Rice begins Asian sanctions tour
TOKYO, Oct. 18 (UPI) -- U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in Tokyo Wednesday for talks with Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso on North Korean sanctions.
Rice assured Aso the United States was a military ally to both Japan and South Korea should North Korea become more aggressive with its nuclear testing or policy, the Kyodo news agency reported.
En route to Tokyo, Rice said the Bush administration's policy following North Korea's nuclear test on Oct. 9.
"Obviously an event of this kind does carry with it the potential for instability in the relationships that now exist in the region," she said. "That's why it's extremely important to go out and to affirm, and affirm strongly, U.S. defense commitments to Japan and to South Korea."
Rice is to spend two days in Japan before traveling to Seoul and Beijing to discuss implementing sanctions against Pyongyang that were unanimously approved by the 15-member U.N. Security Council last Saturday.
U.S. warns N. Korea against belligerence
SEOUL, Oct. 18 (UPI) -- North Korea was warned by the top U.S. negotiator in Seoul Wednesday against belligerence in conducting a second nuclear test.
After meeting with South Korean officials over Pyongyang's Oct. 9 underground test, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said reports of a planned second test would be "another serious, rather severe provocation," the Yonhap news agency reported.
"I think we all regard a second test as a very belligerent answer on North Korea's part to the international community," Hill said. "Another sign (North Korea) does not respect the international community, nor does it respect the United Nations nor the U.N. Security Council or its resolution."
Saturday, the Security Council's 15 members voted unanimously to impose sanctions on North Korea for the test, which U.S. intelligence officials said Tuesday was fuelled by home-made plutonium.
Hill said he had little other information to share apart from the need for the international community "to speak very firmly and with one voice," the report said.
U.S. reports 10 soldiers killed in Iraq
BAGHDAD, Oct. 18 (UPI) -- The U.S. military said Wednesday 10 of its soldiers had been killed in five separate attacks in Iraq a day earlier amid mounting sectarian violence.
Six of the troops died in attacks in the vicinity of Baghdad while the others died due to "enemy action" in Diyala and Anbar provinces, the military statement said.
The deaths bring the U.S. death toll to 65 for the month and 600 for the year, CNN said. Since the invasion in March 2003, 2,773 U.S. troops and seven civilian contractors have died in the conflict.
Meanwhile, Baghdad police said 30 bullet-riddled bodies were found scattered around the city Tuesday, a day after 64 bodies were collected. Many were bound at the hands and feet and showed signs of torture, evidence of the sectarian war being fought by Shiite and Sunni Muslims, police said.
That violence has also raged for four days in the northern city of Balad, where the U.S. military has stepped up its operations, the report said.
Tuesday, the BBC said two special police commanders were detained in Balad amid allegations about them assisting Shiite death squads carrying out sectarian killings of Sunni Muslims.
Full U.S. Amber Alert for missing Ky. boy
HENDERSON, Ky., Oct. 18 (UPI) -- Police throughout the United States were looking Wednesday for a Kentucky woman believed to have kidnapped her infant son from a homicide scene.
Nine-month-old Saige Terrell disappeared Monday after a court-ordered visit with his 33-year-old mother, Renee, at her home in Henderson, Ky., where the body of a slain social worker was found.
Police said Boni Frederick, 67, a state social service aide, was beaten to death and her 2000 Daewoo station wagon was missing.
At a news conference late Tuesday, Kentucky State Police said they had no new leads since the car was spotted at a gas station in Smithboro, Ill., the Louisville (Ky.) Courier-Journal reported.
An Amber Alert posted in Kentucky and Indiana was expanded nationally for the infant and police want to question his mother and her boyfriend about the social worker's death, the report said.
British explorer proclaimed 1st at pole
LONDON, Oct. 18 (UPI) -- Britain's Royal Geographical Society claims that Scottish explorer Sir Wally Herbert was the first person to reach the North Pole by surface travel.
Herbert traveled by dogsled from Alaska to Spitzbergen and then to the pole in 1969.
The U.S. explorer Robert Peary is officially credited with reaching the North Pole 60 years earlier. But critics have suggested that Peary never got all the way north, although his claim is still endorsed by the National Geographic Society in the United States.
The British group plans to honor Herbert Wednesday at its headquarters, the Glasgow Herald said.
"I will say that Peary's navigation was flawed, that he did not reach the North Pole and that the first man to do so was Wally when he set off from Alaska and walked to Spitsbergen," said Robin Hanbury Tenison, a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. "It will upset the Americans rather but they don't know about it yet."
