1.) N.Korea fires onto S.Korean island
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - North Korea bombarded a South Korean island near their disputed western border with artillery Tuesday, setting buildings ablaze and killing at least one marine after warning the South to halt military drills in the area, South Korean officials said.
South Korea said it returned fire and scrambled fighter jets in response, and said the "inhumane" attack on civilian areas violated the 1953 armistice halting the Korean War. The two sides technically remain at war because a peace treaty was never negotiated.
The skirmish came amid high tension over North Korea's claim that it has a new uranium enrichment facility and just six weeks after North Korean leader Kim Jong Il unveiled his youngest son Kim Jong Un as his heir apparent.
The North's artillery struck the small South Korean-held island of Yeonpyeong, which houses military installations and a small civilian population and which has been the focus of two previous deadly battles between the Koreas.
One South Korean marine was killed, three were seriously wounded and 10 slightly wounded, a Joint Chiefs of Staff official said. Island residents were escaping to about 20 shelters in the island while sporadic shelling continued, the military official said.
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2010/11/23/apworld/20101123184848&sec=apworld
CNN,
Seoul, South Korea (CNN) -- South Korea's president called on his military forces to use "action" and not talk to punish North Korea for deadly artillery attacks on Tuesday, but international diplomats appealed for restraint.
"The provocation this time can be regarded as an invasion of South Korean territory. In particular, indiscriminate attacks on civilians are a grave matter," President Lee Myung-bak said at the headquarters of the Joint Chiefs of Staff here, according to South Korea's Yonhap news agency.
"Enormous retaliation is going to be necessary to make North Korea incapable of provoking us again," Lee said.
"Given that North Korea maintains an offensive posture, I think the army, the navy and the air force should unite and retaliate against (the North's) provocation with multiple-fold firepower," he said.
Two South Korean marines were killed and 15 South Korean soldiers and civilians were wounded when the North fired about 100 rounds of artillery at Yeonpyeong Island in the Yellow Sea, South Korea authorities said, according to the South Korean Yonhap news agency. The attack also set houses and forests on fire on the island.
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/11/23/nkorea.skorea.military.fire/index.html?hpt=T1
2.) At least 378 die in stampede at Cambodian festival

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) - Rescuers on Tuesday trawled a muddy river for more bodies and Cambodia prepared for a day of mourning in wake of a stampede by thousands of festival goers which left at least 378 dead and hundreds of injured.
The prime minister called it the country's biggest tragedy since the murderous 1970s reign of the Khmer Rouge.
A panic-stricken crowd - celebrating the end of the rainy season on an island in a river - tried to flee over a narrow bridge in the capital Phnom Penh late Monday and many people were crushed underfoot or fell over its sides into the water. Disoriented victims struggled to find an escape hatch through the human mass, pushing their way in every direction. After the stampede, bodies were stacked upon bodies on the bridge as rescuers swarmed the area.
The search for bodies in and along the Bassac River continued Tuesday as state television showed horrific footage of twisted and writhing bodies -- both alive and dead -- piled on each other. Some desperately reached out with their hands, screaming for help and grasping for hands of rescuers who struggled to pull limp bodies from the pile as if they were trapped in sand or snow.
It remained unclear what sparked the stampede. Police and witnesses pointed to the narrow bridge as providing inadequate access to and from the island. Two Singaporean businessmen who organized a sound-and-light show for the festival, said authorities had closed another bridge earlier in the day, forcing tens of thousands of people to use a single span.
One witness said the trouble started when several people fell unconscious in the press of the crowd. Another survivor said he heard a police siren just before the panic erupted. Ambulances raced back and forth between the river and the hospitals for several hours after the stampede. Calmette Hospital, the capital's main medical facility, was filled to capacity with bodies as well as patients, some of whom had to be treated in hallways. Relatives, some crying, searched for the missing Tuesday morning.