ONE NEWS

Wednesday, August 12, 2009 SEOUL: North Korea's Arirang festival -- the world's largest gymnastic performance -- has opened in front of huge crowds, official media in the communist state said Tuesday.The 80-minute show opened at May Day Stadium Monday night, according to the Korean Central Broadcasting Station monitored by South Korea's Yonhap news agency.It said this year's show has added new scenes to highlight the country's campaign to build a "strong, prosperous and powerful nation."The stadium was packed with soldiers and workers as well as diplomats, international agency representatives, tourists and Koreans living abroad, it said.The annual festival named after a famous Korean folk song began in 2002 to mark the 90th anniversary of the birth of founding president Kim Il-Sung.It involves some 100,000 people, many of them schoolchildren, in a display of synchronised acrobatics, gymnastics, dances and elaborate flip-card displays of highly politicised...

Saturday, August 08, 2009 CHENNAI: The Indian Coast Guard detained a ``suspicious'' North Korean ship, which had dropped anchor off Hut Bay in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, after more than six hours of high drama that ended with Indian sailors firing in the air. Officials of Army intelligence, Intelligence Bureau and other agencies are set to inspect the ship and interrogate its occupants. Indian Coast Guard official for Andaman and Nicobar Region, told local television over phone that ``several things were amiss'' about merchant vessel MV Musen, which later declared that it was carrying 16,500 tonnes of sugar from Thailand to Umm Qasr in Iraq. ``She shouldn't have dropped anchor here in the first place, she didn't respond to our signals, and her log book was found to be vague,'' Nautiyal said. Preliminary inspections found that the vessel was carrying sugar. A detailed inspection will be carried out on Saturday by high-level intelligence officials.

SEOUL :: North Korea will pardon two jailed US journalists after visiting former president Bill Clinton apologized to leader Kim Jong-Il for their behavior, state media reported Wednesday. "The measure taken to release the American journalists is a manifestation of the DPRK's (North Korea's) humanitarian and peace-loving policy," the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. Clinton on Tuesday had met Kim for talks during his surprise mission to Pyongyang to win the release of the two female reporters. His was the highest-profile visit by an American to Pyongyang for nearly a decade. TV reporters Laura Ling and Euna Lee were arrested in March while on assignment near the North Korean border with China. They were reporting on the plight of refugees fleeing the impoverished North into China. A court in June sentenced them to 12 years of hard labour for illegal entry and other offences. The harsh sentences soured relations with the United States already strai...