World

WASHINGTON — Air travelers with smartphones or other electronic devices must be able to turn them on to take them aboard under new security measures, US authorities said Sunday.

US-bound travelers from Europe and the Middle East have faced tighter airport security in recent days over fears that militants linked to Al Qaeda are developing new explosives that could be slipped onto planes undetected.

The checks focused on electronic items such as laptops and smartphones, amid fears that extremists such as Al Qaeda could use them as their latest tactic in a long campaign of attacks involving jets.

“During the security examination, officers may also ask that owners power up some devices, including cellphones,” the US Transportation Security Administration said in a statement, noting that all electronic devices are screened by security officers.

“Powerless devices will not be permitted onboard the aircraft. The traveler may also undergo additional screening.”

The agency noted that it could “adjust” security measures further to provide maximum security to travelers.

A TSA official declined to confirm further details about the enhanced screenings in the United States and on US-bound flights.

French and British authorities have urged passengers to allow extra time to get past the additional measures, which were not specified but were believed to focus on footwear and electronic items.

The Department of Homeland Security, of which the TSA is part, is also asking that airlines and airport authorities in Europe and elsewhere examine the shoes of passengers headed for the United States, and increase random screenings of travelers, ABC News reported.

It cited one source as saying the unspecified threat was “different and more disturbing than past aviation plots”.

“We felt that it was important to crank it up some at the last point-of-departure airports,” DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson told NBC television’s “Meet the Press”. 

“We know that there remains a terrorist threat to the United States. And aviation security is a large part of that,” he added.

Concern over 

returning fighters 

On Wednesday, US officials had publicly demanded enhanced security for airports in Europe and the Middle East with direct US flights to the United States.

They did not confirm whether they had intelligence about a specific plot, but their actions suggested alarm.

The request was “based on reAl time intelligence”, according to a Homeland Security Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Western intelligence services say that hundreds of militants travelling from Europe to fight in the Middle East could pose a security risk on their return. Most European passport-holders do not need a visa to travel to the United States.

Of particular concern is Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the Yemen-based branch of the terror network founded by the late Osama bin Laden.

US and other intelligence services say AQAP is passing on sophisticated bombmaking expertise to militants fighting in Syria for use against Western targets — most prominently, passenger aircraft.

AQAP “is always the group we think about when we talk about undetectable bombs”, a US intelligence official told AFP on Friday.

France announced it was boosting passenger screening at its airports, responding to a request from Washington.

The French move, due to come into force Monday and Tuesday, follows similar action already implemented by Britain, and notably impacts Europe’s two busiest hubs, Heathrow and Charles de Gaulle.

Passengers in Britain have long faced tight security measures at airports following high-profile threats, including a failed attempt by British “shoe bomber” Richard Reid to blow up a US-bound flight in 2001.

Experts say that if anyone could be behind the threat of a new generation of bombs, it was Ibrahim Al Asiri, a 32-year-old Saudi believed to be hiding out with AQAP in Yemen’s restive southern provinces.

A previous high-profile attempt by AQAP to blow up a US-bound plane failed on December 25, 2009, when Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to detonate explosives hidden in his underwear.

The Detroit “underwear bomber” is now serving a life sentence in the United States.

DONETSK, Ukraine — Retreating pro-Russian insurgents dug in on Monday in Ukraine’s sprawling industrial hub of Donetsk after government forces scored a string of morale-boosting victories in the bloody battle for the future of the ex-Soviet state.

The eastern home of one million mostly Russian speakers has been flooded with convoys carrying hundreds of fighters and scores of anti-aircraft guns from five smaller surrounding cities where Ukrainian flags were flying for the first time in three months.

The rebels erected checkpoints along the main roads leading into Donetsk while the centre of the riverbank city itself saw several restaurants and shops shutter their doors.

And two rail bridges were blown up just north and east of the city — adding to another link damaged on Friday as part of a seeming campaign to help barricade Donetsk. Pictures showed a cargo train balancing perilously over a highway and one of the broken spans sagging under its weight.

The separatists’ “tactical retreat” began on Saturday with the fall of their symbolic bastion Slavyansk and continued until government forces had reached the very gates of the region’s main metropolis.

Ukrainian National Security and Defence Council deputy head Mykhailo Koval said on Monday that soldiers now intended to complete a “full blockade” of Donetsk and the neighbouring stronghold of Lugansk — both capitals of their own “People’s Republics”.

Koval said their containment would be followed by “corresponding measures that will force the separatists, the bandits to lay down their arms”.

His carefully-worded comments underscored the dilemma facing Western-backed President Petro Poroshenko as he seeks to fulful his May 25 election promise to quickly end Ukraine’s worst crisis since independence in 1991.

The conflict has claimed the lives of nearly 500 people and displaced tens of thousands across an economically-vital region that has long viewed the more nationalistic west of Ukraine and Kiev with a mixture of hostility and mistrust.

A shelling campaign of either Donetsk or Lugansk of the type that pulverised parts of Slavyansk would seem unimaginable because of both the inevitable toll and the high probability of an already-fuming Kremlin responding by sending in its troops.

It would also risk throwing the strategic nation of some 45 million into an all-out civil war on the European Union’s eastern frontier that would pit Russia against Western powers in a stand-off of a scale not even witnessed during the Cold War.

But the rebels have shown few signs of being ready to either sue for peace or engage Kiev in contacts that could lead to a political settlement now being promoted urgently by Germany and France.

Separatist leader Denis Pushilin took to Twitter from an undisclosed location on Monday to paint a picture of insurgents on the rebound.

He claimed that his men had killed “tens” of soldiers from the Ukrainian irregular forces’ Azov battalion in the eastern coal mining region of Saur-Mogila.

“After massacring the fascists at Saur-Mogila, I understood the words of one of my colleagues: We abandoned Slavyansk to take Kiev,” Pushilin declared.

The Ukrainian military made no mention of any battles being waged around Saur-Mogila in its daily overview of the preceding night’s violence.

SLAVYANSK, Ukraine — Resurgent Ukrainian forces on Sunday pursued retreating pro-Russian rebels after seizing their symbolic bastion in a morale-boosting win that appeared to dim hopes for a ceasefire in the bloody separatist insurgency.

Western-backed President Petro Poroshenko called the moment when his troops hoisted the Ukrainian flag over the militias’ seat of power in Slavyansk “a turning point” in a campaign that has killed nearly 500 people and inflamed East-West ties.

The rebels admitted suffering heavy losses while abandoning the strategic city nearly three months to the day after its capture marked the onset of a new and even more bloody chapter in Ukraine’s worst crisis since independence in 1991.

Most analysts think Poroshenko desperately needed a battlefield success one month into his presidency to secure the trust of Ukrainians frustrated by their underfunded army’s inability to stand up to what they see as Russian aggression.

But Poroshenko cautioned that insurgents were regrouping around the million-strong eastern industrial hub of Donetsk and vowed to flush out “terrorists who are entrenching themselves in large cities”.

Ukrainian forces on Sunday reported recapturing four small cities straddling the road between Slavyansk and Donetsk.

“Yes, we are losing a lot, but I am sure that our defence of Donetsk will mark a turning point,” Donetsk rebel leader Denis Pushilin confirmed in a tweet. “We will win”.

But Pushilin and his allies only managed to bring out 2,000 supporters on Sunday for what was meant to be a massive rally in central Donetsk designed to display the intensity of the Russian-speaking region’s independence drive.

And many in Slavyansk seemed relieved to see the gunmen finally leave their shelled-out city’s streets.

“We felt like hostages,” a retired teacher named Anna Gribnikova said a few steps away from a line of several hundred patiently waiting for their two loaves of bread being hand out per person by Ukrainian relief staff.

“Those guys are still dreaming of the Soviet Union,” Gribnikova lamented. “They do not seem to understand that this is the 21st century.”

Russia pushes truce 

The surge of optimism in Kiev has only added to already strong pressure on Poroshenko not to agree to bow to pressure from his Western allies and sign another truce with the insurgents.

Saturday’s triumph in Slavyansk “justifies the position of those who favour a stepped-up military campaign over endless negotiations that turn this into a frozen conflict,” said Volodymyr Gorbach of the Institute of Euro-Atlantic Cooperation.

Poroshenko tore up a 10-day ceasefire last Monday because of unceasing rebel attacks that killed more than 20 soldiers and — according to both Washington and Kiev — allowed the separatists to stock up on new supplies of heavy Russian arms.

Uneasy EU leaders are hoping that a new truce and a Kremlin promise not to meddle can take pressure off the bloc to adopt sweeping sanctions that could damage their own strong energy and financial ties with Russia.

Poroshenko hesitantly invited the separatists and a Russian envoy to attend European-brokered discussions about a new ceasefire on Saturday.

The call had gone unanswered by Moscow and the rebel command. But Russia appeared ready to talk again after the fall of Slavyansk.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stressed to his French and German counterparts the importance of “reaching an agreement between Kiev and the southeast of Ukraine on an unconditional and lasting ceasefire”.

Lavrov specifically cited the “rapid escalation of the situation that comes amid an intensified military operation by the Ukrainian authorities”.

Rebels regroup 

The withdrawal from Slavyansk was led by senior militia commander Igor Strelkov — alleged by Kiev to be a colonel in Russia’s GRU military intelligence.

Kiev believes this supports Western claims that Moscow is covertly backing the uprising to both punish the new leaders for the February ouster of a Kremlin-backed administration and keep control over Ukrainian regions with important military production plants.

Strelkov on Saturday lashed out at Vladimir Putin on Twitter for seemingly going back on his promise to use “all available means” to protect his compatriots in Ukraine — a neighbour the Kremlin chief referred to as “New Russia”.

But the 43-year-old militia commander later told Moscow television that he was busy plotting a counter-offensive that he himself would lead.

“I intend to issue an order [on Monday] creating a central military council that will include all the major field commanders,” Strelkov told the LifeNews channel.

“This agency will help coordinate how we intend to defend the Donetsk People’s Republic and, possibly, a part of the Lugansk People’s Republic,” he said in reference to the other separatist region of eastern Ukraine.

BANNU, Pakistan — Hundreds of Taliban fighters rushed to disguise themselves with new haircuts in the weeks before a Pakistani army assault, it has emerged, as refugees revealed details of life under the militants — and their taste for imported luxuries.

Azam Khan was one of the top barbers in Miranshah — the main town of North Waziristan — until he, like nearly half-a-million others, fled the long-awaited offensive unleashed by the Pakistan military on the tribal area in June.

He told AFP his business boomed in the month leading up to the army assault as the militants sought to shed their distinctive long-haired, bearded look.

“I have trimmed the hair and beards of more than 700 local and Uzbek militants ahead of the security forces’ operation,” he said while cutting hair in a shop in Bannu, the town where most civilians fled.

For years he cut Taliban commanders’ hair to match the flowing locks of former Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) leader Hakimullah Mehsud, killed by a US drone last November, but in May a change in style was called for.

“The same leaders came asking for trimming their beards and hair very short, saying that they were going to the Gulf and wanted to avoid problems at Pakistani airports,” Khan said.

Even Uzbeks and Tajiks with little knowledge of the local language came to him, he said.

“Knowing little Pashto, they used to utter four words: ‘mulgari [friend], machine, zero, Islamabad’,” said Khan — asking him to shave their beards to nothing so they could go to Islamabad.

French perfume 

The Pakistani military launched the offensive against militants in North Waziristan tribal area on June 15, vowing to wipe out the strongholds they have used to wreak countless deadly terror attacks across the nuclear-armed state.

The rugged, mountainous area on the Afghan border has been a hideout for years for Islamist militants of all stripes — including Al Qaeda and the homegrown TTP as well as foreign fighters including Uzbeks and Uighurs.

For years people from North Waziristan remained tight-lipped about life in a Taliban fiefdom, scared of being kidnapped or even beheaded if they shared information about the militants.

But as the exodus of people has grown, some have found the confidence to tell their stories.

While the militants bombed and maimed thousands in their fight to install an austere Sharia regime in Pakistan and publicly professed contempt for the West, in North Waziristan they indulged themselves with fancy imported goods.

Hikmatullah Khan, a shopkeeper in Miranshah, said that at the same time as commanders were insisting he pay 300 rupees ($3) a month “tax”, their fighters were stocking up on grooming products.

“They were very keen to buy foreign-branded shampoos, soaps and perfumed sprays,” Khan told AFP.

“They had a lot of eagerness for French and Turkish perfumes, body sprays and soaps.”

Muhammad Zarif, a wholesale merchant in Datta Khel, near Miranshah, said fighters would buy large quantities of British detergent and American cooking oil, much of it smuggled from Dubai.

Militants gone? 

Pakistan’s allies, particularly the United States, have long called for an operation to flush out groups like the Haqqani network, which use the area to target NATO troops in neighbouring Afghanistan and are thought to have links to Pakistani intelligence services.

The Pakistani military has said it will target militants “of all hue and colour” but the scant resistance troops have encountered has led many to believe the insurgents fled before the offensive, limiting its effectiveness.

The army says the operation has killed nearly 400 militants and will rid North Waziristan of their bases, denying them the space to plan attacks and allowing investment to come to one of Pakistan’s poorest areas.

But it remains to be seen what the long-term impact of the offensive will be. Local intelligence and militant sources told AFP that up to 80 per cent of fighters fled after rumours of an army assault emerged in early May, most over the porous border into Afghanistan.

These sources estimate the present number of militants as around 2,000, down from around 10,000 before the operation. The figures are uncertain and difficult to confirm.

The Pakistani army has asked Afghanistan to crack down on TTP refuges across the border and this week top brass from both sides met in Islamabad to discuss the issue.

“It is clear that militants were aware that the offensive was coming before it started. Lots of them fled,” a Western diplomat told AFP.

“The big question is: after the offensive, will Pakistan allow the Haqqanis and others to come back?”

MOMBASA, Kenya — Gunmen killed at least 29 people in two coastal areas of Kenya in raids the deputy president indicated on Sunday were the work of political rivals, despite Somali Islamists Al Shabab claiming responsibility.

The raids will hammer Kenya’s beleaguered tourist industry after a wave of militant attacks and will deepen public frustrations about poor security, a day before a big opposition rally in the capital.

The Interior Ministry said one of the Saturday night attacks killed nine in the trading town of Hindi in Lamu County, close to where 65 people were killed by gunmen last month in Mpeketoni.

Another was further south in the Gamba area, where 20 died.

“They went around shooting at people and villages indiscriminately,” said Abdallah Shahasi, a senior official for the Hindi area, which lies near the old trading port of Lamu.

Militant raids on the coast have fanned an already tense political atmosphere in Kenya, which has sent troops to join African Union soldiers battling Al Shabab in neighbouring Somalia.

Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, spokesman for the military operations of Al Shabab, told Reuters in Mogadishu the group was behind both attacks.

The group, which attacked Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi last year killing 67 people, had also said it was responsible for the Mpeketoni attacks.

But, just as President Uhuru Kenyatta dismissed Al Shabab’s claim last month and pointed the finger at local politicians over Mpeketoni, his deputy on Sunday suggested political rivals were again to blame.

“We want to tell our friends they cannot blackmail us using criminal elements in our country,” Deputy President William Ruto said on a visit to the Lamu area. He offered no names.

“If you are unable to wait for the next general election, you are in a hurry, you want to make the country ungovernable so you can get into office through the backdoor, that will not happen in Kenya,” he said. “You can forget about it.”

The comments are likely to stoke an already fierce row with the opposition, which has denied any role.

Police Deputy Inspector General Grace Kaindi also cast doubt on Al Shabab’s role, saying a blackboard ripped from a school, scrawled with slogans and placed at a junction near Hindi could implicate the separatist Mombasa Republic Movement (MRC).

“At first we thought it was Al Shabab, but now it is turning out that it is MRC as they have put it there clearly,” she told a news conference.

She said other scribbled phrases seemed to back opposition leader Raila Odinga.

Slogans included “MRC — You are sleeping”, “Muslims your land is being grabbed”, “Raila is adequate” and “Uhuru down”.

The MRC swiftly denied any role.

“The government should stop using us as a scapegoat,” Randu Nzai Ruwa, the MRC Secretary General, told Reuters by telephone.

Veteran opposition leader Odinga, defeated by Kenyatta in last year’s election, has held rallies over the past month criticising the government over frequent militant attacks.

He planned to hold a major rally on Monday in Nairobi.

Police said attackers hit government offices and burnt a church in Hindi during the latest raids.

Lamu County police chief Ephantus Kariuki told Reuters victims were shot in the head with their hands bound and said the attack could have been prompted by land disputes between rival ethnic groups on the coast.

Al Shabab claimed it had broken into the police station at Gamba during the raid on Saturday and freed suspects from detention cells.

A police source corroborated that account, saying the numbers for those released was still being checked. Gamba lies in Tana River County, which neighbours Lamu County.

“They killed some of our colleagues and freed Muslim detainees,” the source told Reuters. “Some of those freed were linked to the Mpeketoni attacks two weeks ago.”

In a separate criminal incident in the port city of Mombasa, a Russian woman tourist who was with two companions was killed by a gang, which robbed them, police said.

PARIS — France on Friday said it is boosting passenger screening at its airports, responding to a request from Washington for extra security for US-bound flights over fears Islamist radicals could be plotting new attacks using hard-to-detect bombs.

The French move, to come into force next Monday and Tuesday, follows similar action already implemented by Britain, and notably impacts Europe’s two busiest hubs, Heathrow and Charles de Gaulle.

Combined, an average 2.5 million passengers a day pass through the two airports.

French and British authorities urged passengers to allow extra time to get past the additional measures, which were not specified but were believed to focus on footwear and electronic items such as mobile phones and computers.

US officials on Wednesday publicly demanded enhanced security for airports in Europe and the Middle East which have direct US flights. They did not say whether they had intelligence about a specific plot, but their actions suggested alarm.

The request was “based on real-time intelligence”, according to a US Homeland Security Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

On Thursday, the US embassy in Uganda warned of a possible plot targeting Entebbe airport, that serves the capital Kampala, for later that day. But the danger period elapsed without incident.

Danger posed by 

Al Qaeda group 

Western intelligence services are concerned that hundreds of Islamist radicals travelling from Europe to fight in the Middle East could pose a security risk on their return. Most European passport-holders do not need a visa to travel to the United States.

One of the radical organisations, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), is of particular concern.

US and other intelligence services believe AQAP is passing on sophisticated bombmaking expertise to militants fighting in Syria for use against Western targets — most prominently, passenger aircraft.

“We have long-standing concern about terrorist groups trying to get undetected material onto planes,” a US intelligence official told AFP.

AQAP “is always the group we think about when we talk about undetectable bombs” the official added.,

Brooke Rogers, of the War Studies Department at King’s College London, said that for extremist groups, bringing down an aircraft was the “ultimate prize. If the attackers succeed, it will be spectacular for them”.

And “unfortunately in aviation, it doesn’t take a big amount [of explosives] to make a boom”, said US air security expert Jeff Price.

Era of airport screening 

France’s aviation authorities said in a statement that its new security measures “will be carried out in a way to limit as much as possible inconvenience to passengers. However delays are possible.”

The stepped-up screening is taking place at Charles de Gaulle Airport — which has 47 US-bound flights a day at this time of the year — and other airports in mainland France, as well as in far-flung French territories such as Tahiti.

A spokesman for the DGAC civil aviation authority told AFP that “we cannot divulge the added measures” being taken.

However, Belgian Interior Minister Joelle Milquet, whose country is also stepping up airport security, told RTL-TVI on Thursday the measures would focus on electronic equipment such as tablets, computers and mobile phones “to make sure there are no explosives”.

Britain downplayed the extra delays passengers would face, with Prime Minister David Cameron saying: “The safety of the travelling public must come first — we mustn’t take any risks.”

His office said there was an “evolving threat” but declined to provide further details.

Although it implemented the additional security from Thursday, Britain was keeping its international terror threat level unchanged at substantial, the third highest grade out of five, where it has been since July 2011.

Passengers in Britain have long faced tight security measures at airports following high-profile threats, including a failed attempt by British “shoe bomber” Richard Reid to blow up a US-bound flight in 2001.

Experts say that if anyone could be behind the threat of a new generation of bombs, it was Ibrahim Al Asiri, a 32-year-old Saudi believed to be hiding out with AQAP in Yemen’s restive southern provinces.

The terror alert in Uganda further rattled nerves, but it was not immediately clear if it was linked to the airport security boost.

Airport security across the world was greatly reinforced in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.

BEIJING — A therapist pours alcohol over a patient and sets him alight — for some in China, playing with fire is a treatment for illness.

So-called “fire therapy”, which proponents claim can cure stress, indigestion, infertility and even cancer, has been used for hundreds of years and recently garnered a blaze of attention in Chinese media.

There is no orthodox medical evidence that it is effective, a fact that matters little to one of China’s most prominent fire therapists.

“Fire therapy is the fourth revolution in human history... it surpasses both Chinese and Western medicine,” said Zhang Fenghao, who trains students at a dingy apartment in Beijing and charges around 300 yuan ($48) per hour for treatment.

He applied a herbal paste to a patient’s back, covered it with a towel and poured on water and a 95 per cent rubbing alcohol, adding proudly: “Using this method, patients can avoid operations.”

The man, Qi Lijun, lay on his front placidly as Zhang flicked a cigarette lighter, igniting a miniature inferno of orange and blue flames dancing above his spine.

“It feels warm, not painful, just warm,” said the 47-year-old, who recently suffered a brain haemorrhage that affected his memory and mobility. “I think it’s effective.”

Many in China cannot afford expensive treatment for chronic ailments and state health insurance is limited, sparking demand for cheaper alternative therapies.

Zhao Jing, 49, who suffers from chronic back pain, had at first been shocked by the idea of the treatment, but added: “After learning everything I don’t have fears any more.”

The practice is based on Chinese folk beliefs that health depends on maintaining a balance of “hot” and “cold” elements within the body.

“We start a fire on top of the body, which gets rid of cold inside the body,” said Zhang, who claims to have lit blazes on foreign diplomats and senior Chinese officials.

The treatment gained renewed public attention this month when photos of a man having fire applied to his crotch went viral on Chinese social media.

“Sir, how well would you like your meat cooked?” joked one microblogger on China’s Twitter-like Sina Weibo.

Burning question 

State media have sought to dampen down enthusiasm for fire therapy, running several reports on shady therapists, some without certification and employing only a bucket of water to prevent conflagrations.

“There have been injuries, patients have been burned on their faces and bodies, because of a lack of standards,” said Zhang. “I have taught tens of thousands of students and we have never seen an accident.”

So far the practice has received little attention from medical journals, but the theory behind it bears some relation to the Chinese medicinal practice of “cupping”, where a flame burns away the oxygen inside a receptacle to create pressure on parts of a patient’s body.

Several long-term studies of that supposed therapy have found little evidence of any effectiveness.

Zhang has received some recognition from publications covering “traditional Chinese medicine”, which is widely available in the country’s hospitals.

The industry is lucrative, producing goods worth 516 billion yuan ($84 billion) in 2012, according to official statistics.

Looking out from behind his patient’s burning back, Zhang recited a poem.

“A fire dragon has come to earth/a mysterious therapy has its birth,” he said, as flames jumped below his chin.

“Medicine needs a revolution, fire therapy for the world is the solution.”

JAKARTA — Indonesia’s presidential race appears to have tightened dramatically less than a week before the election with credible polling showing front-runner and former Jakarta governor Joko Widodo having lost virtually all the formidable lead he had before his nomination.

Analysts say millions of undecided voters have turned to Prabowo Subianto, a former army general who has been accused of abducting pro-democracy activists in 1998 and instigating deadly riots.

In an exclusive interview with The Associated Press, Widodo, known for his down-to-earth demeanor and known as “Jokowi”, says massive smear campaigns by his opponents have significantly reduced his electability. He was wondering how the government and law enforcers could not prevent it.

The latest blows to Widodo and running mate Jusuf Kalla were allegations that his mother was an activist with the banned Indonesian Communist Party, and an edict from the Forum Ummat Islam group saying “choosing Jokowi” is “haram”, or forbidden to Muslims.

But the most massive smear campaign was that a tabloid aimed at discrediting him was circulated among Islamic boarding schools in Java. “Obor Rakyat” or People’s Torch abruptly described Jokowi as a non-Muslim of Chinese descent, corrupt and just a “puppet candidate” of former President Megawati Sukarnoputri. It also painted him as being a liar with a long Pinocchio nose and as a Singapore citizen. Widodo has told campaign supporters on several occasions that his parents were both natives of Java island.

The third edition of the tabloid prompted police to open a libel investigation and question the editor in chief, who is a staff assistant at the office of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. His ruling Democratic Party said it was neutral earlier but turned to support Subianto just two weeks before the July 9 election.

In other opposition activity, some of his rivals’ supporters say electing Widodo will only leave Jakarta to be led by a non-Muslim governor — Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, a Chinese who is currently acting governor.

Indonesia, a country of 240 million, is the world’s most populous Muslim nation, and the third-largest democracy in the world behind India and the United States.

“Indeed, the black campaigns have significantly reduced our electability, but they turned a blind eye on it,” Widodo said, citing the police, the Electoral Supervisory Board and the government. “They should have courage to stop such campaigns, which have caused restlessness and instigated the people.”

“But I am optimistic. We have been working hard and what we found in the field raised our optimism. People everywhere are greeting us with enthusiasm.”

Analysts have warned that Widodo could also be defeated by organised and structural fraud.

A recent survey by Roy Morgan Research, Australia’s best known and longest established market research company, found that the longtime favorite Jokowi has a narrow lead of 4 percentage points above Subianto.

Its face-to-face interviews of 3,117 electors in June in all 34 provinces put Widodo at 52 per cent against 48 per cent for Subianto, while 9 per cent couldn’t say who they will support. The margin of error for the poll was plus or minus 1.8 per cent.

Local polls say Subianto is catching up two weeks before the July 9 vote, with around 40 per cent of the electorate reported to be undecided. Almost 190 million Indonesia are expected to cast their ballots for the country’s new president.

“Actually I do not really believe on the surveys, but they have to be taken into account for evaluation and corrections,” said Widodo, a former furniture producer and newcomer to national politics, but adored by legions of supporters who favor his simple style, humble background and willingness to reach out to the poor.

Ahmad Muzani, deputy campaign chief for Subianto, did not agree that a smear campaign has diverted Widodo’s supporters to their side, which he said has also become victim of unfair publication by local media.

“I think that happened because of mass campaigns by all our coalition parties in convincing the people,” Muzani said.

Yudhoyono, who is constitutionally barred from seeking a third term, has ordered the police and military to secure the presidential election and succession process of the national leadership, and to be alerts against all possible postelection violence.

KIEV — Ukraine’s interior minister said on Saturday that most pro-Russian rebels and their top commander had fled their main eastern stronghold in what would be Kiev’s biggest success of the nearly three-month campaign.

“This morning, intelligence reported that Girkin [Igor Strelkov] and a substantial part of the rebels had fled Slavyansk,” Ukraine’s Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said in reference to the industrial city of nearly 120,000 the insurgents captured on April 6.

Ukraine alleges that Strelkov is a colonel in Russia’s military intelligence unit know as the Chief Intelligence Directorate (GRU).

Both Strelkov and Moscow deny any GRU link despite Western claims that the Kremlin is covertly funding and arming the uprising to destabilise Kiev’s new pro-European leaders and retain control over Russia-speaking eastern regions of Ukraine.

Avakov said in a Facebook post that the militias were fleeing to Gorlivka — a city of 260,000 about 50 kilometres southeast of Slavyansk that also remains largely under the militias’ control.

He wrote in a later post that civilians were taking over roadblocks previously controlled by the insurgents “and carrying weapons and bulletproof vests abandoned by the rebels”.

A Human Rights Watch observer who said she was in the area confirmed Avakov’s claim in a tweet.

“Between 8 and 9 this morning saw insurgents leaving #Slavyansk via #Kramatorsk,” Tatyana Lokshina said in a post.

“They were saying, ‘the city’s fallen, everyone’s getting out’,” she wrote.

‘Massive’ offensive 

Strelkov himself told the pro-Kremlin LifeNews channel on Friday that his units “will be destroyed... within a week, two weeks at the latest” unless Russia helped secure an immediate truce or moved in its troops.

Slavyansk is the symbolic heart of an uprising sparked by the February ouster of a pro-Kremlin administration in Kiev and fuelled by Russia’s subsequent seizure of Crimea.

Relentless shelling and sniper fire have since killed more than 470 people and left Western leaders frustrated by repeated mediation failures.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on Friday agreed to immediate crisis talks with rebel commanders and Russia aimed at stemming bloodshed that has threatened his ex-Soviet country’s survival and ruptured East-West ties.

Clashes in the economically-vital border regions of Lugansk and Donetsk have picked up with renewed vigour since Poroshenko tore up a 10-day ceasefire agreement earlier this week.

His decision was immediately followed by the launch of a “massive” offensive by Kiev that led President Vladimir Putin to warn that Russia had the right to protect its compatriots in Ukraine.

But Poroshenko’s call for talks on Saturday have yet to be confirmed by either Moscow or mediators from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) — a Vienna-based body first formed to preserve peace on the continent during the Cold War.

Kiev has balked at the idea of holding round-table talks in Donetsk — a location in which Moscow carries widespread influence and prefers. But the insurgents refuse to travel to Kiev or EU member countries for fear of their immediate arrest.

The number two man in the separatist Donetsk Cabinet suggested to Interfax on Friday that the round-table discussion be convened in the Belarus capital Minsk.

‘Russian colonel’ 

The 43-year-old Strelkov remains one the uprising’s most mysterious but also powerful figures who effectively headed the new Kiev leadership’s most-wanted list.

He holds the title of “defence minister” of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and is also the chief of the Slavyansk militia.

Strelkov was linked to the April capture and detention of seven OSCE monitors in Slavyansk who were eventually released after an eight-day ordeal following intervention from Moscow.

Kiev has published what it says are intercepted conversations between him and Putin’s special envoy Vladimir Lukin talking about the OSCE monitors.

“We want to liberate Ukraine from the fascists,” Strelkov told a Russian tabloid after his units had captured Slavyansk.

SEOUL — China’s president held talks in Seoul Thursday with South Korean leader Park Geun-hye at the start of a state visit seen as a snub to nuclear-armed North Korea, whose weapons programme was high on the summit agenda.

It was Xi Jinping’s first trip as head of state to the perennially volatile Korean peninsula, and his second summit with Park, who visited China last year.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is still waiting for an invitation to Beijing — a calculated rebuff that speaks to the strained relationship between Pyongyang and its historic and most important ally.

“No previous Chinese leader has put South Korea before and above the North like this,” said Aidan Foster-Carter, a Korea expert at Leeds University.

In what some saw as a display of pique at Xi’s visit, North Korea conducted a series of rocket and missile launches over the past week and pledged further tests in the future.

And Pyongyang scored a diplomatic victory of its own Thursday, as Japan announced it was revoking some of its unilateral sanctions on North Korea after progress in talks on the Cold War kidnapping of Japanese nationals.

Japan and North Korea do not have formal diplomatic ties, and the announcement by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is a significant step forward for a relationship that has been testy for decades.

After their talks, Xi and Park were expected to sign a joint communique, with Seoul hoping for a strong statement on North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme.

But analysts said Beijing was unlikely to up the rhetorical ante by any significant degree.

“That would go against China’s traditional diplomatic pattern,” said Kim Joon-hyung, professor of politics at Handong Global University.

“Xi will probably keep to the general line of urging the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula, rather than criticising the North directly,” Kim added.

As the North’s diplomatic protector and chief economic benefactor, China has repeatedly been pressured by the international community to use its leverage to rein in Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions.

But while Beijing has become increasingly frustrated with the North’s missile and nuclear tests, it remains wary of penalising the isolated state too heavily.

It is especially anxious to avoid any regime collapse that would result in a unified Korea with a US troop presence on its border.

Washington has played up Xi’s two-day visit as evidence of Pyongyang’s deepening diplomatic isolation.

“The symbolism of a visit by a Chinese leader to Seoul against the backdrop of tensions between North Korea and its neighbours... is pretty striking,” US Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Russel told AFP.

The wider background to Xi’s trip includes China’s response to the US “pivot to Asia” and the battle between the two major powers for regional influence.

China is currently South Korea’s largest export market and two-way trade stood at around $275 billion last year, but analysts say Beijing wants to move beyond economic ties and promote political and security links.

Balancing act for Seoul 

This leaves Seoul with a difficult balancing act, given its historic military alliance with the United States.

There are currently around 29,000 US troops stationed in South Korea, which is also protected by the US nuclear umbrella.

So how far would South Korea be willing to go in developing its ties with China beyond the economic sphere?

“Partly it depends who holds power in Seoul,” Foster-Carter wrote on the NK News website.

“Conservatives like Park will ensure the US alliance is not weakened, especially while North Korea continues to snarl.

“But South Korean presidents change every five years. If liberals return to power in 2018, the left’s neutralist and Yankee-bashing tendencies might come to the fore,” he said.