The pilot and co-pilot of an Asiana Airlines cargo plane were killed when the aircraft caught fire and crashed Thursday off South Korea's southern island of Jeju, officials said.

Investigations were focusing on whether inflammable material in the hold of the Boeing 747-400 sparked the blaze.

North Korea said Wednesday, ahead of landmark talks with the United States, that a U.S. missile defense shield will set off a new nuclear arms race.

The target of the shield is "the gaining of absolute nuclear superiority and global hegemony over the other nuclear power rivals," North Korea's U.N. ambassador Sin Son Ho told a U.N. debate on nuclear disarmament.

At least 25 people were killed and nine others went missing as a slow-moving tropical storm dumped enormous amounts of rain across the Philippines' main island, authorities said Wednesday.

Nock-ten, named after a Laotian bird, was expected to cause more damage in the mountainous northern areas of Luzon island on Wednesday night, while also bringing heavy rain to Manila, the state weather service said.

India's Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna said on Wednesday that relations with Pakistan were "on the right track" after talks with his Pakistani counterpart Hina Rabbani Khar in New Delhi.

Conceding that there were challenges that lay ahead, Krishna told reporters: "I can confidently say that our relations are on the right track."

A blast of heavy rain sent landslides barreling through South Korea's capital and a northern town Wednesday, killing at least 32 people, including 10 college students doing volunteer work.

The students died as mud and debris engulfed them as they slept in a resort cabin in Chuncheon, about 68 miles (110 kilometers) northeast of the capital Seoul, said Byun In-soo of the town's fire station. A married couple and a convenience store owner also died.

China has demanded that the United States stop spy plane flights near the Chinese coast, saying they have "severely harmed" trust between the two countries, state-run media reported Wednesday.

The comments came after Taiwanese media reported two Chinese fighter jets attempted to scare off an American U2 reconnaissance plane that was collecting intelligence on China while flying along the Taiwan Strait in late June.

Oslo's central train station was briefly evacuated and a bomb disposal team deployed on Wednesday morning because of a suspicious item of baggage found on a bus, officials told Agence France Presse.

"Nothing suspicious was found and all security cordons have been lifted," Oslo police said in a statement after inspecting the scene.

The mayor of Kandahar, a close ally of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, was assassinated in a suicide attack Wednesday -- the latest in a string of political murders in the key southern region.

The killing came two weeks after Karzai's powerful brother was gunned down in the city and is a further setback for U.S.-led efforts to control the Taliban's spiritual home as foreign troops start to withdraw.

Chinese police said Wednesday they had freed 89 children in a crackdown on trafficking launched this year after online reports of widespread abductions sparked public outrage.

Police also arrested 369 people in the six-month operation to break up a pair of "large criminal enterprises" involved in child-trafficking across 14 provinces, the Ministry of Public Security said in a statement.

The lawyer for the gunman behind last week's attacks in Norway laid out his feelings about the case and his client Tuesday, painting a picture of a cold and paranoid "warrior" who appears to be insane.

"This whole case indicates that he's insane," Geir Lippestad said about Anders Behring Breivik, who has claimed responsibility for Friday's bomb attack on the Oslo government and subsequent shooting spree on a nearby island.