Choe Ryong Hae, a top Workers' Party official and a vice marshal tasked with supervising the North Korean army, departed on a chartered Air Koryo flight with a political and military delegation. Chinese Ambassador Liu Hongcai was among dignitaries on the tarmac for his departure.

The trip is the highest-profile visit by a North Korean official to China this year, and it takes place as the new leadership in China shows frustration with North Korea and a greater willingness to work with Washington to harry Pyongyang over its nuclear ambitions.

China is Pyongyang's economic and diplomatic lifeline, providing nearly all of its fuel and most of its trade, and foreign analysts said the trip could be an attempt to win more aid and repair ties.

There are signs of strains in relations between Beijing and Pyongyang over North Korea's nuclear ambitions, which included an underground nuclear test in February. That test was followed by U.N. sanctions and a protracted period of high tensions as North Korea threatened nuclear strikes on Washington and Seoul.

The rhetoric has fallen off in recent weeks, and there have been tentative signs of diplomacy in the region.

In one sign of Beijing's move displeasure with Pyongyang, China's state-run Bank of China said this month it had notified the Foreign Trade Bank of North Korea that its accounts were closed and all financial transactions suspended.

Meanwhile, Chinese fishermen said gunmen in North Korean military uniforms held a crew captive at gunpoint for two weeks before finally releasing the boat this week. The ship's owner said the captain was beaten and the vessel's fuel stolen.

Choe's trip is believed to be the first top-level meeting between North Korean and China since Chinese Politburo member Li Jianguo went to Pyongyang in late November bearing a letter from Xi Jinping, who had just been installed as China's party chief.

North Korea watchers in China said during the tense weeks of March and April that Beijing had explored sending an envoy to Pyongyang but decided against it because North Korea would not guarantee a meeting with Kim.

The visit precedes discussions about a trip by South Korean President Park Geun-hye to China next month.

Choe and his delegation may be ask for more economic aid from Beijing and to explain North Korea's recent military moves, including short-range projectile launches off the east coast, said Lee Ji-sue, a North Korea specialist and professor at Myongji University in Seoul, South Korea.

Leader Kim Jong Un hasn't visited Beijing since he took power from his father, Kim Jong Il, who visited China in August 2011 just months before his death that December.

China is North Korea's top trade partner. According to the most recent figures from Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency in Seoul, which collects North Korean trade data, China accounted for 89 percent of North Korea's exports and imports in 2011. The 2012 figure was not available.

The numbers show deepening economic ties between North Korea and China in the last few years as the North's economic exchange with South Korea weakened. In 2005, China accounted for 53 percent of North Korea's annual trade, according to KOTRA.

China and North Korea are jointly developing a pair of special economic zones: Rason on the Korean Peninsula's northern tip and Hwanggumphyong, an island in the Yalu River that marks their border to the southwest. Rason has recently begun to develop thanks to Chinese infrastructure projects, but Hwanggumphyong has languished since ground was broken last year.

Choe is close to Kim Jong Un and is often seen on state television standing next to the leader, along with Jang Song Thaek, the uncle who visited China in August last year.

Choe holds a slew of top posts, including director of the General Political Bureau of the Korean People's Army, member of the Presidium of the powerful Political Bureau of the ruling Workers' Party, vice chairman of the Central Military Commission of the Workers' Party, and member of the Supreme Assembly.

The new title for Kim Kyok Sik came in a dispatch Wednesday from the North's Korean Central News Agency detailing a delegation at Pyongyang's airport that was seeing off a special envoy on a trip to China. There were no other details on the appointment.

Kim Kyok Sik previously held the military chief post until 2009. He also was defense minister until being recently replaced by a little-known general. He is the former commander of battalions believed responsible for attacks in 2010 that killed 50 South Koreans.

Kim replaces Hyon Yong Chol as military chief.

Military chief is considered a higher-ranking position than defense minister.

The Bank of Japan ended a policy meeting on Wednesday with no change to its strategy of doubling the monetary base for the sake of reaching a 2 percent inflation target and jolting the economy out of two decades of stagnation. That outcome was expected.

The central bank said in a statement, though, that there is a "high degree of uncertainty concerning Japan's economy" and that prices show no signs yet of rebounding.

Japan's economy grew 3.5 percent in the last quarter, but progress in increasing exports and boosting corporate investment and wages has lagged.

Choe Ryong Hae, a top Workers' Party official and a vice marshal tasked with supervising the North Korean army, departed on a chartered Air Koryo flight with a political and military delegation. Chinese Ambassador Liu Hongcai was among dignitaries on the tarmac for his departure.

The trip is the highest-profile visit by a North Korean official to China this year, and it takes place as the new leadership in China shows frustration with North Korea and a greater willingness to work with Washington to harry Pyongyang over its nuclear ambitions.

China is Pyongyang's economic and diplomatic lifeline, providing nearly all of its fuel and most of its trade, and foreign analysts said the trip could be an attempt to win more aid and repair ties.

There are signs of strains in relations between Beijing and Pyongyang over North Korea's nuclear ambitions, which included an underground nuclear test in February. That test was followed by U.N. sanctions and a protracted period of high tensions as North Korea threatened nuclear strikes on Washington and Seoul.

The rhetoric has fallen off in recent weeks, and there have been tentative signs of diplomacy in the region.

In one sign of Beijing's move displeasure with Pyongyang, China's state-run Bank of China said this month it had notified the Foreign Trade Bank of North Korea that its accounts were closed and all financial transactions suspended.

Meanwhile, Chinese fishermen said gunmen in North Korean military uniforms held a crew captive at gunpoint for two weeks before finally releasing the boat this week. The ship's owner said the captain was beaten and the vessel's fuel stolen.

Choe's trip is believed to be the first top-level meeting between North Korean and China since Chinese Politburo member Li Jianguo went to Pyongyang in late November bearing a letter from Xi Jinping, who had just been installed as China's party chief.

North Korea watchers in China said during the tense weeks of March and April that Beijing had explored sending an envoy to Pyongyang but decided against it because North Korea would not guarantee a meeting with Kim.

The visit precedes discussions about a trip by South Korean President Park Geun-hye to China next month.

Choe and his delegation may be ask for more economic aid from Beijing and to explain North Korea's recent military moves, including short-range projectile launches off the east coast, said Lee Ji-sue, a North Korea specialist and professor at Myongji University in Seoul, South Korea.

Leader Kim Jong Un hasn't visited Beijing since he took power from his father, Kim Jong Il, who visited China in August 2011 just months before his death that December.

China is North Korea's top trade partner. According to the most recent figures from Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency in Seoul, which collects North Korean trade data, China accounted for 89 percent of North Korea's exports and imports in 2011. The 2012 figure was not available.

The numbers show deepening economic ties between North Korea and China in the last few years as the North's economic exchange with South Korea weakened. In 2005, China accounted for 53 percent of North Korea's annual trade, according to KOTRA.

China and North Korea are jointly developing a pair of special economic zones: Rason on the Korean Peninsula's northern tip and Hwanggumphyong, an island in the Yalu River that marks their border to the southwest. Rason has recently begun to develop thanks to Chinese infrastructure projects, but Hwanggumphyong has languished since ground was broken last year.

Choe is close to Kim Jong Un and is often seen on state television standing next to the leader, along with Jang Song Thaek, the uncle who visited China in August last year.

Choe holds a slew of top posts, including director of the General Political Bureau of the Korean People's Army, member of the Presidium of the powerful Political Bureau of the ruling Workers' Party, vice chairman of the Central Military Commission of the Workers' Party, and member of the Supreme Assembly.

__

Associated Press writer Kim Kwang Hyon in Pyongyang, and Sam Kim, Youkyung Lee and Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report.

Thirty-eight workers were undergoing safety training inside the Big Gossan facility when the roof collapsed May 14. Ten injured miners were rescued.

A statement from the mine operator PT Freeport Indonesia said its Emergency Response Team recovered and identified the last victim early Wednesday.

Mining operations at the Grasberg mine have been suspended since the accident to respect the victims and concentrate on the recovery effort. The mine owned by Phoenix, Arizona-based Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. employs more than 20,000 workers.

While no punches were thrown this time, the animated discussions reflected the deep polarization of the country since the death of longtime leader Hugo Chavez and last month's disputed presidential election.

Opposition lawmakers, who claim Chavez's anointed successor, Nicolas Maduro, stole the election by fraud, called for an investigation into the April 30 punch-up in the National Assembly, which left several members of the opposition injured. The brawl erupted as opposition legislators protested a decision to deny them the right to speak unless they accepted the election result.

The opposition also used Tuesday's session to call for an investigation into an audio recording they claim reveals Cuban behind-the-scenes influence on the Chavista government.

In it, state TV talk show host Mario Silva, who was a close ally of Chavez, purportedly is heard describing to a Cuban intelligence official an internal power struggle between Maduro and parliament speaker Diosdado Cabello.

Cabello, who was accused in the conversation of conspiring against Maduro, said he wouldn't respond to "something so rotten, surrounded by flies," while Chavista lawmaker Andres Eloy Mendez dismissed the recording as "gossip."

On his late-night show Monday, Silva said the recording was "absolutely fake" and suggested it had been put together by editing clips from his program, which has been on the air for nine years. He didn't give evidence of how that would have happened, and then announced he was going on sick leave.

"I'm going to be off the air for a few days," Silva said. "But let me tell you something: I insist I don't owe anyone an apology, because I haven't done anything that isn't revolutionary."

Maduro urged his supporters on Tuesday not to be "demoralized" by the recording, calling it part of a "psychological war to try to destroy the Bolivarian revolution."

Cuban authorities did not respond to a request for comment.

The opposition has long accused Cuban leaders of wielding influence behind the scenes in guiding Venezuelan government decisions. The government, meanwhile, accuses opposition leader Henrique Capriles of being a puppet of the U.S.

During his 14-year reign as president, Chavez forged close ties with Cuba, where he was treated for the cancer that killed him March 5. Venezuela has shipped billions of dollars' worth of oil to Cuba on preferential terms.

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Associated Press writer Peter Orsi in Havana contributed to this report.

The video has not been released publicly and there is no way to verify whether it is authentic. Reports Thursday night on the gossip website Gawker and in the Toronto Star claimed it was taken by men who claimed they had sold the drug to Ford. The Associated Press hasn't seen the video.

The mayor of Canada's largest city has refused to take questions. In brief comments Friday, he called it "ridiculous" and "another story with respect to the Toronto Star going after me. And that's all I've got to say for now."

Ford avoided a throng of reporters on Tuesday in his first public appearances following a long holiday weekend in Canada.  He made a speech in council on Tuesday, but only spoke about a casino issue.

The Star reported that two journalists watched a video that appears to show Ford, sitting in a chair, inhaling from what appears to be a glass crack pipe. The Star said it did not obtain the video or pay to watch it. Gawker and the Star said the video was shown to them by a drug dealer who had been trying to sell it for a six-figure sum.

The Star also reported that Ford allegedly made an anti-gay slur against the leader of the federal Liberal Party of Canada, Justin Trudeau. In Ottawa on Tuesday, Trudeau decried Ford's alleged use of an anti-gay slur against him, calling it "reprehensible and unacceptable."

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne expressed concern over the ongoing firestorm surrounding the mayor, saying it is getting in the way of governing. Wynne said the "issues need to be dealt with as quickly as possible so that the council and the leadership of the council can get on with dealing with the business of governing the city."

Ford has been embroiled in controversies about his behavior since being elected in 2010, but these are the most serious allegations he's faced yet. The Toronto Star reported earlier this year that he was asked to leave a gala fundraiser for wounded Canadian soldiers because he appeared intoxicated.

During his campaign for mayor, Ford vehemently denied a 1999 arrest for marijuana possession in Florida, but later acknowledged it was true. He pleaded guilty to driving under the influence and failing to give a breath sample to police.

While in office, he has been accused of flouting conflict of interest rules and making obscene gestures at residents from his car.

The controversy has drawn comparisons to the 1990 arrest of then-Washington Mayor Marion Barry, who was videotaped smoking crack cocaine in a hotel room during an FBI sting operation. Barry served six months in federal prison on a misdemeanor drug possession conviction and later won a fourth term as mayor in 1994.

In a report obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press, Ban said that the situation has become so serious in some countries that governments are already using the army as well as police and paramilitary forces to hunt down poachers.

"Poaching and its potential linkages to other criminal, even terrorist, activities constitute a grave menace to sustainable peace and security in central Africa," the secretary-general said, urging affected governments to consider poaching a major national and regional concern requiring concerted action.

Ban pointed to the slaughter of more than 11,000 elephants in a park in northeastern Gabon between 2004 and 2013, more than 300 elephants killed in one area of a park in Cameroon in the last two months of 2012, and 86 elephants — including 33 pregnant females — slaughtered in a week in March 2013.

Ban said poachers are using more sophisticated and powerful weapons, "some of which, it is believed, might be originating from the fallout in Libya" following the uprising that ousted longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi.

The report said the growing instability was apparent in the Central African Republic where rebel groups united to oust longtime president Francois Bozize in March. Since then, the rebels have been accused of employing sexual violence, killing civilians and rampant looting.

Ban urged the Security Council to consider sanctions against those who have committed "gross human rights violations."

Ban also said suspected attacks by the Lord's Resistance Army continue to be reported in remote border areas of the Central African Republic and Congo, resulting in civilian casualties, abductions and the displacement of people.

LRA fighters began their attacks more than 20 years ago in northern Uganda. When Ugandan troops flushed them out of the country, they moved into South Sudan, Congo and the Central African Republic.

The secretary-general said the U.N. human rights office is finalizing a report on LRA abuses from its formation in 1987 until 2012.

"The report finds that the LRA is responsible for more than 100,000 deaths and that between 60,000 and 100,000 children are believed to have been abducted by the rebel group and that 2.5 million civilians have been displaced as a result of its incursions," Ban said.

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All three men are now in their 80s. Their case is part of a new wave of prosecutions focusing on corporate support for the dictators who ran Argentina in 1976-1983, and the 150-page indictment written by Judge Alicia Vence reads like a history lesson, going to considerable lengths to explain why their actions constitute crimes against humanity and why it has taken nearly four decades to result in criminal charges.

Factory director Pedro Muller, human resources chief Guillermo Galarraga and security manager Hector Francisco Jesus Sibilla are accused of giving names, ID numbers, pictures and home addresses to security forces who hauled two dozen union workers off the floor of Ford's factory in suburban Buenos Aires to be tortured and interrogated and then sent to military prisons.

All three were ordered to remain under house arrest on bail of about $142,000 each. Galarraga and Sibilla are Argentines and Muller is described in the indictment as a Czech national.

Ford Argentina said in a statement that it was aware of the charges against the men but could not comment because the issue was still under judicial investigation.

"Ford Argentina is not a party to the case but has always kept a collaborative and open attitude with authorities and will provide all available information that may be required to clarify this situation," it said.

The Associated Press left phone messages and sent emails seeking comment from the offices of lawyers for the three former executives, but there was no response.

The judge said the executives sought to eliminate union resistance at Ford's Argentina subsidiary and clearly had inside information about the coming "dirty war" in which so-called subversives would be thrown into clandestine detention centers. She described a key meeting the day after the March 24, 1976, coup in which Galarraga told union leaders to "forget any kind of labor complaints" and all their problems would be resolved.

Witnesses recalled that union leader Juan Carlos Amoroso then asked about talks over money that workers said had been systematically removed from their paychecks. The human resources chief laughed and said, "Amoroso, give my greetings to Camps," the judge wrote, a reference to Gen. Ramon Camps.

At the time, Camps was a little-known figure. Named police chief of Buenos Aires province by the military junta, Camps soon ran a system of clandestine detention centers where thousands of people were taken for torture and summary execution. Camps died in 1994 after being convicted of 73 torture deaths and other crimes so wide-ranging that many of Argentina's current human rights trials involve a network of prisons known as "the Camps circuit." About 13,000 people were kidnapped, tortured and disappeared, according to official counts.

"I find it remarkable that the head of human resources at Ford would know information so sensitive such as the function that Camps would develop in the future, something almost impossible to know if the company didn't have a direct and concrete relationship with the military authorities who had overtaken the state institutions of that era," the judge wrote.

Two nights after the meeting inside the Ford factory, a heavily armed group kidnapped Amoroso at home and took him to be beaten and interrogated, according to the indictment. Other Ford union workers were bound, with bags over their heads, and beaten inside a dining area next to the factory's soccer fields, then hauled away to jails for more torture. Some were subjected to electric shocks; others were stripped naked and injured with power tools or made to undergo false executions as interrogators sought information about union leaders' whereabouts.

The indictment also says that when two of the victims' spouses went to authorities seeking information on their missing husbands, a colonel showed them a list of workers' names on a Ford company letterhead and said it was the company, not the military, that wanted the men taken away.

The former president of Ford Motors Argentina, Nicolas Courard, would have been charged as well if he hadn't died in Chile in 1989, the judge wrote.

About 5,000 workers were employed at the time by the Ford factory in suburban General Pacheco, producing the Falcon, a car that became a symbol of state terror because it was often used by military and police squads to carry off "subversives" and move them between secret detention centers.

The victims in this case include Pedro Troiani, Carlos Gareis, Jorge Constanzo, Marcelino Reposi, Adolfo Sanchez, Francisco Perrotta, Juan Carlos Ballestero, Pastor Murua, Ruben Manzano, Juan Carlos Amoroso, Fernando Groisman, Luciano Bocco, Juan Carlos Conti, Ricardo Avalos, Vicente Portillo, Carlos Propato, Luis Degiusti, Eduardo Pulega, Hugo Nunez, Ruben Traverso, Raimundo Robledo, Carlos Chitarroni, Roberto Cantelo and Hector Subaran.

Their treatment was investigated soon after the return of democracy in 1983, but the crimes later fell under a general amnesty that wasn't overturned by Argentina's Supreme Court until a decade ago. The case has developed since then and only now is coming to trial.

Ban's comments came as Myanmar President Thein Sein was making a landmark visit to Washington. The former general met with President Barack Obama on Monday, marking a turnaround in the Asian nation's international acceptance after decades of isolation and direct military rule

Since last year, Myanmar's new government has overseen a wave of political reforms and progress toward democratic rule, though activists accuse Thein Sein of stalling of some commitments and failing to stem ethnic violence.

Last June, Myanmar's new civilian government signed an agreement with the United Nations to end the recruitment of children under the age of 18 as child soldiers.

While complaints about recruitment of child soldiers in Myanmar declined to 32 cases in 2012 from 172 cases in 2009, a new report to the Security Council found that the military continued to target unaccompanied children and orphans found in workplaces, streets, bus and train stations, ferry terminals, markets and their home villages.

The report said that from April 1, 2009 to Jan. 31, 2013, the International Labor Organization received 802 complaints of underage recruitment into the military, of which 770 cases were verified.

Calls to Myanmar's mission to the U.N. were not answered Tuesday.

A task force monitoring child soldiers noted that the majority of boys recruited were aged 14-17, but "children as young as 10 years old have also been reported to have been recruited," the report said.

The task force continued to receive reports of recruitment and use of child soldiers by armed groups including Kachin, Karen, Shan State and Wa State rebel groups, the report said.

Ban also urged the government to close a loophole that allows the recruitment of 16-year-olds who have finished 10th grade and obtained special authorization from the Office of the Adjutant General to join the army.

In 2012, the report said, 167 boys were enlisted under this exception, which goes against the agreement that Myanmar signed with the U.N. banning the recruitment of child soldiers.