N. Korea: Uranium enrichment in final stages

N. Korea: Uranium enrichment in final stages

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea said today that it is in the final stages of enriching uranium, a process that could give the nation a second way to make nuclear bombs in addition to its known plutonium-based program.

North Korea informed the U.N. Security Council it is forging ahead with its nuclear programs in defiance of international calls to abandon its atomic ambitions, the official Korean Central News Agency said in a report early today.

The dispatch said plutonium “is being weaponized” and that uranium enrichment was entering the “completion phase.”

A U.S. State Department spokesman said that he had no immediate reaction to the North Korean announcement.

Number of Americans getting food stamps rises

WASHINGTON — The number of Americans receiving food stamps continued to rise in June, with more than 35 million Americans receiving assistance.

The numbers, released Thursday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, are 22 percent higher than June 2008. The number of Americans receiving food stamps in June rose by more than 700,000 people compared with May.

June was the eighth-straight month the number of people on food stamps rose.

Mass. attorney general to run for Kennedy’s seat

BOSTON — Attorney General Martha Coakley announced Thursday she will run as a Democratic candidate in the special election to succeed the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.

The 20-year prosecutor said she can continue to be “an effective voice for the people of Massachusetts.”

Kennedy died last week of brain cancer at age 77.

Coakley said at a news conference the state has had a “crisis of confidence” in the wake of Kennedy’s death and she wants to pick up his mantle.

The 56-year-old Coakley becomes the most prominent candidate to officially declare. Several others are waiting for Kennedy’s nephew, former Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II, to decide if he will run.

Jimena, Erika weaken

LOS CABOS, Mexico — Hurricane Jimena unleashed flooding that killed at least one man and cut off hundreds of people in remote fishing villages on Mexico’s Baja California peninsula before mellowing into a drifting tropical storm Thursday.

The 75-year-old victim drowned when his house flooded in the village of Mulege on the west coast of the peninsula, said Jose Gajon de la Toba, director of Civil Protection in Baja California Sur state. He said one other person was missing in the fishing village of San Buto.

Also Thursday, Tropical Storm Erika weakened to a depression and neared Puerto Rico and the U.S Virgin Islands after brushing past Antigua and Guadeloupe, churning up rough surf and dumping some rain but leaving little noticeable damage.

Police: Pastor shot, killed after resisting questions

ATLANTA — Plainclothes officers shot and killed a small-town pastor when the 28-year-old father-to-be resisted efforts to question him about a passenger in his car who was the target of a drug sting, authorities said.

Jonathan Paul Ayers of Shoal Creek Baptist Church in Lavonia wasn’t targeted in the probe that ended in gunfire at a gas station Tuesday, Georgia Bureau of Investigation spokesman John Bankhead said. But drug task-force agents opened fire on him after he tried to avoid them, putting his car in reverse and striking one of the officers.

Bankhead said agents approached Ayers after he dropped a woman off at a store in downtown Toccoa, which is about 90 miles northeast of Atlanta. The passenger was the person being investigated by the task force.

Scottish nationalists to try for independence vote

EDINBURGH, Scotland — Scotland’s separatist government said Thursday that it would push for a referendum on independence from the United Kingdom next year — a proposal unlikely to go far because the nationalists are outnumbered in Scotland’s parliament.

The Scottish National Party has long made breaking with Britain the focus of its political agenda, but with only 47 out of 129 seats, it lacks the parliamentary majority needed to make its plan for a referendum a reality.

Associated Press