New island rises off Tonga

A new volcanic island rose out of the Pacific Ocean, the Matangi Tonga news website reported Wednesday.

The island is about one mile in diameter with a crater and four peaks about one day off Neiafu in the South Pacific Ocean.


A new volcanic island that formed in July, 1995 off Tonga in the South Pacific Ocean seen in a Royal New Zealand Navy photo. AFP/RNZN/File photo via Yahoo News.

Crewmembers of the yacht Maiken reported seeing a "vast, many-miles-wide belt of densely packed pumice" on approaching the newly-formed island.

Neither Tonga's Ministry of Lands nor the Tonga Defense Service would confirm the creation of a new island.

UN: No progress in halving world hunger

A decade after political leaders pledged to halve the world's population of hungry people, no progress has been made a United Nations report said Monday.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said there are 854 million underfed people in the world.


Airport workers load aid supplies at Cointrin airport in Geneva, August 8, 2006. Denis Balibouse/Reuters photo from Yahoo News.

FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf said that was only a statiscally insingnficant decrease in the number of hungry people, and that the latest trends may even indicate that the number is beginning to rise again.

"Far from decreasing, the number of hungry people in the world is currently increasing - at the rate of 4 million a year," he said.

Despite the setbacks FAO pledged to meet the goal of halving hunger by 2015 through improved agriculture in developing countries.

North Korea warns South against joining sanctions

North Korea warned its southern neighbor against joining international sanctions against Pyongyang saying it would "pay a high price" should Seoul take that course.

"If the South Korean authorities end up joining U.S.-led moves to sanction and stifle (the North) we will regard it as a declaration of confrontation against its own people ... and take corresponding measures," the North's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland said in a statement.

The United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted a sanctions resolution in response to North Korean nuclear tests, and a South Korean task force met this week to determine how the country should address the measures, including what to do about joint economic projects with the North.


A South Korean protester disguised as North Korea leader Kim Jong-Il holds a placard reading "Let's turn (the Korean peninsula) into a sea of flames" during an anti-North Korea rally in Seoul. AFP/Jung Yeon-Je photo via Yahoo News.