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For news junkies, this will be a hectic week. By its end, Catholics may have a new pope, we may have a new UN ambassador, and both Kofi and his bestest buddy Jacques may suffer nervous breakdowns. Things are looking up because, while Volcker fiddles, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York are burning bad guys. Now all we need to find out are the names of Cooperating Witnesses One and Two, and the high-ranking UN officials whom they bribed for Saddam. CW1 and CW2 may be the first people who have earned the...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The United Nations is studying whether it was appropriate for the top U.N. envoy for North Korea to maintain business ties with a South Korean businessman accused of wrongdoing in the U.N. oil-for-food scandal, U.N. officials said Tuesday. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he had not known about the ties between Maurice Strong and Tongsun Park, a native of North Korea and citizen of South Korea who was also accused in the 1970s of trying to buy influence in Congress. Strong is the U.N. point man on stalled six-nation talks aimed at persuading North Korea to...

WASHINGTON and TORONTO — Canadian Maurice Strong agreed to step aside Wednesday as a special envoy for the United Nations, but vowed to clear his name after being linked to Tongsun Park, a Korean lobbyist charged in connection with the Iraq oil-for-food scandal. At the same time, new details emerged about a Calgary oil company in which Mr. Strong and his son, Fred, were major investors during the 1990s together with Mr. Park -- whom the younger Mr. Strong described as "a spooky guy." Shareholders in Cordex Petroleums Inc. also included CSL Group Inc., the holding company owned by Prime...

UN probes Wheat Pool Payments of $23.15M made in oil-for-food scandal congressional hearing told Steven Edwards CanWest News Service Saturday, April 30, 2005 UNITED NATIONS -- The Saskatchewan Wheat Pool has emerged as one of the companies involved in Iraq oil-for-food deals now under investigation by a U.S. congressional committee probing the United Nations aid program, which Saddam Hussein manipulated to skim off billions of dollars for himself. The focus on the company comes as the UN announced Friday it had discovered a staff-rule violation by Canadian businessperson and international diplomat Maurice Strong, whose long record at the world body...

A South Korean man who met with Sen. John Kerry's fund-raisers to discuss creating a new political group for Korean-Americans was an intelligence agent for his country, raising concerns among some U.S. officials that either he or his government may have tried to influence this fall's election. South Korean officials and U.S. officials said that Chung Byung-man, a consular officer in Los Angeles, actually worked for South Korea's National Intelligence Service.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- John Kerry's campaign collected a maximum $2,000 check from the recently arrested son of South Korea's disgraced former president, and some of its fund-raisers met several times with a South Korean government official who was trying to organize a Korean-American political group.

South and North Korea have agreed on a package of measures aimed at easing tension along their border. After nearly a full day of negotiations, delegates decided to share a radio frequency between patrol vessels in the Yellow Sea. The vessels will also share visual signalling, and a hotline connecting the two countries' naval commands will be established. Naval clashes in the past during the crab fishing season of May and June have killed or wounded dozens of people on both sides. The two Koreas also agreed to dismantle broadcast equipment and signboards set up along their fortified border. The...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - North Korea has used Russian technology to develop a new intermediate range ballistic missile that may be the most capable and accurate system in Pyongyang's inventory, U.S. officials said on Wednesday. There also are "indications" the North Koreans have begun limited production of the longer-range Taepo Dong 2 missile, which can reach the continental United States, and this could mean the weapon is nearly ready for export, a senior U.S. official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity. Experts said if the North has built a new missile based on a new design instead of the old...

SEOUL, South Korea - South and North Korean soldiers briefly traded machine-gun fire in their border zone Thursday, raising tensions even as Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) expressed optimism about diplomatic efforts to resolve the North Korean nuclear standoff. The South Korean military said it did not suffer casualties in the shooting between two guard posts a half mile apart in the heavily mined Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ, the buffer created at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War to keep opposing armies apart. North Korea (news - web sites) did not comment on the exchange....

<p>PANMUNJOM, Korea - If diplomacy fails, this is where another Korean war would begin.</p> <p>Stretched across the waist of the Korean Peninsula, the demilitarized zone is a 151-mile-long belt bristling with barbed wire, mine fields, tank barriers and artillery bunkers that has divided North from South since the 1950-53 Korean War. It is one of the most fortified frontiers on earth.</p>

A radical takes over the Blue House in SeoulIn a neck-and-neck race Kim Dae-jung protege Roh Moo-hyun won Korea's presidential election, to the alarm of governments in the US and JapanBy Rick Chu Friday, Dec 20, 2002,Page 9 Radical left-wing and pro-unification reformer Roh Moo-hyun was elected president of South Korea by a slim margin yesterday -- despite the last-minute political U-turn of his ally, Chung Mong-joon. The US, Japan and other countries were stunned by the results, but it is not surprising that the polarized voters in South Korea made such a choice. Chung's withdrawal from Roh's camp did...

Four S.Koreans Killed, 18 Hurt in Clash with NorthSat Jun 29, 3:05 AM ETBy Paul EckertSEOUL, South Korea (Reuters) - Four South Korean sailors were killed and 18 wounded in a clash with North Korean patrol boats on Saturday in waters off the west coast of the divided peninsula, South Korea said. Photos Reuters Photo The defense ministry said one South Korean vessel was sunk in the clash in the Yellow Sea at a point 170 km (105 miles) west of Inchon International Airport, through which tens of thousands of World Cup soccer visitors entered the country this month. "This...