USA Clinton says US willing to work with North Korea if it reformsSecretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Friday that the United States was willing to work with North Korea if it changed its ways, and also said more pressure should be brought to bear on Sudan and Syria. Speaking in Beijing at the end of two days of high-level meetings overshadowed by a crisis over a Chinese dissident, who had sought refuge at the US embassy, Clinton sought to underscore that Washington and Beijing could still work together on key international issues. “We see two nations that are now thoroughly and inescapably interdependent,” Clinton said in prepared remarks in the closed door meeting. On North Korea, where the United States wants China to put more pressure on the isolated nation’s leadership to reign in its nuclear ambitions, Clinton said Washington was still willing to work with Pyongyang if it changes its ways. Neo-Nazi suspected in Arizona murder-suicideThe Neo-Nazi founder of an anti-immigrant border militia is believed to have shot and killed four people before turning a gun on himself following a domestic dispute at a home in a Phoenix suburb, police said on Thursday. Police believe Jason Todd ‘JT’ Ready opened fire at a house in Gilbert on Wednesday, killing his girlfriend, her daughter, the daughter’s boyfriend and the young couple’s toddler daughter. He then shot himself, Gilbert Police Sergeant Bill Balafas said. Ready, 39, founded the US Border Guard group, a private-citizen militia in Arizona that advocated deadly force to stop illegal immigration over the border from Mexico. Ready had long-held ties to neo-Nazi groups in the United States, the Anti-Defamation League and Southern Poverty Law Centre said on their websites.WORLDProtests planned in Syria after university raidSyrian opposition groups are calling for mass protests a day after a raid by security forces on dormitories at Aleppo University killed four students and forced the closure of the state-run school. Friday is the day of weekly anti-government protests in Syria, when thousands of demonstrators regularly take to the street calling for President Bashar Assad’s ouster. The university incident sparked outrage in the north-

western city of Aleppo and activists said new protests were expected. The Syrian National Council opposition group urged students across Syria to stage a strike. The group also said the international community through its silence was encouraging the Assad regime to continue with its brutal crackdown on dissent.Brazil pledges investment fund for AfricaBrazil pledged major investment and technology transfer to Africa to repay a ‘solidarity debt’ from a country with a huge black population to the poorest but resource-rich continent. “Brazil must begin to repay the solidarity debt we have with Africa,” Former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said, in his first public address since he was

diagnosed with larynx cancer in October. The world’s sixth-largest economy “owes its current strength to the more than 300 years of slavery during which we exploited the sweat and blood of millions of Africans,” he added.