World Briefs

SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea defied international warnings and sent a rocket hurtling over the Pacific on Sunday, a launch President Barack Obama called an illicit test of the regime's long-range missile technology that threatened the security of nations "near and far."

Obama and European Union leaders meeting in Prague condemned the move and said North Korea's dangerous defiance demanded an international response. Diplomats at the United Nations scheduled an emergency Security Council session for later Sunday to discuss what Obama called a clear violation of U.N. resolutions.South Korea and the U.S. military disputed North Korea's claim of a successful launch into space, saying the rocket fell into the ocean in stages.

LONDON– At least $300 billion of the $1.1 trillion stimulus package agreed by G20 leaders last week should be allocated toward helping developing countries, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Sunday.

He also called on the G20 to turn its summit pledges into "concrete action," adding that the stimulus package agreed would help the world economy overcome the financial economic crisis.

LONDON– Seven bodies were found Sunday inside the wreckage of a helicopter which crashed in the North Sea off Scotland, police said.

The Super Puma helicopter carrying 14 passengers and two crew crashed Wednesday as it returned from a BP oilfield about 165 miles off the northeast coast of Scotland. Eight bodies were found in the sea soon after the crash and so far there are no survivors.

PRAGUE – Declaring the future of mankind at stake, President Barack Obama said Sunday all nations must strive to rid the world of nuclear arms and that the U.S. had a "moral responsibility" to lead as the only country ever to use one.

Even as a North Korean rocket launch upstaged his ambitious, if not realistic, call to action in the heart of Eastern Europe, Obama dismissed those who say the spread of nuclear weapons cannot be checked.

NAIROBI – Somali pirates have seized a 20,000-ton German container vessel in their latest attack on the Indian Ocean's busy commercial shipping lanes, a regional maritime group said Sunday.

Heavily armed gangs from the Horn of Africa nation hijacked dozens of vessels there and in the strategic Gulf of Aden last year, taking hundreds of sailors hostage and making off with millions of dollars in ransoms. Foreign navies rushed warships to the area.