Food prices imperil progress, UN says

ACCRA - Higher food prices risk wiping out progress toward reducing poverty and, if allowed to escalate, could hurt global growth and security, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said yesterday. Opening a UN trade and development conference in Ghana, Ban pledged to use the full force of the world body he heads to tackle the price rises, which threaten to increase hunger and have sparked food riots in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. Ban agreed to establish a task force to study the problem, saying that huge increases in prices of staple foods could erase progress made toward goals of halving world poverty by 2015. "We risk being set back to square one," he said. (Reuters)

PESHAWAR - Britain's foreign secretary extended support yesterday for the new Pakistani government's plans to negotiate with militants and agreed that economic development was key to reducing sympathies for Al Qaeda and the Taliban. David Miliband traveled yesterday to Peshawar, capital of North West Frontier Province, and held talks on regional security with the chief minister and the region's governor. In a press conference, Miliband said his understanding of the strategy was that it would focus on groups who commit to non-violence. (AP)

GAZA CITY - Israeli air strikes killed two Palestinians, at least one of them a Hamas militant, and wounded eight others in the Gaza Strip yesterday, the Islamist group and medical staff said. One man was killed and three wounded when a missile hit a house in the southern town of Rafah, medics and Hamas officials said. An Israeli army spokeswoman said armed men had been targeted; Hamas said they were civilians. A Hamas gunman was killed in a strike earlier yesterday, increasing to six the number of militants killed in air strikes since members of the group drove bomb-laden vehicles into an Israeli border crossing on Saturday. Two Palestinian teenagers died yesterday of wounds sustained in an Israeli attack that killed Reuters cameraman Fadel Shana on Wednesday. (Reuters)

TEGUCIGALPA - A group of 16 undocumented Cuban migrants has landed in Honduras after two weeks at sea, an immigration official said yesterday. Francisco Alvarado of Honduras's regional immigration office said the nine men, four women, and three children were in good health after setting out on March 31. "One of the motors broke down and while we repaired it, we were surrounded by sharks," migrant Raymundo Legon Rivero told local television. They reached the island of Guanaja on April 14. (AP)

MOSCOW - Russia closed a plutonium producing reactor yesterday, a Russian news agency reported, marking a milestone in nuclear nonproliferation efforts. The United States and Russia have been working for years on arrangements to close Russia's three remaining weapons-grade reactors. ITAR-TASS cited a Siberian Chemicals Plant official, Alleges Suglobov, with announcing the closure in Seversk. (AP)