Paris - North Korean strongman Kim Jong-il suffered a stroke last summer but was now on the mend, a French doctor who treated him told the daily Le Figaro.

"Kim Jong-il was the victim of a stroke, but he did not undergo surgery," Francois-Xavier Roux, head of neurosurgery at Sainte-Anne Hospital in Paris, told the newspaper on Thursday.

"Today, he is doing better. The photographs that have just been published seem genuine to me," Roux said.

Seoul  - Political relations on the Korean peninsula reached a new low in 2008, as insecurity over the political situation in Pyongyang and North Korea's renewed nuclear posturing raised concerns all across the region.

In early December, at the latest round of the six-party talks disbanded in Beijing, negotiators from China, Russia, the United States, Japan and South Korea struggled to reach a compromise with Pyongyang on a verification roadmap for its nuclear disarmament.

Falling back to its traditional gambit of rejecting previous agreements, North Korea dumbfounded its negotiation counterparts by refusing to have international inspectors take environmental samples at its nuclear facilities.

Beijing  - Deadlocked negotiations on dismantling North Korea's nuclear weapons programme are likely to break up Thursday as Pyongyang rejected a compromise proposal on procedures to verify its disablement.

In the latest round of the six-party talks, delegates from the United States, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea struggled with North Korea's continued refusal to allow nuclear inspectors to take soil and waste samples from its nuclear facility in Yongbyon, a means to verify how much plutonium for nuclear weapons the country produced.

North Korea on Wednesday rejected draft by meeting host China, which included a clause on environmental sampling.

Beijing  - China on Tuesday issued a draft agreement on a mechanism to verify North Korea's nuclear disarmament, as top nuclear negotiators from six countries entered into a second day of talks.

The delegates from the United States, China, Russia, Japan, North and South Korea were to review the draft and deliver their positions to China, South Korea's official Yonhap news agency said, quoting sources within the Seoul delegation.

"We will need to focus our discussions on the verification issue," South Korean chief negotiator Kim Sook said, but added that there had been no progress in the talks so far.

He was under the impression that North Korea was not ready for new discussions or a compromise, Kim added.

Seoul - The population of North Korea is facing a year of privation due to the ongoing food crisis in the country, according to a report by the World Food Programme (WFP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported Monday.

Around 40 per cent of the population or around 8.7 million people - primarily children, pregnant women, nursing mothers, and the elderly - may require urgent aid, the report said, adding that the coming months may see a serious food shortages due to a deficit in cereals.

Beijing, Dec. 8 : Western representatives who will attend negotiations starting today on North Korea''s nuclear programme, are reportedly pessimistic about any progress being made.

According to The Telegraph, the six nations involved in the talks – North Korea, South Korea, China, Japan, the United States and Russia -- have battled on and off for more than five years to implement a lasting plan to end Pyongyang’s nuclear programme.