of the mountain is expected to be one of the relay's highlights. (AP)

SOUTH KOREA

SEOUL -- After months of stalled negotiations between North Korea and the international community, the UN nuclear watchdog said yesterday that it will send a team to Pyongyang next week to discuss how the agency's inspectors will verify the shutdown of the country's nuclear reactor. The visit announced by the International Atomic Energy Agency is the first concrete step toward North Korea's nuclear disarmament after a financial dispute delayed the process for over a year. Russia's Interfax-China news agency reported that North Korea plans to shut down its Yongbyon nuclear reactor in July. (AP)

Germany

BERLIN -- A tour bus crashed on a highway near the eastern German city of Magdeburg yesterday, killing 13 elderly passengers and injuring 31 people, police said. The bus was carrying a group of senior citizens to Dresden and had about 48 people, all adults, aboard. Police said some of the injuries were serious. (Reuters)

Greece

ATHENS -- The owners, operator, and captain of a cruise ship that sank off the island Santorini two months ago were fined $1.57 million yesterday for polluting the Aegean Sea. The Sea Diamond leaked an estimated 300 tons of fuel. Nearly 1,600 people, most of them Americans, were evacuated from the Cypriot-owned ship on April 5, but two French tourists are missing and presumed drowned. The ship sank the next day, with about 450 tons of fuel and lubricants in its tanks. (AP)

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday signaled the Bush administration's support for Pakistan's struggling leader, but expressed worry about the country's rising violence and called for stronger rights for opposition groups. Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf faces the biggest political crisis of his eight-year rule, with thousands demanding that he relinquish power. The United States has been criticized for supporting Musharraf, who seized power in a 1999 coup and controls the military at the expense of democracy in Pakistan. Rice said the United States is " continuing to press for openness in Pakistan, for the rights of opposition in Pakistan, and for free and fair elections." (AP)