UN: North Korea evades sanctions

UN: North Korea evades sanctions

UNITED NATIONS

U.N. experts say North Korea is continuing to evade U.N. sanctions, using airlines, ships and the international financial system to trade in prohibited items for its nuclear and ballistic missile programs raising important questions about the sanctions regime.

The experts monitoring sanctions against the North says Pyongyang also continues to export ballistic missile-related items to the Middle East and trade in arms and related material to Africa.

A summary of the expert panel’s report, obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press, say one reason North Korea is able to keep evading sanctions is “the low level of implementation” by the 193 U.N. member states of the four U.N. sanctions resolutions adopted since the country’s first nuclear test in 2006.

Food crisis in Haiti

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti

Drought-stricken Haiti is grappling with its most- serious food crisis in 15 years as the number of people in need of urgent food aid has recently spiked, the head of the U.N. World Food Program’s country office said Tuesday.

Roughly 1.5 million Haitians are considered severely insecure when it comes to food, more than double the figure of those facing malnutrition from a government assessment in September. Haiti’s northwest, southeast and some areas on the border with the Dominican Republic have been hit hard amid a long drought worsened by the arrival of a strong El Nino weather pattern.

Couple accused of forced labor

HOUSTON

A Houston-area couple forced a Nigerian woman to care for their five children and home without pay during a two-year period in which she was physically and verbally abused, made to work nearly 20 hours a day and told to sleep on the floor, federal authorities say.

Chudy and Sandra Nsobundu were arrested Monday on charges of forced labor, withholding documents, conspiracy to harbor an illegal immigrant and visa fraud. Authorities say the couple seized the nanny’s passport, so she was unable to leave.

The 38-year-old nanny, whose full name is not given in the criminal complaint, told authorities she was promised $100 per month but has never been paid in her two years working for the Nsobundus in their home in the Houston suburb of Katy.

Ind. museum unveils mallet tied to Lincoln

INDIANAPOLIS

A wooden mallet inlaid with the initials “A.L” was made by Abraham Lincoln, who used it during his Indiana youth to make furniture, Indiana State Museum officials said Tuesday in unveiling the artifact that had been a family’s secret heirloom for five generations.

It’s a rare relic that can be directly tied to the 14 years that Lincoln and his family lived in Indiana, said Dale Ogden, the museum’s chief curator of cultural history.

The tool, called a bench mallet, is inlaid with square-edged nails that form Lincoln’s initials – “A.L” – with a period separating them, while a series of other nails were driven into the tool to form the year “1829.”

Journalist found dead in Mexico

MEXICO CITY

A reporter who was kidnapped by armed assailants in the Gulf Coast state of Veracruz this week has been found dead, Mexican authorities said Tuesday.

Anabel Flores Salazar’s body was discovered on a highway in the neighboring state of Puebla and later identified by family members, Veracruz prosecutors said in a statement.

Flores Salazar, a crime-beat reporter for a newspaper in Orizaba, Veracruz, was dragged from her home near the city before dawn Monday.

Associated Press