N. Korea admits to nuclear activity
PYONGYANG, North Korea, Oct. 2 (UPI) -- North Korea said Thursday it has reprocessed 8,000 nuclear fuel rods, enough to make up to six nuclear bombs, the BBC reported.
A senior North Korean official also said the communist state was in possession of a nuclear deterrent and was continuing to strengthen it.
Deputy Foreign Minister Choe Su-hon told the Chinese news agency Xinhua in New York Pyongyang had no choice because the United States had threatened it with nuclear weapons.
It is the first time the country has made such an explicit claim.
The fuel rods were stored at North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear facility, which was shut down under an agreement with the United States in 1994 but has recently been restarted.
Reprocessing the rods separates the plutonium, which could then be used to make nuclear weapons relatively quickly.
Officials say intelligence agencies have been unable to confirm how far North Korea has gone, but concede reprocessing could have taken place at secret locations.
Three U.S. soldiers dead in Iraqi attacks
BAGHDAD, Oct. 2 (UPI) -- Three U.S. soldiers died Thursday in a series of ambushes by Iraqi guerillas, Sky News reports.
A soldier from the 4th Infantry Division was killed in a rocket-propelled grenade attack when his convoy came under fire near the town of Samarra, north of Baghdad.
Earlier, a 1st Armored Division soldier was killed and one was wounded in a gun attack while patrolling the Mansur district of Baghdad.
"The soldiers were patrolling the neighborhood when they were shot with a small caliber handgun," a spokesman for the coalition forces told CNN.
In Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's home town, a female U.S. soldier was killed and three other soldiers wounded when their convoy hit a roadside bomb.
At least 84 U.S. soldiers have been killed in guerrilla-style raids since President Bush declared major combat over May 1.
The total number of U.S. forces killed in the Iraq war now stands at 316 -- 201 deaths in hostile action and 115 in non-hostile activity, which includes accidents.
Limbaugh said target of drug probe
NEW YORK, Oct. 2 (UPI) -- Talk show host Rush Limbaugh reportedly was under investigation Thursday for allegedly buying thousands of addictive painkillers on the black market.
Limbaugh, who late Wednesday resigned from a weekly ESPN football show because of racial comments about Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb, was turned in on the drug allegations by his former housekeeper, who says she was his pill supplier for four years, the New York Daily News reported.
Wilma Cline, 42, was quoted as saying Limbaugh was hooked on the potent prescription drugs OxyContin, Lorcet and hydrocodone and went through detox twice.
"There were times when I worried," Cline told the National Enquirer, which broke the story in an edition being published today. "All these pills are enough to kill an elephant -- never mind a man."
The drugs said to be involved are legal only with a doctor's prescription. All are habit-forming.
Limbaugh had no comment, his lawyers said.
S. Africa's Coetzee wins Literature Nobel
STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Oct. 2 (UPI) -- South African John M. Coetzee won the Nobel Prize for literature Thursday, his works praised for "pregnant dialogue and analytical brilliance."
"J.M. Coetzee's novels are characterized by their well-crafted composition, pregnant dialogue and analytical brillance. But at the same time he is a scrupulous doubter, ruthless in his criticism of the cruel rationalism and cosmetic morality of western civilization," the Swedish Academy wrote.
His novels, largely focused on South Africa and apartheid, include "Dusklands," "Waiting for the Barbarians," and "Life and Times of Michael K" for which he won the UK's prestigious Booker Prize in 1983. He won a second Booker in 1999 for "Disgrace," set on a remote South African farm.
The Nobel committee said, "Extensive reading reveals a recurring pattern, the downward spiralling journeys he considers necessary for the salvation of his characters. His protagionists are overwhelmed by the urge to sink but paradoxically derive strength from being stripped of all external dignity."
Coetzee has taught at the University of New York in Buffalo, in Cape Town and currently is at the University of Adelaide in Australia.
Coetzee will receive a prize of 10 million Swedish krona (USD 1.3 million). The prizes will be awarded in formal ceremonies Dec. 10, the birth date of Alfred Nobel.
