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Reuters, Indonesia

Delegates at climate talks in Bali tried to break a deadlock on Thursday over U.S.-led opposition to tough guidelines for rich nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.

The non-binding range of 25-40 percent cuts from 1990 levels by 2020 remains in draft text but the United States, Canada, Australia and others are opposed to these numbers, angering developing nations, whose own emissions are rising rapidly.

"Most countries want a binding range for the rich nations," said a developing nation delegate on Thursday.

About 190 nations are meeting in Bali for Dec 3-14 talks to try to launch negotiations on a pact to succeed the current Kyoto Protocol, whose first phase ends in 2012.

Developing nations want rich countries to do more to cut their own emissions and say any removal of emission cuts guidelines from the final text would be a sign of bad faith.

Kyoto binds 37 industrialised nations to curb their emissions between 2008 and 2012. Poor nations are exempt from curbs.

The United Nations wants all nations to agree on a successor to Kyoto by late 2009 to give governments time to ratify the new deal and to give markets clear guidelines on how to make investments in clean energy technology.

The United States says having guidelines would prejudge the outcome of the talks and the 25-40 percent range is based on relatively little scientific study.

Chinese delegates said on Wednesday they were disappointed by a lack of progress at the talks and said emissions targets were exactly what was needed to prove rich nations were committed to fight global warming.

China also wants talks on a new global compact to be extended.

"The Chinese want talks to drag on into 2010 to give time for a new American president to come on board. Not many other countries think that's a good idea," one developing nation delegate said.

Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg told delegates the objective must be that global temperatures rise no more than 2 degrees Celsius and that global emissions peak no later than 2015.

"Future generations will judge us on our actions."

"The response from Bali must be we have the will, we have the means and we have the determination to act."

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told delegates on Wednesday the time to act was now to avoid greater extremes of drought and floods, rising seas, spread of disease and mass migration of climate refugees.

In the Arctic, ice at the North Pole melted at a record rate in the summer of 2007, the latest sign that climate change has accelerated in recent years, climate scientists said on Wednesday.

"In 2007, we had off-the-charts warming," Michael Steele, an oceanographer at the University of Washington, said at the 2007 meeting of the American Geophysical Union, where 15,000 researchers have gathered to discuss earthquakes, water resources, and climate change.

Another report adds: The average global land surface temperature this year will be the highest since records began in 1880, partly due to greenhouse gas emissions, Japan's weather agency said on Thursday.

Natural climate fluctuations contributed to the temperature rises, said the report by the Japan Meteorological Agency.

The report coincided with the Dec. 3-14 international talks on the Indonesian island of Bali to discuss a new climate treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol after 2012, but it was not presented there.

The average land surface temperature from January to November this year was higher than in the past in all regions except for southern South America, the report said.

It said the ocean surface temperature was higher in most areas except for the eastern Pacific Ocean near the equator.

The global average land surface temperature in 2007 was forecast to reach 0.67 degrees Celsius above the mean average temperature of the 30-year period from 1971 to 2000.

AFP, Washington

Most Pakistanis want to see President Pervez Musharraf out of power, according to the first poll released since the general declared a state of emergency last month, US media said Thursday.

Sixty-seven percent of those surveyed said he should resign immediately, according to the New York Times which cited a poll by the International Republican Institute, a conservative-leaning civic group based in Washington.

A full 70 percent judged that his government does not deserve re- election and two-thirds "expressed anger at the current state of affairs, desired change and were anti-Musharraf," the institute said.

The results also appeared to show widespread discontent with the US-backed proposal of a power-sharing arrangement between Musharraf and opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, with 60 percent opposing the idea.

A majority (58 percent) indicated they would prefer to see in power an opposition alliance composed of key anti-Musharraf figures including former premiers Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif.

Only one-third were "supportive of President Musharraf and were positive about the condition of the country," while 56 percent said the army should stay out of civilian government, it said.

Pakistan is holding its parliamentary elections on January 8 and Musharraf has promised to lift on Saturday a state of emergency imposed on November 3 which cracked down on opponents, rights activists, lawyers and the media.

Musharraf has already been re-elected to a second presidential term last month, but he could be prosecuted over the state of emergency if he does not secure a two-thirds majority of lawmakers.

The newspaper said it had obtained the poll results from the institute ahead of its official release later Thursday.

The IRI said it surveyed a random sample of 3,520 people across Pakistan, and the poll carried a margin of error of plus or minus 1.69 percentage points.

AFP, Guwahati

Five people were killed and four injured Thursday in an explosion aboard a passenger train in India's restive northeastern state of Assam, officials said.

The blast took place when the high speed train was nearing Golaghat district, about 270 kilometres (170 miles) east of Assam's main city of Guwahati, en route to New Delhi, a railway official said.

"Five people are dead and four are injured due to the impact of the explosion hitting a portion of the luggage van of the train," Trikal Rabha, chief spokesman of the Northeast Frontier Railways, told AFP.

The train had departed from eastern Dibrugarh town with at least 800 people on board, Rabha said.

The blast had not affected other carriages which stayed on the tracks, he said, adding that the rest of the passengers were safe.

"There was partial damage to the trackst It was immediately repaired and the train has resumed its journey," Rabha said.

Golaghat district police chief P.C. Haloi told AFP that preliminary reports suggested the explosive was planted inside the cargo carriage.

All the victims were Hindi-speaking migrant workers from neighbouring Bihar, a group previously targeted by Assamese rebels who accuse them of taking away jobs from local people.

Haloi said authorities suspected two militant organisations in the blast: the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) and the Adivasi National Liberation Army (ALNA).

AFP, Santo Domingo

Tropical Storm Olga, a rare December cyclone, left at least 14 people dead in the Caribbean as pounding rains triggered major floods and landslides, authorities said Wednesday.

In the Dominican Republic, at least 11 people were killed in the northern city of Santiago by the flooding and the release of water from the Tavera dam, which swept down the Yaque del Norte river valley, the country's Emergency Operations Center said.

Some 2,000 people were evacuated from the area as a precautionary measure, said center director Juan Manuel Mendez.

In Santiago province, rescuers found people clinging to trees or perched on their rooftops as floodwaters rose, cutting off dozens of communities from the rest of the country, said Governor Jose Izquierdo.

Dominican President Leonel Fernandez said he was heading to Santiago to visit the stricken areas. Some 34,500 people were evacuated across the Dominican Republic because of the floods and an estimated 5,000 homes were affected, many of them completely destroyed, officials said, as the storm started fizzling out late Wednesday.

Reuters, Kualal Lumpur

Floods in Malaysia have killed 12 people and left more than 20,000 homeless, and more rain is expected, which could push up food and palm oil prices in one of the world's top growers.

The monsoon rains have cut off roads in several states including Kelantan and Terengganu in the east and Johor in the south, local media reported. The Meteorological Department has forecast more heavy rain.

Johor was the worst hit, with 13,000 residents fleeing to higher ground, the New Straits Times reported on Thursday. The state is a major oil palm and rubber growing region and a key source of vegetables and poultry.

Plantation officials say heavy rains have slowed down harvest and transportation of palm oil. Malaysia is one of the world's largest producers of the edible oil, which is used in products ranging from shampoo and ice-cream to biofuels.

Some economists warn the floods could also drive up food prices, similar to the situation early this year when the country was hit by the worst floods in nearly 40 years.

AFP, New York

New Jersey is expected Thursday to become the first US state in four decades to vote to abolish the death penalty, in a move hailed by human rights activists as a step towards ending capital punishment. The state's senate voted this week to ban executions in favor of a life term in jail without parole and the measure expected to easily pass through the state's Democrat-controlled general assembly in a vote on Thursday.

The bill then just needs to be signed by Democratic governor Jon Corzine, who has repeatedly expressed support for the measure and has vowed to sign it into the northeastern state's laws by January. David Fathi, director of the US program at Human Rights Watch, described the likely passage of the bill as a "historic event." "For the first time in over 40 years the elected representatives of a major American state are definitively saying no to the death penalty," he said.

Iowa and West Virginia were the last states to vote to abolish executions in 1965.

"It is a very significant event for a state that has had the death penalty on its books for decades. It's one more indication that the death penalty is on its way out in the United States," he told AFP.

Although New Jersey has not executed anyone since 1963, it still has eight people on death row and came close to executing a prisoner two years ago, said Joshua Rubenstein, northeast regional director of Amnesty International USA.

It was one of the states to reinstall the death penalty after the US Supreme Court overturned an earlier ban in 1976 but has observed a freeze on executions since 2005 along with nearly two dozen other states.

AFP, Washington

Hillary Clinton may be the only woman running for the US presidency, but her top Democratic rival Barack Obama is fighting hard to court women voters who hold more than half of the decisive nominating votes. Former first lady Clinton has called on prominent women political figures and activists to appear at her rallies, and at the weekend brought out on the campaign trail her daughter Chelsea, 27, and 88- year-old mother Dorothy. This coincided with Obama wheeling out his own weapon: influential television host Oprah Winfrey, whose talk show is viewed by millions-mainly women. Her speech at his rally on Sunday drew a record crowd for the current White House race. Since then, Obama has also secured the open backing of three female members of the House of Representatives in as many days. In an apparent bid to bolster his appeal to women voters, his campaign announced that Betty McCollum of Minnesota, Barbara Lee of California and Carol Shea-Porter of New Hampshire all came out in support of him. Candidates appear to be vying to prove "who's woman enough for the job," said Marie Wilson, founder of the White House Project, an activist group promoting female involvement in politics. Clinton has already been endorsed by Kim Gandy, president of the nation's biggest women's group, the National Organization for Women (NOW).

But the challenge Clinton poses for her rivals in vying for women's votes is not impossible to overcome, says Andrea Learned, a specialist in female-targeted marketing.

"The Obama campaign is demonstrating a lot of female voter savvy in its approach, which may give the Clinton campaign a run for its money," Learned wrote in an article on a popular political blog, the Huffington Post.

"Just as 'all women everywhere' don't automatically respond to pink and flowers on retail web sites or product packaging, so, too, will 'all women everywhere' not automatically vote for the token female in the 2008 presidential race."

She argued Obama's stance of consensus-building, rather than confrontation, was likely to resonate particularly with women.

As for predicting which candidate will draw more female votes, the signs are mixed.

A national opinion poll published last week by the Pew Research Center showed Clinton with a vast lead of 52 to 21 percent over Obama among women voters.

AFP, London

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown launched a subtle dig at opposition leader David Cameron on Thursday as he revealed he had chosen a rival carbon-free power technology for his home.

Cameron, the fresh-faced leader of the Conservatives who has worked hard to reshape his party's image as an eco-friendly one, was given the go-ahead last year to install a wind turbine in his up-market west London home. By contrast, Brown told The Times that he had solar panels put on his constituency home in Fife, Scotland-an area not known for bright, sunny days-in 2005 "very quietly t rather than ostentatiously", a reference to Cameron's headline-making wind turbine. "We have been operating with solar power for some time," Brown said, when asked what he had personally done to reduce his carbon emissions. "The irony is my initial instinct was to have wind turbines. We are in a hill in an exposed area but I was persuaded by people who know about these things that even in that area-surrounded by massive winds and storms-solar power was a better way of generating electricity."

AFP, Honiara

Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare was ousted in a parliamentary vote of no confidence Thursday, an AFP reporter in the Pacific island nation witnessed.

Sogavare, who had tried to delay the motion through legal action, said he accepted the 25-22 vote against him.

"Parliament voted me in and parliament voted me out," Sogavare said.

Before the vote, the prime minister was offered the chance to resign but refused.

Sogavare had gone to court earlier in the week seeking to delay the parliamentary session when it became obvious his position was tenuous following the defection of nine government ministers.

However, a High Court judge Wednesday dismissed the government challenge to the December 13 vote as "frivolous and vexatious", paving the way for the no confidence motion to go ahead.