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Iran on Thursday rejected as 'totally untrue' allegations by France and Britain that it is trying to acquire nuclear weapons, insisting it was ready to engage in 'serious talks.'
   Iran's UN mission said allegations made by French president Nicolas Sarkozy and British prime minister Gordon Brown at Thursday's Security Council summit on nuclear proliferation 'are totally untrue and without any foundation.'
   Tehran's commitment to non-proliferation 'remains intact,' it said in a statement, reiterating the Islamic Republic was ready to 'engage in serious and constructive negotiations with interested parties, based on respect, justice, rights of nations and collective commitments.'
   In remarks prepared for delivery at the council meeting, Sarkozy was to have said: 'In violation of five UN resolutions, Iran is pursuing its nuclear proliferation activities.
   'No one can seriously believe that the aims of these activities are peaceful.
   'Iran is amassing centrifuges and enriched uranium. It does not need them. So what is its purpose? It is developing a ballistic arsenal that already threatens Europe, including Russia. What for?' the text said.
   But the French leader widely departed from his prepared remarks, and did not make those exact comments to the 15-member body as it adopted a landmark resolution aimed at getting rid of nuclear arms.
   Instead the French leader told the council: 'Iran since 2005 has flouted five Security Council resolutions.
   'There comes a time when the stubborn facts will compel us to make a decision. If we want a world without nuclear weapons in the end, let us not accept violations of international rules.'
   The Iranian mission hit back: 'Allegations made by the French president against Iran's nuclear programme are a preposterous attempt to disguise the abysmal record of France in non-compliance with its nuclear disarmament obligations.'
   Brown meanwhile told the council that Iran and North Korea were taking 'steps to develop nuclear weapons in a way that threatens regional peace and security.
   'Today, I believe we have to draw a line in the sand. Iran must not allow its actions to prevent the international community from moving forward to a more peaceful era,' he said.
   'And as evidence of its breach of international agreements grows, we must now consider far tougher sanctions together,' the British leader added.
   Reacting to Brown's comments, Tehran accused London of 'deliberately' failing to take 'practical steps to accomplish the total elimination of its unjustifiable nuclear arsenals under article VI of the NPT.'

World leaders Thursday vowed to work to stop the spread of atomic weapons and rid the planet of nuclear arms at an unprecedented Security Council summit hosted by US president Barack Obama.
   The 15-member council unanimously adopted a resolution committing UN member states to endeavour to consign nuclear weapons to history and endorsed a broad framework of actions to reduce global nuclear dangers.
   'Although we averted a nuclear nightmare during the Cold War, we now face proliferation of a scope and complexity that demands new strategies and new approaches,' Obama told the summit talks, which included outgoing UN nuclear watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei.
   'Just one nuclear weapon exploded in a city, be it New York or Moscow, Tokyo or Beijing, London or Paris, could kill hundreds of thousands of people.'
   US officials have stressed the aim of the summit, shunned by Libyan leader Moamer Gaddafi, was to reinvigorate the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which will be the subject of a key review conference next year.
   Thursday's meeting came as Iran's suspect atomic program was once again thrust into the spotlight, with world powers warning more sanctions could follow if Tehran refuses to rein in its nuclear ambitions.
   The Iranian mission at the United Nations hit out at fresh allegations that it was seeking to develop nuclear arms, saying they were 'totally untrue.'
   Obama became the first American president to chair a meeting of the UN Security Council as the United States - the only nation to unleash a wartime atomic bomb - holds the rotating presidency of the 15-member body this month.
   Quoting former US president Ronald Reagan, Obama told the meeting that 'a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.'
   Chinese president Hu Jintao proposed that all nuclear-weapon states 'abandon the nuclear deterrence policy based on first use of nuclear weapons and take credible steps to reduce the threat of nuclear weapons.

German chancellor Angela Merkel and her rivals scrambled for last minute votes Friday before a weekend election that will decide the coalition that must pull Europe's top economy out of its worst post-war crisis.
   Barring a huge election day surprise, the popular Merkel - Forbes magazine's world's most powerful woman for the past four years - was expected to win a second term at the helm of the world's second-largest exporter.
   But the country was spooked again on Friday by a third video warning from militants believed to be linked to al-Qaeda threatening attacks in Germany over the country's military mission in Afghanistan.
   Following a broadly uninspiring campaign, the election is shaping up to be a cliffhanger to see if Merkel can ditch her current coalition partners, the Social Democrats, to govern instead with the pro-business Free Democrats.
   Latest polls show Merkel's Christian Democrats on roughly 35 percent with the Free Democrats on 13 per cent - enough, under Germany's complex electoral arithmetic, to win a razor-thin majority in the country's parliament.
   But the race is tightening, as the SPD have climbed steadily in recent weeks to 26 per cent, following a better-than-expected showing by its candidate Frank-Walter Steinmeier in a live TV debate.

Leading Indian scientists said on Thursday the country's landmark Pokhran nuclear tests in 1998 were 'fully successful', dispelling doubts the programme had been a dud that left India without a proper nuclear deterrent.
   The tests in Rajasthan sparked an international outcry and triggered tit-for-tat tests by Pakistan, a year before the two rivals came to the brink of a fourth full-scale war.
   The programme was also a show of strength by the rising Asian giant, then led by the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, and seen as a deterrent against nuclear-armed neighbours Pakistan and China.
   But some scientists in recent weeks questioned the accuracy of the test results in terms of the explosion yield.
    'The May 1998 tests were fully successful in terms of achieving their scientific objectives and the capability to build fission and thermonuclear weapons with yields (of) upto 200 kt (kilotonnes),' principal scientific adviser R Chidambaram and Atomic Energy Commission chairman Anil Kakodkar said in a joint statement.
   India spent three decades in nuclear isolation after refusing to sign up to the non-proliferation treaty, along with Pakistan and Israel.
   But in 2008, former US president George Bush signed a landmark civilian nuclear deal with India set to be worth billions of dollars, in spite of some vocal domestic critics who accused Bush of letting India off the hook.
   India's defence of the tests coincided with a UN Security council resolution, chaired by American president Barack Obama, which urged nuclear weapons states to scrap their arsenals and countries outside the NPT to help rid the world of atom bombs.
   K Santhanam, the Indian scientist who led the ground preparations for the 1998 tests said the results of a thermonuclear prototype were much lower than the declared yields of 45 kt.
   Chidambaram, who was in overall charge of the tests, countered that the nuclear institute Bhabha Atomic Research Centre accurately measured the fission explosion yield at 15 kt and thermonuclear yield at 45 kt.

The United States reopened its embassy and consulates in South Africa on Friday three days after closing them due to a security threat, a US embassy spokeswoman said.
   'We are all open for regular business,' spokeswoman Sharon Hudson-Dean told AFP.
   The embassy in Pretoria, consulates in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban, as well as aid and development offices, closed on Tuesday after the US State Department said a 'credible' threat had been received.
   The Star newspaper said Thursday that the shutdown was ordered after an Al-Qaeda splinter group phoned the embassy on Monday and threatened to attack US government buildings in South Africa.
   The report did not identify the group, but said the threat was apparently prompted by the killing of a top regional Al-Qaeda leader in Somalia during a lightning US military operation last week.

Both are in their forties. Both work hard to support their families. Both say they are fighting for democracy. But the two Hondurans cross paths in protests on opposite sides of a vast divide.
   As Marlene Espana watched white-clad, smartly-dressed supporters of de facto leader Roberto Micheletti file by at a demo against ousted president Manuel Zelaya, she shouted: 'We don't have money but we have dignity!'
   Although Zelaya comes from a small elite which has ruled Honduras for decades, he is a self-styled champion of the poor who veered to the left under the influence of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
   Zelaya's surprise return this week, after almost three months in exile, unleashed a new wave of demonstrations from both sides in front of his refuge in the Brazilian embassy.
   Espana's family has a history of leftist resistance in this Central American nation where the army, backed by the United States, has kept the population under tight control for decades.
   The 45-year-old mother of four is a typical supporter of Manuel Zelaya. Her three oldest sons, all at university, are in the resistance movement to bring back Zelaya to power.

The European Union on Thursday voiced deep concern about climate change negotiations, warning they were heading in the wrong direction with weeks to go before the make-or-break Copenhagen conference.
   Swedish prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, the current head of the EU, came to the US city of Pittsburgh for a 20-nation economic summit after top-level talks at the United Nations on climate change.
   'We are both very worried about the situation,' Reinfeldt said at a joint news conference with European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso.
   'When it comes to the negotiations, they are in fact slowing down; they are not going in the right direction,' Reinfeldt said. 'We are very worried that we need to speed up the negotiations.'
   Little more than two months remain until the conference in Copenhagen, which is meant to approve the framework of a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, the landmark treaty that required cuts in emissions blamed for global warming.
   The European Union and Japan have been the leading champions of the Kyoto Protocol, which made no requirements on developing nations to cut carbon emissions.

Some 3,917 people have died from swine flu infections since the A(H1N1) virus was uncovered in April, the World Health Organisation said Friday.
   This marks a jump of 431 deaths compared to a week ago when 3,486 deaths were recorded, said the UN health agency in its weekly data on the pandemic published on its website.
   The Americas region continued to post the highest number of fatal cases, at 2,948.
   The Asia-Pacific region reported 702 deaths, while Europe recorded at least 154 fatalities.
   In the Middle East, 72 people have succumbed to the virus while in Africa, 41 deaths have been recorded.
   The northern hemisphere, which will soon enter the flu-prone winter season, is recording an overall increase in flu cases, while in the southern hemisphere the spread of flu has eased.
   Three-quarters of all flu cases detected during the week of September 6 to 12 were pandemic flu cases, added the WHO.

Locked away in secret archives, thousands of files hold the names of ex-KGB agents and top-ranking Communists from before Georgia's independence from the Soviet Union.
   Now Georgia is planning to open those files in a hunt for spies who may still be working for Moscow, this time against the pro-Western government in Tbilisi.
   Fearing that Moscow continues to use Soviet-era spy networks against it, Georgia is planning a law to bar former KGB agents and senior Communists from top government positions.
   Those running for elected office will also be required to disclose any former KGB or Communist connections, or see their pasts exposed to the public.

A 'mole' who leaked data on lawmakers' expenses, sparking Britain's biggest political scandal in years, was angry about a lack of resources for troops in Afghanistan, a newspaper said Friday.
   The unnamed worker was incensed by a perceived failure to properly equip British soldiers in Afghanistan, at a time when politicians filed lavish expenses claims, according to the newspaper that published the leaks.
   The Daily Telegraph published weeks of material earlier this year showing how members of parliament claimed expenses from the public purse for everything from a duck island to moat cleaning and tennis court repairs.
   'It's not easy to watch footage on the television news of a coffin draped in a Union Jack and then come in to work the next day and see on your computer screen what MPs are taking for themselves,' the worker, a civilian, said.
   A surge in the number of British troops killed in Afghanistan has sparked a political row over whether the military is adequately resourced, amid flagging public support for Britain's role in the conflict.
   Prime minister Gordon Brown has defended the government's strategy in Afghanistan, after British forces have in recent months suffered their highest casualty rate since the US-led invasion of the country in 2001.
   The contrast between the conditions facing soldiers and the claims of lawmakers 'helped tip the balance' in the worker's decision to leak the material to the press, he was quoted saying.
   The expenses scandal, that included lawmakers' claiming for mortgage payments on second homes, came at a time when Britain suffered rising unemployment and its worst recession in decades.
   Some 20 lawmakers, including some ministers, quit over the scandal and prompted pledges from Brown and the opposition Conservatives leader to overhaul the expenses system.
   The 'mole' was among workers who processed the MPs' claims, and his colleagues included soldiers who were moonlighting between tours of Afghanistan and Iraq to earn extra cash for body armour and other equipment.
   One of the expense claims which particularly enraged the workers was Brown's claim for a Sky TV sports package, which cost 36 pounds per month, according to the Telegraph.
   'Hearing from the serving soldiers, about how they were having to work there to earn money to buy themselves decent equipment, while the MPs could find public money to buy themselves all sorts of extravagances, only added to the feeling that the public needed to know what was going on,' the worker said.
   A senior army commander who led troops in Afghanistan has quit, an official confirmed, after reported clashes with the prime minister Gordon Brown's government over the conflict.
   Major General Andrew Mackay, a decorated officer who led soldiers in southern Afghanistan in 2007 and 2008, has resigned, the ministry of defence said.
   'We can confirm that Major General Andrew Mackay has decided to leave the army. This is a personal matter for him,' a spo-kesman said late Thursday.

British prime minister Gordon Brown will try to lift the gloom shrouding his Labour Party next week at its final conference before a general election - even if polls suggest he hasn't a hope of winning.
   The four-day conference in Brighton on England's south coast effectively fires the starting gun for campaigning ahead of elections to be held by mid-2010, with the main opposition Conservatives gathering the week after.
   Labour supporters hope a strong performance by Brown in his speech on Tuesday can help to eat away at the commanding opinion poll lead for the Conservatives, who are on course to end 13 years in opposition.
   David Cameron's party have a 17-point advantage over Labour, according to a poll published last month by MORI. Worryingly for Brown, the margin has remained largely unchanged for months.
   Labour's support has even collapsed in its traditional electoral stronghold of northern England, research by the Financial Times published Thursday showed.
   With many observers predicting the election will be held in May, Labour have barely eight months to claw back the gap, or be kicked out of power just three years after Brown took over the reins from Tony Blair.
   The signs that the former finance minister can turn around his party's fortunes are not promising.
   Brown has faced heavy criticism for his handling of the economy as Britain emerges from the slump slower than its main European competitors, unemployment is the highest for 14 years and British troops are enduring heavy losses in Afghanistan.
   The prime minister was also lambasted for failing to intervene when Scotland released the Lockerbie bomber in August.
   When Brown addressed the party conference last year, he was fighting off challenges to his leadership in the teeth of a financial crisis which was gathering strength after the collapse of US investment bank Lehman Brothers.

Japan’s new government launched an investigation Friday into whether previous administrations entered secret security pacts with Washington, including one said to endorse US nuclear-armed ships despite a policy of barring such weapons.
   The Democratic Party of Japan, which unseated the long-ruling Liberal Democrats in parliamentary elections last month, has vowed to improve transparency in government as well as review military ties with the US.
   Japan's previous governments have always denied secret deals, but some bureaucrats have recently said that long-standing speculation that they existed is correct, prompting new Foreign Minister Katsuya Okadato to launch an inquiry.
   'We will reveal everything we find,' Okada told reporters in New York, according to Kyodo news agency.
   Four alleged pacts are subject to the investigation, including one between the two allies in 1960 giving tacit approval of port calls by U.S. military aircraft and warships carrying nuclear weapons.
   Nuclear arms are a sensitive topic for Japan, the world's only country to have suffered nuclear attacks. Tokyo since 1967 has maintained principles of not possessing, producing or allowing nuclear weapons into the country.
   Okada has assigned a 15-member team to sift through more than 3,200 files at the foreign ministry, as well as 400 files stored at the Japanese embassy in Washington. The team will report their findings in late November, the ministry said.
   They will also look into an alleged secret deal in 1960 regarding the use of US military bases if there is war on the Korean peninsula. The other two pacts are related to the entry of nuclear weapons onto the southern island of Okinawa in times of emergency and the cost burdens associated with the 1972 handover of Okinawa back to Japan from US control.
   Okada has said that if the secret pacts are confirmed, he does not intend to punish Foreign Ministry officials who may have been involved in any cover-up.

Thailand’s defence minister has urged the 300,000 members of the country's military and their families to be on the lookout for insults to the monarchy, a ministry spokesman said.
   The call intensifies a recent official crackdown under Thailand's harsh lese majeste laws, which state that anyone who insults 81-year-old King Bhumibol Adulyadej or other royals can be jailed for up to 15 years.
   The move comes as King Bhumibol recovers in hospital from a bout of fever.
   General Prawit Wongsuwon, the defence minister, said at a meeting of the country's defence council that all members of the army, navy and air force should keep watch against 'disinformation', the spokesman said.
   'We asked all personnel and their families to be vigilant for web sites or any other media that insult the monarchy. We want them to be our eyes and ears,' spokesman Colonel Thanathip Sawangseang told AFP.
   'It is not the ministry's direct task, but it's a national security issue.'
   He said personnel should inform police, the Information and Communications Technology ministry or the defence ministry itself if they see anti-monarchy statements.
   The ICT ministry said its special 'war room' for protecting the royals has shut down or blocked 19,000 web pages since it was set up earlier this year.

More than 5,000 Mexicans may have died in the past 15 years while making the often perilous journey to try and sneak into the United States, Mexico's National Human Right Commission said Thursday.
   'The estimate on the number of victims is not certain, and ranges from 3,861 to 5,607,' CNDH president Jose Luis Soberanes said, presenting the report based on official figures and completed in collaboration with the American Civil Liberties Union. Some rights groups say up to 10,000 people may have lost their lives during the same period in trying to reach the United States, now home to an estimated 12 million immigrants.
   The CNDH called for the deaths of immigrants at the often violence-plagued southern US border to be 'recognized as part of an international humanitarian crisis,' Soberanes said.
   The number of deaths spiked in 1994, when the United States launched Operation Guardian to reinforce controls at the California border and later at the border with Arizona and Texas states, he explained.
   Although the deaths are largely accidental, they are linked to what the CNDH chief called the 'extreme risks' undertaken by the clandestine travellers to avoid immigration controls: torrents, steep mountains and deserts.
   Some 27 people have already drowned to death since January in the Rio Grande river (Rio Bravo) that marks the north-eastern Mexican border with Texas, according to local authorities.
   Only a small portion of the illegal immigrants are killed by border police - seven between 1994 and 2007, according to the report.
   The strategy of bolstering controls and the 'militarisation' of the border 'has not limited immigration,' Soberanes said.
   'This policy of contention has failed,' he added, because the number of illegal immigrants has increased in parallel with boosted surveillance measures - growing from 8.4 million to 11.9 million between 2000 and 2008.

International space missions have found ice on the moon and more evidence of ice on Mars - good news for future settlements and also for scientists looking for extraterrestrial life.
   Four reports published in Friday's issue of the journal Science show clear evidence of water, likely frozen, on the desert surfaces of both the moon and Mars.
   The US space agency NASA said its Moon Mineralogy Mapper, or M3, found water molecules all over the moon's surface. The M3 instrument was carried there last October by the Indian Space Research Organization's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft - India's first space mission.
    'Water ice on the moon has been something of a holy grail for lunar scientists for a very long time,' said Jim Green, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA in Washington.
   'When we say 'water on the moon,' we are not talking about lakes, oceans or even puddles. Water on the moon means molecules of water and hydroxyl (hydrogen and oxygen) that interact with molecules of rock and dust specifically in the top millimetres of the moon's surface,' Carle Pieters of Brown University in Rhode Island said in a statement.
   Jessica Sunshine of the University of Maryland and colleagues used infrared mapping from the Deep Impact spacecraft to show water all over the moon. Roger Clark of the US Geological Survey and colleagues used a spectrometer - which breaks down light waves to analyse elements and chemicals reflecting them - from the Cassini spacecraft to identify water.
   'This water on the moon appears to be bound up with minerals such that it is stable in the airless and low-gravity environment of the moon,' Marc Norman of Australian National University in Canberra said in a statement. 'So we won't be able to pump it like groundwater, but will have to collect fairly large volumes of lunar soil, then extract and store the water for use.'
   In the fourth report, NASA said its Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spotted ice at five new Martian craters, likely kicked up by meteor impacts.

Five US soldiers have died after fighting insurgents in troubled southern Afghanistan, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said Friday.
   Two of the soldiers were killed outright and three died of their injuries in three separate incidents on Thursday, the military said.
   'Two members were killed and one died from wounds as a result of an improvised explosive device detonation,' ISAF said, referring to remote-control bombs that have become the scourge of foreign troops in Afghanistan.
   'One service member died of gunshot wounds from an insurgent attack, and one service member died of wounds sustained in an insurgent attack while on patrol,' the statement added.
   NATO and the United States have more than 100,000 troops in Afghanistan fighting a Taliban-led insurgency, which is at its deadliest in the eight years since the 2001 US-led invasion ousted the Taliban regime in Kabul.

South Korea is analysing changes to North Korea's constitution which apparently strengthen the authority of leader Kim Jong-Il, an official said Friday.
   'The government has obtained the full text of the North's constitution and is currently studying it,' unification ministry spokeswoman Lee Jong-Ju told a briefing.
   Radio Free Asia said Thursday the revisions made in April to the communist state's charter seem to bolster Kim's rule.
   The radio said the new constitution for the first time drops the use of the term 'communism.' It refers instead to the 'songun' policy of Kim Jong-Il and the 'juche' philosophy promoted by his father and founding president Kim Il-Sung.
   Songun, a military-first policy, prioritises the welfare of soldiers over civilians. Juche calls for self-reliance in national affairs.
   'What we have learned of the constitution seems to be in line with recent media reports,' spokeswoman Lee said, adding the government will decide whether to disclose the text after it completes the analysis.
   North Korea decided to revise its constitution at a parliamentary meeting in April attended by Kim, his first appearance at a major public event since a reported stroke in August 2008.

A marathon UN diatribe by Libya's Moamer Gaddafi may have been too much for other world leaders in the audience, but in Indian Kashmir it seems to have won him an enthusiastic fan base.
   Gaddafi berated Western powers for an hour and 35 minutes from the General Assembly podium on Wednesday in a speech covering issues as diverse as John F Kennedy's assassination, swine flu and his support for Kashmiri independence.
   While a number of delegates found themselves unable to sit through the entire performance, separatist leaders far away in Indian Kashmir were united in praise for his ringing endorsement of their struggle.
   'Kashmir should be an independent state, not Indian, not Pakistani. We should end this conflict,' Gaddafi told the assembly.
   His remarks were splashed over the front pages of Kashmir's leading dailies on Friday, as separatist leaders applauded.
   'We hail this brave and valiant leader for his bold advocacy of Kashmiris' wishes and aspirations,' said Yasin Malik, head of pro-independence political party the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front.

Indonesia’s heaviest-ever newborn drew curious crowds Friday to an Indonesian hospital where the boy named Akbar - or the Great in Arabic - came into the world at a record 19.2 pounds (8.7 kilograms).
   Akbar Risuddin was born to a diabetic mother in a 40-minute caesarean delivery that was complicated because of his unusual weight and size, Dr Binsar Sitanggang said.
   'I'm very happy that my baby and his mother are in good health,' father Muhammad Hasanuddin said Friday. 'I hope I can afford to feed the baby enough, because he needs more milk than other babies.'
   Crowds pushed to get a peek of the extraordinary Indonesian boy, who measured nearly 24 inches (62 centimetres) when he was born Monday, at the Abdul Manan hospital in the northern town of Kisaran on the strictly Islamic island of Sumatra.