SEOUL, South Korea — Officials from South Korea and the United States will hold talks in Hawai'i beginning tomorrow to discuss the rising tension between North and South Korea, according to South Korea's Yonhap News.

North Korea tested more than a dozen missiles this year, triggering military threats from both sides. On Thursday North Korea seized a South Korean fishing boat and its four crew members after the vessel strayed across a maritime border. North Korea said the boat had "illegally intruded" into its territorial waters.

Nations involved in talks to disarm North Korea must send a unified message that there will be "consequences" to its defiance, Agence France-Presse quoted former U.S. President George W. Bush as saying in South Korea's Jeju island yesterday.

IRAQ, KURD LEADERS VOW TO SETTLE DISPUTES

BAGHDAD — In the first such meeting in a year between the two rivals, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Kurdish President Massoud Barzani pledged yesterday to resolve disputes over land and oil that have threatened to spill into fighting.

The conflict between the government and the Kurdish semiautonomous region is seen as the most dangerous threat to Iraq's stability, and American officials have publicly urged both sides to resolve their disputes before most U.S. combat troops complete their withdrawal from Iraq by August 2010.

Barzani said a Kurdish delegation would visit Baghdad "to solve all the problems."

NEW STRAIN OF AIDS VIRUS DISCOVERED

WASHINGTON — A new strain of the virus that causes AIDS has been discovered in a woman from the African nation of Cameroon.

It differs from the three known strains of human immunodeficiency virus and appears to be closely related to a form of simian virus recently discovered in wild gorillas, researchers report in today's edition of the journal Nature Medicine.

The finding "highlights the continuing need to watch closely for the emergence for new HIV variants, particularly in western central Africa," said the researchers, led by Jean-Christophe Plantier of the University of Rouen, France.

The three previously known HIV strains are related to the simian virus that occurs in chimpanzees.

EARTHQUAKE STRIKES IN WATERS OFF GUAM

HAGATNA, Guam — A moderate earthquake has struck in waters off the island of Guam, but there were no reports of any damage or injury.

The U.S. Geological Survey said in a preliminary report that the magnitude-5.1 quake struck at 11:47 a.m. local time today at a depth of about 21 miles. It was centered about 100 miles southwest of Hagatna and 230 miles southwest of Saipan.

Police said there have been no reports of injuries or damage on the island.

PLAGUE CLAIMS SECOND LIFE IN CHINA

BEIJING — A second man has died of pneumonic plague in northwest China, in an outbreak that prompted authorities to seal off an entire town where about a dozen people were infected with the highly contagious deadly lung disease, a state news agency said.

The man who died yesterday was a neighbor of the first person who died in Ziketan, the stricken town in Qinghai province, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

Ten other people, mostly relatives of the first deceased man, were infected and undergoing isolated treatment in hospital, Xinhua said in a report late yesterday.

The town of 10,000 people was under quarantine and a team of experts was being sent to the area, it said.

CHINA ARRESTS 319 IN DEADLY RIOTING

BEIJING — Police in western China have detained 319 more people suspected of being involved in deadly ethnic unrest between Muslim minority Uighurs and the dominant Han Chinese community last month, the official Xinhua News Agency reported late yesterday.

The detentions were in addition to earlier announcements by the government that more than 1,600 people have been detained over the July 5 riots in Urumqi that started when police stopped a protest by Turkic-speaking Uighur residents. The Uighurs smashed windows, burned cars and attacked Han Chinese. Two days later, the Han took to the streets and staged retaliatory attacks.

The government says 197 people were killed and more than 1,700 were injured in the violence and that most of the victims were Han Chinese.