North Korea's Kim arrives in Russia (Reuters)

VLADIVOSTOK, Russia (Reuters) – North Korean leader Kim Jong-il arrived in Russia on Saturday for his first visit in nearly a decade as the isolated state sought economic aid after heavy flooding exacerbated its chronic food shortages.

Kim will meet President Dmitry Medvedev and will spend time in the Far East and Siberia, the Kremlin said in a statement. The meeting is expected to take place around mid-week.

Russia and North Korea were once politically close, but relations cooled and trade fell sharply after the collapse of the Communist Soviet Union in 1991.

Kim arrived in the town of Khasan, near the short border between North Korea and Russia, on a train and was greeted by the Primorye region governor and Medvedev's representative in the Russian Far East, a regional government source said.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency, citing a South Korean government source, said Kim was expected to stay in Russia for a week and would probably hold talks with Medvedev in Ulan-Ude, 2,050 km (1,275 miles) further west near Lake Baikal in Siberia.

The local edition of the Russian newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets in Ulan-Ude said Kim's train was likely to arrive there on Tuesday or Wednesday.

The brief Kremlin statement confirmed Kim was arriving on Saturday and said he would spend time in the Far East and Siberia. "The main event of the visit will be President Dmitry Medvedev's meeting with Kim Jong-il," it said.

It did not say when or where the meeting would take place.

Russia is a member of the long-stalled six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear program, though China now holds more influence with North Korea than Russia does.

North Korea has been desperate for economic aid after suffering from floods and economic sanctions led by the United States because of its nuclear program.

VISIT FOLLOWS NUCLEAR TALKS

Citing a "severe deficit" of food products in North Korea, Russia's Foreign Ministry said on Friday that Russia would send 50,000 tonnes of grain to North Korea by the end of September. It said the first shipment was made on Friday.

The United States has offered North Korea up to $900,000 in emergency flood assistance but has made no decision yet on a broader request for humanitarian food aid for the isolated country, the State Department said on Thursday.

Kim made his last public visit to Russia in 2002, when he met then-President Vladimir Putin in the far eastern city of Vladivostok. He has visited China, Pyongyang's closest big-power ally, three times in just over a year.

The visit follows a series of top-level meetings between Pyongyang, Seoul, Washington and Beijing that has raised hopes of a resumption of long-stalled talks on disabling the secretive North's nuclear weapons program.

Russia and Japan are also parties to the talks.

Russia has expressed concern about North Korea missile tests and urged it to abide by commitments on its nuclear program, but has warned South Korea and the United States against acting too aggressively with the North.

Russian authorities in Vladivostok, 130 km (80 miles) from the North Korean border, had been making preparations for a possible visit by Kim in June, according to a local official.

He never arrived, and the newspaper Kommersant reported that he had canceled the visit because of worries about security following media reports that he was coming.

In 2001, Kim traveled over 7,000 km (4,500 miles) to Moscow by train for talks with Putin, who is now prime minister and is considering a return to the presidency in a vote next March.

Western reports suggest Kim was born at an army camp in the Soviet Union where his father was a key figure among Korean communist exiles receiving training. The North says Kim was born in a secret guerrilla camp at Mount Paektu, a peak considered sacred to Koreans.

(Additional reporting by Sung-won Shim in Seoul and Alexei Anishchuk and Denis Dyomkin in Moscow; Writing by Steve Gutterman; Editing by Yoko Nishikawa and Michael Roddy)

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First lady Michelle Obama arrives in South Africa (AP)

PRETORIA, South Africa – First lady Michelle Obama is beginning a goodwill visit to sub-Saharan Africa and Botswana, accompanied by her two daughters, a niece, a nephew and her mom.

Mrs. Obama received a warm welcome upon her arrival Monday night at the air force base in the capital of South Africa, Pretoria, after 18 hours and more than 1,800 miles of travel.

Throughout the week, the first lady will promote youth leadership, education and HIV/AIDS prevention programs.

She'll also pay tribute to the legacy of Nelson Mandela and others like him whose struggles and sacrifices ultimately led to the undoing of South Africa's system of segregation.

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Michelle Obama is fond of saying there's no magic to her being first lady.

She didn't come from a wealthy or well-connected family. She came from the South Side of Chicago and is a descendant of slaves. But she says it's a passion for an education that she and President Barack Obama shared and a willingness to work hard that helped them become successful.

It's a message that young leaders in Africa soon will hear when Mrs. Obama makes her second solo trip abroad as first lady, visiting South Africa and Botswana this coming week.

"In so many ways, I see myself in you all. And I want you to see yourselves in me," she recently told Washington high school students, hoping to inspire them with her personal story.

The weeklong visit, beginning with the first lady's arrival Monday in Johannesburg, is intended to improve relations between the U.S. and Africa and promote youth engagement, education, health and wellness. In the centerpiece speech of the trip, she will appear Wednesday before a U.S.-sponsored forum of young women leaders from sub-Saharan Africa.

The president is not going, but Mrs. Obama is being joined by her daughters, Malia and Sasha, as well as her mother, Marian Robinson, and a niece and nephew, Leslie and Avery Robinson. Her family will join her on most outings, probably exposing her daughters to more of the media spotlight than they're used to.

It was during her first solo trip outside the U.S., to Mexico in April 2010, that the first lady started an effort to encourage young people to become involved in their communities and countries and not shy away from trying to solve persistent global problems.

The youth population outside the U.S. is growing fast, with young people ages 15 to 24 making up 20 percent of the world's population.

"The fact is is that responsibility for meeting the defining challenges of our time will soon fall to all of you," Mrs. Obama told thousands of university students in Mexico City. "Soon, the world will be looking to your generation to make the discoveries and to build the industries that will fuel our prosperity and ensure our well-being for decades to come."

That message is likely to resonate in a place such as South Africa, where two of three residents are younger than 30, said Jennifer Cooke, an Africa scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

Botswana is a regular stop for U.S. officials. Well governed, it is considered one of Africa's best functioning democracies, Cooke said.

Many of the stops on Mrs. Obama's trip will highlight South Africa's past under apartheid, the system of white-minority rule. She'll also pay tribute to the legacy of Nelson Mandela, who spent 27 years in prison for his role in the anti-apartheid movement. He later became South Africa's first elected black president.

The size of Mrs. Obama's traveling party is sure to invite comparisons to her vacation last August in Spain with Sasha and friends. The five-day trip to Spain's Costa del Sol stoked a bit of a firestorm about the wisdom of taking a glamorous trip with such economic hurt at home and raised speculation about who was paying the bill.

Attempting to head off similar criticism this time, the White House said Mrs. Obama is allowed to bring guests with her on the plane because she's on official U.S. business, as the president is allowed on his official trips. All other costs regarding her family are to be paid for privately.

Mrs. Obama's visit opens Tuesday in Pretoria, the South African capital, at a meeting with Nompumelelo Ntuli-Zuma, one of President Jacob Zuma's three wives, at his official residence. Zuma was scheduled to be out of the country. Back in Johannesburg, Mrs. Obama meets with Mandela's wife, Graca Machel, and tours the Nelson Mandela Foundation and the Apartheid Museum.

A meeting between America's first black first lady and the 92-year-old former president is hoped for but remained in doubt, given his fragile health. Mandela had an acute respiratory infection in late January that led to a two-day hospital stay. He retired from public life after leaving office in 1999 after one term, but remains a larger-than-life figure in his country and around the world.

Mrs. Obama delivers her speech Wednesday at the Regina Mundi Church in the black township of Soweto, one of many churches that became hubs of activity for political gatherings after such meetings were banned during the anti-apartheid movement. She'll also view a memorial honoring a 13-year-old boy shot and killed by government police during a June 1976 student uprising in Soweto.

In Cape Town on Thursday, Mrs. Obama and her family will ride a ferry to Robben Island for a moving visit to the closet-sized cell where Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years in prison.

She'll highlight education by inviting disadvantaged students to spend the day immersed at the University of Cape Town, before meeting with groups that work to halt the spread of HIV/AIDS in South Africa, including by using soccer to teach children about the deadly disease. Between 5 million and 6 million South Africans live with HIV/AIDS.

Mrs. Obama also was scheduled to meet with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and key figure in the struggle against apartheid and in later helping South Africa overcome its past.

She heads to Botswana on Friday to call on President Ian Khama in Gaborone, the capital, and drop in at a combination clinic and center for teenagers that teaches about leadership and HIV/AIDS.

With the official business concluded by Saturday, the first lady and her family will head off for private time, including a safari and an overnight stay in the animal park.

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Online:

Michelle Obama's video message about the trip: http://tinyurl.com/6fpjc7a

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Mexican poet's peace caravan arrives in Juarez (AP)

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico – A well-known Mexican poet who has turned his grief over a murdered son into a crusade for peace ended his weeklong "consolation caravan" Friday in the country's most violent city, saying he seeks to change public consciousness and the government's current strategy for fighting drug trafficking.

Javier Sicilia, who started the caravan from outside Mexico City last Saturday, had amassed about 1,500 followers, including others who had lost innocent family members and friends to drug violence, by the time he reached Ciudad Juarez, the border city across from El Paso, Texas.

Sicilia visited a park created in the memory of 15 teens slaughtered in 2010 by gang members in what was believed to be a case of mistaken identity, as well as a field where the bodies of eight women were found in 2001. Hundreds of women were murdered in Juarez in the 1990s, the symbol of the city's violence before a fight among drug cartels heated up, killing at least 3,100 people last year alone.

"Do your jobs, stop humiliating the citizens of Juarez, and do justice to so many who have died," Sicilian called out to state and local officials. "This is the beginning of a civil resistance movement to transform consciousness, to start a dialogue in the absence of government policies."

The number of homicides has fallen for three straight months in Juarez, though government officials haven't given a reason for the drop. But the city is emblematic of Mexico's problem with drug crimes and impunity. At least 95 percent of crimes there are never prosecuted, according to local human rights groups.

Several people have been arrested in the March 28 slaying of Sicilia's son, Juan Francisco Sicilia, a college student who authorities say was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Prosecutors say drug gang members killed him and six others 10 days after a couple of Sicilia's friends had a chance scuffle with the gangsters.

The caravan of about a dozen buses started in Cuernavaca, a central resort and industrial city where Sicilia's son and the others were slain.

Since then, Sicilia has led several marches, first in Cuernavaca and then from Cuernavaca to Mexico City. He also has proposed writing the names of the dead on plaques at the spots where they were killed throughout the country so that they won't just be numbers.

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Libyan rape accuser arrives in Romania

(CNN) -- Eman al-Obeidy, the woman who caught the world's attention when she accused members of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's forces of gang-raping her, arrived Monday at a refugee facility in Romania.

Al-Obeidy had fled Libya and was awaiting resettlement as a refugee in Qatar when she was deported Thursday and sent back to Benghazi in Libya.

On Sunday, a high-level U.S. State Department source told CNN that al-Obeidy was on her way to Malta with her father, and would head to a processing center in Europe before leaving for a final destination. It may take weeks before she gets to that destination.

Another U.S. State Department source said Sunday the United States was deeply concerned about her well-being, and worked closely with officials in Europe and Libya to get her safely out of the country. The same source said the U.S. is "prepared to provide whatever help and support Eman may need."

Al-Obeidy has told CNN on repeated occasions that she wants to go to the United States.

One of the State Department sources told CNN that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton "has been deeply interested in the case and has followed it throughout."

Al-Obeidy was reportedly beaten before being deported from Qatar. Najah Dawaji, a U.S.-based Libyan freedom activist, said she was with three key members of Libya's opposition Transitional National Council when they learned that al-Obeidy was forced from Doha and arrived in Benghazi on Thursday. She said al-Obeidy had a black eye, bruises on her legs and scratches on her arms.

Al-Obeidy told a journalist that officials in the Transitional National Council had pressured the Qataris to expel her.

After arriving in Qatar, al-Obeidy had made public statements saying the Transitional National Council was using her. The council denied that.

Council members were upset upon seeing al-Obeidy's condition and vowed to open an investigation, Dawaji said.

The United States said it was "disappointed" by al-Obeidy's expulsion, which it said was "a breach of humanitarian norms."

Amnesty International called the deportation "outrageous," saying the action by the Qatari government "is a serious breach by Qatar of its international obligations."

CNN's Khalil Abdallah and Nic Robertson contributed to this report.

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Clinton arrives in Pakistan amid tense ties (Reuters)

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Islamabad on Friday in a surprise visit amid frayed relations with the U.S. nuclear-armed ally after the death of Osama bin Laden.

The discovery of the al Qaeda leader in a garrison town just 50 km (30 miles) away from the capital Islamabad raised fresh doubts about Pakistan being a reliable partner in the U.S.-led war on Islamist militancy.

The Pakistan government welcomed the death of the al Qaeda leader but has criticized the U.S. secret mission in Abbottabad, where bin Laden lived for years, as a breach of its sovereignty.

Many U.S. lawmakers, skeptical that Pakistani officials did not know of bin Laden's presence, want to cut U.S. aid to Pakistan, which the White House views as vital to counter-terrorism and to hopes of stabilizing neighboring Afghanistan.

In a sign of deepening distrust, Pakistan has told the United States to halve the number of military trainers stationed in the country.

But just a day before coming to Pakistan, Clinton said working with Pakistan was a strategic necessity for the United States, even as she pressed Islamabad to act more decisively to counter-terrorism.

She praised Pakistan as a "good partner" in global efforts to fight terrorism, though she acknowledged that the two countries have disagreed on how hard to fight al Qaeda, Afghan Taliban fighters and other militants.

"We do have a set of expectations that we are looking for the Pakistani government to meet but I want to underscore, in conclusion, that it is not as though they have been on the sidelines," she told a news conference in Paris on Thursday.

"They have been actively engaged in their own bitter fight with these terrorist extremists."

(Reporting by Zeeshan Haider)

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Sen. John McCain arrives in Libya

s trip comes as Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced Thursday that President Barack Obama has authorized armed Predator drones against forces loyal to Gadhafi. It is the first time that drones will be used for airstrikes since the United States turned over control of the operation to NATO on April 4.

The rebels have complained that NATO airstrikes since then have largely been ineffective in stopping Gadhafi forces.

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