WORLD BRIEFS

NORWAY: Empty seat for Nobel

When ambassadors, royalty and other VIPs take their seats in Oslo's modernist City Hall on Friday for the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, there will be one chair left empty: for this year's winner. Liu Xiaobo, a democracy activist, is serving an 11-year prison sentence in China on subversion charges brought after he co-authored a bold call for sweeping changes to Beijing's one-party communist political system. Liu's supporters, including his wife Liu Xia, were placed under house arrest to prevent anyone from picking up his prize. China was infuriated when the $1.4-million prize was awarded to the 54-year-old literary critic, describing it as an attack on its political and legal system. Beijing also pressured foreign diplomats to stay away and China and 18 other countries have declined to attend, including Russia, Pakistan, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba. The last time the peace prize was not handed out was 1936, when Adolf Hitler prevented pacifist Carl von Ossietzky from accepting the award.

HAITI: Cholera source indicated

Scientists reported Thursday the strongest evidence yet that a cholera outbreak that has killed more than 2,000 people can be traced to South Asia. The analysis fits with, but does not prove, the controversial idea that the disease came from UN troops from that region. DNA analysis found that cholera bacteria in Haiti were nearly identical to strains predominant in South Asia, researchers said. That indicates cholera was introduced by people, rather than arriving through ocean currents or arising within Haiti, as has been suggested, said Harvard researcher Dr. Matthew Waldor. He is an author of a report published online Thursday by the New England Journal of Medicine that confirms a South Asian link reported last month by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

THE KOREAS: Chinese visits Pyongyang

Diplomacy is showing signs of life two weeks after North Korea shelled its neighbor. China, under intense international pressure, sent a top envoy to meet with Kim Jong Il, and an American governor whose past visits have led to warmer ties announced a trip to the North. As both sides continued military maneuvers, regional powers balanced shows of support for their allies with attempts to negotiate a detente. Beijing's top foreign policy official, State Councilor Dai Bingguo, turned up Thursday in Pyongyang for "warm and friendly" talks with leader Kim, the North's official Korean Central News Agency reported. A delegation headed by U.S. Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg will have talks on North Korea in China next week.

CONGO: Guide a crocodile victim

An acclaimed outdoorsman who wrote movingly about testing himself against nature is presumed dead after a crocodile snatched him from his kayak while he led an American expedition from the source of the White Nile into the heart of Congo. Two Americans being guided by South African Hendrik Coetzee, 35, on the grueling trip could only watch in horror. They paddled unharmed to safety after the Tuesday morning attack on the Lukuga River in Congo. Coetzee's body has not been recovered.