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Russia said Thursday there was still every chance of reaching a deal with Iran over its nuclear programme, adding that the question of new UN Security Council sanctions was not on the agenda.
   The comments came despite the apparent rejection by Tehran of a UN-brokered offer the day earlier, which prompted US president Barack Obama to warn of ‘consequences’ in the form of toughened sanctions against Tehran.
   ‘At the current moment it is important to let diplomacy work, and superfluous emotions only harm the situation,’ Russian foreign ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko added in a statement.
   He said there was still ‘every chance’ of implementing a preliminary offer brokered by the UN nuclear agency under which foreign states would further enrich Iranian uranium abroad.
   ‘Currently there is no discussion about working out additional sanctions measures against Iran at the UN Security Council,’ he said.
   Russia is a permanent, veto-wielding, member of the UN Security Council and the United States requires its support—as well as that of China—if it is to agree a new set of sanctions against Tehran
   Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki on Wednesday said Tehran had rejected the plans for it to send most of its stocks of low-enriched uranium abroad.
   But Nesterenko said that there had still been ‘no official and final response’ from Tehran to the offer. He said the UN atomic agency was still working out the technical aspects of the offer.
   Different scenarios were still being examined, the spokesman said, adding that Iran ‘has its concerns and wants the most favourable conditions for itself.’
   Russian President Dmitry Medvedev had at the weekend given one of his strongest warnings yet to Tehran following talks with Obama on the sidelines of a regional summit in Singapore.
   Medvedev said Moscow was ‘not completely happy about the pace’ of efforts to resolve the crisis and, in a clear reference to sanctions, said ‘other options’ were on the table in case of failure.
   Russia has the strongest ties with Iran of any major power, and its capacity to provide technical help for the Iranian nuclear drive is seen by some analysts as giving it an unmatched power of leverage in Tehran.
   Russia is building Iran’s first nuclear power plant in the southern city of Bushehr but earlier this week warned the facility will not start operations by the end of 2009 as previously announced.
   The West suspects Tehran is trying to develop a nuclear weapon under cover of its civilian nuclear energy programme. Russia has said there is no evidence to support these accusations.

Britain’s opposition Conservatives said Thursday they would work with the EU’s new president and foreign policy supremo, despite opposing the treaty that created the positions.
   Conservative foreign affairs spokesman William Hague congratulated the pair appointed earlier Thursday, and said the party would work with them ‘in the British national interest’.
   ‘We did not agree with the Lisbon Treaty’s establishment of these posts but they are now a fact,’ Hague said.
   ‘We look to the President of the Council and the High Representative to ensure that the EU’s business as an association of nation states is conducted efficiently.
   ‘So I am very pleased that those of us across Europe who said that the president should be a chairman, not a chief, have won the argument.’
   European leaders chose Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy as the European Union’s first president.
   Britain secured the prestigious post of European foreign policy supremo for its EU Trade Commissioner Catherine Ashton, after dropping its backing for former prime minister Tony Blair.
   Both jobs were created under the bloc’s Lisbon Treaty, which was finally ratified this month, after years of political wrangling.
   Conservative leader David Cameron, tipped to be prime minister at Britain’s general election next year, has vowed to take back powers from Europe.
   The Euroskeptic earlier this month backtracked on a ‘cast-iron guarantee’ to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.

EU leaders picked little known Belgian prime minister Herman Van Rompuy as Europe’s first president with a mission to give the continent a greater world profile.
   Catherine Ashton of Britain became the European Union’s foreign policy supremo in the new team after Britain dropped its campaign for former prime minister Tony Blair so that Van Rompuy got unanimous approval at a special leader’s summit called to make the appointments.
   US resident Barack Obama welcomed the appointment saying it would make Europe an ‘even stronger partner’ for the United States.
   The appointments ‘will strengthen the EU and enable it to be an even stronger partner to the United States,’ the White House said in a statement.
   In a separate statement, secretary of state Hillary Clinton hailed the appointments as ‘a milestone for Europe and for its role in the world,’ and described Ashton as ‘my new counterpart.’
   ‘This is the new leadership team of Europe,’ said Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeld, flanked by Van Rompuy and Ashton, speaking after the dinner summit.
   ‘The idea is to have a leader of the council... who actually gives room for everyone, who listens to everyone, who creates winners not losers,’ Reinfeldt said. ‘We have achieved that.’
   The posts were created under the EU’s Lisbon treaty which reforms decision-making in a bid to give the 27-nation bloc more credibility in dealing with the likes of the United States and China.
   Van Rompuy said he regretted giving up the Belgian premiership, but accepted the challenge of managing member states frequently at odds over competing national agendas.
   ‘Even if it is particularly difficult to abandon the leadership of my country, I accept your decision
   and I thank you for the honour you have given me,’ said Van Rompuy, who takes up the post on January 1.

Barack Obama’s first presidential trip to Asia was also his first big step in recasting US ties with a region in flux, and showed this will demand patience and compromise from a superpower used to pushing its weight around.
   In a tone-setting speech in Tokyo, Obama cast his nine-day Asia odyssey as a return to full US engagement, but his trip covering Japan, a regional summit in Singapore, China and South Korea also became a tutorial in the disputes and shifting forces standing in his way.
   Above all, in China the US president found its Communist Party leaders glad for the prestige of his presence but showing little public sign of yielding over currency friction, human rights or putting greater weight behind efforts to bottle in the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran.
   All that could be cast as a failure, and already has been by Obama’s domestic critics and some commentators.
   But US summits with China and the rest of Asia have rarely brought instant rewards and are even less likely to now the U.S. has been wounded by financial crisis and Beijing sees itself as an emerging regional gatekeeper.
   Whoever is in the White House, Washington’s dealings with Asia in coming years will look less like a clean sprint and more slog through a muddy obstacle course, with plenty of chances to stumble along the way.
   ‘The United States is a big power that became used to having it’s way,’ said Liu Jiangyong, a professor of East Asian security affairs at Tsing-hua University in Beijing.

At least one in two children in 17 small counties in the United States is living in poverty, according to a US Census survey measuring income and poverty in small areas and school districts.
   Ziebach County, South Dakota, an area with a population of 2,542, leads with a poverty rate for those under the age of 18 of 67.1 per cent, the survey released on Wednesday showed. For all ages, the poverty rate is 54.4 per cent.
   In at least 30 counties with populations ranging from just over 2,000 people to nearly 62,250 people, the poverty rate for all ages is more than one in three, the Census showed.
   Douglas County, Colorado with a population of 280,621 has the lowest poverty rate of 3.1 per cent, while New Mexico’s Los Alamos County has the lowest rate for children of 2.8 per cent.
   The survey, which relies on 2008 data, is an indication of how American small towns and rural areas are faring economically. The data is also important as the stimulus plan passed in February has special programs targeted to ‘recovery zones,’ areas with high unemployment rates and low incomes, and schools where large numbers of the students live hand to mouth.
   The county with the smallest median income was also in South Dakota. Buffalo, which has a population of 2,142, has a median household income of $19,182. In 23 small areas, median income does not even reach $25,000.
   Virginia is home to the top two counties for median income. Loudon, with a population of 289,995, has a median household income of $111,582 and Fairfax, population 1.02 million, has a median income of $107,075.
   The Census also released estimates of poverty for the more than 13,000 US school districts. The New York City Department of Education has the highest number of students living in poverty at nearly 352,670, but it also has the highest number of students at 1.33 million. Still, more than a quarter of its students live in poverty.

A four-hour computer glitch triggered major flight delays and cancellations across the United States Thursday as air controllers were forced to input flight plans by hand, officials said.
   The second such problem to hit the network in just over a year began at 5:00am (1000 GMT) but was repaired within four hours, the Federal Aviation Administration said.

A British lawmaker, charged with probing expense claims of colleagues, quit his position as a newspaper Friday raised allegations about his own expenses worth thousands of pounds.
   Opposition lawmaker David Curry claimed almost 30,000 pounds (33,500 euros, 49,800 dollars) from the public purse for the cost of running a second home that he was barred from using, according to the Daily Telegraph on Friday.
   Curry, from the Conservatives, stood down as head of the House of Commons committee charged with policing lawmakers’ expenses late Thursday, and now faces a formal inquiry into the allegations.
   ‘I used the cottage to carry out my duties as a constituency MP (member of parliament) and am content with my arrangements,’ he said in a statement.
   ‘However, given the particular responsibilities of the chairman of the Committee of Standards and Privileges, I shall refer my case to the Commissioner on Parliamentary Standards John Lyon and will stand down from the chairmanship during the course of his inquiries,’ he said.

US defence secretary Robert Gates announced Thursday a thorough investigation into the Fort Hood shootings to examine if warning signs were missed and to ensure such a ‘tragedy’ never happens again.
   An army psychiatrist, Major Nidal Hasan, has been charged with the murder of 13 people in the November 5 rampage at the military base in Texas, in which 42 people were also wounded.
   Gates asked former army secretary Togo West and former chief of naval operations Admiral Vernon Clark to lead a probe into possible ‘lapses or problems’ that had raised ‘serious questions.’
   ‘We do not enter this process with any preconceived notions,’ Gates, who attended a funeral for one of the victims of the tragedy on Wednesday, told a press conference.
   ‘However, it is prudent to determine immediately whether there are internal weaknesses or procedural shortcomings in the department that could make us vulnerable in the future.’

President Barack Obama’s vow to reveal his ‘end game’ for Afghanistan may bolster any future decision to send more US troops — but could also reinforce doubts over US staying power in the conflict.
   Political analysts say Obama is walking a tricky line as he readies his Afghan strategy, promising a dubious US public and critics in his own Democratic Party that the war will not be open-ended while assuring allies in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Europe of the US commitment to victory.
   Afghanistan’s Taliban militants, fighting to unseat the US-backed government of president Hamid Karzai, may also take hope from the suggestion that US military commanders are planning a way out — although analysts say this may be too simplistic a reading of Obama’s intentions.
   ‘It depends on what the president means about the exit strategy. A fixed date for withdrawal would be a bad idea, but that is not necessarily what he means,’ said Stephen Biddle, an Afghanistan expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.
   ‘The man is careful with the way he uses words ... and if he means how do we get success that lets us leave, then that is the due diligence we would expect from the chief executive.’
   US defence secretary Robert Gates, asked on Thursday about a timeline for turning security over to Afghan forces, said an eventual drawdown could follow the Iraq model and go region by region, but declined to discuss specifics.
   ‘My assumption would be there will be some districts and some provinces where that handover could come relatively soon. But again in terms of specific dates I would leave that more to folks on the ground,’ he told a news conference.
   Talk of exit strategies is nothing new in Washington — or in Kabul and Islamabad, where US allies have questioned if, eight years into the conflict, the United States still has the stomach for a long-term fight.
   in Congress, Democratic lawmakers have repeatedly called for plans to withdraw US troops, reflecting divisions in the president’s own party over the Afghan plan.
   ‘Showing the people there and here that we have a sense about when it is time to leave is one of the best things we can do,’ liberal Democratic Senator Russ Feingold said earlier this year when the Obama administration launched its policy review.
   Obama said this week that his Afghan strategy, which could send as many as 40,000 more U.S. troops to fight Islamic insurgents, did not presage ‘a multiyear occupation’.
   ‘The American people will have a lot of clarity about what we’re doing ... and, most importantly, what’s the end game on this thing,’ he told CNN, adding that he hopes to wrap things up before handing off to the next US president — a window of between three and seven years, depending on whether he wins a second term in 2012.

Bomb attacks on Friday killed 23 people in Afghanistan, a deadly start to president Hamid Karzai’s second term that underscored spiralling insecurity nine years into the US-led war.
   The attacks brought to 35 the number of people killed since Karzai was sworn in for another five years on Thursday, pledging to try to bring peace to the nation and take over security from foreign forces in five years.
   A suicide bomber on a motorcycle struck the capital of the south-western province of Farah, killing 15 people near the governor’s home.
   A roadside bomb targeted a controversial warlord, who escaped unscathed but killed five of his
   bodyguards northwest of Kabul, while a similar device, of the type favoured by Taliban insurgents, killed three civilians in the east.
   The Taliban-led insurgency against the Western-backed government is at its deadliest in the eight years since US-led troops ousted the Islamists, and is slowly encroaching into once peaceful parts of the north and west.
   The suicide bomber damaged buildings in Farah in an area where heavy trucks were being loaded, officials said.
   ‘The bomber riding on a motorcycle detonated himself at a main square near my working office in my home,’ provincial governor Rohul Amin Amin told AFP.
    ‘Fifteen people have been killed,’ the governor said. Apart from a police officer, all the dead were civilians, Amin added.
   About 38 other people were wounded, officials said. More than a dozen were in a ‘critical condition’.
   Karzai condemned the ‘brutal and unforgivable attack on civilians’, said a statement from his office.
   In the capital Kabul, a roadside bomb ripped through the convoy of Abdul Rab Rasoul Sayaf, a pro-Karzai warlord-turned-lawmaker who survived. Five of his bodyguards were killed, police said.
   ‘Five of his bodyguards were killed,’ he said.

A US government report warned Thursday that China is sharply stepping up espionage against the United States as the rising Asian power invests in cyber warfare and grows more sophisticated in recruiting spies.
   ‘China is changing the way that espionage is being done,’ said Carolyn Bartholomew, the chair of the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission.
   In its wide-ranging annual report to Congress, the commission reported a steep rise in the disruption and infiltration of websites of the US government and perceived Beijing rivals such as Tibet’s exiled leader the Dalai Lama.
   Colonel Gary McAlum, a senior military officer, told the commission the US defence department detected 54,640 malicious cyber incidents to its systems in 2008, a 20 per cent rise from a year earlier. The figure is on track to jump another 60 per cent this year.
   While the attacks came from around the world, the commission said China was the largest culprit. Some Chinese ‘patriotic hackers’ may not receive official support, but the report said the government likely planned to deploy them in a conflict to disrupt a foreign adversary’s computers.
   The bipartisan commission found that China was the most aggressive nation in spying on the United States and was trying to recruit more American spies.
   While China historically tried to tap Chinese Americans — believing, often incorrectly, that they would be sympathetic — it was now turning to the Soviet model of seeking to bribe informants with cash and gifts, the report said.
   It said the Chinese were expanding ‘false flag’ operations, in which sources are deceived into thinking they are providing information elsewhere.
   It pointed to the case of Tai Shen Kuo, a furniture salesman in New Orleans arrested last year after persuading two retired US military officials to give sensitive information by telling them it was headed to Taiwan, not mainland China.
   The commission also found that China has launched an effort to influence US think-tanks and academia by rewarding scholars with access and depriving visas to more critical voices.

The foreign ministers of Japan and China agreed Thursday to advance political and military exchanges in a bid to foster mutual trust, a Japanese diplomat said.
   Japan’s Katsuya Okada and his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi also reiterated their shared resolve to press North Korea to stop its nuclear programmes, to tackle climate change and to boost economic cooperation, he said.
   ‘In particular, Foreign Minister Okada pointed out that exchanges in the security field were necessary,’ said the diplomat, who attended the talks.
   Okada told Yang that continued exchanges of navy vessels and military officers should improve trust between the two countries, the diplomat said, as Tokyo becomes wary of rising Chinese military power.
   Okada welcomed a plan by Chinese defence minister Liang Guanglie to visit Japan, he said.
   The two men also agreed to arrange visits by political leaders, the diplomat said.
    ‘Minister Yang said China was trying to coordinate a visit to Japan by a national leader,’ he said, although he declined to specify who that might be.
   Yang’s visit to Japan is widely viewed as a step toward a future visit by Vice President Xi Jinping, who is considered to be a possible successor to President Hu Jintao.

A UN commission issued a resolution Thursday expressing ‘grave concern’ over widespread rights abuses in Myanmar and detention of political prisoners including opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
   The non-binding resolution was adopted in a 92-26 vote, including 65 abstentions, by the General Assembly human rights committee. A similar resolution was adopted last year by 89-29, with 63 abstentions.
   The resolution now goes before the plenary session of the 192-member world body for adoption. The document ‘strongly condemns the ongoing systematic violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms of the people of Myanmar,’ it said.
   It also expressed ‘grave concern at the recent trial, conviction and sentencing of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, resulting in her return to house arrest, and calls for her immediate and unconditional release.’
   The resolution comes three months after the UN Security Council agreed on a watered-down statement of concern at the extended detention of Aung San Suu Kyi, kept under house arrest for most of the past two decades, after a tougher draft met opposition from China, Libya, Russia and Vietnam.
   It also follows US President Barack Obama’s face-to-face meeting with Myanmar Prime Minister Thein Sein on Sunday at a regional summit where he called on the ruling generals to release the pro-democracy icon. The resolution urges the government ‘to release all prisoners of conscience, currently estimated at over 2,000, without delay, without condition.’
   The commission also slammed the junta for a collection of human rights violations, including ‘the continuing practice of arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances, rape and other forms of sexual violence, torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.’
   General elections are scheduled for next year in Myanmar, ruled by the military since 1962 when the country was known as Burma.

The United Nations on Thursday stepped up pressure on Sri Lanka to free thousands of war-displaced civilians held in state-run internment camps.
   ‘Months after the conflict ended, our main concerns haven’t changed. People are still not given free access to leave these camps on their own free will,’ UN humanitarian chief John Holmes told AFP after a visit to the camps.
   Holmes, who ended a three-day visit on Thursday, said some 130,000 men, women and children remained inside the tightly-guarded camps.
   More needs to be done to improve their living conditions, the UN under secretary general for humanitarian affairs added.
    ‘We are very much encouraged by the government’s progress to resettle people. There were about 288,000 people in May (when the conflict ended) and now its much less,’ Holmes said.
   He asked the government to allow those returning to their villages a greater say in their resettlement.
    ‘People need to be consulted as much as possible on where they are going, the status of their homes, their livelihoods.’
    ‘But I must say that those who have been allowed to return are quite relieved to get out of the camps and rebuild their lives with what little they have.’
   He inspected demining efforts and visited the Manik Farm area in the island’s north where most of the displaced civilians are being held. He said the government appears to be on track to resettle displaced people by January 2009.
   ‘But we have some doubts. There are bound to be areas where demining is not finished. Our concern is what’s going to happen to these people who cant go back to their villages. Where will they stay once the camps are emptied?’
   He said some may opt to live in the state-run makeshift shelters until their villagers were cleared of mines.
   ‘In that case, freedom of movement becomes more crucial. People should be free to leave the site for jobs or visit friends and relatives until its safe to return.’

Suspected Maoist rebels have derailed a passenger train in eastern India, killing two people and injuring more than 40, a report said Friday.
   National Railways Minister Mamata Banerjee told the Press Trust of India that two bodies had been found in an overturned carriage in the state of Jharkhand, while six more were trapped in another coach and 47 people were injured.
   ‘Maoists blew up a portion of a railway track which caused the derailment. There were also three to four blasts nearby to deter rescuers,’ Banerjee told PTI.
   Eight of the train’s 10 coaches had derailed after guerrillas detonated bombs in front of the engine on Thursday night, she said.
   The attack came ahead of state polls in Jharkhand later this month.
   The Maoist movement started as a peasant uprising in 1967 but has now spread to 20 of India’s 29 states, including Jharkhand and Orissa.
   Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has labelled the leftist rebels the greatest threat to India’s internal security, and a massive security operation planned by the federal government to wipe them out is tipped to start this month.

Shrews, beware: a group of Indian husbands tired of being harassed by their wives are demanding the local government create a male protection society to address their grievances.
   The men, who said they had enough of their ‘nagging’ wives, dressed up in clothes traditionally worn by grooms and paraded through the northern city of Lucknow this week to ask for a National Commission for Men.
   ‘We are asking for equal rights. We want somebody to listen to the grievances of men,’ said Subhash Dube, a medical doctor who described himself as a victimised husband.
   The president of the All India Welfare Committee for Husbands, Indu Pandey, said statistics showed abuse of a section of the penal code meant to protect women against their husbands.
   ‘Demands to amend this law have been put forward a lot of times. Therefore, we oppose this law,’ Pandey said.

In a landmark decision, Israel’s supreme court has thrown out a law allowing privately-run prisons, arguing that running jails for profit would be a ‘grave’ violation of inmates’ human rights.
   ‘We have reached the conclusion that the very transfer of the powers to administer a prison from the state ... to the hands of private businessmen who operate for profit causes harsh and grave damage to the basic human rights of prisoners,’ presiding judge Dorit Beinish wrote in the ruling.
   The ruling, issued on Thursday with the support of eight justices and one dissenting, overturns a law passed by parliament in 2004 that allowed the establishment of privately-run prisons.

Two Chinese rights activists who sought a meeting with US President Barack Obama hours before he left Beijing said on Friday they were briefly detained by police, and one said Washington’s sway over rights in China had eroded.
   Jiang Tianyong and Fan Yafeng said they were among several critics of China’s restrictions on human rights who gathered near the US embassy in the Chinese capital on Wednesday, hoping to meet Obama before he left that night for Seoul.
   Most of the group left as it became clear there be no chance of such a meeting, but Jiang and Fan said they stayed until plain clothes security police took them away for a few hours of ‘chats’ late into the night.
   ‘We had wanted to discuss (with Obama) the deterioration of religious freedom in China, as well as deteriorating treatment of other rights defenders,’ said Fan, a legal scholar who recently lost his job at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

A suspected US drone aircraft fired two missiles at a north-western Pakistani militant stronghold on Friday, killing eight people, the second such attack this week, security and Taliban officials said.
   The United States has carried out more than 40 attacks with its pilotless, missile-firing aircraft in northwest Pakistan this year as its forces in neighbouring Afghanistan have faced an intensifying Taliban insurgency.
   The attack was near Mir Ali, a town in the North Waziristan region on the Afghan border and a major sanctuary for al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
   ‘Eight people have been killed,’ an intelligence official in the region said.
   A Taliban official confirmed the target had apparently been a vehicle.
   ‘Our men are going to the site of the strike. We don’t have details right now,’ said the Taliban official, who declined to be identified.
   North Waziristan is a stronghold of Taliban militants and their al-Qaeda allies.
   Four militants were killed in a similar strike on Wednesday night in the same region.