UPI NewsTrack TopNews

Storm barrels up Atlantic Coast

NEW YORK, March 2 (UPI) -- Police reported three storm-related traffic deaths from a snowstorm that blew into New England Monday after burying states along the U.S. Atlantic Coast.

Separate crashes on icy roads Sunday claimed the lives of Jose Fuentes, 57, in Greenlawn, N.Y.; Ray A. Charles, 23, in Medford, N.Y.; and an unidentified man on Route 78 in Newark, N.J., Newsday and The (Newark) New Jersey Star-Ledger reported.

The storm left nearly a foot of heavy wet snow in parts of New York and states south to the Carolinas, canceling hundreds of flights in airports from Nashville to Boston, where as much as 15 inches of snow was expected.

Parts of New York could see up to 18 inches of snow by Monday night with accumulations reaching up to 12 inches south to Washington and into Maryland, The New York Times and The Washington Post reported.

State troopers in Massachusetts reported a 20-car pileup and several smaller pileups along the South Shore, The Boston Globe reported.

"It's the first of March, which you know is the month that we say comes in like a lion and out like a lamb," said New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, adding "it's pretty clear that the lions are getting ready to roar."

Brown to pitch 'global new deal' in U.S.

LONDON, March 2 (UPI) -- British Prime Minister Gordon Brown says he will discuss a "global new deal" with U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington meetings this week.

Brown was set to fly to the United States Monday, becoming the first European leader to meet with the new U.S. president, scheduling discussions with Obama for Tuesday and a Wednesday speech before a joint session of the U.S. Congress, the BBC reported.

Brown, who is coming off a European Union summit, told reporters he would take a "clear message" to Washington from EU leaders that "bold global action" was needed to tackle the economic crisis. Writing in the Sunday Times of London, Brown said he and Obama would discuss a "global new deal whose impact can stretch from the villages of Africa to reforming the financial institutions of London and New York."

The Brown-Obama meetings are coming ahead of the Group of 20 economic summit in London next month, where Brown said is vital that world leaders "take the big decisions necessary to secure our economic future," the BBC reported.

EU turns down Hungary's $240B plan

BRUSSELS, March 2 (UPI) -- The European Union has said no to a proposal by Hungary to assemble a $240 billion bailout for Eastern European countries.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said a sweeping bailout proposal wasn't appropriate, The Washington Post reported Monday.

"Saying that the situation is the same for all Central and Eastern European states … I don't see that," Merkel said after a summit meeting Sunday in Brussels. "You cannot compare Slovenia or Slovakia with Hungary," she said.

Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany proposed the rescue package. On Sunday, he said "large-scale defaults" would occur in counties that have spent years recovering from communist economic policies, the newspaper said.

"We should not allow a new Iron Curtain to be set up and divide Europe into two parts," Gyurcsany said before the summit began.

But, Czech Republic Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek said he didn't want "a Europe divided along a north-south or an east-west line."

Poland and the Czech Republic said they didn't need to be rescued from default and resented being lumped into a block of countries requesting aid, the report said.

Pakistani captors: U.N. hostage will die

QUETTA, Pakistan, March 2 (UPI) -- A Pakistani militant group holding an American working for the United Nations says it will kill the hostage in four days if its demands are not met.

The previously unknown group, The Balochistan Liberation United Front, said in a letter John Solecki, 49, will die unless 1,109 people it says are missing and being held by Pakistani security agencies are released, GEO TV reported Monday.

Solecki, who heads the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in southwestern Balochistan province, was kidnapped in the provincial capital of Quetta Feb. 2 after gunmen ambushed his car and killed the driver, the broadcaster said.

The militant group had earlier demanded U.N. intervention to secure the release of 141 women it said were being held in Pakistani torture cells in exchange for Solecki, and has also demanded information about more than 6,000 missing persons as well and resolution of the issue of Baloch independence, Asian News International reported.

N. Korea complains of U.S. military drills

PANMUNJOM, South Korea, March 2 (UPI) -- The first high-level talks between North Korea and the United Nations Command in years yielded complaints about upcoming military drills, sources say.

Citing unnamed military sources, the South Korean news agency Yonhap said North Korea objected to a planned South Korea-U.S. joint military exercise during a half-hour meeting Monday at the inter-Korean truce village of Panmunjom, the first encounter between Pyongyang and the UNC in nearly seven years.

"North Korea filed lengthy complaints against the plan to hold the Key Resolve and Foal Eagle exercise and the situation involving the U.S. military deployment on the Korean Peninsula," the source told Yonhap.

At the meeting, which was called in an effort to reduce border tensions, the UNC stressed that the annual drills are a defensive in nature and aren't related to preparations for any attack. The U.S.-led UNC monitors the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War, the news agency said.

The joint U.S.-South Korea drills are scheduled for March 9-20, with plans calling for the United States to mobilize 26,000 troops and an aircraft carrier to test its ability to quickly deploy forces should North Korea invade, officials say.