Efforts to rescue tens of thousands of villagers cut off by a monsoon-swollen river in northern India were reaching a critical stage Thursday, aid workers and evacuees said.
   Those who have escaped Bihar state’s worst-hit areas say food is running out and people are drinking the muddy flood water, while aid workers speak of ‘grim’ conditions.
   ‘We haven’t had anything to eat for five days,’ said Murti Shah, who finally got out of her village in worst-hit Madhepura district after spending two weeks on the school’s rooftop eating through the family’s supplies of grain.
   ‘We drank the flood waters.’
   Asked if she had boiled the water first, she looked amazed.
   ‘How would we boil it?’ she asked. ‘We have no utensils. We have nothing. Everything is under water.’ Many villagers in the area, submerged after the Kosi river breached its defences upstream in Nepal and swung east, have lost their lives trying to make it to safety.
   ‘My uncle was on a tree and when he tried to get down he was washed away by the current,’ said 30-year-old Anil Kumar Bhaskar, who also made it out Wednesday on a navy boat. ‘Later we found his body in the reeds.’
   Meanwhile, India and Nepal are trading barbs in an escalating dispute over the failure of flood defences that left hundreds of villages underwater and millions of people destitute.
   An embankment along the Kosi river in southern Nepal was breached on August 18, allowing the river to pour down a course it had abandoned many years previously.
   Though the flood defences are 12 kilometres inside the Nepal border, India is responsible for their maintenance to protect its own population downstream.
   But Nepal says India failed in its duties, allowing the river to change course and empty huge volumes of water onto unsuspecting regions of India’s northeast Bihar state.
   State government warnings to evacuate when the river first broke through its flood walls have kept the death toll low, with some 100 people drowned so far even though the floods have affected at least three million.
   Over 600,000 people have been evacuated from flooded areas, but rescuing the estimated 350,000 villagers still stranded in the coming days is vital to prevent more deaths, rescuers and survivors say.
   ‘We are getting to areas we haven’t been able to get to before,’ said Rajeev Ahluwalia, an assistant commander with India’s new National Disaster Response Force set up after the 2004 tsunami, in Chandpur Bhangaha.
   ‘It’s very grim. The people there are in pathetic conditions,’ he said as he set off on a final rescue late Wednesday afternoon.
   Air-drops of food and other emergency aid have also been stepped up. ‘We are dropping quite a bit of relief now to people who have moved to embankments and railway lines for temporary shelter,’ said Indian Air Force Group Captain Jagdir S Johar, who is overseeing airborne aid operations.
   Although the Indian government is working overtime, deploying rescue squads from its army, navy and disaster response force, villagers and aid agencies say more is still needed.
   Several of the villagers only just making it out by boat said these were the first rescue vessels they had seen since their homes were flooded on August 18.

The Thai prime minister, Samak Sundaravej, on Thursday refused to resign or call snap elections, and lashed the protesters besieging his offices for 10 days as a ‘doomsday cult.’
   In an hour-long national radio address, Samak sought to shore up his support base, proclaiming himself as a defender of democracy against a movement that he said threatened to bring ‘anarchy’ to Thailand.
   ‘I am not resigning, I will not dissolve parliament. I have to stay in order to preserve democracy and to protect the monarchy,’ he said.
   Searching for a way out of the stalemate, and with protesters clamouring for his resignation, Samak summoned his cabinet for an emergency meeting and proposed holding a referendum to ask the public whether he should stay or go.
   But sorting out the legalities of the vote will take weeks, government spokesman Wichianchot Sukchotrat said. An earlier proposal to hold a referendum in July fell flat.
   In his vitriolic attack on the People’s Alliance for Democracy, which is occupying the grounds of his Government House offices, Samak accused the protesters of trying to subvert Thailand’s democracy.
   The PAD — a hodgepodge of royalists, businessmen, and activists — wants to roll back many of Thailand’s democratic gains by creating a new parliament in which only 30 per cent of seats would be elected.
   ‘The PAD is like a radical doomsday cult,’ Samak said.
   ‘The PAD is an illegal group who have seized the Government House and declared their victory. How can that be correct? The country cannot survive without law and order. Otherwise it’s a state of anarchy,’ he added.
   Pressure on Samak mounted as Foreign Minister Tej Bunnag resigned after just six weeks on the job, and the protesters vowed not to leave their campsite on the Government House lawn, now a stinking mudpit with little sanitation.
   ‘His speech only increased my confidence that what we are doing is not wrong. We will not go anywhere as long as he stays,’ said media mogul and protest leader Sondhi Limthongkul.
   ‘This government is bullshit,’ Sondhi said.
   If the referendum goes ahead, Wichianchot said voting could be held in early October.
   But all sides agree that any new balloting would like tilt in Samak’s favour, as the protests have again highlighted the gaping divide in Thai society between the wealthy urban elites represented by PAD and the poor rural population that backed Thaksin and now Samak.

Pakistan on Thursday condemned a cross-border raid by Afghanistan-based international troops on a tribal village as ‘shameful’ and unjustified, saying that only civilians had been targeted.
   The fiery criticism from the foreign minister came after the US ambassador to Islamabad was summoned in protest at the incident in tribal South Waziristan, in which local officials said at least 15 people were killed.
   Wednesday’s raid marked the first time Pakistan has accused international troops based in Afghanistan of a direct attack on its soil since they were deployed in late 2001 to oust the hardline Taliban regime from power in Kabul.
   Both the US-led coalition and the separate NATO-led security force operating in Afghanistan have said they have no knowledge of any such incident in South Waziristan, a known haven for Taliban and al-Qaeda militants.
   A Pentagon spokesman declined to comment.
   The Pakistani foreign minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, decried the raid as unjustified, saying there had not been a ‘high-value target’ in the village attacked, and called on foreign forces to review their rules of engagement.
   ‘It is a regrettable, shameful and astonishing incident. We strongly condemn the unprovoked attack by ISAF and coalition forces,’ Qureshi said to the unanimous approval of MPs in the chamber.

Government forces and Tamil separatists were locked in heavy combat in northern Sri Lanka with at least 26 rebels killed in fresh fighting, the defence ministry said Thursday.
   Six soldiers were wounded and another was missing following the latest clashes with the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam since Wednesday, the ministry said in a statement.
   ‘The LTTE continues to steadily lose manpower as the Sri Lankan security forces continue to advance further into the heart of the LTTE administrative power, Kilinochchi,’ the ministry said.
   ‘This is a major set back for the terrorists.’
   The military has said that it wants to dismantle the Tigers’ de facto mini-state by capturing the town of Kilinochchi, 330 kilometres north of Colombo.
   Government troops were now said to be within striking distance.

The Pakistani riot police used sticks to beat lawyers demanding the reinstatement of dozens of judges sacked by former president Pervez Musharraf, an AFP correspondent witnessed Thursday.
   The melee broke out after around 100 black-suited lawyers tried to enter the Supreme Court building by climbing the main gates, shouting slogans against the new chief justice appointed by Musharraf in November.
   After the 15-minute brawl, the lawyers retreated but continued their demonstration.
   Some 500 lawyers had been joined by political party workers and other supporters carrying black flags, placards and banners in front of parliament house and the Supreme Court.
   ‘This is the representative gathering of all lawyers and bar associations of Pakistan and our struggle will continue until the reinstatement of all judges,’ lawyers’ leader Aitzaz Ahsan told reporters.

A helicopter crashed into an oil rig off the coast of Dubai on Wednesday killing all seven people on board, including two Indians, and forcing the closure of the Rashid oilfield, the authorities said.
   Dubai produces a fraction of the oil output of the United Arab Emirates, the world’s fifth-largest oil exporter. Dubai pumped around 65,000 barrels per day in 2007, according to trade estimates, out of the UAE’s output of around 2.5 million bpd.
   The helicopter, which was travelling from Dubai’s main international airport to the oilfield around 70 kilometres off the coast of Dubai, crashed onto the deck of the Maersk jack-up drilling rig, they said.
   ‘The aircraft then broke up and fell into the sea,’ Petrofac, the operator of Dubai government’s offshore oilfields, said in a statement. It declined to say how much the oilfield produces.
   ‘Immediately following the incident, a fire broke out on the main deck of the drilling rig which was quickly contained and extinguished... All operations on the Rashid field have been suspended and the platform and drilling rig have been secured.’

The Israeli police said on Thursday they will decide within days whether to recommend that the prime minister, Ehud Olmert, be charged in several different cases of suspected graft.
   Senior police officials met on Thursday to examine the evidence in three probes against Olmert, who announced in July he would step down following a public uproar over the graft suspicions.
   ‘The material will be examined by the head of the investigation department. The police opinion (on the indictment) will be brought together with all the findings before the state prosecution,’ a police source said.
   ‘We will decide whether to recommend indictments in several or all of the cases within days,’ he said.
   Israeli media said that police was likely to recommend indicting Olmert on a number of charges, including bribery and money laundering.
   While police and the state prosecution can recommend legal steps against a premier, it is the attorney general who decides whether to press formal charges.
   Olmert has been questioned several times in past weeks over suspicions he had accepted cash-stuffed envelopes from a US businessman to finance election campaigns and a lavish lifestyle before he became premier in 2006.
   He is also suspected of having billed the same overseas trips several times over, allegedly using the ill-gotten gains to finance private trips for himself and his family.
   In the third case, Olmert is suspected of trying to steer the sale of Bank Leumi towards a friend, Australian real estate magnate Frank Lowey, when he was trade and industry minister between 2003 and 2006.

White House candidate John McCain will Thursday crown an unlikely political comeback when he formally accepts the Republican presidential nomination after a remarkable American journey.
   The Republican convention on Wednesday formally nominated John McCain as the party’s candidate to run in the November 4 elections against Democrat Barack Obama.
   After starting a state by state roll-call, other states then ceded to McCain’s home state of Arizona to allow it to put the 72-year-old senator over the top to reach the 1,191 delegates needed to capture the nomination.
   McCain will take centre stage on the final day of the Republican National Convention, a week after his rival Barack Obama took up the Democratic banner at a spectacular convention finale in Denver.
   McCain will grab the spotlight a day after his vice presidential pick Sarah Palin emerged from a political maelstrom to capture the heart of fellow Republicans in an address that electrified party faithful.
   McCain’s keynote speech will be a sweet moment for the former Vietnam war prisoner, after his campaign almost slumped into bankruptcy last year and after a bitter loss in 2000 to the president, George W Bush.
   The convention, pumped up with energy after Palin’s prime time speech, formally nominated McCain as its candidate for the November 4 election after a fabled roll-call of the states.
   Palin’s passionate, hard-nosed speech rocked the convention hall, and won praise from US commentators, who said the formerly obscure Alaska governor could no longer be dismissed as an amateur.
   ‘If the Republicans win the presidential election in November, it may well be said that they won it last night — the night that John McCain’s brilliantly screwy choice for a running mate changed from laughingstock to national star,’ wrote Tom Shales in The Washington Post.
   McCain bounded onto the stage to embrace his controversial running mate.
   ‘Don’t you think we made the right choice for the next vice president of the United States?’ McCain asked, following days of political and personal revelations about Palin, the first-ever woman on a Republican ticket.
   Palin’s family joined her on stage, including pregnant 17-year-old daughter Bristol, the girl’s boyfriend Levi Johnston and the Alaska governor’s four-month-old Down syndrome son Trig.
   Obama’s campaign dismissed the convention as an exercise in mud-slinging without any programme to fix the troubled US economy.
   ‘We still haven’t gotten a single idea during the entire Republican convention about the economy and how to lift a middle class so harmed by the Bush-McCain policies,’ spokesman David Plouffe said in an e-mail.
   In a speech which mixed homespun small town values and searing political rhetoric, Palin, who will be formally anointed vice presidential nominee on Thursday, styled herself as a scourge of the Washington elite.
   The Alaska governor lauded the character of McCain, and contrasted it to what she described as the ‘dramatic speeches before devoted followers’ of Obama.
   ‘For a season, a gifted speaker can inspire with his words, for a lifetime, John McCain has inspired with his deeds,’ said Palin.
   The 44-year-old mother of five and staunch opponent of abortion also noted she had served as a smalltown mayor in her native Alaska, saying in another swipe at Obama that the job was like being a community organiser ‘except that you have actual responsibilities.’

Australia is in the grip of a ‘man drought’ where women increasingly outnumber men and a good bachelor is hard to find, according to new research from a leading demographer.
   From its founding as a British penal colony more than 200 years ago, Australia has traditionally suffered from a gender imbalance where men were more likely to be more numerous than the fairer sex Down Under.
   But what was once an oversupply of testosterone began to move in the other direction in the 1990s, and single women in their thirties are beginning to wonder where all the men have gone, says study author Bernard Salt.
   ‘In 1976 there were 54,000 more 30-something men than women on the Australian continent,’ he said.
   ‘That switched in the 1990s to the point that today there are 9,000 more 30-something women than men in Australia.
   ‘You could argue that since the 1970s we’ve gone from a ‘sheila shortage’ to a man drought today,’ he said. (Sheila is a slang Australian term for a young woman).
   Salt, who drew on official statistics and his own research to write ‘Man Drought And Other Social Issues Of The New Century’, said men were increasingly being drawn overseas as part of the internationalisation of the labour market.
   ‘Our youngest, our brightest, our most ambitious, the slightly more male occupations are being attracted out of Australia,’ he said.
   ‘It upsets the gender balance.’
   About five per cent of the Australian population — between 750,000 and one million people — live overseas, with the most popular destinations being the United Kingdom, the United States, United Arab Emirates, Canada, Singapore and Hong Kong, Salt said.
   ‘You tend to find that small outpost colonial cultures tend to tithe their best and brightest to a stronger economy,’ Salt said, adding that the trend was showing no signs of reversing.
   ‘I can’t see why that flow would kick back to the other direction,’ he said.
   ‘I don’t know that it’s going to get to the point where the birth rate slows down. I think that it’s enough to upset the gender balance, I don’t think it’s enough to depress the birth rate.’
   But it’s not all bad news for Australian women. Salt’s research found the ‘man drought’ did not exist for women in their 20s who could be mistaken for thinking there were too many men, as they were sought by males of all ages.

The Zimbabwe president, Robert Mugabe, looks set to move forward with forming a government if opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai does not sign a power-sharing deal on Thursday.
   ‘If after Thursday, Tsvangirai does not want to sign. We will certainly put together a cabinet. We feel frozen at the moment’, Thursday’s edition of the The Herald quoted Mugabe as saying on his return from Zambia late Wednesday.
   Power sharing talks between Mugabe and Tsvagirai, who heads the Movement for Democratic Change, were deadlocked in mid-August over Mugabe’s desire to retain control of the country’s security forces, according to the opposition.
   Last ditch attempts to revive the negotiations by the South African president, Thabo Mbeki, who is mediating in the crisis, last week failed.

Democratic vice presidential hopeful Joe Biden on Thursday said his Republican vice presidential rival, Sarah Palin, missed the point in her critical convention speech by not talking about how to fix the country’s economic woes.
   Biden told CNN television that Palin, the Alaska governor who electrified party faithful, ‘had a very skillfully written and very skillfully delivered political speech and I was impressed with her.;
   But, Biden said, she failed to mention ‘the middle class or health care or about how people are going to fill up their gas tanks.’
   ‘I didn’t hear a single word about how you’re going to get our kids to college; so I was impressed with the speech but impressed with what I didn’t hear spoken,’ Biden said.
   Biden, running along with senator Barack Obama, said John McCain’s vice presidential pick did not offer ‘a single word or phrase about how to deal with the retirement security for people and social security.’
   ‘I didn’t hear the word Afghanistan or Pakistan mentioned where the terrorists live. Where al Qaeda is,’ Biden stressed.
   Biden said that fellow senator ‘John McCain is a great hero. John’s my friend. ... But we need more than, you know, a good soldier and a brave American. We need a wise leader.’