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An Israeli strike on the southern Lebanon Palestinian refugee camp of Ain Al Hilweh killed at least two people and wounded 15, including five children, medics said early Wednesday.
   It was the first time Israel has bombarded the Palestinian refugee camp, the largest in Lebanon and home to some 50,000 people, since the start of the four-week-old conflict.
   Two shells fell on the area around the home of colonel Munir Maqdah, a radical military chief of the Fatah movement in Lebanon, Palestinian sources said.
   The victims were pulled out of a house destroyed by the strike in the north of the camp near Sidon, the main city of south Lebanon, and taken to three hospitals as rescue efforts continued to try to find any others trapped inside.
   Lebanon houses 12 refugee camps which accommodate half of the 380,000 Palestinians living in the country and have now been opened to Lebanese fleeing the Israeli bombardment.
   An Israeli helicopter also killed two Palestinian militants on Wednesday in a missile strike on the northern West Bank refugee camp of Jenin, Palestinian security sources said.
   The sources said that 24-year-old Amjad al-Attili and Mohammed Atiq, 26, were members of the radical Islamic Jihad militant group.
   Arrest of speaker unhelpful: Russia
   Russia criticised Israel’s arrest of the speaker of the Palestinian parliament, Aziz Dweik, and called for his release.
   ‘Such actions in no way help to calm the situation in the Palestinian territories or to make progress towards an Israeli-Palestinian settlement,’ the foreign ministry said in a statement.
   The arrest of the legally elected chairman of the Palestinian legislative assembly ... raises many questions, above all about Israel’s competence to arrest and prosecute representatives of the Palestinian legislature and executive on territory outside Israeli jurisdiction.
   ‘We are counting on the release of Palestinian officials in the near future,’ the statement said.
   Russia is a member of the diplomatic ‘quartet’ for Middle East peace along with the European Union, the United Nations and the United States.
   Israeli troops seized Dweik on Saturday from his home in Ramallah. The ruling Islamist Hamas movement is considered to be a terrorist group by Israel and the West.
   On Tuesday a deadly Israeli bombing raid struck a southern Lebanese village close to the funeral for those killed in an attack a day earlier as its army and Hezbollah fighters remained locked in bloody clashes inside the border.
   At least six people were killed and 28 wounded in two raids on the village of Ghaziyeh, close to the city of Sidon, 500 metres away from the funeral procession of 14 people killed there a day earlier, the police said.
   Five other civilians were killed and four wounded when Israeli jets later fired missiles on a convoy of trucks carrying fruits in eastern Lebanon, near the border with Syria, the police said.
   Although there was a relative lull in bombardments around the region of the port city of Tyre, the Israeli air force carried out dozens of raids in 20 different locations across the border region.
   Both Hezbollah and the Israeli army said there were violent clashes in Debel—seven kilometres inside Lebanon—where Hezbollah said it had killed several soldiers and the military said one had been killed.
   In several major incursions, Israel has poured thousands of soldiers into an area stretching from Bayada on the coast in the west to the village of Kfar Kila in the east, facing fierce Hezbollah resistance.
   The army has advanced in places up to eight kilometres inside Lebanon in its ground offensive, aimed at eradicating Hezbollah fighters from the border area and thwarting rocket attacks.
   An Israeli reservist was killed in clashes with Hezbollah forces in the village of Debel, an army spokesman said, adding that at least 15 Hezbollah men were killed in the fighting.
   The spokesman said the dead soldier was among a force walking near an engineering corps vehicle that was hit by an anti-tank missile. Hezbollah said it had ‘killed and wounded’ several Israeli soldiers in Debel and the village of Labbouneh further west.

Tamil Tiger rebels are insisting that truce monitors from EU countries quit Sri Lanka despite efforts by peace broker Norway to persuade them to drop their demand, the government said Wednesday.
   Norway’s top peace envoy Jon Hanssen-Bauer told the government that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam were demanding monitors from Denmark, Finland and Sweden must leave by the original deadline of September 1.
   A government statement said that Hanssen-Bauer briefed Sri Lanka’s government Tuesday after his three-day visit to the island’s northern and eastern regions where he held talks with Tamil Tiger leaders.
   ‘He stated that he was disappointed that the LTTE had not changed its position regarding the expulsion of EU nationals from the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission,’ the statement said.
   It said Hanssen-Bauer discussed with Colombo the ‘transitional stage of the SLMM in the run up to the LTTE ultimatum and possible options to re-constitute the SLMM to its current strength.’
   The Tigers asked the European Union member states to take back their nationals from the monitoring mission after the EU in May designated the Tamil Tigers as a terrorist group.
   The Swedish-led SLMM has said that the Tiger demand for monitors from EU member states Denmark, Finland and Sweden to withdraw their staff would lead to a virtual collapse of monitoring of the February 2002 truce.
   The Tigers last month reiterated to visiting Swedish envoy Anders Oljelund that ceasefire monitors from EU member states must go.
   Diplomatic sources close to the peace process said Hanssen-Bauer tried and failed to persuade the Tigers to drop their demand, or at least put off the deadline until Norway had more time to reconstitute the SLMM.
   
   Five killed in attack on ambulance
   Five people including a doctor were killed when an ambulance was caught up in a mine attack carried out by government forces, Tamil Tiger rebels said.
   The blast hit the vehicle in an area held by the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the guerrillas said in a statement on Wednesday.
   ‘An ambulance returning to its base at Nedunkerni hospital ... was attacked by a government of Sri Lanka deep penetration unit,’ the statement said. ‘Five people including all three health professionals in the vehicle were killed.’
   LTTE spokesman S Puleedevan said a second attack took place around noon Wednesday a few kilometres away from where the ambulance was hit, but there were no casualties.

Swollen rivers swamped thousands of villages and towns across India’s south and west on Wednesday, forcing 4.5 million from their homes as rescuers struggled to bring them food and drinking water, officials said.
   India’s annual monsoon rains—vital for the country’s agriculture-driven economy—have triggered floods across at least five states since the weekend, killing around 200 people, submerging villages and causing widespread damage to crops.
   In Maharashtra and Gujarat, military boats and helicopters continued to reach out to thousands who remained marooned on trees and rooftops, many without food and water, after rivers burst their banks and flooded homes.
   In Gujarat, scores of villages and the industrial town of Surat, known for its diamond-cutting and textile trades, went without power as floodwaters inundated the region, leaving around three million people homeless.
   ‘We screamed out when we saw the soldiers, they saved our lives,’ said Mulji Devalia, a Surat resident, whose two-storey house was completely submerged by floodwaters.
   Television channels said 90 per cent of the town was submerged and showed pictures of people wading through waist-high water and vehicles almost totally submerged.
   Officials said phone lines were down and there was an acute shortage of drinking water. Full-scale relief operations would begin once water levels receded, the officials added.
   ‘It is very tough to reach out to the needy, the water level is rising minute by minute,’ said local administrator Vatsala Vasudev.
   Industrial production has been badly affected in the nearby coastal city of Hazira, with Oil and Natural Gas Corp.’s gas plant flooded and production disrupted at a petrochemicals complex run by Reliance Industries Ltd.
   In Andhra Pradesh, some 6,000 villages have been flooded, leaving around 1.5 million homeless and forcing thousands into trees and onto rooftops.
   ‘We haven’t eaten for three days and the children are crying because of hunger and thirst,’ one resident of a flood-affected village told Reuters by telephone.
   Other stranded villagers said they were suffering from fever, diarrhoea and vomiting.
   ‘The situation is terrible. The area under submergence is increasing every hour due to the backwaters,’ said MVPC Sastry, a senior flood official, adding that military helicopters were dropping food packets and water rations to the marooned.
   In many areas, villagers were taking turns through the night to watch over water levels. At least 350 villages had been completely cut off.
   Sonia Gandhi, the head of the ruling Congress party, was expected to visit the flood-affected areas in the state on Wednesday, with the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, expected to tour Gujarat and Maharashtra the following day.

The Japanese city of Nagasaki on Wednesday mourned the 61st anniversary of the world’s second and last nuclear attack, with its mayor voicing anger that non-proliferation efforts were ‘collapsing’.
   Some 4,600 people, ranging from aging survivors to local teenagers, offered a minute of silent prayers under hot sunshine at 11:02am (0202 GMT), the moment of the blast in 1945.
   The US nuclear bomb, codenamed ‘Fat Man’ after Winston Churchill, killed more than 70,000 people in Nagasaki, a southern port city known for its early openness to foreign trade and large Christian community.
   The bomb was even larger than ‘Little Boy’ which was dropped three days earlier on Hiroshima, killing some 140,000 people. Japan surrendered on August 15, ending Second World War.
   Nagasaki Mayor Iccho Ito offered an impassioned plea to step up efforts to control nuclear weapons.
   ‘What is the human race doing?’ he said in his address. ‘The world’s nuclear non-proliferation regime faces the risk of collapsing.’
   ‘Sixty-one years since the bombing, the city of Nagasaki is filled with anger and frustration,’ Ito said. ‘The nuclear powers are not making sincere efforts for nuclear arms reduction.’
   He criticised the United States for reaching a civilian-use nuclear deal with India, which was initially ostracised by Western powers and Japan for declaring itself an atomic power in 1998.
   ‘In particular, the United States is giving tacit approval to India’s nuclear arms development,’ Ito said.
   He also criticised Iran, Israel and Pakistan for their declared or suspected nuclear programmes and singled out self-declared nuclear neighbour North Korea.
   ‘North Korea has declared it possesses nuclear arms and is threatening Japan’s and the world’s peace and security,’ Ito said.
   ‘I again urge the Japanese government to promote the denuclearisation of northeastern Asia,’ he said.
   ‘I also demand the government provide further support for aging hibakusha at home and abroad,’ he said, using the Japanese term for atomic bomb survivors.
   Communist North Korea set off new alarm bells in the region with its July 5 test-firing of seven ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan (East Sea).
   North Korea said it was boosting its defences and frequently accuses Japan of failing to atone for its brutal occupation of the Korean peninsula which ended in 1945.

The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, suggested in an interview with Forbes magazine that he might not run for reelection in 2009, and complained of lack of international support on crucial issues facing his country.
   ‘I don’t think it is good to be running all the time,’ Karzai told the magazine. ‘Let other people get a chance to run.’
   ‘I want to leave a good legacy for Afghanistan. I want to have this country stable and constitutionally strong. I want to have this country left with a stable environment of alternative leaders,’ he added in what the magazine said was a strong suggestion that he would not run in Afghanistan’s next election.
   Karzai, 49, is Afghanistan’s first president since a coalition of international forces and Afghan mujahedeen commanders overthrew the extremist Taliban regime in 2001.
   
   15 Taliban killed in attack
   US-led soldiers and warplanes killed 15 Taliban militants who attacked a coalition compound with rockets and rifles in mountainous eastern Afghanistan, the coalition said Wednesday.
   Two US soldiers and an Afghan policeman were wounded in Tuesday evening’s battle in the remote province of Nuristan which borders Pakistan, it said in a statement.
   It said 30 insurgents had attacked a provincial reconstruction team base in Nuristan’s Kamdesh district and coalition forces responded with small arms and mortar fire.

An HIV/AIDS epidemic may kill 11 million people in India over the next 20 years, the Times of India reported on Wednesday, citing official census figures.
   Along with the 5 million children not born to women who died young because of the virus, India’s forecast 2026 population of 1.4 billion would be trimmed by 1.2 per cent, the paper reported.
   The United Nations AIDS agency says that 5.7 million Indians live with the HIV virus, and that India has the world’s highest caseload, overtaking South Africa earlier this year.
   ‘If we do not stop it (the AIDS epidemic) now, the fate of South Africa will overtake us,’ India’s minister for local self-government, Mani Shankar Aiyar, told a meeting of rural politicians on Wednesday.
   More than one of every nine South Africans in a population of 45 million are HIV-positive.
   Indian officials have not accepted the UNAIDS figure for India and continue to cite the Health Ministry’s number of 5.2 million people living with HIV/AIDS.
   But anti-AIDS groups say the real figure is higher as the stigma attached to the disease prevents some people from reporting their status. Other deaths are not recorded as HIV-related in medical records.

Maoist rebels in Nepal and India accused the United States on Tuesday of ‘openly intervening’ in the two countries to weaken their movements and urged Washington to end its interference.
   ‘Particularly in Nepal and India they have been directly intervening in the suppression of the Maoist movements,’ the groups said in a rare joint statement e-mailed to journalists in Kathmandu. ‘As part of their direct intervention US officers have been training the RNA and even entering every sphere of society to subvert the ongoing anti-monarchical movement,’ it said referring to the Royal Nepal Army, now named Nepal Army.

Pakistan will expel around 300 foreign students from Islamic seminaries in the country if they failed to get permission from their governments to stay, a senior official said on Tuesday.
   The move is part of a drive to counter religious extremism and terrorism launched by president Pervez Musharraf in the wake of the July 7, 2005 attacks in London when at least one of the suicide bombers was believed to have spent time at a Pakistani madrassahs.
   Syed Kamal Shah, permanent secretary at the Interior Ministry, said 600 to 700 foreign students were currently enrolled with seminaries or madrassahs across the country.
   ‘Fifty per cent of them have already got permissions from their governments,’ he told a news conference.
   ‘We will expel (the remaining) if their governments don’t give them No Objection Certificates for their stay,’ he said.

The police have arrested three activists from a banned Islamic group for their suspected involvement in serial train blasts in Mumbai last month which killed 183 people, a police spokesman said Tuesday.
   The three men were arrested in different areas of Nagpur in Maharashtra state, whose capital is Mumbai.
   They were identified as Shakeel Wasi, 32, Shakir Ahmed Naseer, 27, and Mohammed Rehan Khan also aged 32, the police spokesman said.
   The men belong to the Students Islamic Movement of India, which is banned under India’s anti-terrorism laws, he added.
   SIMI advocates the ‘liberation of India’ through its conversion into an Islamic land, according to the South Asia Terrorism Portal website, which tracks separatist trends.

A Malaysian businessman was charged Wednesday with injuring former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad with pepper spray.
   Nik Sapeia Nik Yusoff, 53, was charged with injuring four people including Mahathir on July 28, the state Bernama news agency reported.
   Mahathir was hit with pepper spray shortly after he arrived in Kelantan state, amid a scuffle between two factions of his supporters over whose vehicles would be used to transport him during his visit.
   Nik Sapeia was reportedly the leader of one of the factions and a veteran member of the ruling United Malays National Organisation.

The Thai prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, facing another election in October, said on Wednesday he would remain in politics if voters wanted him to, but did not say explicitly whether he would run again for the top job.
   ‘I’m considering whether or not to be prime minister again,’ Thaksin told a crowd of around 500 northeastern villagers and farmers on a tour marking the start of the campaign for a general election scheduled for October 15.
   ‘If you want me to carry on with my job, working for all of you, I will,’ he said. ‘Every time I visit all of you in remote areas like this I feel that I can’t ignore you.’

Almost 2,000 bodies were brought to Baghdad’s morgue last month, an official said on Wednesday, recording the highest number since an attack in February on a Shia shrine that sparked a wave of sectarian bloodshed.
   Morgue assistant manager, Doctor Abdul Razzaq al-Obaidi, told Reuters about 90 per cent of the deaths were due to violence in the capital, where US and Iraqi forces have stepped up their troops levels to combat sectarian bloodshed.
   ‘Most of the cases have gunshot wounds to the head. Some of them were strangled and others were beaten to death with clubs,’ said Obaidi.
   The morgue toll was a jump from 1,595 in June and is the largest number since the aftermath of the bombing of the Golden Mosque of Samarra, blamed by the US and Iraq on al-Qaeda.
   Iraq’s health, interior and defence ministries consistently provide lower figures than those released by the morgue.
   Figures from those ministries showed about 1,000 civilians were killed across Iraq in July in ‘terrorism’ attacks in the highest monthly civilian death toll in six months. Some 1,820 civilians were wounded.
   A monthly report from those ministries said 79 police were killed and 148 were wounded in July, while 63 Iraqi soldiers were killed and 37 wounded. The increasing sectarian violence has prompted fears of civil war.
   The United States has boosted its troop levels in Baghdad.
   About 6,000 additional Iraqi forces and 3,500 US soldiers of the 172nd Striker Brigade combat team are being deployed in the Baghdad area and are expected to start systematically clearing neighbourhoods most troubled by sectarian tension.
   The first phase of the operation, which began on July 9, killed or captured 411 murderers associated with death squads, the US military said, but it failed to ease bloodshed.
   The prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, has vowed to confront the armed militias blamed for fanning tensions, but must tread carefully as some of these groups have close ties to parties in the government, including ones in his own ruling Alliance.
   Maliki said a consensus was building between religious leaders and prominent tribes to condemn the killing, and he was echoed by US ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalizad. But the daily drumbeat of violence continued, claiming at least eight lives and injuring 25 others around the country.
   Five civilians died and 20 were hurt by a rocket attack in Baquba, north of Baghdad, which collapsed a three-storey building near to a mosque, police said. Witnesses feared some people were still trapped in the rubble.
   Police said a bomb targeting a US patrol in east Baghdad killed one civilian and injured another, while in Basra an Iraqi army colonel was shot dead on his way to work, the army said.
   Two separate roadside bombs in Kirkuk killed one civilian, wounded another and hurt three Iraqi soldiers. The 4th Iraqi Army Division was handed lead responsibility for security in Kirkuk province on Tuesday, although US troops from the 101st Airborne Division remain on hand for backup if needed.
   The US military said two servicemen were missing in the guerrilla hotbed of Anbar province after a helicopter crash.
   The military said the helicopter went down with six crew aboard on Tuesday. Four others survived and were in a stable condition. It said the crash did not appear to have been the result of enemy action.

Two brothers at the centre of a high-profile British police anti-terrorism raid are under investigation for allegedly hurling abuse at soldiers outside a barracks, police confirmed Wednesday.
   Mohammed Abdul Kahar, 23, and Abul Koyair, 20, allegedly screamed ‘We hope you die in Iraq’ and spat at Welsh Guardsmen on duty outside Wellington Barracks, central London, according to The Sun newspaper.
   A Metropolitan police spokeswoman said: ‘We are investigating an allegation of harassment outside Wellington Barracks at 10:00pm (2100 GMT) on August 1. ‘There have been no arrests.’
   Kahar and Koyair were arrested at their home in Forest Gate, east London, in a June 2 raid that was prompted by what police said at the time was ‘credible’ intelligence that chemical weapons were being manufactured there.
   Despite an extensive, week-long search nothing was found, prompting a backlash from local people and some Muslim community leaders.
   The brothers — who are of Bangladeshi origin — were also released after days of questioning.
   Kahar was shot in the shoulder during the raid, which involved about 250 officers. A police watchdog report last week concluded the shooting was an accident.
   On the same day the report came out, Kahar was arrested on suspicion of child pornography offences. He denies any wrongdoing.
   The brothers are currently staying at the ‘four-star deluxe’ Crowne Plaza Hotel, near Queen Elizabeth II’s Buckingham Palace residence and the Met’s headquarters at New Scotland Yard while their home is being repaired.

Political appointees, CIA officers and former military personnel would not face prosecution for humiliating or degrading wartime prisoners under amendments to a war crimes law drafted by the Bush administration, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday.
   The amendments are part of the administration’s three-pronged response to a June 29 Supreme Court ruling that struck down as illegal and a violation of the Geneva Conventions the military tribunal system set up to try Guantanamo prisoners, the Post said.
   The court’s ruling gave prisoners captured in Afghanistan protections under the Geneva Conventions, which the administration previously maintained did not apply to them.
   Citing unidentified US officials, the newspaper said the administration plans to amend the 1996 War Crimes Act, which makes it a crime to violate the Geneva Conventions, by narrowing the number of potential criminal prosecutions.
   Only 10 specific categories of illegal acts against wartime detainees, including torture, murder, rape and hostage-taking, could be prosecuted under the amendments, it said.
   The list would not include the kinds of humiliating acts, like forced nakedness, used at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison which fall short of torture but are nevertheless barred by the Geneva Conventions as ‘outrages upon personal dignity,’ it reported.
   Attorney general Alberto Gonzales told a Senate Committee last week the language of the Geneva Conventions was too vague and needed to be better defined by Congress.
   Gonzales said Congress should provide a list of offences that would constitute crimes under the Geneva Conventions’ requirement for humane treatment of prisoners.

Cubans adjusted to life without Fidel Castro in charge on Tuesday as the veteran revolutionary recuperated from surgery that forced him to relinquish power for the first time in 47 years.
   The initial shock of Castro’s hand-over to brother Raul eight days ago appeared to be wearing off and Cuba watchers said they expected little change on the Communist island Fidel took over in a 1959 revolution.
   Even though neither Castro has been seen since the transfer of power was announced July 31, Cuban officials and allies have repeatedly said the ailing ‘comandante’ is getting better and the country has had a successful temporary transfer of power.
   The Communist Party newspaper Granma said vice president Carlos Lage was meeting in Bogota with heads of state attending the inauguration of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe to update them on Castro’s ‘positive recovery’ from surgery for intestinal bleeding.
   In the crumbling Cuban capital, workers paved streets and tidied boulevards before a summit of the Nonaligned Movement of developing nations next month.
   In some parts of the city, authorities resumed distribution of Chinese-made refrigerators, rice steamers, fans and electrical stoves to replace millions of old household appliances.
   The drive was Castro’s latest pet project to save energy and end power outages. Cubans get free basic health care and education, but many struggle to get by in daily life.
   Cubans were still concerned about Castro’s condition, but relieved the country had not fallen into chaos.
   ‘People are getting used to the idea that Fidel will be out for weeks, for months or maybe forever,’ said driver Manuel, a Havana resident who said life was getting back to normal.
   ‘At first we were very frightened,’ Aleida Guevara, daughter of Castro’s late guerrilla comrade-in arms Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, said in an Internet chat on the Foreign Ministry’s Internet site. But now, she said, ‘El Comandante is improving,’ and, ‘We are calm.’
   The return to normal was not quite complete because the government kept police and security forces, including military reservists, on alert.
   Along the coast, authorities urged residents to watch for an invasion force from Castro’s arch enemy, the United States.
   The administration of the president, George W Bush, has urged Cubans to push for democracy in this time of flux, but insists it has no plans to invade the island 90 miles from Florida.
   Cuba experts in a round-table discussion at the University of Miami said they believed Fidel Castro’s era was at an end, but doubted Raul’s rule would bring great change soon.

Connecticut senator Joseph Lieberman lost a Democratic Party showdown to a relative unknown on Tuesday, a casualty of voter anger over his support for the war in Iraq and the president George, W Bush.
   Six years after he was chosen the Democratic vice presidential nominee, Lieberman fell in a tight Senate primary battle to wealthy businessman Ned Lamont, who called him a cheerleader for Bush and urged voters to send an anti-war message to the country.
   Lieberman conceded defeat but said he would file petitions on Wednesday to run as an independent in November.
   ‘Tomorrow, we launch a new campaign to unite the people of Connecticut,’ he told cheering supporters at a downtown Hartford hotel. ‘If you’re fed up with the nasty partisanship in Washington, then I ask your help.’
   Lamont’s outsider bid to unseat the three-term senator in Democratic-leaning Connecticut offered a gauge of anti-war sentiment among voters before the election in November, when control of Congress will be up for grabs.
   ‘Connecticut voters do not call for change lightly but today we called for change decisively. No more stay the course,’ Lamont told supporters at a victory celebration in Meriden, where he was flanked by black leaders Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.
   ‘Stay the course is not a winning strategy in Iraq and it is not a winning strategy in America,’ said Lamont, who sent an e-mail to supporters asking them to contact Lieberman and urge him
   to reconsider his independent bid.
   The Connecticut race attracted national attention as a referendum on the war and Democratic anger at Bush, with Lamont calling Lieberman a Bush ‘lapdog.’
   Lieberman fought back, emphasising his experience and Democratic credentials and calling himself a reliable opponent of Bush’s domestic agenda.
   He argued a quick pullout of troops ‘would be a disaster for Iraqis and for us’ but said the Bush administration had made mistakes in its conduct of the war.
   Lieberman wrote a Wall Street Journal article last year headlined ‘Our Troops Must Stay’ and warned Democrats about criticising Bush on the war.
   Lamont, whose last bid for public office was an unsuccessful 1990 state Senate race, will be the Democratic Senate nominee in November against Republican Alan Schlesinger, a former state legislator seen as little threat.
   To run as an independent, Lieberman must file petitions with 7,500 valid signatures with the Connecticut secretary of state by the end of the day on Wednesday.

After a month of huge street protests, the battle for power in Mexico goes back to the ballot box on Wednesday with a partial recount of votes in a tight presidential election that has split the country.
   The top electoral court ordered all the votes counted again at 9 per cent of polling stations in a bid to clear up fraud allegations and calm a political crisis that has shaken Mexico’s young democracy.
   Starting on Wednesday morning, judges, election officials and party representatives will spend up to five days checking the tallies at 11,839 voting stations to see if there is truth to the leftist candida-te’s claim he was robbed of victory.
   Conservative ruling party candidate Felipe Calderon won the July 2 vote by a tiny margin but his left-wing rival, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, claims there was massive vote-rigging.
   An anti-poverty campaigner and former mayor of Mexico City, Lopez Obrador has pulled hundreds of thousands of supporters onto the streets to demand a recount of all 41 million votes.
   That was rejected by the electoral court, and he fiercely criticised the decision to hold only a partial recount.
   ‘We don’t want one-tenth of a democracy. We want a 100 per cent democracy,’ he told thousands of supporters who for the last 10 days have lived and slept in Mexico City’s vast Zocalo square and a main road running through its business district.

As many as 100 British members of Parliament, most of them from the governing Labour Party, are to demand that parliament is re-called immediately amid concern over the government’s strategy to end the conflict in the Middle East, The Guardian reported on Wednesday.
   Government of the prime minister, Tony Blair, has been criticised for failing to call for an immediate ceasefire to the conflict between Israel and the Shia militia Hezbollah. The lower House of Commons and upper House of Lords are in their annual recess until October 9.
   The newspaper said the demand is likely to be made in the next two days, with the organisers apparently in discussion with smaller opposition parties including the Liberal Democrat Party and Scottish National Party.
   ‘In this crisis, parliament needs to speak for the nation,’ said Jon Trickett, chairman of the 50-member Compass group of left-wing MPs.
   The Guardian said that unnamed sources in the cabinet acknowledged that if efforts for a United Nations Security Council resolution to bring about an end to the conflict fell apart, there could be a recall. Until then, however, Downing Street does not see a great need for one, the newspaper said.
   France and the United States have been working together at the UN to draft a resolution, one that doesn’t call for Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon.
   An Arab League delegation on Tuesday, however, called for the UN to order Israeli forces to leave Lebanon as part of any resolution on a truce deal.

A tabloid newspaper editorial executive and two other men faced charges Wednesday of allegedly intercepting phone calls from staff close to Prince Charles, heir to the British throne.
   The three — including Clive Goodman, royal editor of Britain’s best-selling newspaper, The News of the World — were arrested in the London area Tuesday on suspicion of ‘unlawful telephone interceptions,’ police said.
   One of the two unnamed men, aged 50, has been released on bail, police said.
   The anti-terrorist branch of London’s Metropolitan Police is investigating because of the potential security risks to the royal family and says they are now also trying to determine whether other public figures may have been bugged.
   Police said inquiries began in December last year when three staff members at Clarence House, the prince’s official residence in London, contacted them about alleged repeated security breaches within its telephone network.
   The police would not comment on a BBC report that the three staffers were Prince Charles’s communication secretary Paddy Harverson and two others who work with his sons Princes William and Harry.
   Clarence House declined to comment on the developments.
   However, The News of the World confirmed that its royal editor had been arrested.
   ‘Clive Goodman, a News of the World journalist, has been arrested and is currently being questioned at Charing Cross Police Station in London,’ a spokesman said Tuesday.
   The offices of News International, which owns The News of the World, have also been searched by police.
   News International is the British subsidiary of media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.

A retired Russian secret service colonel was convicted of treason in Moscow on Wednesday for betraying Russian intelligence agents to Britain's MI6 secret service, and was sentenced to 13 years in prison, court officials said.
   'According to the court, Sergei Skripal is guilty of state treason through the transfer of state secrets to ... the British secret service,' Yevgeny Komissarov, a spokesman for Moscow's military court where Skripal was tried, told AFP.
   Skripal acknowledged before the court that he had given away the identities of numerous Russian intelligence agents to the British secret service between 1995 and December 2004 for payments totaling more than 100,000 dollars (78,000 euros), Komissarov said.

N Korea seeks aid from South
North Korea has for the first time appealed to South Korean groups for help in recovering from devastating floods despite chills in relations caused by its missile tests last month, aid officials said. The North Korean Committee for the Implementation of the June 15 Declaration—named after the historic inter-Korean summit in 2000 – expressed its gratitude for South Koreans’ efforts to help flood victims. ‘We hope that the relief aid, instead of instant noodles or clothing, should be mainly composed of construction materials such as cement and steel, construction vehicles as well as food, blankets and medicines,’ the committee said. ‘We request your side to inform other groups (of what we want).’
— AFP

Chinese official executed
as Taiwan spy
An official from China’s social security fund has been executed on charges of spying for rival Taiwan, a spokesman for the agency said Tuesday, and government employees have been required to watch a video about the case. Tong Daning, director of the general office of the National Social Security Fund, was executed April 21, said Yan Caiping, the agency’s chief press officer. Yan said Tong was convicted of spying for Taiwan but wouldn’t give any other details. China and Taiwan, which split in 1949 amid civil war, are believed to spy actively on each other. Beijing claims Taiwan as its own territory. The communist mainland government has threatened repeatedly to attack and has been trying to isolate the island internationally, giving Taipei a strong interest in the mainland’s military and diplomatic policy.
— AP

‘Suharto graft case should be dropped’
An Indonesian appeal court has ruled that a corruption case against former dictator Suharto should be dropped, overruling a lower court’s order to reopen the case, a court spokesman said Wednesday. The attorney-general’s office announced on May 11 that it had halted legal proceedings against the ageing Suharto, who is accused by critics of amassing billions of dollars in state assets during his iron-fisted rule. It cited poor health. Saying a stroke had left Suharto unable to follow proceedings. In response to a suit filed by activists, the South Jakarta district court ruled in June that the case be reopened. But the Jakarta Court of Appeal has overruled it, court spokesman Yohannes Suhadi told reporters.
— AFP

40,000 flee erupting volcano
Hampered by communist rebels and reluctant residents, troops Wednesday raced to move stragglers away from the rumbling Mayon volcano in the central Philippines. A two-day drive by the military and local government has seen 39,422 people evacuated from villages around the country’s most active volcano which is showing strong signs of erupting, the provincial disaster coordinating council said. Officials said the main problem is dissuading residents from returning to their homes amid an apparent lull in the eruptive phase. Farmers have been sneaking out of evacuation centres in the morning to work their farms on the fertile volcanic soil and guard their property.
— AFP

Kabila takes DR Congo vote lead
The Democratic Republic of Congo's interim president, Joseph Kabila, has taken the lead in early results from last month's landmark elections. These results mainly come from the east. Ex-rebel leader Jean-Pierre Bemba is leading in results from the west. With results from only eight of 62 counting centres known, countrywide tallies may not be available for weeks. A candidate must secure more than half of the total vote to avoid a run-off presidential election in October. Despite outbreaks of violence in the build-up to the election, polling day passed without trouble. But European Union observers have warned that a partial release of results could again stir up tensions.
— BBC

Four foreign oil workers kidnapped
in Nigeria
Two Norwegians and two Ukrainians working on an oil supply vessel in Nigeria have been kidnapped, the Norwegian government and the ship operators said on Wednesday. 'Two Norwegians and two Ukrainians were kidnapped late Tuesday while they were on a Norwegian offshore supply vessel,' operated by Tryco Supply, foreign ministry spokesman Frode Andersen told AFP. Tryco Supply confirmed the abductions, the latest in a series of foreign oil workers in Nigeria, and said no ransom demand had been made.
— AFP

Chechen leader hails Putin plan for troop withdrawal
Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov on Wednesday welcomed a plan by the president, Vladimir Putin, to pull out all non-permanent Russian troops from Chechnya by 2008, the Interfax news agency said. ‘The gradual pullout of non-permanent defence department and interior ministry troops–is possible now that the republic’s law enforcement bodies have become a unified whole that works closely with federal forces,’ Interfax quoted Kadyrov, who is prime minister in Chechnya’s Moscow-backed administration, as saying. Putin ordered the troop withdrawal in a secret order on August 2 that was made public in state newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta on Tuesday.
— AFP

US insists it still working on Darfur despite ME crisis
The United States insisted Tuesday that it was still working intensively to get a UN peacekeeping force into Sudan's embattled Darfur region a day after the United Nations warned of increasing violence and suffering in the area. 'We have been pushing this, we do push it every single day,' State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said amid suggestions Washington had been neglecting the Darfur crisis as it grapples with the Israeli-Lebanon war and other international problems. Up to 300,000 people have died and another 24 million displaced since a rebellion broke out in Sudan's western Darfur region in February 2003.
— Reuters

Serbia seeks justice for ex-commander
Serbia has demanded that Bosnia prosecute a wartime Muslim commander allegedly seen in recently released video footage ordering the destruction of Serb homes in 1995 in western Bosnia. The footage, aired this week by local broadcasters, showed Bosnian Muslim and Croatian soldiers harassing and attacking convoys of Serb refugees fleeing a Croatian military offensive launched in August 1995 to retake contested territories from Serb rebels. More than 200,000 Serbs fled during the offensive - the biggest single exodus in the Balkan wars of the 1990s. Many of them crossed through parts of western Bosnia in search of safety, and more than a hundred were killed.
— AP