World News Briefs

N. Korea: Floods wreak havoc

SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea detailed a picture of massive devastation Wednesday from some of the country's heaviest rains that official media said wiped out more than a tenth of the impoverished country's farmland during peak planting season.

If confirmed, the destruction to the country's agriculture sector would be a quarter of the damage the North claimed it suffered in massive flooding in 1995. That disaster, coupled with outdated farming methods and the loss of the country's Soviet benefactor, sparked a famine that is estimated to have killed as many...