World

HONG KONG — Chaos erupted in central Hong Kong Monday as dozens of masked men rushed barricades at the city's main pro-democracy site, sparking renewed accusations that authorities are using hired thugs to disperse demonstrators.

Groups of men, many wearing surgical masks, descended on the front lines of the rally at Admiralty near Hong Kong's central business district, triggering clashes with protesters, just hours after police had moved in to take down some barriers.

Demonstrators, who have come under attack from organised crime gangs known as triads at another flashpoint demonstration site in Mongkok, shouted: "Weapons! Weapons!" and "Arrest the triads" as police struggled to impose order.

Pro-democracy lawmakers rounded on the authorities over the clashes.

"This is one of the tactics used by the communists in mainland China from time to time. They use triads or pro-government mobs to try to attack you so the government will not have to assume responsibility," Democratic Party lawmaker Albert Ho told AFP.

"It seems that the police have duly removed some of the barricades to make way for the suspected triads to get through to the peaceful protesters," Civic Party lawmaker Claudia Mo told AFP.

One lawmaker on the scene of the clashes in Admiralty voiced concern over how the situation had "degenerated".

"From what I can see the police were helping the anti-Occupy actions more than the peaceful protesters," said the Civic Party's Kenneth Chan.

Taxi drivers had also converged on the site with their cars, demanding the barricades be removed and other anti-Occupy groups chanted "Occupy is illegal".

Anti-Occupy protesters mainly dissipated as the afternoon wore on, while pro-democracy demonstrators rebuilt their barricades using everything from bamboo poles to sticky tape.

But as police announced they would soon move to clear more "obstacles" at both the Admiralty site and a secondary site in the shopping hub of Causeway Bay.

"We will not eliminate the possibility of using minimal force or arrest actions," police senior superintendent, Hui Chun-tak, told reporters.

He said that three men had been arrested, one for assault and two for carrying offensive weapons.

Triad allegations 

The demonstrators are calling for Beijing to grant full democracy to the former British colony and have brought parts of Hong Kong to a standstill over the last fortnight, prompting clashes with elements who oppose the blockades and widespread disruption.

Despite repeated orders to disperse, the rallies have taken on an air of permanence, with tents, portable showers and lecture venues.

It was the second time since the mass protests began that authorities had been accused of cooperating with criminal gangs.

In previous clashes at the secondary site of Mongkok 10 days ago, police said eight of the 19 arrested had triad backgrounds.

Furious pro-democracy protesters also accused the authorities of using thugs Monday.

"The government wants Hong Kong people to fight each other, that's how they want to win," protester Angela Li said.

"All the people using violence and causing trouble are paid thugs."

Police said that the clashes were due to "people unlawfully blocking the roads with obstacles".

Earlier Hong Kong's embattled leader Leung Chun-ying had told reporters in the Chinese city of Guangzhou that he wanted the protests to end.

"Under the appropriate situation we hope to allow society to return to normal as quickly as possible," he said on the sidelines of a trade meeting.

Police 'do what 

they want' 

Police took down some peripheral barricades in a dawn operation allowing traffic to pass around the Admiralty site for the first time in two weeks as well as removing several barriers around the Mongkok site.

The overall atmosphere had been calm, but some protesters voiced anger at what they saw as a police swoop.

"The police refuse to communicate with us, they just do what they want," added Wong King-wa, 25.

On Sunday, Chief Executive Leung had said the protesters had "almost zero chance" of changing Beijing's stance and securing free elections.

China announced in August that while Hong Kongers will be able to vote for Leung's successor in 2017, only two or three vetted candidates will be allowed to stand — an arrangement the protesters dismiss as "fake democracy".

Students and pro-democracy campaigners have taken to the streets — sometimes in their tens of thousands — since last month to call for Beijing to change its position and to demand Leung's resignation.

Talks between student leaders and city officials collapsed last week, deepening the crisis in the semiautonomous city.

Chinese police detained two Beijing activists who took part in a Hong Kong pro-democracy march, a friend said Monday.

China has in recent weeks held around 40 people on the mainland who had expressed support for the protests in Hong Kong, according to rights groups.

MONROVIA — Health workers across Liberia went on strike on Monday to demand danger money to care for the sick at the heart of a raging Ebola epidemic that has already killed dozens of their colleagues.

Doctors, nurses and carers in west Africa are on the frontline of the worst-ever outbreak of Ebola, which has killed more than 4,000 people, mostly in Guinea, Sierra Leone and the hardest-hit, Liberia.

The Liberian walkout came as the World Health Organisation warned that the Ebola crisis was "the most severe acute public health emergency in modern times".

Meanwhile, officials in the United States said the country must "rethink" its approach to Ebola after a female nurse in Texas contracted the tropical virus, in the first case of contamination on US soil and the second outside Africa.

As the new US case fuelled global jitters, EU ministers called a meeting for Thursday to discuss screening travellers from Ebola-hit west Africa, in line with steps taken by Britain, the United States and Canada.

In Liberia, the chairman of the national health workers' union, Joseph Tamba, said his strike call had been "massively" followed.

"Health workers across the country have downed tools as we asked them to do," Tamba told AFP.

In the capital Monrovia, where staff at Island Clinic, the largest government-run Ebola facility, have been on a "go slow" for three days, a patient quoted on local radio described scenes of desolation with the sick deserted by staff.

"We are at the Ebola Treatment Unit and no one is taking care of us," the unnamed man said. "Last night several patients died. Those who can walk are trying to escape by climbing over the fence."

Journalists have been banned from Liberia's Ebola clinics, making the situation there difficult to ascertain.

Risk bonus 

Ninety-five Liberian health workers have died so far in the epidemic, and their surviving colleagues want pay commensurate to the acute risk of dealing with Ebola, which spreads through contact with bodily fluids and for which there is no vaccine or widely-available treatment.

Danger money aside, Tamba said many workers were not even being paid their regular wage to combat an epidemic that has killed more than 2,300 in Liberia and overwhelmed its skeletal health service.

He said that at the Island Clinic — which is backed by the World Health Organisation — staff were promised a monthly wage of $750 (595 euros) for nurses and lab technicians, and $500 for other carers, but they have received a third less.

"It's as if the government was piling on extra staff without having to pay them a wage," Tamba charged.

'Rethink approach'

Both cases of contamination reported so far outside Africa — in Spain last week and now in the United States — have involved health workers who fell ill despite stringent safety protocols surrounding Ebola.

Authorities in the United States confirmed a female nurse had tested positive for the disease following "extensive contact" with a Liberian Ebola patient, Thomas Eric Duncan, who died on Wednesday.

The nurse at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas is in isolation and said to be in stable condition.

The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said it believed there had been a "breach in protocol", although her employers insisted she had followed CDC precautions, which would have included wearing a mask, gown and gloves.

"We have to rethink the way we approach Ebola infection control because even a single infection is unacceptable," said CDC director Tom Frieden on Monday.

President Barack Obama called for "immediate additional steps" to ensure hospitals were ready to follow Ebola protocols, as nurses' representatives demanded protective equipment, including hazardous materials suits and specialised Ebola training.

While the CDC was working to track down other health workers who may have been exposed in Dallas, Frieden said he would "unfortunately not be surprised" to see more cases.

Spain 'Ebola-free 

by October  27' 

The United Nations says aid pledges have fallen well short of the $1 billion needed, leading World Health Organisation chief Margaret Chan to warn of "many more cases" to come for Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia without radical action by the international community.

But Chan voiced confidence that developed nations would be able to contain the virus.

"We do not expect the countries with a good system of health to experience a situation like in the three countries of west Africa."

In Spain, a crisis cell set up when Madrid nurse Teresa Romero fell sick after caring for two missionaries with Ebola said there was "reason to hope" she could recover.

Fifteen other people are under observation in Madrid's Carlos III hospital for symptoms of the disease, which include fever, diarrhoea, vomiting and bleeding.

The hospital's director, Antonio Andreu, told Spanish radio that Spain will be free from the threat of further contagion from Ebola on October 27 if all those who had close contact with the infected nurse remain without symptoms by then.

The disease has an incubation period of up to 21 days.

DALLAS, Texas — A health worker in Texas at the hospital treating the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States has tested positive for the deadly virus, raising fresh worries about the spread of the disease beyond West Africa.

The worker at the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital had been wearing protective gear during treatment of the patient Thomas Eric Duncan, who died last week. The worker reported a low-grade fever on Friday night and was isolated and referred for testing, health officials said on Sunday.

"We knew a second case could be a reality, and we've been preparing for this possibility," said Dr David Lakey, commissioner of the health service.

The worker is the first person in the United States to test positive for Ebola who has not been to West Africa, where an outbreak has killed more than 4,000 people, mostly in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

"This individual was following full CDC precautions, which are barrier and droplet so gown, glove, mask and shield," Dan Varga, the hospital's chief clinical officer told a news conference in Dallas.

The hospital has been criticised for at first turning away Duncan when he first showed up there on September 25, saying he had been in Liberia and had a fever. About two days after he was discharged, he was taken back by ambulance and put in an isolation unit.

The director of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in an interview with network CBS on Sunday there was likely a lapse in protocol at the hospital that led to the healthcare worker being infected.

"We're deeply concerned about this new development," Dr Thomas Frieden said in an interview on CBS' "Face the Nation" on Sunday. "I think the fact that we don't know of a breach in protocol is concerning because clearly there was a breach in protocol."

Duncan died in an isolation ward on October 8, 11 days after being admitted, with more than 50 people attending to his care. The hospital said it was decontaminating its isolation unit while health officials said Duncan's body had been cremated.

None of the 10 people who had close contact with him or 38 people who had contact with that group have shown any symptoms, state health officials said.

Texas officials did not identify the health worker or give any details about the person, but CNN said it was a woman nurse.

The CDC will conduct a test to confirm results of testing in Austin that showed the worker had Ebola, health officials said.

Dr Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the patient had direct contact with Duncan in providing care. He predicted the CDC would "fortify" the protocols for caring for Ebola patients after reviewing the incident in Dallas.

Ebola pamphlets

There was a yellow hazardous material drum on the lawn of the red brick apartment where the health worker lived and information pamphlets about the Ebola virus were stuffed in the doors in the surrounding blocks of the apartment.

Neighbour Cliff Lawson, 57, was woken at 6:00am local time by two Dallas police officers who told him "don't panic”.

"I went back to bed after that. There's nothing you can do about it. You can't wrap your house in bubble wrap," Lawson said.

A team is decontaminating the patient's apartment and car, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings said.

The patient, who has not been working for two days, was taking their own temperature twice a day. The worker informed the hospital of a fever and was isolated immediately upon their arrival, the hospital said in a statement.

"That healthcare worker is a heroic person who provided care to Mr Duncan," said Judge Clay Jenkins, chief executive of Dallas county.

Screening at JFK airport

News of the second patient in Dallas came as US authorities step up efforts to stop the spread of the virus.

New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport on Saturday began the screening of travellers from the three hardest hit West African countries.

Liberia is the country worst affected by the virus with 2,316 victims, followed by 930 in Sierra Leone, 778 in Guinea, eight in Nigeria and one in the United States, the World Health Organisation said on Friday. Some 4,033 people are known to have died in seven countries from the outbreak, it said.

Ebola is spread through contact with body fluids of an affected person or contamination from objects such as needles. People are not contagious before symptoms such as fever develop.

MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered thousands of troops to withdraw from the border with Ukraine ahead of diplomatic talks on bringing peace to the Western-backed, former Soviet republic.

The announcement by the Kremlin late Saturday appeared to be a positive signal prior to Putin's meeting with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and European leaders in Milan on Friday.

Accused by Ukraine and the West of stoking a bloody insurgency in eastern Ukraine, Russia is facing its most serious international isolation since the end of the Cold War. Several rounds of Western sanctions have shaken the economy, intensified capital flight and weakened the ruble.

"The head of state has tasked the defence minister with beginning to bring troops back to their permanent bases," the Kremlin said.

The order meant that 17,600 servicemen, who the Kremlin said had been participating in drills in the southern Rostov region on the border with Ukraine, would withdraw.

Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu received the order after reporting that "summertime training on military ranges of the Southern military district is over”, the Kremlin said.

The late Saturday meeting between Putin and Shoigu took place after the president chaired a meeting of his national security council at his Black Sea residence in Sochi, said the Kremlin, without providing further details.

Kiev reported that attacks by insurgents in the east of the country had subsided.

The rebels and the Ukrainian military in the eastern Donetsk region said for their part that they had agreed to a "no-shooting period", and the army announced "progress" in negotiations and preparations to create a buffer zone, as required under a ceasefire agreement.

Negotiating a compromise 

Russia denies meddling in Ukraine and says it has never deployed troops in the bloody conflict. But Moscow-based political analyst Alexei Makarkin suggested Putin's order to pull back troops from near the border was aimed at persuading the West to ease punitive measures.

"I think this is part of the compromises that Russia and Ukraine have reached," he said on Echo of Moscow radio.

Putin will meet Ukraine's Poroshenko for talks on the sidelines of an Asia-Europe Meeting in Milan on Friday.

The talks — which will also address the two countries' long-running gas dispute — will also include the prime ministers of Italy and Britain as well as German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

"I don't expect that these will be easy negotiations," Poroshenko said on Saturday.

Putin and Poroshenko last met in August in Belarus, after which Kiev announced a truce with the pro-Moscow separatists which has been repeatedly broken.

In addition, US Secretary of State John Kerry will hold talks with Russia's Sergei Lavrov in Paris on Tuesday, with Ukraine expected to be high on the agenda.

The six-month conflict in Ukraine has killed more than 3,300 people and sparked deep mistrust between Russia and its neighbours to the west.

Although tens of thousands of Russian troops have been stationed near the Ukrainian border, Moscow has always denied getting involved in the fighting on the side of local separatists.

However, human rights activists and relatives of Russian soldiers say military commanders have used ranges in the Rostov region to deploy troops to Ukraine.

Activists investigating numerous reports of regular Russian troops in Ukraine say that secret funerals for soldiers killed fighting there have taken place in recent weeks.

Russia's unacknowledged casualties may run into hundreds, according to some estimates.

Some opponents of Putin say the troop drawback means that the Kremlin is dropping its support for separatists.

"The project Novorossiya [New Russia] is over," former deputy prime minister turned opposition leader Boris Nemtsov said, referring to the loaded Tsarist-era name for what is now southern and eastern Ukraine.

Putin has used the term to refer to separatists battling to mould Ukraine's eastern regions into an independent statelet.

Nemtsov said the results of the Kremlin's six-month campaign were "disastrous".

Putin "wanted respect from the Ukrainian people", Nemtsov wrote on Facebook. Instead "he has got an enemy for many years to come".

Instead of winning international recognition, the Russian president "has become an outcast", he added.

Ukrainian analyst Taras Berezovets said the troop pullback meant Putin "had lost".

"Novorossiya has been left to its own devices," he said on Facebook.

MADRID — Countries across the world scrambled Saturday to stem a deadly Ebola outbreak that is getting worse "every day", as the condition of a Spanish nurse infected with the disease improved.

Travellers were screened and safety drills were carried out as a UN official just back from west Africa warned the disease, which has killed more than 4,000 people there, was outpacing efforts to fight it.

"The virus is far ahead of us and every day the situation gets worse," the head of the United Nations' emergency Ebola mission Anthony Banbury, told UN leaders after a tour of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, the nations worst hit by the epidemic.

"Collectively we must stop the spread to other countries and ensure that countries are prepared to rapidly detect, control and eliminate the virus if it is introduced."

A suspect case was ruled out in Brazil, where a Guinean man tested negative for Ebola, the health ministry said, but fears of contagion persisted in Europe.

Attention there focused on Madrid-based nurse Teresa Romero, 44, the first person diagnosed as having caught the disease outside Africa.

Spanish government officials were locked in a meeting on Saturday to coordinate their response to the crisis.

Romero's condition "improved in the night. She is conscious and talks from time to time when she is in a good mood", a hospital source told AFP.

Her condition "is serious but is improving", the source said.

Sixteen other people, mostly hospital staff, are under observation at the Carlos III hospital where Romero is being treated. The hospital said one of them was expecting final test results and could be discharged Saturday.

Doctors started treating Romero with the experimental Ebola treatment ZMapp late on Friday, the source added.

There is still no vaccine or widely available treatment for Ebola, but ZMapp, made in California, is one of several drugs that have been fast-tracked for development.

Romero is thought to have contracted the disease in late September in a Madrid hospital while caring for a Spanish missionary infected with Ebola in Africa who later died.

Hoaxes fuel Ebola fear 

The WHO said 4,033 people have died from Ebola as of October 8 out of a total of 8,399 registered cases in seven countries.

The sharp rise in deaths came as the UN said aid pledges to fight the outbreak have fallen well short of the $1 billion (800 million euros) needed.

The Spanish health ministry on Friday called on citizens "to continue their daily activities normally", after a series of hoaxes fuelled fears of wider contagion.

Police said on Saturday they had arrested a man in the southern Spanish city of Cadiz who they said had triggered a safety alert by pretending to have Ebola symptoms.

Officials at the Madrid hospital insisted there was no risk of infection from patients under observation, including Romero's husband, who were photographed leaning out of the windows of their hospital rooms.

Disease safety drills 

Britain held a nationwide exercise on Saturday to test its preparedness for an Ebola outbreak.

The eight-hour exercise featured actors pretending to be infected with Ebola plus medical staff treating them at undisclosed locations around the country.

Britain and the United States have boosted screening at major airports such as London Heathrow and JFK in New York.

In Latin America, Peru and Uruguay have announced similar airport measures, and Mexico and Nicaragua planned to tighten controls of migrants heading for US soil as an Ebola precaution.

The Canadian government advised its citizens to leave the west African countries most affected by Ebola. It took measures at its own borders to screen for potentially exposed travellers.

The United Nations and leaders of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone pleaded for greater help on the frontline of the disease in Africa.

UN Deputy Secretary General Jan Eliasson said only a quarter of "the one billion dollars sought" to combat the disease had been pledged. He appealed for doctors, nurses and other healthcare personnel to come forward.

The president of Guinea met Friday with International Monetary Fund head Christine Lagarde, who promised the organisation was "ready to do more if needed”.

Ebola concern spread to the sports world, with hosts Morocco calling for the January-February 2015 Africa Cup of Nations to be postponed, but the African Football Confederation said the schedule would not be changed.

HONG KONG — Hundreds of student activists camped overnight at major protest sites in Hong Kong as the democracy movement sought to re-gather momentum after the government called off talks on defusing unrest in the global financial hub.

Protests escalated late last month, after Beijing's decision on August 31 to impose conditions that effectively would have stopped pro-democracy candidates from contesting an election of the city's chief executive set for 2017.

The occupation movement suffered a noticeable dip in support over the past week, but strong crowds of over 10,000 on Friday for rallies in the former British colony.

By Saturday evening, thousands of protesters had returned to join the stalwarts, including parents and children in a more relaxed, festival-like atmosphere. Scores more brought tents, foam and ground sheets to form a kind of sprawling urban campground hemmed in by towering skyscrapers.

"Hong Kong is my home, we are fighting for Hong Kong's future, our future," said Lawrence Chan, a 23-year-old media studies student, who has taken part in the protests from the outset.

Hong Kong Chief Secretary Carrie Lam, who announced the postponement of talks with the students on Thursday because of their persistent calls to escalate action, said on Saturday that she hadn't given up hope of getting them on track again.

"It's most important that we must make clear the aim and nature of the meeting," she told reporters during a weekend trip to China, stressing that the dialogue should centre on Beijing's proposed framework for electoral reform in 2017.

Since taking to the streets around two weeks ago, the activists have blocked major roads around the government precinct in Admiralty, as well as the shopping districts of Central and Causeway Bay.

At Friday's rallies, protest leaders urged demonstrators to prepare for a protracted struggle instead of expanding the protests geographically. The protests have led to some resentment among the public because of traffic jams and loss of business. A few street fights have broken out that pitted the students against anti-occupy mobs and local gangsters or triads.

It was unclear how long Hong Kong authorities will tolerate the occupation or how the stand-off might be resolved. For now, however, police presence remains thin with authorities seemingly reluctant to risk fresh flare-ups.

Riot police had cracked down on protesters massing near the government headquarters on September 28, but the authorities have taken a softer line since. Police on Saturday again warned the protesters to leave.

Over one hundred colourful tents were sprinkled across the eight-lane Harcourt Road highway, among scores of red and blue portable marquees serving as supply and first aid stations; stocked with water, biscuits, noodles and cereals.

"We have tents here to show our determination that we're prepared for a long-term occupation," said Benny Tai, one of the leaders of the movement, who emerged bleary-eyed from a tent pitched outside the Hong Kong government's headquarters.

Scores of people ran a marathon in support of the students early on Saturday, and bridges remained festooned with umbrellas, protest art demanding full democracy and satirical images lampooning Leung Chun-ying, the city's Beijing-backed leader.

The atmosphere was perhaps at its most relaxed since the Occupation movement began. Students, families and snap-happy tourists strolled along Harcourt Road, folding yellow paper origami umbrellas and penning colourful democracy missives.

Those notes have filled an entire covered walkway outside government headquarters christened the "Lennon" wall as a tribute to John Lennon.

Other studied and typed in an open-air classroom at makeshift desks with power sockets set up on the highway, while others gathered to hear and join stump speeches on democracy.

The “Occupy Central” protests, referring to the Central business district, was an idea conceived over a year ago. It has presented Beijing with one of its biggest political challenges since it crushed pro-democracy demonstrations in and around Tiananmen Square in the Chinese capital in 1989.

In the first direct public comments by a senior Chinese leader in response to the protests, Premier Li Keqiang said Hong Kong authorities had the ability to protect the city's economic prosperity and social stability.

"Maintaining the long-term prosperity and stability of Hong Kong is not only in China's interests but is mostly in the interests of the people of Hong Kong," Li said in Germany on Friday.

Since Britain handed back control in 1997, China has ruled Hong Kong through a "one country, two systems" formula which allows wide-ranging autonomy and freedoms not enjoyed on the mainland, and specifies universal suffrage as an eventual goal.

The Communist Party leadership has dismissed the Hong Kong protests as illegal and has left Leung to find a solution.

The Hong Kong Federation of Students urged President Xi Jinping in an open letter to allow full democracy in Hong Kong in what would be a "pioneering achievement" for him. Beijing fears that calls for democracy in Hong Kong could spread to the mainland, with China already facing separatist unrest in Tibet and Xinjiang.

Leung has so far ignored the demand by the protesters for full democracy and their calls for him to quit. Earlier this week, some lawmakers demanded that anti-graft officers investigate a $6.4 million business payout to Leung.

ARNIA, India/MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan said on Thursday it was capable of responding "befittingly" to Indian border shelling, and warned against an escalation of the worst fighting between the nuclear-armed rivals in more than a decade.

Nine Pakistani and eight Indian civilians have been killed since both sides' security forces started heavy shelling more than a week ago along a 200km stretch of border in the disputed, mostly Muslim region of Kashmir.

More were injured on Thursday. Both countries accused each other of starting the latest hostilities that have hit heavily populated civilian areas. India says it will not talk to Pakistan or stop firing until its neighbour backs down first.

"We do not want the situation on the borders of two nuclear neighbours to escalate into confrontation," the Pakistan ministry of defence said in a statement. "India must demonstrate caution and behave with responsibility."

Since they split 67 years ago, the nations have fought each other in three wars, two over Kashmir. There has not been a full-blown war since they both tested nuclear weapons in 1998.

Exchanges of sporadic fire are common along the de facto border dividing the region, despite a ceasefire pact signed in 2003. But the extent and intensity of the latest violence and the number of civilian deaths is unusual.

India earlier warned Pakistan it would pay an "unaffordable price" if it persisted with shelling and machine-gun fire across a heavily populated border area in the lowlands of Kashmir.

Both claim all of Kashmir's Himalayan mountains and fertile valleys. Their shared border is among the most heavily militarised in the world and travel between the two nations is kept to a minimum.

India's Defence Minister Arun Jaitley called Pakistan an "aggressor" and accused it of making unprovoked attacks on Indian-controlled Kashmir. He threatened heavy retaliation.

"If Pakistan persists with this adventurism then our forces will continue to fight," Jaitley told a news conference in New Delhi. "The cost of this adventurism will be unaffordable." He did not give more details.

Pakistan's Major General Khan Tahir Javed Khan, responsible for the section of the border where the violence has broken out, said that India had fired 20,000 shells so far this year, compared to just 200 in 2012.

He also said he had been trying to meet his Indian counterpart since the exchanges of fire began, but they would not return his calls.

Since late on Wednesday, 13 people including three Indian border security guards were injured in firing from Pakistan, a senior Indian police official in Kashmir said.

This is the first major fighting with Pakistan that India's nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi has dealt with since taking office in May. It comes after weeks of destabilising anti-government protests in Pakistan and just a few days ahead of Indian state elections, for which Modi has been campaigning.

"I don't need to speak, our guns will do it. We have responded with courage to ceasefire violations," Modi said at a campaign rally on Thursday, replying to opposition criticism that he had not been vocal during the crisis.

One senior Indian army officer in Kashmir said the violence suited both sides, with Pakistan's army taking a more assertive role in politics and India's Modi, ahead of state polls, fulfilling his promise of a more muscular foreign policy.

The officer declined to be named because he was not authorised to speak to the media.

"People know my intentions very well. I don't have to spell it out," said Modi. "We have displayed our strength very well."

Villagers flee

Jaitley appeared to rule out initiating talks to end heavy mortar fire falling on border posts and villages that have flourished on both sides in recent years thanks to the long lull in fighting.

"How can we have talks when firing is on?" he said.

Since the fighting broke out four days ago there has only been one telephone call between the two militaries. The usual way to stop clashes is to call a meeting of senior officials at the border, but no such meeting has been held this time.

There was intermittent fire on Thursday.

India has for years accused Muslim Pakistan of backing separatist Muslim rebels in India's part of Kashmir. Pakistan denies arming the militants saying it only gives them diplomatic support in the face of human rights abuses by Indian forces.

Almost 20,000 Indian civilians have fled their homes in the lowlands around India's Jammu region to escape the fighting, taking refuge in schools and relief camps.

"When will this stop?" said Ram Lal, 65, in Arnia, the village worst affected by shelling on the Indian side. Lal's wife had a bandaged arm after sustaining a small injury when two shells landed early on Thursday.

"We should have it out once and for all. What's the use of dying each day like this? Have a full-scale war and be done with it," Lal said, surveying walls pock-marked by shrapnel on his two-storey house. A nearby car had its windows shattered.

On the Pakistan side of the border, villagers moved among piles of debris from walls and roofs of their homes destroyed by mortar shells.

"The way Indian troops are indiscriminately shelling the civilian populations on our side, I am afraid there will be many more casualties," said Chaudhry Latif Akbar, a local Pakistani official in Kashmir.

India held a meeting on Wednesday of its top security officials to discuss how to handle the conflict. Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has called a similar meeting on Friday.

HONG KONG — Hong Kong called off talks with protesting students on Thursday, dealing a heavy blow to attempts to defuse a political crisis that has seen tens of thousands take to the streets to demand free elections and calling for leader Leung Chun-ying to resign.

The government's decision came as democratic lawmakers demanded anti-graft officers to investigate a $6.4 million business payout to Leung while in office, as political fallout grows from the mass protests in the Chinese-controlled city.

It was not immediately clear what the students' next move would be — whether to ramp up the street protests or make plans to fight another day. They were to hold a news conference later in the evening.

"Students' call for an expansion of an uncooperative movement has shaken the trust of the basis of our talks and it will be impossible to have a constructive dialogue," Chief Secretary Carrie Lam said on the eve of the planned dialogue.

She blamed the pull-out on students' unswerving demands for universal suffrage, which she said was not in accordance with the Asian financial centre's mini-constitution, the Basic Law, and what she described as their illegal occupation of parts of the city.

Hours earlier, Hong Kong's justice department handed to prosecutors the investigation of the business payout to Leung by an Australian engineering company.

Part of the brief includes "considering and deciding whether prosecution action is warranted" against Leung, who has refused to stand down in recent weeks over protesters' calls for Beijing to keep its promise of universal suffrage.

The department said its decision was aimed at avoiding "any possible perception of bias, partiality or improper influence".

The campaign against the former property surveyor and son of a policeman has extended from the streets to the city's legislative chambers where democrats have threatened to veto major decisions and potentially cause policy paralysis.

Leung denies wrongdoing

Australia's Fairfax Media reported this week that engineering firm UGL Ltd. paid Leung a total of $6.4 million in 2012 and 2013 in relation to its acquisition of DTZ Holdings, a property consultant that employed Leung as its Asia Pacific director before he took office in July 2012.

Leung's office denied any wrongdoing. DTZ was not immediately available to comment, while UGL said it was under no obligation to disclose the agreement.

As part of the contract Leung signed with UGL in December 2011, he agreed to promote the "UGL Group and the DTZ Group as UGL may reasonably require, including but not limited to acting as a referee and adviser from time to time", according to a copy seen by Reuters.

Leung's office said in a statement that such assistance would only be provided in the event that he failed to be elected Hong Kong leader, and providing that such assistance would not create any conflict of interest.

Leung stepped down from DTZ on December 4, 2011, two days after signing the deal with UGL, which acquired the property consultancy. Leung was sworn in as Hong Kong chief executive in July 2012.

"After CY Leung became CE [chief executive], he should have terminated the contract, because as a CE, it was impossible for him to continue accepting huge payment to help promote UGL or DTZ," Democratic Party chief executive Lam Cheuk-ting said in a letter to the Independent Commission Against Corruption seen by Reuters.

"There's reason to believe that CY Leung was eyeing the unpaid remuneration by UGL so that he continued with the agreement. Even worse, since CY Leung honoured the agreement and accepted the payment, how could he not declare to the Executive Council?" said Lam, who is a former anti-graft agency official.

The ICAC said it did not comment on individual cases.

UGL said the agreement was simply a non-compete arrangement to ensure that Leung would not move to a competitor, set up or promote any business in competition with DTZ, or poach any people from DTZ.

Emily Lau, head of the Democratic Party, told Reuters it would try to form a select committee to investigate and possibly impeach Leung, although the formation of such a group would have to be backed by the entire 70-seat legislature and there was no guarantee that would happen, given the pro-Beijing majority.

DALLAS —  A Liberian man who was the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States died in a hospital isolation ward on Wednesday and the government ordered extra screenings at five major airports as part of efforts to stop the virus spreading outside of West Africa.

Thomas Eric Duncan, who arrived in the United States in late September from Liberia, had been in critical condition and on a ventilator, the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas giving him an experimental medication to try to keep him alive.

"It is with profound sadness and heartfelt disappointment that we must inform you of the death of Thomas Eric Duncan this morning at 7:51am," hospital spokesman Wendell Watson said in an e-mailed statement.

About 48 people who had direct or indirect contact with Duncan since he arrived on September 20 are being monitored, but none have yet shown any symptoms, according to health officials.

Duncan's case has raised questions about the effectiveness of airport screening and hospital preparedness. The administration of President Barack Obama has been under pressure from lawmakers to enhance screening and even ban flights.

The White House said on Wednesday that extra screening for fever of arriving passengers from West Africa will be carried out at five US airports — New York's John F. Kennedy, Newark Liberty, Washington Dulles, Chicago O'Hare and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta.

Duncan became ill after arriving in Dallas to visit family.

He went to the Dallas hospital on September 25, but was initially sent home with antibiotics. His condition worsened, he returned September 28 by ambulance and was diagnosed with Ebola.

"I am in tears. All of us are in tears," Wilfred Smallwood, Duncan's half brother, said from his home in Phoenix, Arizona, after the announcement of Duncan's death.

Duncan's fiancée, Louise Troh, who is being quarantined, wrote in a statement: "His suffering is over. My family is in deep sadness and grief, but we leave him the hands of God."

The hospital has not released details on how it will handle Duncan's body but said it will follow protocols from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC and other US health officials say the chances of Ebola spreading in the United States are low.

The current Ebola outbreak, the worst on record, began in March and on Wednesday, the World Health Organisation updated its toll of the disease. WHO said Ebola has killed 3,879 people out of 8,033 cases by the end of October 5, with no evidence that the epidemic was being brought under control in West Africa.

Ebola can take as long as three weeks before its victims show symptoms, at which point the disease becomes contagious. Ebola, which can cause fever, vomiting and diarrhea, spreads through contact with body fluids such as blood or saliva.

While several American patients have been flown to the United States from West Africa for treatment, Duncan was the first person to start showing symptoms on US soil.

A nurse in Spain who treated a priest who worked in West Africa is also infected.

US Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday appealed to other governments to do more to help contain the spread of Ebola, urged countries not to shut their borders and told airlines to keep flying to West Africa.

"More countries can and must step up," Kerry said.

Shares of biotech companies linked to the development of treatments against Ebola reacted sharply on Wednesday to Duncan's death. Shares in Chimerix, whose experimental Ebola drug was being administered to Duncan, tumbled 9.5 per cent to $30.08. US-traded shares of Tekmira Pharmaceuticals Corp., whose treatment has been used in other Ebola patients, sharply pared losses, briefly turning positive after having fallen as much as 8.8 per cent earlier.

Questions have been raised on what impact the hospital's decision to discharge Duncan had on his treatment. In animal tests of experimental Ebola drugs, the chance of survival drops the longer it takes to begin treatment.

"You can have the best drug in the world and there is a point where that drug just won't work," said virologist Thomas Geisbert of the University of Texas Medical Branch, who has done pioneering work on Ebola treatments.

"There is a point where the virus has done so much damage you can't recover from it," Geisbert said.

Duncan was able to fly to the United States from Liberia's capital Monrovia because he did not have a fever when screened at the airport and filled out a questionnaire saying he had not been in contact with anyone infected with Ebola. Liberian officials have said that Duncan lied on the questionnaire and had been in contact with a pregnant woman who later died of the disease.

STOCKHOLM — Two Americans and a German scientist won the Nobel Prize in chemistry on Wednesday for finding ways to make microscopes more powerful than previously thought possible, allowing scientists to see how diseases develop inside the tiniest cells.

Working independently of each other, US researchers Eric Betzig and William Moerner, and Stefan Hell of Germany shattered previous limits on the resolution of optical microscopes by using glowing molecules to peer inside the components of life.

Their breakthroughs, starting in the 1990s, have enabled scientists to study diseases such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and Huntington's at a molecular level, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said.

"Due to their achievements, the optical microscope can now peer into the nanoworld," the academy said, giving the 8 million-kronor ($1.1 million) award jointly to the three for "the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy".

Betzig, 54, works at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Ashburn, Virginia. Hell, 51, is director of the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Goettingen, Germany, and also works at the German Cancer Research Centre in Heidelberg. Moerner, 61, is a professor at Stanford University in California.

"I was totally surprised, I couldn't believe it," said Hell, who was born in Romania. "Fortunately, I remembered the voice of Nordmark and I realised it was real," he added, referring to Staffan Nordmark, the academy's permanent secretary.

The Nobel judges didn't immediately reach Moerner, who was at a conference in Brazil. The American found out about the prize from his wife after she was told by The Associated Press.

"I'm incredibly excited and happy to be included with Eric Betzig and Stefan Hell," Moerner told the AP.

Betzig said he started to tremble when he saw an incoming call from Sweden, receiving the news with a mix of happiness and fear.

"Because I don't want my life to change. I really like my life and I'm busy enough already," he told journalists in Munich, where he was giving a lecture.

For a long time optical microscopes were limited by the wavelength of light and other factors, so scientists believed they could never yield a resolution better than 0.2 micrometres.

But the three scientists were able to break that limit by using molecules that glow on command. The advance took optical microscopy into a new dimension that made it possible to study the interplay between molecules inside cells, including the aggregation of disease-related proteins, the academy said.

The technology offers advantages over an electron microscope, which offers slightly better resolution but can't be used to examine cells that are alive.

"You really need to be able to look at living cells because life is animate — it's what defines life," Betzig said.

Hell used these methods to study nerve cells to get a better understanding of brain synapses; Moerner studied proteins related to Huntington's disease; and Betzig tracked cell division inside embryos, the academy said.

Hell said he was convinced that as a result of the discovery scientists will be able to find out more quickly what happens in a cell when a disease emerges.

"Any disease, in the end, can be boiled down to a malfunctioning of the cell," he said. "And in order to understand what a disease actually means, you have to understand the cell and you have to understand the malfunction."

Moerner said scientists can now tell whether individual molecules are different or the same.

"It's very much like asking whether they all march to the same drummer or not," Moerner told the AP. "When you can watch one by one, then we are able to observe exactly when it changes from one state to another."

The technology lets scientists see "way below" the traditional limit for resolving detail with light microscopes, said Catherine Lewis, director of the cell biology and biophysics division at the National Institute of General Medical Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland.

"You can observe the behaviour of individual molecules in living cells in real time. You can see... molecules moving around inside the cell. You can see them interacting with each other," she said.

That gives a foundation for research into controlling those interactions in a way that may treat or diagnose disease, she said.

Nobel committee member Claes Gustafsson called the laureates' work "a revolution, because as recently as 15 years ago, it was believed to be theoretically impossible to break this barrier".

This year's Nobel awards began Monday with US-British scientist John O'Keefe splitting the medicine award with Norwegian couple May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser for brain cell research that could pave the way for a better understanding of diseases like Alzheimer's.

On Tuesday, Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano of Japan and US scientist Shuji Nakamura won physics award for the invention of blue light-emitting diodes — a breakthrough that spurred the development of LED technology, which can be used to light up homes, offices and the screens of mobile phones, computers and TVs.

The Nobel Prize in literature will be announced Thursday, followed by the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday and the economics prize on Monday.

The prizes are always handed out on December 10, the date that prize founder Alfred Nobel died in 1896.