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.

A senior North Korean diplomat left Tuesday for rare talks in the United States, a media report said, amid efforts to restart stalled negotiations on scrapping the North's nuclear programs.

First vice foreign minister Kim Kye-Gwan left Beijing Tuesday morning en route for New York, South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted a Seoul diplomatic source as saying.

Norwegian police could seek to charge the man who says he carried out last week's killings of 76 people with crimes against humanity, which would carry a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison.

The new charge against Anders Behring Breivik would mean he could serve more than the current 21 years he faces for terrorism-related charges after Friday's twin bombing and shooting, a term that many Norwegians feel is not long enough.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak was on Tuesday to fly to Washington where he would meet top U.S. officials, including new U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, his office said.

"He is due to fly on Tuesday afternoon for a three-day visit to the United States during which he will meet with Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta," spokesman Barak Seri told Agence France Presse.

One Tajik policeman was killed and another two received gunshot wounds when they clashed with runaway militants in a remote region near the Afghan border, police said on Tuesday.

Police said the gunmen were part of a group of militants who escaped from a detention center last August, killing six prison guards.

Heavily-armed Australian police on Tuesday seized a "substantial" stockpile of explosives in a raid on a house north of Melbourne, but ruled out any religious or racial connections.

A 32-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of possessing items used to make bombs after arson and explosives squad detectives, together with the Special Operations Group, executed a search warrant at the house in Castlemaine.

The man behind last week's twin attacks that killed 76 people was investigated in March for a purchase of chemicals, but the probe was dropped, Norwegian police said on Monday.

Anders Behring Breivik came to police's attention because of a purchase from a Polish business selling chemicals, but the incident was judged too insignificant to warrant a follow-up, Norwegian Police Security Service (PST) head Janne Kristiansen said.

The United States Monday unveiled a series of tough sanctions aimed at cracking down on international organized crime, including gangs from Russia, Japan and Mexico and the Italian Mafia.

The Japanese Yakuza, the Camorra from Naples and Mexico's Zetas as well as The Brothers' Circle, based mainly in the former Soviet Union, were among those slapped with economic sanctions, the White House said.

A Guinean woman who has accused former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn of trying to rape her in a New York hotel was on the offensive Monday, saying she wanted him to go to jail.

"Because of him, they call me a prostitute," Nafissatou Diallo told Newsweek magazine in her first public interview since the alleged attack by the former powerful French politician in a Manhattan hotel suite in May.