OTHER NEWS

South Korea promised energy aid to poor North Korea trying to encourage it to return nuclear disarmament talks after more than a year deadlock and give up nuclear weapons at the revived six-nation arms talks.

China agreed to take steps against piracy of U.S products as part of a package incremental measures which aim at easing the accumulated anti-Chinese sentiment in the U.S. Congress. The American Commerce Secretary said that the Bush administration would closely supervise the execution of the undertaken measures.