World / Nation Briefs December 19, 2011
<p>U.S. Army SPC Keenan McCoy holds his 13-month-old daughter Kyre, as he kisses his wife Rachel during an early morning welcome home ceremony for about 300 U.S. Army 1st Cavalry 2nd Brigade soldiers returning home from deployment in Iraq at Fort Hood, TX, Sunday.</p>
North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, 69, dies
SEOUL, South Korea - Kim Jong Il, North Korea's mercurial and enigmatic leader, has died. He was 69.
Kim's death was announced Monday by state television from the North Korean capital, Pyongyang.
Kim is believed to have suffered a stroke in 2008 but appeared relatively vigorous in photos and video from recent trips to China and Russia and in numerous trips around the country carefully documented by state media.
The leader, reputed to have had a taste for cigars, cognac and gourmet cuisine, was believed to have had diabetes and heart disease.
The news came as North Korea prepared for a hereditary succession. Kim Jong Il inherited power after his father, revered North Korean founder Kim Il Sung, died in 1994.
In September 2010, Kim Jong Il unveiled his third son, the twenty-something Kim Jong Un, as his successor, putting him in high-ranking posts.
Fort Hood welcomes home troops from Iraq
FORT HOOD, Texas - Nearly 300 soldiers among the last U.S. combat troops returning from Iraq have been greeted with their loved ones' cheers and hugs at Fort Hood.
The troops tightly embraced spouses, children and other relatives who had waited on the Texas Army post for their 3 a.m. arrival Sunday. The soldiers from the 2nd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division said they were glad to be home before Christmas - and relieved to be out of Iraq.
Staff Sgt. Elama Palemene hugged his wife and two young daughters after returning from his fourth deployment.
Palemene's group was among many returning to Fort Hood in recent weeks - one nearly every day - because of the troop withdrawal, said Staff Sgt. Jefferson VanWey, a 1st Cavalry spokesman.
Palemene said he was happy upon hearing the news that the very last U.S. combat troops rolled out of Iraq across the border into neighboring Kuwait at daybreak Sunday. Their convoy's exit marked the end of a bitterly divisive war that raged for nearly nine years and left Iraq shattered, with troubling questions lingering over whether the Arab nation will remain a steadfast U.S. ally.
US aid a step toward Korea nuke talks
The United States is poised to announce a significant donation of food aid to North Korea this week, the first concrete accomplishment after months of behind-the-scenes diplomatic contacts between the two wartime enemies. An agreement by North Korea to suspend its controversial uranium enrichment program will likely follow within days.
A broad outline of the emerging agreement has been made known to The Associated Press by people close to the negotiations.
Discussions have been taking place since summer in New York, Geneva and Beijing. They already have yielded agreements by North Korea to suspend nuclear and ballistic missile testing, readmit international nuclear inspectors expelled in 2009, and resume a dialogue between North Korea and South Korea.
Oil platform capsizes; 4 dead, 49 missing
MOSCOW - Rescue workers are searching for 49 men in freezing, remote waters off Russia's east coast after their oil rig capsized and sank amid fierce storms on Sunday.
By nightfall, four men had been confirmed dead, 14 others had been plucked alive from the churning, icy waters by the ship that had been towing the Kolskaya drilling platform. But the search for the remaining men was hampered by freezing temperatures, a driving blizzard and strong winds.
Dmitry Dmitriyenko, governor of the Murmansk region in Russia's north-west where 33 of the men come from, urged friends and families not to lose hope late Sunday, but admitted the chance of the men surviving in the 33.8 Fahrenheit water is approaching zero.
The Emergencies Ministry said that 67 people had been aboard the platform as it was being towed about 120 miles off the coast of Sakhalin, a large island just north of Japan in the Sea of Okhotsk in the western Pacific Ocean that until the late 19th century had been the Russian Empire's most remote penal colony.
Of the 67 people aboard, 53 were crewmembers and 14 were workers and support staff, RIA Novosti news agency reported.
Woman burned to death owed suspect $2K
NEW YORK - A man charged with dousing a woman in flammable liquid and tossing a Molotov cocktail on her in an elevator told police he set her on fire because he was angry that she owed him $2,000, authorities said Sunday.
Jerome Isaac, of Brooklyn, was arrested Sunday on murder and arson charges in the death of 73-year-old Deloris Gillespie. The 47-year-old Isaac reeked of gasoline when he entered a police station overnight and implicated himself in Gillespie's death, New York Police Department spokesman Paul Browne said.
Gillespie was ambushed in the elevator of her Brooklyn apartment building on Saturday afternoon, Browne said. The suspect had been waiting for her when the elevator doors opened to the fifth floor of her building in Prospect Heights, police said.
- The Associated Press