Algeria provides Mali military aid against al-Qaeda-linked group

Algiers (Earth Times - dpa) - Algeria has provided Mali with weapons, munitions and satellite navigation equipment to fight the terrorist group calling itself al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, local media reported Friday. According to El-Khabar daily, a convoy of 20 lorries of material was provided by the Algerian military to combat the group. A similar delivery is planned for Niger.

Algeria has stipulated to the recipients that the weapons be used not against Tuareg rebels but only against the al-Qaeda-linked group, which is active in the whole of northwest Africa.

The countries of the Sahel have signed an agreement for multilateral aid in the fight against terrorism from the international al-Qaeda network.

Karzai increases lead to 46 pct in Afghan election

By JASON STRAZIUSO and RAHIM FAIEZ, Associated Press Writers

KABUL – President Hamid Karzai widened his lead in Afghanistan's presidential race as new vote tallies were released Saturday, inching closer to the 50 percent threshold of votes he needs to avoid a run-off.

As Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission slowly releases partial results from the Aug. 20 presidential election, accusations of fraud have poured into the Electoral Complaint Commission. Videos of alleged fraud have been posted on the Internet, and Karzai's top challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, has made multiple complaints of cheating.

The allegations from Abdullah and other presidential candidates, along with low turnout in the violent south because of Taliban threats of violence, could strip the election of legitimacy in Afghan eyes.

The latest results show Karzai ahead with 46.2 percent of the votes already counted against Abdullah's 31.4 percent. The results are based on 35 percent of the country's polling stations, meaning they could still change dramatically. Karzai must win 50 percent of ballots cast to avoid a runoff.

Results will not be finalized until late September after the allegations of fraud have been investigated.

In Abdullah's latest salvo against the Afghan president, he said Karzai was behind "state-crafted, massive election fraud" and called his government "too corrupt" and the "worst in the world."

The U.N.-backed Electoral Complaints Commission has said the number of major fraud complaints that could "materially affect" the outcome had soared to 270.

The lengthy election process has added to strains in U.S.-Afghan relations, which had already cooled since the Obama administration took office.

U.S. denies deal with Israel on halting settlements

A senior U.S. official denied that his administration has reached an agreement with Israel on halting settlement activities, Palestinian sources in Ramallah said Friday.

The sources said that the U.S. denial was made during a meeting held in Ramallah late on Thursday night between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and David Hill, deputy to U.S. Middle Eastpeace envoy George Mitchell.

The meeting between Abbas and Hill was held shortly after Mitchell held talks in London on Thursday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss the issue of settlement freeze in Palestinian territories.

Saeb Erekat, a veteran Palestinian peace negotiator, told Palestinian state-run Wafa news agency that Hill briefed Abbas on the meeting between Mitchell and Netanyahu in London.

"We were told that the talks with Israel (on the issue of settlement) will continue in Washington, and Mitchell is planning to visit in the region next month," said Erekat.

Abbas reiterated to the U.S. official that there are commitments that every party has to honor in the Middle East Roadmap peace plan, mainly including halting the Jewish settlement activities, according to Wafa.

"Halting settlement activities is not only a Palestinian condition, but an international one, and the peace negotiations should restart from where it had stopped," said Erekat.

India's first lunar mission ends after contact lost with mooncraft

New Delhi - India declared Saturday that its first unmanned mission to the moon had ended after the national space agency lost contact with its lunar craft orbiting the moon. "The radio contact with Chandrayaan-1 was abruptly lost at 1.30 am Indian Standard Time (2000 GMT Friday) by the Deep Space Network (DSN)," the government-run Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) said in a statement.



The probe which was expected to last two years came to an end 10 months after the launch but had met most of the objectives of the mission, ISRO scientists said.


Shortly after the statement, Chandrayaan-1 project director M Annadurai announced the end of the mission, the PTI news agency reported.


"The mission is definitely over. We have lost contact with the spacecraft," Annadurai told the PTI. "It (Chandrayaan-1) has done its job technically...100 per cent. Scientifically also, it has done almost 90-95 per cent of its job," he added.

Scientists earlier told PTI that ISRO did not have "much hope" of continuing the probe as it did not know what was happening to the spacecraft and was unable to establish any communication.


News channels quoting ISRO sources said "connectivity revival" was rare and the Chandrayaan-1 was likely to crash into the moon as the agency was unable to send any command or receive any data from the orbital craft.


Chandrayaan-1, launched on October 22, was described as the cheapest moon mission ever, costing about 80 million dollars.

The mission catapulted India into the club of space-faring countries, which includes the United States, Russia, Europe, China and Japan. A moon probe was launched from the lunar spacecraft a month later, which successfully landed on the moon's surface.


Powered by a single solar panel, the lunar craft's tasks included taking high-resolution pictures of the moon, preparing a three- dimensional atlas of its near and far sides, doing chemical and mineralogical mapping and exploring for the presence of water in its polar regions.


There were 11 payloads onboard the 1,380 kilogramme Chandrayaan-1 - five designed and developed in India, three from the European Space Agency, one from Bulgaria and two from the United States.


"The spacecraft has completed 312 days in orbit, making over 3,400 orbits around the moon and providing a large volume of data from sophisticated sensors like terrain mapping camera, hyper-spectral imager, moon mineralogy mapper and so on, meeting most of the scientific objectives of the mission," the ISRO statement said.


In July, ISRO scientists had said that the probe had lost a sensor that helps guide the spacecraft which could bring the mission to a premature end before its projected two-year life span.


Scientists had responded with a makeshift solution, but some experiments had failed, the ISRO had said then.


The space agency chief Madhavan Nair had said the Chandrayaan-1 had worked excellently since its launch and the mission was a "100- per-cent success" as it had completed most of its objectives and collected "almost all the data" it was designed for.

Lawyer: Iraqi shoe thrower to be released early

By SINAN SALAHEDDIN, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD – An Iraqi journalist jailed after hurling his shoes at former President George W. Bush W. Bush will be released next month after his sentence was reduced for good behavior, his lawyer said Saturday.

Muntadhar al-Zeidi's act during Bush's last visit to Iraq as president turned the 30-year-old reporter into a folk hero across the Arab world amid anger over the 2003 invasion.

He has been in custody since the Dec. 14 outburst, which occurred as Bush was holding a joint news conference with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

He was initially sentenced to three years after pleading not guilty to assaulting a foreign leader, then the court reduced it to one year because the journalist had no prior criminal history.

Defense attorney Karim al-Shujairi said al-Zeidi will now be released on Sept. 14, three months early.

"We have been informed officially about the court decision," al-Shujairi told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "His release will be a victory for the free and honorable Iraqi media."

Judicial spokesman Abdul-Sattar Bayrkdar said he had no immediate information about the release because it was a weekend.

The bizarre act of defiance transformed the obscure reporter from a minor TV station into a national hero to many Iraqis fed up with the nearly six-year U.S. presence here.

The case also drew worldwide attention and became a rallying cry throughout the Muslim world for critics who resent the U.S. invasion and occupation.

Thousands demonstrated for al-Zeidi's release and hailed his gesture, which came in the waning days of the Bush administration. The incident also embarrassed al-Maliki, who was standing next to Bush at the time.

Neither leader was injured, but Bush was forced to duck for cover as the journalist shouted in Arabic: "This is your farewell kiss, you dog! This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq."

Indian Kashmir offers reward in hunt for killers

SRINAGAR, India (AFP) – Authorities in Indian Kashmir Saturday announced a 40,000-dollar reward for information in a double rape and murder case that sparked huge anti-India protests.

Police have arrested four fellow officers for allegedly destroying evidence that could have led investigators to those responsible for the rape and murder of two women.

A paid advertisement published in leading Urdu newspapers of the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley said the government would pay two million rupees (40,000 dollars) to anyone providing information about the killers.

The bodies of a 17-year-old girl and her 22-year-old sister-in-law were discovered in a stream on May 30. Police initially said they drowned, but later acknowledged they had both been raped and murdered.

The case triggered widespread anti-India protests in the Kashmir valley after family members accused the security forces of being directly involved in the women's deaths.

A judicial probe into the case concluded that the four policemen and a forensic expert not only failed to carry out their proper duties but also destroyed important evidence.

Anti-India sentiment runs deep in the Kashmir valley, where the majority of residents want independence for the Himalayan region.

A nearly 20-year Muslim insurgency in Indian Kashmir has claimed more than 47,000 lives.

Violence has declined in the state since India and Pakistan started a peace process in 2004 to resolve all pending disputes including Kashmir.

The dispute dates from the partition of the subcontinent in 1947 and the Kashmiri region is split between the two countries along a UN-monitored line of control.

Minerals on ancient Martian rock formed in a habitable environment

London, August 29 : A new analysis has suggested that a rock found on Mars in 1996, which was claimed by scientists to host life, has minerals which could have only been formed in a habitable environment.

Researchers led by David McKay of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, caused a sensation 13 years ago when they proposed that a chunk of Mars rock found in Antarctica, called ALH 84001, contained possible signs of past life on the Red Planet, including complex carbon-based molecules and some microscopic objects shaped like bacteria.

But, the claim was never widely accepted.

Other scientists countered that the shapes were ambiguous and that the complex carbon-based molecules could have been produced without life, since they are also found in chunks of asteroids that fall to Earth as meteorites, for example.

Some argued that the carbon in the meteorite could have been deposited in very harsh conditions, involving water at more than 150 degrees Celsius.

Even the hardiest known terrestrial microbes die above about 120 degrees C.

But, according to a report in New Scientist, a new analysis suggests that the water involved was cool enough to allow for life, which at least keeps open the possibility of fossilized life in the meteorite.

The study was led by Paul Niles of NASA Johnson. Neither he nor any of the other team members were part of the 1996 life claim.

To explain deposits of minerals containing calcium, magnesium, and iron, in the rock, Niles and his colleagues suggest the rock was sitting at or near the surface of Mars, with water rich in carbon dioxide bubbling up to the surface in the area from deep underground, perhaps as part of a hot spring.

The relative amounts of the three metals deposited from solution depend on the temperature of the water they were dissolved in.

The team used previous measurements of these amounts to calculate a water temperature of less than 100 degrees C.

This was not a certainty beforehand, since water can remain liquid above that temperature at the higher pressures underground.

“These minerals were formed in what is very likely to have been a habitable environment,” Niles said.

The study shows there is still more to learn from what is “probably the single most examined rock in all of human history,” said Marc Fries of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. 

Ahmadinejad lauds his govt ahead of confidence vote

TEHRAN (AFP) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insisted on Saturday that his current government fought for people's rights and served them honestly, as he prepares to face a vote of confidence on his new cabinet.

"In my view, the ninth government exerted all its efforts and abilities in the path of honesty, service and fighting for people's rights," the hardliner said at the shrine of the founder of the Islamic republic Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

"I think that the ninth government did its best and I hope that God almighty will continue protecting, guiding and accepting our services to the people," the president was quoted as saying by the state broadcaster.

He was speaking at the shrine to mark annual government week, which commemorates the killing of president Mohammad Ali Rajai and prime minister Mohammad Javad Bahonar in a spate of opposition bombings in 1981.

Ahmadinejad was re-elected for a second four-year term as Iran's president in a disputed June 12 poll, which his rivals claim was heavily rigged.

On Sunday, he will introduce his new 21-member cabinet line-up to members of parliament, who will over three days scrutinise the line-up before the vote of confidence on Wednesday, Iranian media said.

Ahmadinejad is facing stiff opposition from his own hardline camp over some of the candidates he has chosen as next ministers in the new government, which will be the 10th since the Islamic republic was founded in 1979.

Several MPs have consistently said that about six nominees, including the key oil minister candidate, could be rejected by parliament.

During his first tenure, Ahmadinejad came under fire for frequently reshuffling the cabinet, sacking 10 ministers and two central bank chiefs and retaining inexperienced ministers.

Jordan's king allows Hamas leader to attend his father's funeral

Amman - King Abdullah II on Friday issued instructions to allow the politburo chief of the Palestinian Hamas group, Khalid Mashaal, to enter Jordan to attend the funeral of his father who passed away in Amman Friday, the official Petra news agency said. The agency quoted an official source as saying that the monarch's gesture was made for "purely humanitarian reasons and does not carry any political connotations".



Mashaal, who is based in Damascus, was deported from Jordan to Qatar in 1999 along with other senior Hamas officials after the Jordanian authorities decided to close down the radical group's offices in Amman.


















The Jordanian government officially recognizes the Palestinian Authority and its President Mahmoud Abbas as the representative of the Palestinian people, and does not accord recognition to the Hamas group which is in control of the Gaza Strip.


Former head of Jordan's General Intelligence Department General Mohammad Dahabi held a series of talks with Hamas officials in Amman last year in what local reports described as an attempt to establish even-handed ties with the feuding Palestinian groups, Hamas and Fatah, but the effort appeared to have faltered after Dahabi's resignation in January

Calif. firefighters wage fierce wildfire battles

By CHRISTINA HOAG, Associated Press Writer

LOS ANGELES – Firefighters beat back flames licking at ocean-view estates Friday, while another wildfire raged through a dry forest above Los Angeles' foothill suburbs. Residents nervously watched aircraft drop loads of water and retardant on nearby blazing slopes.

The dramatic success of an overnight air and ground battle against a swift-moving blaze on the Palos Verdes Peninsula was tempered by the threat from an out-of-control fire on the opposite side of Los Angeles in the steep San Gabriel Mountains above the city of La Canada Flintridge.

The blaze in Angeles National Forest had grown to nearly 8 square miles by Friday evening and was creeping east toward Los Angeles foothills suburbs, Forest Service spokeswoman Rachel Mailo said. It was 5 percent contained. Hundreds remained evacuated Friday evening and hundreds more were packed and ready to move on a moment's notice.

"We're boxed up and ready to go," said La Canada Flintridge resident Steve Buntich, watching helicopters line up to siphon water from a golf course reservoir. He said his wife and children had evacuated to a friend's house for several hours, but had since returned home.

Ash fell from the sky and huge billows of smoke rose from the mountains as Elias Yidonoy, 62, and his wife prepared to leave their La Canada Flintridge home. Their minivan was loaded with suitcases filled with clothing, documents and photographs.

"It's wait and see," said Yidonoy, who with his wife had also left their home for several hours overnight and then returned.

The foothill residents were among more than a thousand Californians chased from their homes by the threat of wildfires.

The Palos Verdes Peninsula fire roared to life on the south Los Angeles County coast Thursday night and spread rapidly up canyons in the city of Rancho Palos Verdes. As many as 1,500 people fled as hundreds of firefighters rushed to protect homes in the fire's path in adjacent Rolling Hills Estates.

"The fire was stopped right at the backyards of those homes," county fire Chief Deputy John Tripp told a morning news conference.

Calm, windless conditions allowed water-dropping helicopters with spotlights to work much of the night. Six homes received minor exterior damage, and the only structures destroyed were an outbuilding and gazebo. No injuries were reported.

After daybreak, no flames were showing and all evacuations were lifted, but Tripp warned that fire could still surge out of the uncontained area.

"We are not out of the woods yet," he said.

Firefighters continued to work the ashen landscape, and a helicopter dropped loads of water sucked from the Pacific Ocean.

The fire above La Canada Flintridge was moving eastward and residents of adjacent Altadena were likely to see flames, said U.S. Forest Service spokesman Stanton Florea. A major goal was to keep the fire from spreading up Mount Wilson, where many of the region's broadcast and communications antennas and the historic Mount Wilson Observatory are located, Florea said.

"We've had some success but unfortunately not enough to say we have any containment," Florea said.

Elsewhere in the Angeles National Forest, more than 1,600 firefighters working in 102-degree heat had achieved 60 percent containment of a 3.1-square-mile blaze in a canyon above the city of Azusa. No structures were threatened or damaged.

"We're getting a handle on it. It's just taking a little longer than expected," said U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman Rachel Mailo.

To the north in the state's coastal midsection, a nearly 8-square-mile fire threatening Pinnacles National Monument kept 100 homes under evacuation orders near the Monterey County town of Soledad. The blaze, only 15 percent contained, was started by agricultural fireworks used to scare animals away from crops.

In the southern part of Monterey County, firefighters had 100 percent containment of a 5 1/4-square-mile fire that had threatened 20 ranch homes.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency Friday in Los Angeles and Monterey counties.

"It's fire season, clearly," he said. "There's tremendous amount of heat all over the state."

A nearly 3 1/2-square-mile fire in Yosemite National Park was 10 percent contained, said staff member Erik Skinrud.

The Mariposa County Sheriff's Office ordered guests and staff at the Yosemite View Lodge, just outside the park's western gate, to evacuate Friday afternoon due to the fire. People without lodging were offered beds in a shelter in Mariposa staffed by the Red Cross.

Residents of the nearby community of El Portal watched as water-dropping helicopters refilled from the Merced River.

Park spokeswoman Kari Cobb said officials closed a campground and a portion of Highway 120, anticipating that the fire would spread north toward Tioga Road, the highest elevation route through the Sierra. The number of firefighters was expected to double over the weekend to 1,000.

Southeast of Los Angeles in Riverside County, a 1 1/2-square-mile fire in the San Bernardino National Forest was 5 percent contained. Temperatures reached 106 degrees in the region.

In San Diego County, three fires totaling 1,000 acres burned on the Camp Pendleton Marine base but posed no threat to buildings, Cpl. Gabriela Gonzalez said

Pakistan suicide bomber training camp destroyed

By ASIF SHAHZAD, Associated Press Writer

ISLAMABAD – Helicopter gunships destroyed a training camp for suicide bombers in northern Pakistan's troubled Swat Valley overnight, killing six Taliban militants, the army said Saturday.

Several more militants were wounded in the camp, located on a small island in the Swat River opposite the town of Charbagh, the army said. It said the operation followed reports on the camp by intelligence agents and local residents.

"The place was being used as a launching pad for preparing the suicide attackers," the army said in a statement, adding that those being trained were to bomb targets in Swat, including the valley's main city of Mingora.

About a week ago, two suicide attacks on consecutive days killed seven people in Swat.

Security forces have been winding down a nearly three-month offensive to dislodge the Taliban from the Swat Valley and surrounding areas, but sporadic clashes continue.

The United Nations said this past week that about 1.5 million people who had fled fighting in the wider region were returning home, and the World Health Organization said it was concerned about providing health support for them.

Authorities also have been battling militants in Pakistan's lawless and remote tribal belt along its northwestern border with Afghanistan.

Police were investigating the possible al-Qaida links of 12 suspected foreign militants arrested Friday on the edge of the tribal area, after they allegedly sneaked into the country from Iran, Punjab provincial police official Mohamad Rizwan said.

"One thing is certain, that they are terrorists," Rizwan said.

The men from Sudan, Russia, Turkey and Iran were arrested in the city of Dera Ghazi Khan, said Hassan Iqbal, a district official. Police also seized a laptop computer and $10,000 from the men, he said.

The detainees "had links with Taliban" and wanted to go to Pakistan's South Waziristan tribal region, Iqbal said, without giving further details.

South Waziristan is a stronghold of former Pakistani Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud, who was killed by a CIA missile strike earlier this month.

Pakistan has deployed more than 100,000 troops in the tribal regions since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. Authorities have arrested about 1,000 Taliban and al-Qaida suspects over the past few years, including senior aides to al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri.

Al-Zawahri, in a video posted Thursday on Islamic militant Web sites, said a Pakistani offensive against the Taliban in the Swat Valley was doomed to fail. He urged Pakistanis to "back the jihad (holy war) and mujahedeen" with fighters, money and support.

Wounded CBS journalist at hospital in Afghanistan

By NAHAL TOOSI, Associated Press Writer

KABUL – A CBS Radio News correspondent was being treated Saturday at Bargam Air Base after being seriously wounded by a roadside bomb in eastern Afghanistan that also killed a U.S. service member, officials said.

The U.S. troop death made August the deadliest month of the nearly eight-year war for American forces. The intensified fighting has raised the risk to journalists embedded with the military.

Cami McCormick was wounded Friday when the Army vehicle in which she was riding struck a bomb. CBS could not confirm the extent of her injuries, and NATO officials declined to comment, citing privacy regulations.

NATO spokesman Capt. Jon Stock confirmed that a U.S. service member died in the blast, bringing to 45 the number of American military personnel killed in August.

The military has not given the exact location of the explosion or named the U.S. service member. CBS said it occurred in Logar province, and officials there confirmed that a blast had hit a military convoy on Friday.

McCormick was first treated at a field hospital, where she was in stable condition after surgery. She was later transported to the Bagram base, north of Kabul, for more treatment. McCormick, 47, is an award-winning New York-based correspondent who has worked for CBS since 1998.

President Barack Obama's decision to send 21,000 additional troops to Afghanistan to combat a resurgent Taliban has increased international media attention to the war, coinciding with a rise in troop casualties.

At the same time, Taliban militants have increased their reliance on roadside bombs — known as improvised explosive devices, or IEDs.

They are now the cause of the majority of Western troop deaths in Afghanistan.

Two Associated Press journalists, photographer Emilio Morenatti and videographer Andi Jatmiko, were wounded along with two U.S. soldiers by a bomb in Afghanistan on Aug. 12.

Also overnight Friday, police said they had reports that three rockets were launched in the Afghan capital but there were no known deaths or injuries. Abdul Ghaffar Sayidzada, head of the criminal investigation department, said authorities were trying to establish where the rockets landed.

Japan's ruling party cast as election underdog

By ERIC TALMADGE, Associated Press Writer

TOKYO – The conservative party that has run Japan for virtually all of the past 54 years was widely expected to face overwhelming defeat as candidates made their final pitches Saturday in one of the most heated parliamentary elections in decades.

All major media polls have forecast that the Liberal Democratic Party will lose badly to the opposition Democratic Party of Japan in Sunday's balloting for the 480 seats in the powerful lower house of parliament.

If it does, opposition leader Yukio Hatoyama is likely to become prime minister and form the country's first non-LDP Cabinet in more than a decade and only its second since the party was created in 1955.

The vote is seen as a barometer of voter frustrations over the economy, which is in one of its worst slumps since World War II, and a loss of confidence in the Liberal Democrats' ability to tackle tough issues such as the rising national debt and rapidly aging population.

Prime Minister Taro Aso — whose own support ratings have sagged to a dismal 20 percent — called on voters in one of his final pitches Saturday to stick with his party, saying the Democrats are untested and unable to lead.

"Can you trust these people? It's a problem if you feel uneasy whether they can really run this country," Aso told a crowd in Oyama City, north of Tokyo.

Aso said more time is needed for economic reforms and asked for support "so our government can accomplish our economic measures."

He and the ruling party, however, have taken a big hit on the economic front.

On Friday, the government reported that the unemployment rate hit 5.7 percent — the highest level in Japan's post-World War II era — and that deflation intensified and families have cut spending, largely because they are afraid of what's ahead and are choosing to save whatever money they can as a safety measure.

Hatoyama has used the nation's economic insecurities as a strong argument for change.

He has promised to cut wasteful spending, hold off on tax hikes planned by the Liberal Democrats and put more money into consumers' pockets. That is a sharp contrast with the Liberal Democrats' heavy focus on tax-funded stimulus packages that increase government spending and debt.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development predicts that the country's public debt, already the highest among member countries, may reach 200 percent of gross domestic product next year.

Making the situation more dire is Japan's rapidly aging demographic, which means more people are on pensions and there is a shrinking pool of taxpayers to support them and other government programs.

Still, doubts remain about whether the Democrats can deliver on their promises.

They are proposing an expensive menu of initiatives: toll-free highways, free high schools, income support for farmers, monthly allowances for job seekers in training, a higher minimum wage and tax cuts. The estimated bill comes to 16.8 trillion yen ($179 billion) if fully implemented starting in the 2013 fiscal year.

"I've supported the LDP before, but I'm not sure this time," said Eri Sato, a 25-year-old saleswoman in Tokyo. "My concern is whether the Democrats can really achieve their campaign promises."

But even with major issues pressing the nation, many analysts say the elections could be dominated not so much by policy differences but by voters' desire for something new after a half-century of virtual one-party rule.

"The election is more about emotions than policies," Tokyo University political science professor Takashi Mikuriya said in a televised interview. "Most voters are making the decision not about policies but about whether they are fed up with the ruling party."

Polls by major newspapers, including the Mainichi and the Asahi, said Hatoyama's party is likely to win more than 320 seats, sharply higher than the 112 it held before parliament was dissolved in July.

The Liberal Democrats had 300 seats in the lower house before the elections, and several polls have projected the number could plummet to 100.


Japanese media have already started predicting a timeline of events, such as when a new Cabinet will be formed, on the assumption that the opposition party will be victorious.

Along with his fiscal departures from the Liberal Democratic Party, Hatoyama says he will rein in the power of the bureaucracy and wants Japan to be more independent from the United States, Tokyo's key trading partner and military ally.

But Hatoyama, who holds a doctorate in engineering from Stanford University, insists he will not seek radical change in Japan's foreign policy, saying the U.S.-Japan alliance would "continue to be the cornerstone of Japanese diplomatic policy."

North Caucasus leaders warn Medvedev on violence

Denis Dyomkin, Reuters

SOCHI, Russia (Reuters) - Leaders from Russia's turbulent North Caucasus told President Dmitry Medvedev on Friday that an Islamist insurgency had permeated all spheres of society and they were struggling to combat it.

Ingushetian regional head Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, still limping from a suicide bomb attack in June, said Islamic militancy would be impossible to fight without greater support from the Kremlin.

"(It) has permeated all facets of life in society. Today...(it) presents a serious threat to peace and order in the republic and to the region as a whole, it's impossible not to feel it," said Yevkurov.

As well as the immediate threat of destabilization in the entire North Caucasus, the Kremlin is worried radical Islamism may spill over into other regions in Russia, which is home to some 20 million Muslims.

Medvedev met over two dozen leaders, Muslim clerics and North Caucasus experts in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, where he reassured them of Moscow's support for the region.

RAMADAN VIOLENCE

Islam's holiest month of Ramadan has been marked in Russia's south by a wave of suicide bomb attacks and armed assaults on police and security forces in Chechnya, where Russia has fought two separatist wars, and neighboring Ingushetia and Dagestan.

As national television channels showed Medvedev meeting with North Caucasus leaders in prime time, news agencies carried reports of intensive shootouts between security forces and gunmen in the regional republic of Kabardino-Balkaria.

"According to preliminary data, three members of illegal armed formations were killed," RIA bew agency quoted police as saying. It said there were no losses among security forces.

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, an ex-rebel turned Kremlin loyalist, told Medvedev a new strategy must be found.

"They kill, they blow things up, they are devils... We know we are making mistakes."

"We must do all we can to achieve a spiritual victory."

Agreeing, Medvedev told them: "It is absolutely essential to ensure full support for the Islamic leaders, the muftiat, those who serve in the Caucasus."

"Without consolidating the authority of the Islamic leaders we will be unable to deal with the problems that exist."

Yevkurov said religious organizations were themselves divided and "are too far away from the authorities," alluding to previous comments that local law enforcement agencies must be changed.

"Any of our attempts to resist this criminal underground are doomed to failure if we do not have our own ideology. But how will we deliver it?" he said.

Medvedev also proposed a Muslim television channel and controls on access to Islamic education abroad as ways of tackling Islamist insurgency in the region.

"There indeed must be control... Unfortunately these people are returning ... (and) bring back unorthodox views on Islam," he said, echoing complaints from Yevkurov and Kadyrov who say many Islamic schools in Arab countries spread radical teachings.

"We failed to take timely action to take the situation under our control, while those foreign emissaries grabbed the initiative," Yevkurov said.

NKorea to free SKorean fishermen as tensions ease

By KWANG-TAE KIM, Associated Press Writer

SEOUL, South Korea – Four South Korean fishermen held by North Korea after their boat strayed into northern waters will be released, and families divided for decades after the Korean War will get a rare chance to meet next month — the latest signs tensions are easing on the divided Korean peninsula.

North Korea announced Friday it would hand over the fishermen and their boat to South Korean authorities across the eastern sea border on Saturday afternoon, Seoul's Unification Ministry spokesman Chun Hae-sung said. Chun welcomed the decision, but urged North Korea not to detain South Koreans in the future.

"I am very pleased and it's beyond expression," Lee Ah-na, the wife of the boat's captain, told The Associated Press from the eastern port of Geojin, just south of the border.

The announcement came hours after the two Koreas agreed to hold a new round of reunions next month for families separated by the Korean War — the first in nearly two years.

Red Cross officials from the two sides concluded three days of talks at the North's scenic Diamond Mountain resort with a deal to hold six days of temporary reunions involving 200 families from Sept. 26, according to a joint statement.

Millions of families were separated by the Korean War, which ended in 1953 with a cease-fire, not a peace treaty. No mail, telephone or e-mail exchanges exist between ordinary citizens across the Korean border.

Following their first summit in 2000, the two Koreas regularly held family reunions until late 2007. Then, ties frayed badly after conservative South Korean President Lee Myung-bak took office last year with hard-line policies such as linking aid to North Korea's nuclear disarmament.

North Korea has reached out in recent weeks to Seoul and Washington following a series of provocations, including nuclear and missile tests, and international sanctions to punish its communist regime for the defiant moves banned under U.N. resolutions.

Earlier this month, the North freed two American journalists and a South Korean worker after more than four months of detention. It also sent a delegation to Seoul to mourn the death of former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung.

South Korean media reported this past week that North Korea invited Washington's two top envoys on the North to visit in what would be their first nuclear talks since President Barack Obama took office.

State Department spokesman Philip Crowley told reporters Thursday that the U.S. had not received a formal invitation from the North. He also said special envoy Stephen Bosworth plans to travel to Asia soon, but will not go to North Korea.

The Chosen Sinbo, a Tokyo-based newspaper considered a mouthpiece for the North Korean regime, said Friday that inter-Korean relations can improve if Seoul "grabs the extended hand" of the North.
 
Meanwhile, the United Arab Emirates seized a cargo ship bound for Iran carrying banned rocket-propelled grenades and other arms from North Korea, the first such seizure since sanctions against the North were tightened, diplomats and officials told the AP on Friday.

The seizure was carried out in accordance with tough new U.N. Security Council sanctions meant to derail North Korea's nuclear weapons program, but which also ban the North's sale of any conventional arms.

"We can confirm that the UAE detained a North Korean vessel containing illicit cargo," a Western diplomat told the AP.