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Pakistan vows to attack Bin Laden lair

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, May 17 (UPI) -- Pakistan needs billions more in foreign aid to rout militants from the Afghanistan border -- a stronghold of Osama bin Laden, President Asif Ali Zardari said.

"We're going to go into Waziristan, all these regions, with army operations. Swat is just the start. It's a larger war to fight," Zardari told The Sunday Times of London.

To oust the Taliban and al-Qaida leadership, Pakistan needs billions of dollars in aid to support its military and to care for as many as 1.7 million refugees -- the largest number of displaced people since Pakistan split from India in 1947, Zardari told the Times.

"If we are to win the hearts and minds of these people we need to be able to relocate them back into civil society, rebuild their houses and give them interest-free loans to restart their businesses," Zardari said.

Pakistan has agreed to accept counterinsurgency training from British and U.S. troops, including 25 to 50 special forces soldiers based in new training camps in Baluchistan, in southwest Pakistan, the Times reported.

Nuke talks hang on journalists' freedom

SEOUL, May 17 (UPI) -- North Korea must release two journalists before a U.S. envoy visits Pyongyang to revive stalled talks on nuclear disarmament, a diplomat said Sunday.

Laura Ling and Euna Lee are charged with illegally entering North Korea through China in March. The two journalists work for former U.S. Vice President Al Gore's San Francisco-based Current TV.

U.S. special envoy Stephen Bosworth is concerned North Korea will use the journalists as a bargaining chip if he tries to restart nuclear talks before they are freed, an unidentified South Korean diplomat told South Korea's Yonhap news agency.

North Korea has refused to restart the six-party talks because of what it called the "unfair" condemnation by the U.N. Security Council of its rocket rocket launch in April. North Korea has expelled international observers and threatened to conduct another nuclear test. The U.N. Security Council sanctioned North Korea in 2006 for a nuclear test.

Missouri mobile home fire leaves five dead

GALENA, Mo., May 17 (UPI) -- Five people, including three children, have died in a mobile home fire in Shell Knob, Mo., a fire official says.

Central Crossing Fire District Chief Rusty Rickard said a 7-month-old baby, a 2-year-old and a 3-year-old were killed in the Saturday blaze in the Turkey Mountain II Estates subdivision, the (Springfield, Mo.) News-Leader reported Sunday.

Rickard said the three children, along with a 20-year-old woman and a 21-year-old man, were dead by the time firefighters arrived at the mobile home. Names of the deceased were not reported.

"We made entry into the structure and did everything we could to rescue them, but every person we found was already dead at that point," the fire chief said.

Rickard told the News-Leader it appeared all five died while sleeping. The cause of the fire has not been determined.

Women elected for first time in Kuwait

KUWAIT, Kuwait, May 17 (UPI) -- A dramatic change in Kuwait's conservative society has been revealed with the first elections of women to its National Assembly, analysts said.

The third try for female candidates running for the Assembly, only four years after women obtained the right to run for office, proved to be the charm Saturday when four of them were voted in, the Kuwait news agency KUNA reported.

The four winners -- Ma'souma Mubarak, Aseel Awadhi, Salwa Jassar and Rola Dashti -- are academics, officials said.

"The Kuwaiti women have been able to notch up this great victory at a crucial time and set a precedent in the history of Arabian Gulf parliaments," Mohammad Feili, professor of constitutional law at Kuwait University, told KUNA. "The results of yesterday's elections revealed a dramatic change in the Kuwaiti voters' approach to politics."

Kuwaiti journalist Sajed Abdali agreed, saying the elections were "a big surprise. What made it a surprise are the number of female winners and the advanced positions they were able to secure."