'No guarantee of peace,' NKorean envoy warns China

BEIJING (AP) — China told a top North Korean envoy Friday it wants a peaceful, denuclearized Korean Peninsula, and said the emissary warned there is "no guarantee of peace" but that his country was willing to hold talks with all sides.

The official state Xinhua News Agency said a top Chinese army general, Fan Changlong, made the call for denuclearization in his meeting Friday with North Korean Vice Marshal Choe Ryong Hae.

His comments were a reiteration of China's established position, but could be seen as a rebuke of its neighboring ally following a half-year gap in high-level contacts during which Pyongyangangered Beijing by conducting rocket launches, a nuclear test and other saber-rattling.

Tensions surrounding the nuclear issue have "intensified strategic conflicts among involved parties and jeopardized the peace and stability of the peninsula," continued Fan, a vice chairman of the Central Military Commission overseeing China's armed forces.

Choe, a personal envoy of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, was widely expected to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping and deliver a message from Kim before returning.

"Conditions on the Korean Peninsula and in the east Asian region are complex and exceptional, and there is no guarantee of peace. North Korea's people require a peaceful and stable environment to build their nation," Choe was quoted as saying.

"North Korea is willing to work with all sides to search for a method of solving the problems through dialogue," Choe said.

The envoy's comments reflect both the threatening tone of North Korea's recent statements, and its desire to show deference to Beijing's hopes for a return to nuclear disarmament talks.

Choe met Thursday with the ruling Communist Party's fifth-ranked official, and Chinese state media later quoted the envoy as saying that North Korea "is willing to accept the suggestion of the Chinese side and launch dialogue with all relevant parties."

Beijing considered Pyongyang's recent moves an affront to its interests in regional stability and showed its displeasure by joining with the U.S. to back U.N. sanctions and cut off dealings with North Korea's Foreign Trade Bank.

China is North Korea's last significant diplomatic ally and main source of trade and economic assistance.

China's North Korea watchers said it is unlikely that Chinese leaders would have accepted Choe's visit without a promise from Pyongyang that it was prepared to return to diplomacy as Beijing has sought.

"The relationship is rocky, so they will try to mend the relationship," Cui Yingjiu, a retired professor of Korean at Peking University, said of North Korea. "Second, they also want to improve relations with the U.S. and need China to be their intermediary."

Russia says Syrian regime agrees to peace talks

AP10ThingsToSee - In this image from amateur video obtained by a group called Ugarit News, a rebel runs from an explosion, Sunday, May 19, 2013 in Qusair, Syria. An intense battle drove rebels from large parts of Qusair, part of a withering government offensive aimed at securing a strategic land corridor from Damascus to the Mediterranean coast. (AP Photo)

BEIRUT (AP) — The Syrian government has agreed to attend a conference proposed by Russia and the United States on ending the country's civil war, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Friday, the first sign that President Bashar Assad's regime would be willing to take part in the talks with the opposition.

Assad's government has not issued a definitive statement of its own on the proposed talks, but a Syrian legislator in Damascus also said the government intends to attend.

Russia and the U.S. joined efforts to convene an international conference to bring representatives of Assad's regime and the opposition to the negotiating table, expected to be held in Geneva next month. The aim of the talks would be to establish the outlines of a transitional government as a way to end the civil war, now in its third year.

More than 70,000 people have been killed and several million displaced since the uprising against Assad erupted in March 2011.

The diplomatic push comes as the rebels have suffered a string of setbacks and found themselves forced to call in reinforcements to fight off a weeklong regime offensive aimed at recapturing the key western Syrian town of Qusair.

The main opposition group, the Syrian National Coalition, has not yet said whether it will attend the Geneva conference and is currently discussing its position at a gathering in the Turkish city of Istanbul. But members have said they want guarantees that Assad's departure is foremost on the agenda of any talks.

The U.S.-Russia plan, similar to the one set out last year in Geneva, calls for talks on a transitional government and an open-ended cease-fire. Washington, along with key European and Arab supporters of Syria's opposition, said Wednesday that Assad must relinquish power at the start of a transition period. Russia, however, has not committed to Assad's departure and the Syrian leader has said he will not step down before his term ends next year.

Moscow's announcement came after days of talks there between Syria's Deputy Foreign Minister Faysal Mekdad and Russian officials.

"We note with satisfaction that we have received an agreement in principle from the Syrian government in Damascus to participate in the international conference, in the interest of Syrians themselves, to find a political solution," Russia's Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said in televised remarks.

But he said it is impossible to set the date for the conference at this point because there is "no clarity about who will speak on behalf of the opposition and what powers they will have."

Lukashevich also said Moscow "was not encouraged" by the results of recent meetings of members of the Syrian National Coalition.

U.S. officials announced later Friday that Secretary of State John Kerry will meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov next week in Paris to discuss the Syria peace talks, adding that Kerry will extend a seven-day trip through the Middle East and Africa by one day to dine Monday with Lavrov.

In the Syrian capital, legislator Sharif Shehadeh confirmed the government intends to attend, though no official statement has been issued yet. "The expectations and the opinion within the Syrian leadership is that it will most definitely attend the conference," Shehadeh told The Associated Press.

He said neither the opposition nor the regime should set preconditions for the talks because that would lead to "failure and this is something Russia is making clear to the opposition."

"The success of the conference lies with the opposition, not the government," he said.

At the Syrian National Coalition's three-day gathering in Istanbul that began Thursday, an opposition figure expressed doubts over Moscow's announcement, questioning why the regime has said nothing about it.

"We are very supportive of the (U.S.-Russian) initiative. Our fear is that the regime is not going to negotiate in good faith. We would like to hear enough (from Damascus) to know that they are serious about these negotiations," Louay Safi said.

Kerry has acknowledged the difficulties of launching peace talks. "Nobody has any illusions about how difficult, complicated, what a steep climb that is," he said Thursday during a visit to Israel.

Intense fighting, meanwhile, continued in Qusair, near the border with Lebanon, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Government forces have been trying to recapture the town since Sunday. State-run news agency SANA said troops killed a "large number" of rebels in the latest clashes.

The Beirut-based Al-Mayadeen TV, which has several reporters embedded with Syrian troops in Qusair, said government forces were advancing inside the nearby town of Hamdiyeh in an attempt to cut the rebels' last supply line.

Syrian state media also reported that rebels fired mortar shells at the central prison in the embattled northern city of Aleppo, killing and wounding several inmates.

The pro-opposition Aleppo Media Center said rebels and government troops were clashing at the prison, where a large fire had broken out. State-TV reported later Friday that troops repelled the attack on the jail and killed several gunmen.

State-run news agency SANA said the army destroyed two trucks loaded with explosives near the central prison and killed scores of "terrorists."

A week earlier, Assad's forces repelled a rebel raid on the prison aiming to free hundreds of political prisoners.

In other violence, a suicide bomber detonated his car packed with explosives on the outskirts of the northern city of Idlib, killing five people and wounding 10, SANA reported. It did not identify the target of the attack.

In neighboring Lebanon, Lebanese supporters and opponents of Assad fought overnight in the port city of Tripoli, a port city that has seen some of the worst fighting in years provoked by the bloodshed in Syria. Security officials said the death toll since Sunday reached 25, including three soldiers.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations, said 200 people were wounded in the fighting. The city was quiet during the day Friday apart from sporadic shooting.

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Associated Press writers Nataliya Vasilyeva in Moscow and Ayse Wieting in Istanbul contributed to this report.

'Horrified' trucker watches I-5 bridge collapse

APNewsBreak: Canadian trucking co. says it had Wash. permit to cross I-5 bridge that collapsed

Associated Press -

MOUNT VERNON, Wash. (AP) -- A truck hauling an oversized load of drilling equipment hit an overhead bridge girder on the major route between Seattle and Canada, sending a section of the interstate into the river below as the driver watched the structure collapse in his rearview mirror.

Two other vehicles plunged into the Skagit River, but all three occupants escaped with only minor injuries.

"He looked in the mirrors and it just dropped out of sight," Cynthia Scott, the wife of truck driverWilliam Scott, said Friday from the couple's home near Spruce Grove, Alberta, just west of Edmonton. "I spoke to him seconds after it happened. He was just horrified."

The spectacular scene unfolded about 7 p.m. Thursday on the north section of the four-lane Interstate 5 bridge near Mount Vernon, about 60 miles north of Seattle and 40 miles south of the Canada border, and disrupted travel in both directions. Officials warned it could be weeks before things returned to normal along the heavily travelled corridor.

The Washington State Patrol said the truck driver works for Mullen Trucking in Alberta. The tractor-trailer was hauling a housing for drilling equipment southbound when the top right front corner of the load struck several trusses on the north end of the bridge, the patrol said.

Scott voluntarily gave a blood sample for an alcohol test and was not arrested. A top company official said the driver was amazed by what he saw happen.

"He's a little bit bewildered," Ed Scherbinski, vice president of Mullen Trucking, said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Initially, it wasn't clear if the bridge just gave way on its own. But at an overnight news conference, Washington State Patrol Chief John Batiste blamed it on the too-tall load. The vertical clearance from the roadway to the beam is 14.6 feet.

The truck made it off the bridge and Scott remained at the scene and cooperated with investigators. Two other vehicles went into the water about 25 feet below as the structure crumbled. Three people were rescued and were recovering Friday.

The trucking company said it received a state permit to carry its oversized load across the bridge. Scherbinski said the state Department of Transportation had approved of the company's plan to drive the equipment along I-5 to Vancouver, Wash.

He also said the company hired a local escort to help navigate the route. The driver was well-experienced with handling oversized loads, he said.

"This is what we do for a living. We pride ourselves in doing things the proper way," Scherbinski said.

Mike Allende, a state DOT spokesman, confirmed the truck had its permit.

"We're still trying to figure out why it hit the bridge," he said. "It's ultimately up to the trucking company to figure out whether it can get through. It's their responsibility to make sure the load they have can travel on that route."

Dave Chesson, a state DOT spokesman, said there were no signs leading up to the bridge warning about its clearance height.

Gov. Jay Inslee — who issued an emergency proclamation for surrounding Skagit, Snohomish and Whatcom counties — said it will cost $15 million to repair the bridge. The federal government has already promised the state $1 million in emergency funding.

Inslee talked to U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood on Friday morning. LaHood is promising his full support to get Washington's main north-south roadway repaired as quickly as possible. National Transportation Safety Board officials planned to join state authorities at a Monday afternoon news briefing.

Traffic could be affected for some time. The bridge is used by an average of 71,000 vehicles a day, so the roadblock will cause a major disruption in trade and tourism between Seattle and Vancouver, British Columbia.

The Washington Transportation Department has set up detours. The closest bridge nearby is mostly used for local traffic between Mount Vernon and Burlington. The department also is recommending detours using state Routes 20 and 9 that add tens of miles to a trip. Drivers are urged to avoid the area if possible, especially over the Memorial Day weekend.

Dan Sligh and his wife were in their pickup on I-5 heading to a camping trip when he said the bridge before them disappeared in a "big puff of dust."

"I hit the brakes and we went off," Sligh told reporters from a hospital, adding he "saw the water approaching ... you hold on as tight as you can."

Sligh and his wife were taken to Skagit Valley Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. The other man was reported in stable condition at United General Hospital in Sedro-Woolley, hospital CEO Greg Reed said.

The bridge was inspected twice last year and repairs were made, Transportation Secretary Lynn Peterson said.

"It's an older bridge that needs a lot of work just like a good number of bridges around the state," she said.

The bridge was not classified as structurally deficient, but a Federal Highway Administration database lists it as being "functionally obsolete" — a category meaning that the design is outdated, such as having narrow shoulders and low clearance underneath.

The bridge was 1,112 feet long and 180 feet wide, with two lanes in each direction, state DOT spokesman Noel Brady said. There are four spans, or sections, over the water supported by piers. The span on the north side is the one that collapsed. It's a steel truss bridge, meaning it has a boxy steel frame.

The mishap was reminiscent of the August 2007 collapse of an I-35W bridge in Minneapolis that killed 13 people and injured another 145 when it buckled and fell into the Mississippi River during rush-hour.

Sligh was thankful.

"You're kind of pinching yourself and realize you're lucky to be alive."

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UK-bound Pakistan plane diverted, 2 men arrested

LONDON (AP) — Britain scrambled fighter jets Friday to intercept a commercial airliner carrying more than 300 people fromPakistan, diverting it to an isolated runway at an airport on the outskirts of London and arresting two British passengers who allegedly threatened to destroy the plane.

A British security official said the situation involving the Pakistan International Airlines flight did not appear terror-related, though police were still investigating, but the incident further rattled the U.K. just days after a soldier was killed on a London street in a suspected terror attack.

The security official requested anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the investigation.

A Pakistani official briefed by British police and PIA security on the investigation said the two suspects, speaking Urdu, allegedly threatened to "destroy the plane" after an argument with crew. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the case on the record.

Flight P709 was traveling from Lahore, Pakistan, to Manchester Airport when it was diverted by the fighter jets to Stansted Airport. The U.K. Ministry of Defense confirmed that Typhoon jets were launched to investigate an incident involving a civilian aircraft but gave no further details.

Passenger Nauman Rizvi told Pakistan's GEO TV that two men who had tried to move toward the cockpit during the flight were handcuffed and arrested once the plane landed. Rizvi said that after the men were taken away, the flight crew told passengers there had been a terrorist threat and that the pilot had raised an alarm.

Essex Police said they were notified at 1:20 p.m. local time (12:20 GMT, 8:20 a.m. EDT) that a threat had been made to an aircraft. The force said that after the Boeing 777 landed at 2:15 p.m., armed officers entered it and arrested two British nationals, aged 30 and 41, on suspicion of endangering the aircraft.

The suspects were taken to a police station where they face questioning, the police said in a statement. The plane will be examined by forensic specialists but no suspicious items have been recovered so far, police added.

"This incident is being treated as a criminal offense," the police statement said, in another indication it was not being seen as a terror case.

Mashood Tajwar, a spokesman for PIA, said 297 passengers and 11 crew members were on the plane. By late afternoon Friday, passengers had disembarked from the plane and were being interviewed, according to Mark Davison, a spokesman for Stansted Airport.

Police across Britain have stepped up patrols in recent days following the suspected terror attack in south London.

Two men with a meat cleaver and knives attacked and killed a British soldier in broad daylight, and gruesome footage that emerged after the attack showed one of the alleged assailants angrily complaining about the British government and troops in foreign lands.

Those two suspects were shot when police arrived on the scene and have been hospitalized.

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Associated Press writers Paisley Dodds in London and Zarar Khan in Islamabad contributed to this report.

Cassandra Vinograd can be reached at http://twitter.com/CassVinograd and Danica Kirka can be reached at http://twitter.com/DanicaKirka

Oklahoma gets far more than its share of disasters

Graphic shows major disaster declarations by state and county since

This combination of Associated Press file photos shows left, a neighborhood in Moore, Okla., on Tuesday, May 4, 1999, after a tornado flattened many houses and buildings in central Oklahoma, and right, flattened houses in Moore on Tuesday, May 21, 2013. This week’s twister killed 24 people, obliterated entire city blocks and caused damage that’s expected to top $2 billion. Four tornadoes have hit the town since 1998, including one in 1999 that everyone just calls the “May 3 tornado,” which had 300 mph winds and killed more than 40 people. (AP Photo/J. Pat Carter; Tony Gutierrez)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Many states get hit frequently with tornadoes and other natural catastrophes, but Oklahoma is Disaster Central.

The twister that devastated Moore, Okla., was the 74th presidential disaster declared in the Sooner state in the past 60 years. Only much-larger and more-populous California and Texas have had more.

The state is No. 1 in tornado disasters and No. 3 for flooding, according to a database of presidential disaster declarationshandled by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. And those figures don't include drought, which is handled by a different agency.

The explanation is partly atmospheric conditions that trigger twisters and flooding, partly where people live and how they build their homes, and partly politics and bureaucratic skill, according to disaster experts. Even one of the state's U.S. senators said recently that because of the way federal guidelines are written, Oklahoma is getting disaster aid more often than it needs.

Of the 25 U.S. counties that have been declared disasters the most times since 1953, nine are in Oklahoma, the highest total of any state.

Oklahoma County has been on the disaster list 38 times, more than the entire state of New Jersey. Caddo County, just west of the Oklahoma City metro area, has been named a federal disaster areanine times since 2007, with a litany of woe that includes twisters, floods, ice storms, a blizzard and violent winds.

"Things happen around here," Tulsa, Okla.-based disaster consultant Ann Patton said. "Of course, sometimes it can make you stronger."

When disaster declarations are measured on a per-person basis, Oklahoma gets nearly three times the national average. When they are computed based on how much land is in a state, it gets twice the national average, according to an analysis of FEMA records.

The atmospheric explanation is pretty basic: "Oklahoma really is the bull's-eye for awful tornadoes," said Mike Lindell, director of the Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center at Texas A&M University.

Oklahoma is in a particularly busy and dangerous section of Tornado Alley, the cluster of states in the nation's midsection that are especially twister-prone.

If you map all the nation's tornadoes in May — the busiest tornado month — they form a circular blob 100 miles across over central Oklahoma. That's because low-pressure systems rush south down the Rocky Mountains and collide with warm, moist air, forming nasty thunderstorms that often spawn tornadoes, said Harold Brooks, a research meteorologist at the Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Okla.

"Welcome to the sweet spot of severe thunderstorms," Brooks said.

Texas, Kansas and Florida get more tornadoes than Oklahoma does, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But Oklahoma gets more of the biggest ones — the EF5s, like the one that smashed Moore. That's why the storm lab and the National Weather Service storm prediction center are in Oklahoma, Lindell said.

With severe thunderstorms, you can get both tornadoes and flooding. Oklahoma has been declared a disaster 35 times because of tornadoes and 44 times because of flooding. In some instances, a combination tornado-and-flood disaster was declared.

The FEMA database looks only at how often catastrophes are declared and aid is shipped, not at how much total money is given out.

Tornadoes generally occur more frequently than hurricanes and earthquakes but usually don't cause as much damage. Oklahoma City officials estimate the Moore tornado caused up to $2 billion in damage, while state officials say it may exceed the figures for the 2011 Joplin, Mo., tornado. At $2.8 billion, Joplin is the nation's costliest tornado since 1950, according to NOAA.

Yet NOAA's National Hurricane Center lists more than 30 hurricanes that caused more than $2.8 billion damage when adjusted for inflation. Hurricanes tend to hit broader areas, last longer and strike the more densely populated coast, where property values are higher.

Another explanation for Oklahoma's role as Disaster Central is urban sprawl, which puts more people in the path of disasters. Moore, with 56,000 people, boomed by more than one-third between 2000 and 2010. As more such suburbs pop up and grow, the chances of homes being hit increases.

Between 1970 and 1985, Tulsa County was declared a flood disaster about nine times, said Patton, the disaster consultant. Then the city moved more than 1,000 buildings out of harm's way and diverted water. There hasn't been major flooding since, she said.

Oklahoma is the leading state when it comes to safe rooms, which probably saved lives in Moore, according to FEMA. Yet some areas haven't developed wisely to avoid disasters and "don't respect the power of nature," Patton said.

Several disaster experts also say Oklahoma is particularly adept at working the bureaucracy to obtain federal aid.

Having the president declare your community a federal disaster area is a complicated process that needs to be followed precisely. A governor must request a presidential declaration in writing through FEMA, which rates the disaster based on a number of factors. It is up to the president to make the decision, and then it's up to FEMA to get the aid flowing.

The presidential decision involves many factors, including the political clout of the region's congressional delegation and how good a case the governor makes, said University of Delaware political science professor Richard Sylves, who studies disaster declarations. Oklahoma is so experienced at this process that its governors and emergency managers know how to make it run smoothly, he said.

"Some people get disaster declarations simply because they've got an influential political delegation," Lindell said of the process in general.

The irony, said Kathleen Tierney, who heads the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado, is that Oklahoma's current two senators have often opposed special disaster relief funding bills for other parts of the country, such as one earlier this year for the Northeast after Superstorm Sandy.

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., has criticized the FEMA formula for declaring disasters, saying it rewards smaller states and punishes bigger ones for catastrophes of the same size.

During a hearing last month, Coburn told Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano: "Oklahoma had 22 FEMA grants last year. I'm thankful that the federal government is helping Oklahoma out, but in a lot of those, we weren't overwhelmed and we could have taken and dealt with it. And some states that may be in much worse budget shape than we are had twice as much but got no help from the federal government on like-minded events. "

Joseph Nimmich, FEMA associate administrator for disaster response, said Thursday that politics has absolutely nothing to do with Oklahoma's many disaster declarations: "It's purely a natural occurrence."

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Online:

FEMA list of presidential disasters since 1953 by state: http://1.usa.gov/11eQHyU

FEMA explains the process how a community gets declared a federal disaster:

http://1.usa.gov/13LS6ZL

NOAA's billion-dollar disasters: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions/summary-stats

Seth Borenstein can be followed at http://twitter.com/borenbears