World

KIEV — Pro-Europe parties led by a group backing President Petro Poroshenko swept a parliamentary election in Ukraine on Sunday, an exit poll showed, giving him a mandate to end a separatist conflict and pursue democratic reforms.

The survey, issued after voting stations closed in the ex- Soviet republic, gave Poroshenko's bloc 23 per cent of the votes cast for the 29 competing parties, ahead of the Party of his ally, Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk, on 21.3 per cent.

A third pro-Europe Party was in third place but a surprise was the strong performance of a group representing allies of ousted president Viktor Yanukovych. The Opposition Bloc, led by former Fuel Minister Yuri Boiko, secured 7.6 per cent — enough to put his Party into parliament.

The exit polls confirmed expectations of a pro-Western assembly emerging from the first parliamentary election since Yanukovych's overthrow in February.

"We can say today that a third of voters supports the president's course for carrying out reforms for entering the European Union," said Yuriy Lutsenko, the leader of the Poroshenko Bloc.

The polls offered a reading only of Party voting for 225 of the 450 seats in parliament and results from voting to single constituency seats will be known only in a few days time.

With the Party of the pro-Europe Party, Selfhelp, in third place on 13.2 per cent, Poroshenko should easily be able to forge a coalition to press on with plans to end the conflict in the east and move Ukraine towards the European mainstream.

Other parties which seemed likely to enter parliament on the basis of the exit poll included the populist Radical Party and the nationalist Svoboda (Freedom) Party.

The Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) Party of former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko performed worse than many had expected though with 5.6 per cent of the vote on Party lists she also should enter parliament.

Though the result for the Opposition Bloc, which has criticised Poroshenko's policies in the east, surprised many, other parties allied with the disgraced Yanukovych fared poorly, including the communists. The influence of pro-Russian groups looks set to be greatly diminished.

This reality could fuel fresh tension in the future with Russia which condemned Yanukovych's ousting as a "fascist" coup and went on to annex Crimea in March and back anti-Kiev rebellions by separatists in the east.

More than 3,700 people have been killed in the conflict which Poroshenko, after big battlefield losses by government forces, has now vowed to solve only by political negotiations.

Voting did not take place on Sunday in areas held by the rebels nor in Crimea.

NEW YORK — The first person quarantined under strict new rules in the New York City area for people with a high risk of Ebola tested negative, New Jersey officials said on Saturday, as President Barack Obama said the response to domestic cases of the deadly disease needs to be based on "facts, not fear".

Under the new policy, anyone arriving at the two international airports serving New York City after having contact with Ebola patients in Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea must submit to a mandatory 21-day quarantine. The requirement exceeds current federal guidelines.

"We have been examining the protocols for protecting our brave healthcare workers, and, guided by the science, we'll continue to work with state and local officials to take the necessary steps to ensure the safety and health of the American people," Obama said.

Like last week, the president used his weekly address to discuss the response to Ebola, which has killed thousands of people in West Africa and has become a political issue in the United States ahead of November 4 congressional elections.

The new rules in New York and New Jersey were announced a day after an American doctor who recently helped Ebola patients in Guinea also tested positive for the virus at Manhattan's Bellevue Hospital. The physician, who was self-monitoring, started feeling symptoms about week after he returned home.

The first person to face the mandatory quarantine under the new rules was a medical worker who arrived at Newark Liberty International Airport on Friday after treating Ebola victims in West Africa.

Tests on the worker, who has not been publicly identified, showed no signs of the virus, New Jersey's health department said on Saturday. Even so, the patient remains in quarantine at University Hospital in Newark.

Meanwhile, Obama commended New Yorkers for their calm reaction to the city's first case. He said that medical authorities were responding effectively to the threat from the deadly virus.

"It's important to remember that of the seven Americans treated so far for Ebola — the five who contracted it in West Africa, plus the two nurses from Dallas — all seven have survived," Obama said.

He did not refer to the new 21-day mandatory quarantines announced late on Friday by the governors of New York and New Jersey for medical workers returning from Ebola hot spots. His administration is discussing similar measures.

The worst Ebola outbreak since the disease was identified in 1976 has killed almost half of more than 10,000 people diagnosed with the disease — predominantly in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea — although the true toll is far higher, according to the World Health Organisation.

The United Nations agency also said on Friday that trials of Ebola vaccines could begin in West Africa in December, a month earlier than expected, and hundreds of thousands of doses should be available for use by the middle of next year.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie put the screening measures in place after Dr. Craig Spencer, a 33-year-old New Yorker who had been treating Ebola patients in Guinea, tested positive for Ebola on Thursday.

Spencer, who spent a month in the West African nation working with the humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders, was the fourth person diagnosed with the virus in the United States and the first in its largest city.

Critics of the measures have raised concerns that mandatory quarantines could discourage Americans from going to help control the epidemic in West Africa.

Representative Diana DeGette, a Democrat from Colorado who was an early advocate of reassessing federal protocols on handling Ebola cases, warned against an overreaction by health authorities.

"It's a very fine balance between getting our people to go over and help treat these Ebola patients — and they are very courageous to go on the front lines like that — and also make sure we protect public health," DeGette said in an interview with CNN on Saturday morning.

The unidentified healthcare worker in New Jersey did not have any symptoms when she arrived at Newark Liberty International Airport on Friday, officials said, but developed a fever while quarantined at the airport before being taken to the Newark hospital.

Despite the negative test result, she will remain under mandatory quarantine for the full 21 days, the virus's maximum incubation period, the New Jersey health department said.

The federal government is considering similar quarantine rules, according to a spokesman for the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

The virus is not airborne but is spread through direct contact with bodily fluids from an infected person who is showing symptoms.

NEW YORK — A hatchet attack on New York police officers was a "terrorist act" carried out by a self-radicalised Muslim convert who had been in the military and browsed Al Qaeda websites, police said Friday.

"This was a terrorist act," police commissioner Bill Bratton told a news conference on Friday, one day after the attack, saying he was "very comfortable" describing it as a "terrorist attack”.

Police said Zale Thompson, who was 32, unmarried and unemployed, appeared to have acted alone and was not affiliated to a particular group, but that the investigation was ongoing.

A loner who spent hours locked away in his bedroom, he had looked at websites about groups such as Al Qaeda and Islamic State, and watched beheadings and Wednesday's deadly attack in Canada.

Officer Kenneth Healy, 25, is in hospital in a critical but stable condition after being injured in the back of the head during Thursday's broad daylight attack in a busy shopping area.

Another officer was hit in the arm in the assault in New York's borough of Queens. The group of four young police officers had graduated from the police academy only months before.

In an attack that lasted just seven seconds, Bratton said Thompson charged with a hatchet in his hand, striking two officers before he was shot dead by the two other officers, who were uninjured.

A graphic video of the attack has been released, showing a bearded Thompson dressed in a green jacket, running towards his victims and swinging the hatchet in both hands.

A 29-year-old female bystander was accidentally shot and is also in hospital in a critical but stable condition, Bratton said.

Police said Thompson converted to Islam two years ago and that relatives described him as a "recluse" and "lately depressed”.

An axe and a large hunting knife were recovered from his home and Thompson made anti-Western, anti-government and in some cases anti-white statements on social media, police said.

He visited websites that focused on terror groups such as Al Qaeda, the IS organisation and the Shabab Islamists in Somalia.

Police said Thompson's Internet browsing history included the fence-jumping incident at the White House this week and Wednesday's shooting in Canada.

Online history 

"It appears... this is something he has been thinking about for some time and thinking about with more intensity in recent days," chief of detectives Robert Boyce said.

Police believe that Thompson acted alone and was self-directed.

"The investigation is hoping to determine as quickly as possible if there were any other actions that he was engaged in with others that might indicate a continuing a threat," Bratton said.

Police said they were investigating whether Thompson was affiliated with any mosque or association, but said most of his activity and exposure appears to have been through the Internet.

"The father described that he spent extensive amounts of time by himself in his bedroom and by all accounts was a true proverbial loner," said Bratton.

Thompson had no police record in New York but had come into contact with the force as a victim of assault when he was 16, and was arrested six times in California in 2003-04.

He spent three years in the military but was involuntarily discharged in 2003, most likely due to drugs, police said.

SITE, a private terrorism monitoring group, said that Thompson displayed "extremist leanings" in an array of statements on YouTube and Facebook.

Bratton said the issue of a lone wolf, self-radicalised assailant was one of "increasing concern" to counter-terrorism officers.

SITE said Thompson described "jihad as a justifiable response to the oppression of the 'Zionists and the Crusaders'" in a comment posted to a pro-Islamic State video on September 13.

Queens residents said that they were disturbed by the attack.

"A thing like that isn't supposed to happen, children can be on the streets," said a woman who gave her name as Helena.

"Anyone could get caught in this incident and I don't think that's right, it's not right," she told AFP.

BEIJING — China may ban Facebook, but not its co-founder Mark Zuckerberg. The young billionaire delighted an audience of students at a prestigious Beijing university this week with a 30-minute chat in his recently learned Mandarin Chinese.

Did he complain about the ban? 

He made no explicit mention of China's ban on the social media giant, but an indirect reference to it drew laughter during the question-and-answer session Wednesday at Tsinghua University. Zuckerberg, whose company has long sought to enter China, noted Facebook already helps some Chinese companies in foreign markets, citing computer maker Lenovo's ads on Facebook in India.

"Speaking of China, I have a more difficult question for Mark, which I hope will not get me fired. What are Facebook's plans in China?" asked the forum facilitator and Facebook employee Wei Xiaoliang, to the laughter and applause from the audience.

"We are already in China," Zuckerberg said in Chinese, to more laughter. "We help Chinese companies gain customers abroad," he said.

"We want to help the rest of the world connect to China."

Why was Zuckerberg in China? 

Zuckerberg may be hoping to lay the groundwork for an eventual entry into China, but he visited Beijing this week as a newly appointed member of the advisory board for Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management and met with the university's president on Tuesday.

Both he and the university posted clips of his Wednesday session, which was open to questions from students for the last 8 minutes.

Facebook has been banned in China since 2009. Beijing promotes Internet use for business and education but bans material deemed subversive and blocks access to foreign news and social media websites that authorities believe could stoke social unrest.

Zuckerberg's Chinese pronunciation was far from fluent, and some native speakers called it a "challenge" to understand. He sometimes struggled with certain words and tones, and needed help in understanding questions in Chinese. But he was able to express himself well and maintain an intelligible conversation for a half hour. The students responded with warm cheers for his effort and laughter at his humour.

Zuckerberg married Chinese-American Priscilla Chan in 2012, and set himself the goal of learning Mandarin in 2010. He said Wednesday that he wanted to learn the language partly because his wife's grandmother only speaks Chinese. He recalled informing the grandmother of the marriage plans.

"Priscilla and I decided to get married, so I told her grandmother in Chinese, and she was very surprised," Zuckerberg said.

What else did he say?

 Zuckerberg said several things apparently aimed at endearing himself to the Chinese audience. He said China is a great country and hopes that learning the language will help him learn its culture. "The Chinese language is difficult, and I speak English, but I like challenges," Zuckerberg said.

When asked about his favourite food, he cited "Beijing hutong snacks" sold by street-side vendors in the capital, and Peking duck, Beijing's signature dish of duck meat served with sauce and rolled up in a crepe.

How was he received? 

Tsinghua students gave Zuckerberg a warm reception. On social media, many microbloggers noted the irony that Zuckerberg's famous creation is blocked in China.

Designer David Wang, in an interview in downtown Beijing, said he would be happy if Facebook was allowed across the so-called Great Firewall of China. "Because now we have to use software to jump the wall if we want to access Facebook," he said.

Li Qin, a computer programmer from the eastern city of Hangzhou, said on a microblog that she could barely understand Zuckerberg's Chinese.

"It was a challenge for Chinese listening comprehension. But even though Facebook cannot enter the Chinese market, Mark is still making a fighting effort to learn," she said. "It was quite a funny scenario."

GENEVA/LONDON — The World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Thursday it was "reasonably confident" that the Ebola virus plaguing three West African countries had not spread into neighbouring states.

Asked whether countries such as Guinea Bissau and Ivory Coast might have cases of the disease crossing their borders without knowing about or reporting them, WHO Assistant Director General Keiji Fukuda said he considered that unlikely.

"We are reasonably confident right now we are not seeing widespread transmission into neighbouring countries," Fukuda told reporters in a briefing. "It remains a concern...[but] right now I think we are not seeing it."

"We will keep looking for further spread of infection, but we simply haven't seen it," he added.

The WHO's emergency committee, advising on Ebola, said earlier on Thursday that screening people leaving Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea remained critical for reducing the spread of the disease.

At a minimum, exit screening should consist of "a questionnaire, a temperature measurement and, if fever is discovered, an assessment of the risk that the fever is caused by Ebola," the committee said.

Last week, the WHO said it would send teams of experts to Mali and Ivory Coast, two of the countries at highest risk, to check their preparedness.

The economic damage of a major outbreak in Ivory Coast would be felt around the world, since it and next-door Ghana produce about 60 per cent of the world's cocoa beans.

Although Senegal and Nigeria managed to contain the disease after it was imported by travellers, Ebola is still raging in the three countries at the heart of the epidemic, the worst Ebola outbreak on record.

At least 4,877 people are known to have died, but the true toll may be three times as much.

The response to the disease is now based on a "70-70-60 plan" to get 70 per cent of patients in isolation and 70 per cent of bodies buries safely within a 60-day period ending on December 1.

But the elements needed to achieve that — bed spaces, treatment centres, laboratories, dead-body-management teams and volunteers — are still far short of what is required.

The WHO originally appealed for 12,000 local staff and 750 foreign experts, but it has raised those targets to 20,000 and 1,000 respectively. Fukuda said there were only 600 foreign experts so far.

"It has been terrifically difficult to get enough health workers, both domestic and international healthcare workers, this continues to be one of the major challenges," Fukuda said.

OTTAWA, Ontario — A Canadian soldier standing guard at a war memorial in the country's capital was shot to death Wednesday, and gunfire then erupted inside parliament, authorities said. One gunman was killed, and police said they were hunting for as many as two others.

The bloodshed immediately raised the specter of a coordinated terrorist attack, with Canada already on alert because of a deadly hit-and-run earlier in the week against two Canadian soldiers by a man who police say was fired up with radical Muslim fervor.

Witnesses said the soldier was gunned down at point-blank range by a man carrying a rifle and dressed all in black, with a scarf over his face. They said the gunman then ran off and entered parliament, a few hundred yards away, where dozens of shots soon rang out.

People fled the complex by scrambling down scaffolding erected for renovations, while others took cover inside as police with rifles and body armor took up positions outside and cordoned off the normally bustling streets around parliament.

Police gave no details on how the gunman died. But on Twitter, Member of Parliament Craig Scott credited parliament sergeant-at-arms Kevin Vickers with shooting the attacker just outside the MPs' caucus rooms.

Ottawa police spokesman Chuck Benoit said two or three gunmen were believed to be involved in the attacks. Gilles Michaud, assistant commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, called it a "dynamic, unfolding situation”.

Ottawa Hospital said it received two patients, both listed in stable condition, in addition to the soldier.

Tony Zobl, 35, said he witnessed the soldier being gunned down from his fourth-floor window directly above the National War Memorial, a 70-foot, arched granite cenotaph, or tomb, with bronze sculptures commemorating
World War I.

"I looked out the window and saw a shooter, a man dressed all in black with a kerchief over his nose and mouth and something over his head as well, holding a rifle and shooting an honor guard in front of the cenotaph point-blank, twice," Zobl told the Canadian Press news agency.

"The honor guard dropped to the ground, and the shooter kind of raised his arms in triumph holding the rifle."

Zobl said the gunman then ran up the street toward Parliament Hill.

Cabinet Minister Tony Clement tweeted that at least 30 shots were heard inside parliament, where Conservative and Liberal MPs were holding their weekly caucus meetings.

"I'm safe locked in a office awaiting security," Kyle Seeback, another member of Parliament, tweeted.

The top spokesman for Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Harper was safe and had left Parliament Hill. The US Embassy in Ottawa was locked down as a precaution.

Officials also cancelled two events in Toronto honoring Pakistani teenager and Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai, including one in which she was supposed to receive honorary Canadian citizenship. The teenager was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman in 2012 for calling for schooling for girls.

President Barack Obama condemned the attacks as "outrageous" and spoke by telephone with the prime minister, offering to help and reassuring him of the American people's solidarity with Canada.

The attack came two days after a recent convert to Islam killed one Canadian soldier and injured another with his car before being shot to death by police. The killer had been on the radar of federal investigators, who feared he had jihadist ambitions and seized his passport when he tried to travel to Turkey.

Canada had raised its domestic terror threat level from low to medium Tuesday because of "an increase in general chatter from radical Islamist organisations," said Jean-Christophe de Le Rue, a spokesman for the public safety minister.

In the hours after Wednesday's attack, police warned people in downtown Ottawa to stay away from windows and rooftops.

Scott Walsh, 21, a construction worker working in a manhole right in front of Parliament Hill, said he heard the shots at the war memorial.

"We're in construction and we're used to loud bangs. When people started screaming and running, that's when I clued, and I saw this guy running" with a gun, he said. "It was intense. I didn't think it was real. "

He said the gunman had long black hair with a scarf covering the lower half of his face.

WASHINGTON — The new US Ebola "czar" starts work on Wednesday as the Obama administration ramps up its response to the potential spread of the virus, and drugmakers started a project to accelerate development of a vaccine and produce millions of doses.

As the administration boosted airport screening measures in response to criticism that it was slow to act against Ebola, a Pentagon emergency Ebola medical team was scheduled to begin training at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas.

The virus has killed more than 4,500 people, predominantly in three impoverished West African countries, in the worst outbreak of the disease since it was identified in 1976.

US President Barack Obama was set to hold a meeting on Wednesday with Ron Klain, his new Ebola response coordinator, amid rising Republican criticism ahead of congressional elections next month.

Klain, a lawyer and veteran Democratic political operative, was expected to improve coordination between the federal government and the states after three cases were diagnosed in the United States, all in Texas; Liberian Thomas Eric Duncan, who died on October 8 in Dallas, and two nurses who treated him.

Leading drugmakers said on Wednesday that they planned to develop an Ebola vaccine and produce millions of doses of the most effective experimental product for use next year.

The World Health Organisation said it hopes tens of thousand of people in Africa, including front-line healthcare workers, can start receiving vaccines beginning in January.

US drugmaker Johnson & Johnson announced that it aims to produce 1 million doses of its two-step vaccine next year, and said it has discussed collaboration with Britain's GlaxoSmithKline, which is working on a rival vaccine.

Human testing of a second "investigational" Ebola vaccine is under way at the US National Institutes of Health's Clinical Centre in Maryland, NIH said on Wednesday. Testing on a first possible vaccine began last month and initial data was expected by the end of the year.

"The need for a vaccine to protect against Ebola infection is urgent," said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He said the vaccine, called VSV-ZEBOV, was "promising”.

The US Defence Department's emergency medical team — including five infectious disease doctors, 20 critical care nurses and five trainers who are experts in infectious disease protocols — will gather in Texas on Wednesday to start three days of training, the Pentagon said.

No travel ban

The Obama administration has ratcheted up its response to Ebola but so far has stopped short of a travel ban from West African countries hit by Ebola demanded by some lawmakers.

The Department of Homeland Security said on Tuesday that travelers from the three countries at the centre of the epidemic — Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea — would be funneled to one of five major US airports conducting enhanced screening for the virus. The restrictions on passengers whose trips originated in those countries were due to go into effect on Wednesday.

Affected travellers will have their temperatures checked for signs of a fever that may indicate Ebola infection, among other protocols, at New York's John F. Kennedy, New Jersey's Newark, Washington Dulles, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta, and Chicago's O'Hare international airports, officials said.

Two travellers from Liberia were under observation in hospitals in Chicago on Wednesday after they reported symptoms during screening at O'Hare on Tuesday.

One, a child, reportedly vomited on the flight to Chicago, health officials said. A physician at the hospital where the child was taken said doctors suspect the patient does not have Ebola but was isolated as a precaution.

In New Jersey, a Liberian passenger detained at Newark Liberty Airport on Tuesday appears to be symptom free, Governor Chris Christie said at a news confrence. "There is no indication that he has been infected with Ebola," Christie said.

A Reuters/Ipsos online poll released on Tuesday showed that nearly three-fourths of 1,602 Americans surveyed favoured a US ban on civilian air travel in and out of the three countries.

But Elhadj As Sy, secretary general of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), on Wednesday said such restrictions would not effectively curb Ebola.

"It [Ebola] creates a lot of fear and extreme panic that sometimes lead to very irrational type of behaviors and measures, like closing borders, cancelling flights, isolating countries, etc.," Sy told reporters in Beijing, where the IFRC was holding a conference. "Those are not solutions."

A group of some 50 Cuban doctors and nurses arrived in Liberia on Wednesday to help treat patients.

The two US nurses who contracted Ebola after treating Thomas Duncan were both improving. The US National Institutes of Health upgraded the medical condition Nina Pham on Tuesday to good from fair. The other, Amber Vinson, is weak but recovering, her mother said.

NBC freelance cameraman Ashoka Mukpo, an American who contracted Ebola while working in West Africa, is free of the virus and will leave the Nebraska Medical Centre on Wednesday, the hospital said.

PRETORIA — Olympic and Paralympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius started his five-year jail sentence on Tuesday for killing his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, marking the end of a trial that has gripped South Africa and millions around the world.

His uncle, Arnold Pistorius, indicated he would not appeal.

As judge Thokozile Masipa gave her decision on the 27-year-old's culpable homicide conviction, Pistorius, whose downfall has been likened to that of American football star O.J. Simpson, stood resolutely in the dock.

His only reaction was to wipe his eyes before two police officers led him to the holding cells beneath the high court in the heart of the South African capital.

Ninety minutes later, an armoured police vehicle carrying Pistorius — still dressed in dark suit, white shirt and black tie — left the building through a throng of reporters towards Pretoria Central Prison, where he is expected to serve his time.

Once the execution site for opponents of South Africa's former white-minority government, the jail is now home to the country's most hardened criminals, including the man known as "Prime Evil", apartheid death squad leader Eugene de Kock.

Prisons officials said Pistorius, whose lower legs were amputated when he was a baby, would be housed in a separate and secure hospital wing of the massive complex.

‘One law for all’

In delivering her decision, 67-year-old Masipa stressed the difficulty of arriving at a decision that was "fair and just to society and to the accused".

She also rebuffed suggestions that Pistorius — a wealthy and influential white man — might be able to secure preferential justice despite the "equality before law" guarantee enshrined in the post-apartheid 1996 constitution.

"It would be a sad day for this country if an impression were created that there is one law for the poor and disadvantaged, and one law for the rich and famous," she said.

Steenkamp, a 29-year-old law graduate and model, died almost instantly on Valentine's Day last year when Pistorius shot her through a locked toilet door at his luxury Pretoria home.

Prosecutors pushed for a murder conviction, but the athlete maintained he fired in the mistaken belief an intruder was hiding behind the door, a defence that struck home in a country with one of the world's highest rates of violent crime.

The ruling African National Congress' Women's League, which is at the forefront of political efforts to tackle violence against South African women, on Tuesday called for an appeal by the state against the September 12 culpable homicide conviction.

But Steenkamp's family said it was satisfied with the sentence.

"Justice was served," family lawyer Dup De Bruyn told reporters outside the court. The judge had given "the right sentence", he said.

‘Dark ages’ gone

With no minimum sentence for culpable homicide, South Africa's equivalent of manslaughter, Pistorius could have been punished with a few years of house arrest combined with community service.

Before the decision, protesters picketed outside the court, a sign of the anger that might have ensued and the damage that might have been done to an often-criticised judicial system if the sentence were seen as too light.

"Why are certain offenders more equal than others before the law?" said protester Golden Miles Bhudu, dressed in orange prison garb and wrapped in chains as he ridiculed Pistorius' retching and crying during the seven-month trial, the first in South Africa to be broadcast live throughout.

"He screams like a girl, he cries like a baby but he shoots like a soldier," Bhudu said.

However, Masipa pointed to the moral and philosophical changes South Africa has undergone since the end of white rule and the 1994 election of Nelson Mandela, saying the courts were no longer about mob justice and an "eye-for-an-eye".

"As a country we have moved on from the dark ages," she said. "Society cannot always get what they want because courts do not exist to win popularity contests."

Many ordinary South Africans were unimpressed, especially after Pistorius' defence lawyer, Barry Roux, said he expected the athlete to serve only 10 months of the five-year sentence behind bars, and the remainder under house arrest.

"They are only scaring him with this sentence. It shows our society hasn't transformed," said Johannes Mbatha, a 38-year-old minibus taxi driver waiting at a Johannesburg bus station.

"If it was a black man he would have never received such a light sentence. But that's how things are in South Africa."

In Steenkamp's home town of Port Elizabeth, a handful of family friends at a bar owned by her parents raised their hands in recognition of the five-year sentence.

"I thought he would walk," said 50-year-old Martin Cohen, who worked as a race horse trainer with Steenkamp's father, Barry, who suffered a stroke shortly after his daughter's killing.

The state prosecuting authority, which has two weeks to decide whether to launch an appeal against the verdict, said Pistorius was likely to serve at least a third of his sentence in prison or 20 months.

On a separate conviction for firing a handgun in a packed Johannesburg restaurant, Pistorius was given a three-year suspended sentence.

Even if he is freed early, Pistorius will not be able to resume his athletics career until his full term is served, the International Paralympic Committee said, ruling out any appearance at the 2016 Rio Olympics.

Known as "Blade Runner" because of his carbon-fibre prosthetics, Pistorius became one of the biggest names in world athletics at the London 2012 Olympics when he reached the semi-finals of the 400m race against able-bodied athletes.

SAINT-JEAN-SUR-RICHELIEU, Quebec — The fatal attack on a Canadian soldier by a suspected Islamic militant in Quebec was "clearly linked to terrorist ideology", Canada's public safety minister said on Tuesday.

It was the first fatal attack on Canadian soil involving Islamic militants, and the first incident since Canada joined the battle against Islamic State fighters who have taken over parts of Iraq and Syria.

The 25-year-old suspected militant deliberately ran over two soldiers with his car in the Quebec town of Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu on Monday and was shot dead by police shortly afterward.

Police said on Tuesday that one of the soldiers had died.

"What took place yesterday is clearly linked to terrorist ideology," Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney told reporters in the Quebec town, about 40km southeast of Montreal.

"I can assure you we take the terrorist threat seriously. This tragedy reminds us painfully that this threat is very real."

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's office said the man driving the car was known to federal authorities, and that there were clear indications he had become "radicalised", a term the government has used to refer to those who support militant Islam.

Canadian security officials have been worried for years about the potential threat of radicalised young men.

Canada is sending six fighter jets to take part in the US-led campaign against Islamic State militants in Iraq.

Canadian media, citing police sources, identified the driver as Martin Couture-Rouleau, a resident of Saint-Jean-Sur-Richelieu, and said he had a Facebook page under the name of Ahmad Rouleau. Reuters was unable to verify the identity of the driver.

Blaney declined to give any details of the police investigation into the attack and did not respond when asked about media reports that said Canadian authorities had confiscated Rouleau's passport earlier this year.

A neighbor, speaking on condition that her name not be used, told Reuters that Rouleau became radicalised about a year ago after getting involved with extremist Muslims.

Many of the entries on the Ahmad Rouleau page on Facebook promote Islam as the true religion and Christianity and atheism as false, but some posts have a political tone.

He posted a quote from an early Muslim caliph, Umar Ibn Khattab: "I will not calm down until I will put one cheek of a tyrant on the ground and the other under my feet, and for the poor and weak I will put my cheek on the ground."

Another post had a symbol handwritten in Arabic, which appears on the flag of the Islamic State militant group, that proclaims that Mohammed is the prophet of Allah.

Television footage outside the house of Rouleau's father showed a police investigator leaving with a bag overnight.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) has for years fretted about the dangers posed by home-grown extremists.

Jeff Yaworski, deputy director of operations at the spy agency, said on Monday the agency was worried that Islamic State's "message and successful social media strategy could inspire radicalised individuals to undertake attacks here in Canada".

He told legislators the CSIS was aware of at least 50 Canadians involved with Islamic State and other militant groups in the region.

Ottawa said last week it planned to boost the powers of CSIS by giving it the ability to track and investigate potential terrorists when they traveled abroad.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) said on October 8 it was tracking 90 individuals who either intended to go abroad to join militant groups or had returned to Canada after taking part in terror-related activities.

The RCMP this year set up a series of Integrated National Security Investigations teams to focus on "individuals and entities that are a threat to national security". It said on Monday that Rouleau was known to its team in Montreal but gave no more details.

ABUJA/LAGOS — Nigeria was declared free of the deadly Ebola virus on Monday after a determined doctor and thousands of officials and volunteers helped end an outbreak still ravaging other parts of West Africa and threatening the United States and Spain.

Caught unawares when a diplomat arrived with the disease from Liberia, authorities were alerted by Doctor Ameyo Adadevoh, who kept him in her hospital despite protests from him and his government, and later herself died from the disease.

They then set about trying to contain it in an overcrowded city of 21 million where it could easily have turned a doomsday scenario if about 300 people who had been in direct or indirect contact with him not been traced and isolated.

"This is a spectacular success story," Rui Gama Vaz from the World Health Organisation (WHO) told a news conference in the capital Abuja, where officials broke into applause when he announced that Nigeria had shaken off the disease.

"It shows that Ebola can be contained, but we must be clear that we have only won a battle, the war will only end when West Africa is also declared free of Ebola."

This year's outbreak of the highly infectious haemorrhagic fever thought to have originated in forest bats is the worst on record.

It has killed 4,546 people across the three most-affected countries, Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, and travellers from the region have infected two people in Texas and one in Madrid.

It was imported to Nigeria when Liberian-American diplomat Patrick Sawyer collapsed at the main international airport in Lagos on July 20.

Airport staff were unprepared and the government had not set up any hospital isolation unit, so he was able to infect several people, including health workers in the hospital where he was taken, some of whom had to restrain him to keep him there.

Lagos, the commercial hub of Africa's most populous nation, largest economy and leading energy producer, would have been an ideal springboard for Ebola to spread across the country.

"Nigeria was not really prepared for the outbreak, but the swift response from the federal government, state governments [and] international organisations... was essential," said Samuel Matoka, Ebola operations manager in Nigeria for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).

The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, which was involved in managing the outbreak, said officials and volunteers reached more than 26,000 households of people living around the contacts of the Ebola patients.

‘Stand your ground’

Adadevoh, doctor on call at the First Consultants hospital in Lagos where Sawyer was brought, prevented the dying man from spreading it further, Benjamin Ohiaeri, a doctor there who survived the disease, told Reuters.

Ebola is much more contagious once symptoms become severe.

"We agreed that the thing to do was not to let him out of the hospital," Ohiaeri said, even after he became aggressive and demanded to be set free.

"If we had let him out, within 24 hours of being here, he would have contacted and infected a lot more people."

Sawyer was reported only to have malaria, Ohiaeri said. But Adadevoh noticed he had bloodshot eyes and was passing blood in his urine — telltale signs of hemorrhagic fever. She left instructions by his bed that under no circumstances should anyone let him leave.

At one point, Sawyer ripped off his intravenous tube and a nurse had to put it back, according to a source close to the hospital staff. She later got infected and died. Sawyer then became aggressive and had to be physically restrained.

Ohiaeri said a Liberian government official on the phone had even threatened negative consequences if they did not release Sawyer, saying that holding him was tantamount to kidnapping.

"The lesson there is: stand your ground," he said.

Once the hospital contacted the ministries of health in the state of Lagos and the federal ministry in Abuja, authorities quickly set up and equipped an isolation unit.

Lagos state governor Babatunde Fashola rushed back from a pilgrimage to Mecca to handle the crisis, Ohiaeri said.

Nigeria used an existing health surveillance system for Polio for contact tracing, so was able to trace and isolate Sawyer's primary and secondary contacts quickly. Mobile technology meant live updates could be made to the contact list.

"Everyone played their part. We're so proud," Ohiaeri said.

IFRC's Matoka said contact tracing of suspected cases was key to preventing the disease from spreading into communities where it would have been harder to control.

"It was effective in identifying all suspected cases and keeping watch on them before they developed symptoms and infect other people. We were able to remove people from communities once they showed symptoms and [before they] infect many others," he said.

Even when the virus found its way to the oil hub of Port Harcourt in the southeast, authorities were able to quickly contain it, an example WHO said others should be able to follow.

"If a country like Nigeria, hampered by serious security problems, can do this... any country in the world experiencing an imported case can hold onward transmission to just a handful of cases," WHO Director Margaret Chan said in a statement.

For the three impoverished countries at the epicentre of the crisis it is a different matter. According to consultancy DaMina Advisors, Nigeria has one doctor per 2,879 people compared with one per 86,275 in Liberia.

Nigeria's success in preventing the spread of the disease contrasts with its slower and more fractious response to crises such as the kidnapping in April of more than 200 girls still being held by Islamist militant group Boko Haram.

"The approach to Ebola was pragmatic, patriotic and non-partisan," said Lagos-based political analyst and lawyer Emekanka Onyebuchi.

"They put the nation first and this is what we should have done in other areas, like the [kidnapped] girls."

The cooperation between the central government in Nigeria and the opposition-led administration in Lagos state contrasts with the United States, where bickering between Republican and Democrat lawmakers over Ebola has eroded public trust.

Alex Okoh, Nigeria's director of port health services, said the lesson the United States and other countries can learn from Nigeria is to "put aside the political barriers and focus on the issues at hand".

Senegal also declared itself Ebola-free, where one case was imported from Guinea, on Friday.

Officials hope such success stories will change the way the West, where many are currently in the grip of a panic about a disease brought to their shores from "Africa", sees the crisis.

"There is focus on the worst-case scenarios, which again perpetuate the wrong, negative image of Africa as opposed to looking at some of the areas where there has been success," said Abdul Tejan-Cole, a Sierra Leonean who is executive director of the Open Society Initiative for West Africa.