World News Host

AP - North Korea issued a New Year’s message vowing to strengthen its military policy amid tension on the Korean peninsula.

AP - The Gaza Strip has lost its last lifeline after five days of Israeli bombing raids that destroyed dozens of smuggling tunnels under the sandy border with Egypt.

AP - Mexico sent 10 alleged drug smugglers to the United States on Wednesday, capping an already record year for extraditions between the two countries.

AP - A fire swept through a high class nightclub jammed with hundreds of New Year’s revelers in the Thai capital, killing at least 54 people and injuring about 100, officials said early Thursday. Victims died from burns, smoke inhalation and injuries during the stampede to escape from the club, which had only one door for entry and exit, police Maj. Gen. Chokchai Deeprasertwit said.

AP - Israel sent more troops to the Gaza border Wednesday, rapidly moving forward with preparations for a possible ground offensive as the next stage of its military assault on the coastal territory’s Hamas rulers.

AP - U.S. military deaths in Iraq plunged by two-thirds in 2008 from the previous year, a reflection of the improving security following the U.S. military’s counterinsurgency campaign and al-Qaida’s slow retreat from the battlefield. By comparison, the war in Afghanistan saw American military deaths rise by 35 percent in 2008 as Islamic extremists shift their focus to a new front with the West.

AP - Russia’s state gas monopoly Gazprom said it will cut off all gas supplies to Ukraine on Thursday morning after the two sides failed to reach an agreement on how much Ukraine will pay in 2009.

AP - President Nicolas Sarkozy will travel to the Middle East next week, his office announced, as France kept up the pressure on Israel to end fighting in Gaza despite Israel’s rejection of a temporary truce.

AP - Banquet halls have canceled weddings, parents are holding makeshift day care centers in bomb shelters and motorists avoid driving during the day. As Hamas shells southern cities, hundreds of thousands of Israelis in rocket range are finding new ways of coping.

Reuters - U.S. President George W. Bush is to meet next week with south Sudan’s president to discuss his peace pact with the Khartoum government, which the United States accuses of complicity in genocide in Darfur and sponsoring terrorism.