In the news

WORLD

BEIJING – Envoys worked Sunday to negotiate a schedule for dismantling North Korea’s nuclear programs, amid efforts to resolve the thorny issue of U.S. financial sanctions that have frozen some $25 million in North Korean funds.

Christopher Hill, the American envoy, said he met with representatives from the North Korea delegation over the weekend to explain the U.S. position on the funds in Macau’s Banco Delta Asia bank and said he was hopeful that the issue had been resolved.

However, he had yet to meet with his North Korean counterpart, Kim Kye Gwan, who arrived Saturday but did not participate in preparatory meetings ahead of a formal resumption of six-party nuclear talks on Monday.

The talks are meant to assess progress since a Feb. 13 disarmament agreement was reached giving North Korea 60 days to shut its main reactor and a plutonium processing plant and allow U.N. monitors to verify the shutdown. In return, North Korea is to receive energy and economic assistance and move toward normalizing relations with the U.S. and Japan.

Hill told reporters Sunday the issue of the frozen funds “will not be an impediment to our six-party process.”

Hill said the North Korean officials he spoke with “made it very clear that they have begun their tasks for the purpose of denuclearization.”

NATION

JESSUP, Md. – Citing inefficiency and concern about employee safety, state officials closed a 128-year-old maximum-security prison on Saturday after secretly moving its inmates to other prisons over the past few weeks, according to a newspaper report.

Public Safety and Correctional Services Secretary Gary Maynard said he began working on plans to close the Maryland House of Correction in Jessup hours after a correctional officer, Edouardo Edouazin, was stabbed there on March 2, the (Baltimore) Sun reported Sunday.

Edouazin lived, but others involved in attacks at the prison haven’t been so lucky. Last summer, three prisoners were killed and a guard was stabbed to death by two inmates.

“The house of correction was one of the worst in terms of officer safety and efficiency of operation,” Maynard said. “You can’t put enough officers here to make it safe.”

During the last two weeks, groups of 15 to 40 inmates secretly were moved in vans and buses during the day, said John Rowley, acting commissioner of the Division of Correction. Inmates weren’t told until the morning of their move that they were leaving and weren’t told where they were going, officials said.

The last few dozens of the 842 inmates the prison housed were to be moved Saturday. Most went to other facilities in Maryland, but 97 of the “most disruptive” inmates went to federal prisons across the country or state facilities in Kentucky and Virginia, officials said.

STATE&LOCAL

NEWPORT NEWS – Local, state and federal authorities seized an estimated $1 million worth of counterfeit designer goods from 11 businesses following a month-long investigation.

Friday’s operation was the biggest in city history and one of the biggest in the state, said Lorain Crain, a master police detective in Newport News’ economic crimes unit.

“Operation Nike” involved officials from the Newport News and Hampton police departments, Virginia State Police, the Internal Revenue Service, the U.S. Postal Inspector and trademark investigators.

Officials swept across the city Friday with search warrants for the stores. No arrests were made, but police said charges are pending.

Authorities say the stores were selling counterfeit brand-name goods, such as fake Baby Phat and Coach items.

Investigators bought at least $200 worth of goods at each store, enough to warrant charges of grand larceny by false pretenses, Crain said.

Newport News police began investigating the businesses in December after receiving complaints that counterfeiters were hurting legitimate businesses.

The U.S. Department of Commerce estimates counterfeit goods drain $200 billion to $250 billion a year from the national economy, as well as 750,000 jobs.