Thailand

Payloads for peace dropped over provinces

In a novel approach to peacemaking, Thai warplanes dropped millions of folded paper cranes over the country’s troubled southern provinces, expressing hope for an end to the separatist violence that has killed hundreds in the Muslim-dominated region.

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra declared the origami-style missives a success, saying they had an “enormous positive psychological effect,” reminding southerners they are part of Thai society and their countrymen care for them.

Even so, the campaign didn’t stop the violence. A 22-pound bomb was discovered — and safely defused — Sunday on a road crowded with people waiting to gather the paper cranes, a peace symbol borrowed from Japan and familiar to most Asians.

Pakistan

UNICEF chief: 170M children malnourished

Lack of food and education still afflict millions of children around the world, with nearly 10 million youngsters under age 5 dying each year from preventable diseases, the U.N. children’s agency said Sunday.

UNICEF chief Carol Bellamy underlined the challenges of improving primary health care for children on a global basis as she opened an international conference in the Pakistani capital to encourage volunteers to help at aid agencies and in government programs.

“Children under the age of 5 are still dying at a rate of nearly 10 million a year from preventable causes like diarrhea, measles and acute respiratory infections,” said Bellamy, who arrived Sunday in Islamabad for a three-day visit.

More than 170 million children globally remain malnourished, she said.

Turkey

Russian leader makes first visit to nation

President Vladimir Putin made the first official visit by a Russian leader to Turkey on Sunday, looking to strengthening an economic relationship that is turning a country that has been a foe since the times of the Ottomans and the czars into a newfound trading partner.

Putin was to have dinner with President Ahmet Necdet Sezer before official talks today.

Russia has urged Turkey to crack down on charities it claims channel money and weapons to Chechen rebels. In an apparent gesture to Putin, Turkish authorities apprehended nine suspected Chechen militants and three pro-Chechen Turks last week, and the Anatolia news agency reported Sunday that police had linked them to al-Qaida.

Colombia

Drug trafficking suspect claims innocence

Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela, the most powerful Colombian drug trafficker ever extradited to the United States, said he was not guilty in an interview made shortly before he was flown to Miami over the weekend.

Rodriguez Orejuela, 65, is charged, along with his brother, Miguel, with running a drug network responsible for producing 80 percent of the U.S. cocaine supply in the 1990s. He was flown Saturday to Miami, where he is in jail awaiting his first court hearing today.

“I feel innocent of the charges they are making against me, and I will respond to them,” Rodriguez Orejuela said in the interview with the radio station W, a portion of which was published Sunday by the newspaper El Tiempo. He was referring to accusations by U.S. prosecutors.

The drug cartel leader has spent nearly a decade in prison in Colombia before his extradition.