The New Nation - Internet Edition

Poll shows Obama leading in 5 key US states, McCain in 3

Reuters, Washington

Barack Obama leads John McCain in five of eight crucial battleground states one week before the US presidential election, with Senator McCain ahead in two states and Florida dead even, according to a series of Reuters/ Zogby polls released yesterday.

Senator Obama held steady with a five-point lead over Senator McCain among likely US voters in a separate Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby national tracking poll, the same advantage he held on Sunday. The national telephone poll has a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points.

Republican Senator McCain is struggling to defend about a dozen states won by President George W Bush in 2004, including all eight of the states surveyed over the last three days.

Breakthroughs by Senator Obama in any of those states could move him close to or above the 270 electoral votes he needs to win the White House on November 4. Senator Obama, a Democratic senator from Illinois, held narrow leads over Senator McCain in Virginia, North Carolina, Missouri, Ohio and Nevada, most within the margin of error of 4.1 percentage points. Senator McCain had a solid 10-point lead in West Virginia and a 6-point edge in Indiana.

The two candidates were tied at 47 per cent in Florida, the largest of the battlegrounds with 27 electoral votes and the state that decided the disputed 2000 election.

Most polls show Senator Obama comfortably ahead in all of the states won by Democrat John Kerry in 2004, but the Reuters/Zogby polls show Senator McCain in serious danger in several states won by Mr Bush.

"If Obama holds the Kerry states, he is in line now to get enough electoral votes to win the White House," Zogby said, noting Senator McCain faces a difficult fight in a handful of states where Republicans have a long history of success.

"These polls are a measure of what an uphill battle Senator McCain faces to win," Zogby said. "These are all Republican states and McCain has a very tough challenge, but they are all close."

Meanwhile, Democrat Barack Obama entered the final seven days of the dramatic presidential campaign exhorting supporters to fight to the end to defeat Republican John McCain and remake the nation. The White House rivals were to hold competing rallies Tuesday in the rust-belt state of Pennsylvania before splitting, with McCain fighting a rearguard action in North Carolina and Obama on the attack in Virginia .

Despite holding a robust poll lead nationally and in battleground states, Obama, 47, warned against complacency as he prepared to air a costly 30-minute "infomercial" on major US networks Wednesday evening.

Over one billion people will be hungry next year

AP, United Nations

Rising food prices will push the number of hungry people in the world over one billion next year, a U.N. expert said Monday.The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization reported in September that at least 925 million people are hungry in the world today, compared with 848 million between 2003 and 2005, said Olivier De Schutter, the U.N. Human Rights Council's independent expert on the right to food.

"But the data relates to the beginning of 2008, and since then the estimate is that at least 44 million more people have become hungry," he said. "So we are now closer to the billion - and with a bit more efforts we'll arrive at the billion by next year."

De Schutter told reporters after briefing the U.N. General Assembly's human rights committee that rising prices and increasing hunger are driving the world "far away" from achieving the U.N.

goal of reducing extreme poverty by half by 2015. "The situation of hunger in the world is alarming," said de Schutter, a law professor at the University of Louvain in Belgium and currently a visiting professor at Columbia University's Law School in New York.

"The prices of food commodities on international markets have been going down since they reached a peak in June 2008, when the level of real food prices was 64 percent above their levels of 2002," he said.

Peace talks in doubt as Israel heads for snap elections

AFP, Jerusalem

Israeli political parties on Tuesday launched talks to set a date for snap elections to replace scandal-plagued Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, with the Middle East peace process at a standstill.

Both Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni's centrist Kadima party and the right-wing Likud party of hawkish former premier Benjamin Netanyahu, the two frontrunners in the coming vote, favour holding elections as soon as possible.

Senior Kadima MP Tzachi Hanegbi told military radio that February 3 would be a "good date" while the head of Likud's parliamentary bloc Gideon Saar said elections should be held "as soon as possible to minimise the interim period".

President Shimon Peres formally initiated the process of holding new elections on Monday after Livni, who last month was elected to succeed Olmert at the head of Kadima, failed to assemble a coalition to replace him.

4 policemen killed in northern Iraq

AP, Baghdad

Police say four officers have been killed and four others wounded in a drive-by shooting in the turbulent Iraqi city of Mosul.

A police officer says unidentified gunmen opened fire on the eight off-duty policemen traveling in two civilian cars to work Tuesday morning.

The attack underlines the continuing violence in Mosul when most of the rest of Iraq is enjoying a dramatic drop in violence. In Baghdad, a police officer says nine people, including four policemen, have been wounded in two separate roadside bombs targeting police convoys.

The officers spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to release the information.

10 militants killed in Pakistan

AFP, Islamabad

At least ten Taliban militants were killed in exchange of fire with Pakistani troops in a northwestern valley rocked by a violent campaign for Islamic law, an official said. The exchange of fire erupted after militants refused to surrender in Sarsanai area in the Matta district of the valley.

"A fire fight began after militants refused to lay down arms and leave the area. Resultantly, 10 rebels were killed," chief military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas told AFP.

Separately, one soldier was killed and another wounded when militants attacked a paramilitary Frontier Corps checkpost in Tutanobandai area in the Matta district.

90 dead, 20,000 displaced in Yemeni floods

AP, Sana

Flooding caused by a tropical storm has killed 90 people and displaced 20,000 others in southern Yemen, police and the World Food Program said Monday.

The WFP, which said 20,000 people were displaced, said it has been difficult to get aid to hard-hit Hadramut province because many roads were destroyed by floodwaters after Thursday's storm.

A police official said 90 people died and 24 farms were wrecked. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

President Ali Abdullah Saleh called on Yemenis and non-governmental organizations to help flood victims by donating money and other aid.

India tops Asia-Pacific political risk table in 09

Reuters, Singapore

India, Malaysia and Thailand face the highest political and social risk among Asia-Pacific countries in 2009, mainly because of internal instability, a political risk consultancy said.

India's highest risk score of 6.87 on a scale of 10 also reflected fears over Pakistan, the Hong Kong-based Political & Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC) said in a report, warning of social unrest and insecurity if things worsened in the neighbouring nation. The consultancy assessed 16 countries on factors such as the risk of disruptive political change, the threat posed by social activism and vulnerability to policy changes by other governments. A score of zero represented the best socio-political situation and 10 the highest risk.

Contributing to India's high score was uncertainty over the outcome of general elections next year, rising communal violence and increased militant attacks, PERC said in the report released on Monday.

IAEA still undecided on nature of Iran nuclear programme

AFP, United Nations

UN nuclear watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei said here Monday that his agency was still unable to determine whether or not there were undeclared nuclear activities in Iran.

"I regret that we are still not in a position to achieve full clarity regarding the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran," the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) told the UN General Assembly.

He urged Tehran to "implement all the transparency measures required to build confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of its nuclear program at an early date." "This will be good for Iran, good for the Middle East region and good for the world," he added.