OBITUARY. North Korean Foreign Minister Paek dies . North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam-sun, the reclusive country?s top diplomat for much of the past decade of confrontation over its nuclear ambitions, has died, Pyongyang?s official media reported yesterday.

Paek, 77, who had been foreign minister since September 1998, had been ailing for some time. His last major appearance on the public stage, at an Asian foreign ministers? meeting in Kuala Lumpur in July, saw him being wheeled around on a golf cart.

?Leader Kim Jong-il yesterday sent a wreath to the bier of the late Foreign Minister Paek Nam-sun, deputy to the DPRK (North Korea) Supreme People?s Assembly, expressing deep condolences over his death,? the KCNA news agency said. It gave no further details.

Due to his ailing health, Paek had largely been relegated to a behind-the-scenes role in recent years, turning over nuclear diplomacy to his deputies, Kang Sok-su and Kim Kye-gwan, a South Korean government official said. North Korea conducted its first nuclear test in October.

MOGADISHU. Battle for Somalia nears Kenya border. Gunfire rattled near Somalia?s border with Kenya early on yesterday as Ethiopian warplanes backing the Somali government streaked overhead in pursuit of its fleeing Islamist rivals.

The Islamists, who withdrew from their last stronghold on Monday after two weeks of war, rejected a government amnesty offer after disappearing into hills between the port of Kismayu and the long frontier with Kenya. Residents of Liboi, a Kenyan border post, said they saw Ethiopian fighter jets and helicopter gunships flying over the Somali town of Doble, 25 km (15 miles) away, late on Tuesday. Then they heard shooting which tailed off after midnight.

?When we heard the gunshots we panicked, although we knew it could be these groups fighting across the border,? Liboi businessman Abdi Rage said by telephone. Nairobi sealed the border after the Somali government urged it to stop the leaders of the Somalia Islamic Courts Council (SICC) or foreign jihadist supporters escaping. ?Security officers moved to the border immediately when they received the reports of shooting, but they did not see any signs of fighting. Things are calm and under control,? local Kenyan police commander Johnstone Limo told Reuters by telephone. ?No armed individual or group can enter our country or be allowed to compromise its security,? he said. ?We shall stop them, arrest them and, if necessary, fight them.? Eight suspected combatants were being questioned after they were arrested trying to enter Kenya near Liboi on Sunday.

An ambush that killed at least one Ethiopian soldier in south Somalia on Tuesday showed the fighting may go on, despite a lightning military offensive by Ethiopian tanks, troops and jets that routed the Islamists from Mogadishu then Kismayu. The International Contact Group on Somalia, including the foreign ministers of Germany, Sweden and Norway and EU aid chief Louis Michel, was due to meet in Brussels on Wednesday to discuss the situation in Somalia.

MISLED. KFC rapped over spicy chicken adverts. Fast food chain KFC was criticised by an advertising watchdog yesterday for misleading customers over a promotion for cheap chicken drumsticks.

The Advertising Standards Authority said posters offering a piece of ?Spicy Zinger? chicken for 50 pence failed to make clear that the deal was open only to people who also bought a complete meal.

The watchdog upheld complaints from three people, saying small print explaining the promotion was not clear enough.?We considered that referring to the significant condition only in smallprint was likely to mislead consumers about the nature of the offer,? the ASA said.It ordered KFC to state terms and conditions more clearly in future.

KFC, part of US restaurant group Yum! Brands, said the text on the posters was unambiguous. The poster was displayed at 7,000 sites for two weeks and only attracted a handful of complaints, it added. KFC was behind the advert that drew the most complaints in 2005. More than 1,600 people complained about a commercial that featured call-centre workers singing with their mouths full.

GAZA CITY. Haniyeh cuts short tour of Arab world. For the second time, Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas plans to cut short a tour of Arab nations, aides said yesterday. The aides said Haniyeh would return to Gaza today to attend to ?work? instead of traveling to Jordan, which has offered to host a meeting between Haniyeh and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of the Fatah movement in an effort to defuse deadly tensions between their factions.

Both Haniyeh and Abbas have agreed in principle to such a meeting, but no date has been announced.The aides said Haniyeh decided to break off his trip after making an Islamic pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia. They said he would resume the tour, but did not specify when or say what was the nature of the work that led him to come back early.

Besides Jordan, Haniyeh was also to have visited Kuwait and Qatar.He broke off his original trip in mid-December following a deadly bout of Hamas-Fatah violence. His convoy came under fire at the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt as he returned.A shaky cease-fire reached in late December has curbed the fighting.There was no immediate indication of a link between the change in Haniyeh?s travel plans and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert?s scheduled trip to Egypt today to meet with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

Egypt has played a major role in mediating between Israel and the Palestinians, and has been trying to negotiate the release of an Israeli soldier captured by militants linked to Hamas, which controls the Palestinian parliament and Cabin.

UNITED NATIONS . troops in south Sudan raping children. The Daily Telegraph of London reported recently that UN peacekeepers and civilian staff were raping and abusing children as young as 12 in southern Sudan.

The newspaper, in a story posted on its Web site, said it had gathered accounts from more than 20 young victims in the town of Juba of UN civilian and peacekeeping staff forcing them to have sex.

The UN Peacekeeping Department in New York declined to comment. The report appeared on the first day of work for UN leader Ban Ki-moon of , who this week became the world body?s eighth secretary-general, succeeding of Ghana.There are more than 11,000 UN peacekeepers and police from some 70 countries in southern Sudan, enforcing a January 2005 peace agreement that ended a 21-year civil war.

The Telegraph said the first signs of sexual exploitation of local youths in southern Sudan emerged within months of the peacekeepers? arrival in March 2005. The UN Children?s Fund UNICEF drafted an internal report detailing the problem, it said.

The newspaper said Sudan?s government had gathered evidence including video footage of UN workers having sex with young girls. But the has yet to publicly acknowledge there was a problem or even investigate, the newspaper said.