Denver: Nuns convicted in protest

A federal jury convicted three Roman Catholic nuns Monday of defacing a missile silo by swinging hammers and painting crosses on it with their own blood.

Sisters Ardeth Platte, 66, Jackie Hudson, 68, and Carol Gilbert, 55, were arrested Oct. 6 for breaking into a Minuteman III missile silo site on Colorado’s northeastern plains. They were charged with interfering with the nation’s defense and causing property damage of more than $1,000.

The nuns are peace activists and have said they were compelled to act as war with Iraq moved closer and because the United States has never promised not to use nuclear weapons.

The three women face a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison when they are sentenced July 25.

South Korea: Talks with North canceled

Cabinet-level talks between North and South Korea were abruptly canceled Monday in a setback to efforts to get the North to give up its nuclear program.

The talks aimed at reconciliation between the two Koreas were canceled after Pyongyang failed to confirm that the meetings would take place, South Korea’s Unification Ministry said.

Seoul had hoped to use the meetings to persuade its communist neighbor to scrap its suspected nuclear weapons program. The cancellation also is a setback for South Korean efforts to ease tensions between Washington and Pyongyang.

The cancellation came ahead of a meeting Wednesday of the U.N. Security Council to discuss North Korea’s nuclear program.

Afghanistan: Hunt for Taliban intensifies

Security forces Monday swept through remote hills in northwestern Afghanistan in search of several hundred suspected Taliban fighters blamed for launching a recent wave of attacks.

The fighters’ names and native villages were discovered on lists found in the pockets of five senior Taliban commanders captured during fighting last week in Badghis province, said Abdul Wahed Tawaqli, spokesman for the governor of neighboring Herat province.

Those captured included Mullah Badar, a former governor of Badghis under the Taliban, whose government was ousted by U.S. forces and Afghan opposition groups in 2001.

Afghan authorities say Taliban remnants are reorganizing in an effort to destabilize the fledgling government of President Hamid Karzai.

Kenya: Diseases, malnutrition kill millions during Congo war

More than 3 million people have died during Congo’s civil war, the vast majority from malnutrition and disease, a relief organization said today in Nairobi.

The International Rescue Committee said in a report that at least 85 percent of the 3.3 million deaths were from easily treatable diseases and malnutrition.

“This is a humanitarian catastrophe of horrid and shocking proportions,” George Rapp, president of the New York-based organization, said.

The IRC said the disaster has been caused in part by the forced displacement of people fleeing fighting and the collapse of the country’s health system. The Congo war began in August 1998 and at one point drew in armies from six other African nations.