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Gordon Brown vowed to soldier on as Britain’s prime minister on Saturday, admitting that he faced an unprecedented period of turbulence he awaited another electoral bloodbath.
   A day after reshuffling his cabinet in a desperate bid to reassert his authority, Brown again insisted that he had no intention of standing down as he headed to the battlefields of Normandy in a brief respite from the fight for his political life.
   ‘I think it’s important to recognise that in these unprecedented times, we are bound to have ups and downs in politics,’ Brown told reporters as he promised to ‘clean up politics’ in the wake of a blistering expenses scandal.
   ‘We keep on with the task at hand ... We are not diverted,’ he added.
   But despite his defiance, British newspapers said Brown’s government had been fatally wounded and called for a general election, while some said it was time for him to step down after heavy defeat in local English elections.
   Results from European polls are due on Sunday which are expected to yield equally disastrous results.
   Brown’s cabinet shake-up was brought forward ahead of Saturday’s trip to France to be alongside the US president, Barack Obama, and France’s Nicolas Sarkozy to mark the 65th anniversary of D-Day.
   Ten ministers — some embroiled in a row over personal expenses — have resigned in the past week. Political analysts believe Labour has little chance of winning the next general election that must be held by June 2010.
   A victory for the main opposition Conservatives, headed by David Cameron, would see the Tories in power for the first time since 1997.
   Brown will be hoping his hasty reshuffle does not bring a repeat of Margaret Thatcher’s downfall as prime minister, which came as she was holed up at a European summit in Paris in November 1990.
   Former Labour leader Neil Kinnock insisted Brown should remain in power.
   ‘I’m absolutely certain that Gordon is the best man to take us through the recession, which is by far the most dominant issue facing the country and on people’s minds,’ he told Sky News television.
   On Friday, Brown handed Kinnock’s wife Glenys the position of European minister after incumbent Caroline Flint stormed out saying the premier had ‘strained every sinew’ of her loyalty.
   James Purnell quit as work and pensions secretary, saying that under Brown, Labour had no chance of winning the next general election.
   Defence secretary John Hutton, transport secretary Geoff Hoon and welsh secretary Paul Murphy also stepped down Friday.
   Business secretary Peter Mandelson was instrumental in stopping further ministers from following Purnell, with some persuasive late-night telephone calls, media reported.
   He was rewarded with the added title of first secretary of state — de facto deputy prime minister — but denied he was now the ‘kingmaker’ in the British government.
   On Wednesday, Brown repeatedly failed to give job assurances to finance minister Alistair Darling.

Iran has started production of a new ground-to-air missile system, Iranian media reported on Saturday, amid persistent speculation that Israel might attack the Islamic Republic’s nuclear facilities.
   ‘The range of this defence system (missile) is more than 40 km and it is able to pursue and hit the enemy’s airplanes and helicopters on a smart basis and at supersonic speed,’ the defence minister, Mostafa Mohammad Najjar, said, without specifying how the missile compared to previous such weapons.
   Najjar was quoted by Iran’s Fars News Agency three days after Israel issued contradictory signals on whether it might bomb Iran, with its foreign minister saying there were no such plans and the defence minister saying all options were open.
   The missile announcement came less than a week before a June 12 presidential election, in which conservative the president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is facing a challenge from moderates advocating a detente in Tehran’s international relations.
   Fars, a semi-official news agency, said production of the Shahin (hawk) missile defence system was one of the ‘most important and complex projects’ undertaken by Iran’s defence industry after the country’s 1979 Islamic revolution.
   Iran’s Press TV said all parts of Shahin were produced in the country, which is under UN and US sanctions over its disputed nuclear programme.
   The United States and Israel accuse Iran of seeking to develop nuclear bombs, a charge Tehran denies, and have not ruled out military action if diplomacy fails to resolve the row.
   Israel, widely believed to be the Middle East’s only nuclear power, has repeatedly described Iran’s nuclear programme as a threat to its existence.

A row erupted Friday as Democratic lawmakers accused Republican rivals of revealing secret information on interrogation tactics unveiled during a closed-door Congress debate.
   Lawmakers gathered Thursday at a closed hearing of the intelligence committee to discuss CIA methods employed in the Bush-era ‘war on terror’ launched in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks.
   Republican members on the intelligence committee proceeded to tell congressional daily The Hill that ‘they were informed that the controversial methods have led to information that prevented terrorist attacks.’
   Democratic lawmakers hit out that their colleagues had broken Congress rules by publicly discussing the contents of the debate.
   Illinois representative Jan Schakowski said that ‘everyone on the committee understands the meaning of a closed hearing.’
   It is, she added in a statement, ‘irresponsible that members of this committee exited the classified briefing well before it ended and headed right to the press.
   ‘Had they stayed for the entire hearing, the members would realise how foolish the remarks they made to the media actually were,’ Schakowski said.
   Republicans accused the Democrats of trying to bury the truth that such interrogations work.
   Lawmaker Pete Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the intelligence panel, said he had reviewed documents and materials from the Central Intelligence Agency and reached ‘the conclusion that enhanced interrogation techniques clearly were proven to be effectives.’
   Hoekstra said he thought that ‘it would be great’ if legislators had open hearings on the issue and that more interrogation material be declassified.
   ‘There has been a lot a miss-information out there,’ he said, stressing that the president, Barack Obama, ‘has selectively released some information and not others. I don’t see why he can’t release some additional information.’

French crash investigators said on Saturday that the Air France jet which plunged into the Atlantic had speed monitors that had often failed on other planes and were due to be replaced.
   The head of the air accident investigation agency said the missing Rio to Paris flight, which crashed on Monday with the loss of all 228 people on board, had suffered multiple systems failures in its final moments.
   Automatic error messages broadcast by the A330 jet just prior to the crash showed that its autopilot had cut out after it received conflicting speed readings, BEA director Paul-Louis Arslanian told reporters.
   ‘There is a programme of replacement, of improvement,’ he said, adding that planes that have not yet had the replacement are not necessarily dangerous, and that in other cases pilots had been able to regain control.
   On Friday, Airbus urged all pilots of its jets to review a warning issued in July 2001 on the procedures to follow if speed indicators give conflicting readings and force the autopilot to cut out.
   Investigators seeking clues to what had caused flight AF 447 to crash so suddenly have so far had to rely on the automatic messages as salvage crews have been unable to locate the wreckage in deep Atlantic waters.
   Brazilian air force spotters believe they have identified floating debris, but no surface vessel has been able to recover any, and a French nuclear sub and a research ship equipped with mini-submarines are steaming to the scene.

Lebanese voters go to the polls on Sunday for a crucial parliamentary election that will see a showdown between the ruling Western-backed coalition and factions led by
   the Iranian-backed Hezbollah.
   The vote is being
   held under tight security with 50,000 soldiers and police deployed across the country to prevent violence between the two camps.
   More than 200 international observers from the European Union, the Carter Centre and other institutions will oversee the election.

The Australian prime minister, Kevin Rudd, announced a reshuffle of his government on Saturday after his former defence minister was forced to step down in disgrace.
   The highest profile of Rudd’s new appointments was that of former trade union boss Greg Combet, who became minister for defence personnel, material and science, as well as the assistant minister for climate change.
   Combet, 51, who has been serving as a parliamentary secretary, is a rising political star who was elected to parliament just 18 months ago at the same time Rudd came to power.
   ‘This reshuffle underlines the government’s continued commitment to its core priorities (including) nation building for recovery... and getting on with the task of strengthening Australia’s security,’ Rudd told reporters in Brisbane.
   The changes came two days after former defence minister Joel Fitzgibbon fell on his sword in an embarrassing first ministerial resignation for the Rudd government.
   Political heavyweight John Faulkner was appointed the country’s new defence minister on Friday.

A fire at a daycare centre in northern Mexico has killed at least 31 young children and left dozens of others injured, the police and officials said Saturday.
   Many of the victims from Friday’s blaze — children aged between three months and two years — died from asphyxiation, officials said.
   The death toll continued to rise into the weekend. ‘We continue to get the bodies out,’ Jose Larrinaga, a spokesman for the local prosecutor’s office, told reporters after the fire died down, adding it was too early to announce a final toll.
   In desperate scenes, local residents smashed the cement walls of the centre in the state capital Hermosillo with cars and vans to try to save the children, said Larrinaga on Televisa television channel.
   Around 25 children and five adults were being treated Saturday in local hospitals, including some ‘in grave condition’, he said.
   Radio reports said there were many newborn babies in a part of the centre where the fire caused the roof to collapse.
   ‘Where’s God? Where’s God?’ a police commander said as he came out of the centre in tears, radio reports said.
   Between 50 and 70 children and a handful of care workers had been taking an afternoon nap when the fire broke out Friday, Larrinaga said.
   Local media said that there were 176 children inside the ABC daycare centre.
   The centre, in a working class neighbourhood in the south of Hermosillo, had a staff of around 20 people.
   It belonged to Mexico’s social security network, the Mexican presidency said in a statement. The president, Felipe Calderon, had felt ‘most profound pain and expressed his most deeply felt condolences to the families of the children,’ it said.
   The federal government has rushed to the area three additional ambulance crews as well as a dozen medical specialists trained to work with burn victims, the presidency statement added.
   State investigators followed firefighters, Red Cross workers and police to the scene, police said in a statement.
   Local media suggested the fire had started in a neighbouring tire shop, a claim the shopowners quickly denied, according to news reports.
   But the local prosecutor’s office cautioned against premature conclusions saying at the moment ‘it would be adventurous to pass judgment on what caused the fire.’
   Meanwhile, dozens of worried families gathered at the centre as well as at hospitals around the city.
   Medics transferred five children who had been identified by their parents to Sonora State children’s hospital, a medical worker said.
   At least 30 children with serious burns were transferred overnight to a specialised hospital across the border to the US state of Arizona, according to El Imparcial daily.
   Calderon called on the national social security director, Daniel Karam Toumeh, to personally visit families and injured children at the scene, the statement said.

Militants on Saturday killed two close aides of an Islamist hardline cleric in an ambush on a prison convoy in northwest Pakistan as troops pressed their offensive against the Taliban, the military said.
   The rebels ambushed a convoy of security forces carrying prisoners from Malakand town to Peshawar.
   ‘Spokesman Ameer Izzat and Mohammad Alam, a deputy of Islamist cleric Soofi Mohammad, died in the terrorist attack,’ a military statement said.
   ‘The convoy was attacked by an improvised explosive device followed by firing by terrorists at 5:10am (2310 GMT) at Sakhakot,’ the statement said.
   It added that ‘a non-commissioned officer embraced shahadat (martyrdom) while five others were injured.’
   The dead aides of Soofi Mohammad, who negotiated a peace deal in the northwest between Taliban rebels and the Pakistani government, were arrested on Thursday along with three Afghan nationals.
   The deal in February to put three million people under sharia law in exchange for peace in the Swat valley fell apart when Taliban fighters advanced to within 100 kilometres of Islamabad in April.
   The ambush came a day after a suicide bomb ripped through a mosque packed with worshippers in the village of Hayagai Sharqai in Upper Dir, killing 38 people.
   Hayagai Sharqai borders the district of Swat, where the military has focused a blistering air and ground assault against the Taliban.
   Attack helicopters shelled militant hideouts in Swat on Saturday, officials said.
   ‘Helicopter gunships targeted rebel hideouts in Barabandi, Kozabandi and Imam Dheri areas of Kabbal town, which has been encircled by troops,’ a senior military official said.
   The villages are within five kilometres of Swat’s main town Mingora.
   Another security official confirmed the helicopter attacks, adding ‘there are reports that several Taliban militants, who fled Mingora, are now holed up in Kabbal.’
   Under US pressure, Pakistan launched an offensive at the end of April and the beginning of May in the districts of Lower Dir, Buner and Swat to crush the militants.
   Pakistan has not released civilian casualty figures as a result of the operations but says more than 1,300 rebels have been killed. The fighting has displaced around 2.4 million people.

The US president, Barack Obama, said Saturday it was vital to break the ‘stalemate’ in the Middle East peace process, saying all sides had to recognise that their fate was inextricably linked.
   ‘We have to move beyond the current stalemate,’ Obama said at a press conference in France where he was to attend commemorations marking the 65th anniversary of D-Day.
   ‘Progress would mean the parties involved, supported by not just the United States, not just by France but by other Arab states, are making serious constructive steps towards a two state solution,’ he said when asked what he wanted to see by the end of the year.
   ‘I do not expect that a 60-year problem is solved overnight, but as I said before I do expect both sides to recognise that their fates are tied together and that it is in the interests of Israel, in its security interests, and in the interests of the Palestinians to resolve this in a peaceful way.’
   Obama, who has called on Israel to halt all its settlement activity in the occupied West Bank, said he wanted Arab nations to all be part of the peace process.
   ‘The Arab states have to be a part of this process,’ said the US president.
   ‘They are going to have to step up as well because Arab states are not only important politically but are important economically.’
   His comments came ahead of a visit to the region by his special envoy, former US senator George Mitchell.
   ‘We are going to try to put as much energy as we can into it,’ said Obama.
   
   Michelle, daughters
   visit Eiffel Tower
   US First Lady Michelle Obama took her two daughters up the Eiffel Tower for a birds-eye view of Paris at sunset Friday after flying in to France to join the president, Barack Obama, who arrived from Germany.
   Hundreds of onlookers screamed ‘Michelle’ as she stepped out of a Chevrolet to wave to the crowd before shepherding Malia, 10, and Sasha, seven, into the landmark tower by a discreet side entrance in the south pillar.
   The mayor of Paris Bertrand Delanoe was on hand to welcome the US party at one of the world’s most visited attractions, with six million visitors a year.

North Korea Saturday restated that South Korea’s decision to join a US-led drive against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction was a ‘declaration of war,’ a report said.
   Within days of Pyongyang’s detonation of a second nuclear bomb on May 25, Seoul said it would join Washington’s Proliferation Security Initiative, a move that incensed North Korea.
   ‘South Korea’s full participation in the PSI is a wanton violation of the DPRK’s sovereignty and an open declaration of war against it,’ a commentary published in the North’s main newspaper, Rodong Sinmun said, reported by South Korea’s Yonhap news agency.
   ‘South Korea will be wholly accountable for the disastrous consequences as it has followed foreign forces in utter disregard of the DPRK’s sovereignty and dignity,’ said the commentary.
   The PSI, launched in 2003 by then president George W Bush, allows its member countries to interdict airplanes or ships suspected of carrying missiles and other weapons of mass destruction.
   Earlier Saturday, the president, Lee Myung-Bak, said South Korea would not make any compromises in the face of North Korea’s military threats and called for Pyongyang to return to six-party disarmament talks.
   ‘I hereby make it clear again that there won’t be any compromise in issues threatening the lives of the people and national security,’ Lee said at a speech marking Memorial Day to honour the Korean War dead.
   ‘Even at this very moment, the North is ratcheting up the level of threats as we are also stepping up our defence posture, resulting in a trigger-wire confrontation,’ Lee said.
   In France, the US president, Barack Obama, said North Korea’s nuclear test had been ‘extraordinarily provocative’ and that the international community would take ‘a very hard look’ at how it would react to the move.
   The UN Security Council is considering new sanctions against Pyongyang but diplomats at the UN say agreement is being held up by differences among seven key powers.

A former State Department official with top secret security clearance and his wife have been arrested and charged with spying for communist Cuba for almost 30 years, US officials said.
   Walter Kendall Myers, 72, and his wife Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers, 71, are accused of conspiracy to hand over classified information to Cuba, serving as an illegal agent for a foreign government and wire fraud, the Department of Justice said in a statement.
   The Washington couple were arrested on Thursday after an undercover FBI sting operation having allegedly passed on secrets for decades to Washington’s Cold War foe via shortwave radio and in shopping carts.
   If found guilty, Myers, known as Agent 202 by Cuban intelligence officials, and his wife, Agent 123, face a maximum of 20 years in prison. ‘The clandestine activity alleged in the charging documents, which spanned nearly three decades, is incredibly serious and should serve as a warning to any others in the US government who would betray America’s trust,’ said David Kris, assistant attorney general for national security.
   Myers first began working for the State Department in 1977 as a lecturer at the department’s Foreign Service Institute in Arlington, Virginia. But from 1988 to 1999 he began to work for its bureau of intelligence and research.
   In 1985, he was given top-secret security clearance which was then upgraded to a higher level in 1999. By the time he retired, Myers was working as a senior Europe analyst for the department’s intelligence bureau and had daily access to classified information stored on computer databases, the Justice Department said.
   A scan of his computer showed that from August 2006 until his retirement in October 2007 Myers had viewed more than 200 sensitive or classified intelligence reports on Cuba, which has been under a US embargo since 1962.

Fierce fighting in central Somalia between pro-government militiamen and hardline Islamist insurgents has left at least 64 people dead, elders and witnesses said on Saturday.
   ‘We sent teams to collect the dead bodies in the battle zones and they found 28 more combatants who were killed in Friday’s clashes,’ Moalim Mohamoud Adan, an elder in the town of Guriel, said.
   Adan and other local elders had already reported that 36 fighters were confirmed dead late Friday, bringing the overall death toll to at least 64 and dozens of wounded.
   The fighting broke out Friday in Wahbo village, near the Ethiopian border, when the Shebab and allied fighters from the Hezb al-Islamiya group tried to recapture the area from pro-government group Ahlu Sunna wal Jamaa.
   Ahlu Sunna wal Jamaa is originally a religious organisation rooted in Somalia’s Sufi brand of Islam but it took up arms in parts of Galgudud neighbouring the Ethiopian border earlier this year to challenge the Shebab.
   Friday’s Shebab-led offensive came a day after Ahlu Sunna wal Jamaa’s top religious leader officially declared his support for the embattled administration of the president, Sharif Sheikh Ahmed.
   Adan said nearly all the dead were fighters and witnesses in the Wahbo area, which lies around 400 kilometres north of the capital Mogadishu. He added it was believed very few civilians had been killed.
   Muktar Fidow, a spokesman and senior commander for the Ahlu Sunna wal Jamaa group, confirmed that the fighting had been very deadly.
   ‘More than 20 dead bodies were found early this morning, most of them were combatants and they were buried outside Guriel,’ he said by telephone.

A committee of international labour experts Saturday called on the Myanmar government to amend a provision in the country’s new constitution that could be interpreted as justifying forced labour.
   During a special session on the forced labour situation in Myanmar, International Labour Organisation experts assessed that such exploitation was rampant in the Asian country and that ‘there is no genuine and sustained political will to end forced labour.’
   In a report presented during the meeting, experts pointed to a provision in the new constitution referring to ‘duties assigned thereupon by the State in accord with the law in the interests of the people.’
   It noted that this provision could be taken to mean that forced labour may be permitted.
   ‘The Committee expresses deep concern about the fact that the government ... included in the text of the Constitution a provision which may be interpreted in such a way as to allow a generalised exaction of forced labour from the population,’ said the experts in the report.
   The Czech Republic’s representative, speaking on behalf of the European Union during the session, also expressed ‘regret’ at the clause, saying that it is ‘not in conformity’ with international labour rules.
   Myanmar’s new constitution is meant to take effect in 2010.
   Myanmar’s representative however rejected the charge, saying that the government ‘cannot accept criticism on our constitution process’ which he claimed was adopted by over 90 per cent of voters.

Protesters clashed with the police Saturday as a separatist strike over the alleged rape and murder of two young Muslim women paralysed Indian Kashmir for a sixth day.
   The strike closed shops, schools, banks and offices in the summer capital Srinagar and other towns in the revolt-hit Muslim-majority Kashmir valley, the police and witnesses said.
   The police fired tear gas and swung batons to disperse hundreds of protesters in Srinagar, who retaliated by hurling stones and bricks.
   ‘Ten protesters received minor injuries,’ a police officer said, adding riot police were keeping a tight vigil over protesters elsewhere.
   The police said they were investigating the deaths of the 17-year-old woman and her pregnant 22-year-old sister-in-law, whose bodies were found in a shallow stream last Saturday.
   Indian officials say preliminary investigations suggest drowning was the cause of death, but the families of the victims have accused the security forces of abducting, raping and killing the women.
   A judicial probe has been ordered by chief minister Omar Abdullah, but it has failed to cool tempers.
   The police and paramilitary forces have also sealed with barbed wire some neighbourhoods in Srinagar, a separatist hub, and in southern Shopian town, where the two women’s deaths were reported.

At least nine police officers and seven Amazon Indians were killed Friday in violent protests in northern Peru over land rights, local officials said.
   Fighting broke out when some 400 police officers moved in to break up a roadblock stopping traffic along a highway near the city of Bagua, 1,000 kilometres north of Lima. Some 2,500 Indian protesters had been blocking the highway with tree trunks and boulders since last week.
   The protesters want decrees signed by the president, Alan Garcia, in 2007 and 2008 easing restrictions on mining, oil drilling, wood harvesting and farming in the Amazon rainforest overturned.
   The police managed to clear the road, but the protest retaliated by torching government buildings, looting buildings and attacking the police station, local officials said.
   The civilian death toll was confirmed to AFP by Olga Bobadilla from the local district attorney’s office, and by John Delgado Cabanillas, the doctor on duty at the Bagua hospital.
   Bagua Mayor Luis Nenez Teran earlier said that nine police officers were killed in the violence.

The UN chief, Ban Ki-moon, on Friday warned the Sri Lankan government against ‘triumphalism’ after its recent defeat of the Tamil separatist insurgency and urged it to ‘heal the wounds’ of the bitter conflict.
   ‘I would like to take this opportunity to warn against the risk of triumphalism in the wake of victory,’ Ban told reporters after he briefed the 15-member Security Council on his visit to ethnically divided Sri Lanka last month.
   ‘It is very important at this time to unite and heal the wounds, rather than enjoy all this triumphalism,’ he added, after the Sri Lankan army last month crushed the 30-year-old separatist rebellion by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.’
   Ban reiterated that the purpose of his visit was to press for unimpeded humanitarian assistance to the more than 300,000 Tamil civilians displaced by the fighting and for their speedy resettlement,
   But he stressed that for the longer term the priority was to help the Sri Lankan government reach out to minority Tamils and Muslims.