US Elections 2010: Candidates make last push for votes

Candidates are making their final push for votes on the last day of campaigning for Tuesday's US Congressional mid-term elections.

President Barack Obama's Democratic party is expected to lose its majority in the House of Representatives and is struggling to keep the Senate.

Mr Obama spent the day at the White House attending meetings and recording radio interviews.

Republicans hope to capitalise on voters' discontent with the economy.

"We're hoping now for a fresh start with the American people," Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele said on Monday.

"If we don't live up to those expectations, then we'll have a problem in two years".

Up for election on Tuesday are all 435 House seats, 37 of the 100 seats in the Senate, governorships of 37 of the 50 states and all but four state legislatures.

The Republican Party needs to gain 39 House seats to win control of the lower chamber of Congress - an amount opinion polls suggest they will easily win - and 10 to take over the Senate.

Democrats are hoping to hold on to the Senate by at least one or two seats.

In addition, voters will decide on ballot measures ranging from marijuana legalisation in California to a referendum in Oklahoma on forbidding judges from using Islamic Sharia law in rulings.

BBC News

After a long and nasty campaign, voters finally decide on Tuesday

Washington (CNN) -- No more robocalls interrupting dinner or angry campaign ads at every TV break -- the most expensive mid-term elections in history finally take place Tuesday, when voters decide who goes to Congress and governors' offices.

Polls indicate a dissatisfied electorate may clean house -- literally -- by tossing out the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives and possibly doing the same in the Senate.

With all predictions, including those of Democrats, signaling Republican gains, the election is considered a referendum on both the Democratic-controlled Congress and President Barack Obama's first two years in office.

Losses by the governing party are common in the first mid-term election it faces, but the shift Tuesday could rival or match historic levels dating back decades.

Unemployment of 9.6 percent amid a slow recovery from economic recession has been the dominant issue, with Republicans accusing Obama and Democrats of pushing through expensive policies that have expanded government without solving the problem.

Obama has led Democrats in defending his record, saying steps such as the economic stimulus bill and auto industry bailout were necessary to prevent a depression, while health care reform and Wall Street reform will lay the foundation for sustainable future growth.

As voting day approached, voter anger appeared to tune out the Democratic arguments. Conservative groups and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce funded attack ads that skewered increased spending under Obama and the health care reform bill he championed, while labor unions and traditional Democratic donors backed messaging that warned a GOP victory would bring back Republican deregulation and policies that caused the recession.

The long and bitter campaign season will cost more than $3.5 billion to be the most expensive non-presidential vote ever, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Republicans need to win an additional 39 seats to claim the House majority, and 10 more Senate seats to overtake Democrats there.

With around 100 of the 435 House seats at stake considered "in play," or competitive, the anti-Democratic mood is predicted to result in big Republican gains.

CNN

Venezuela nationalizes private steel plant

(CNN) -- For the second time in less than week, Venezuela has announced the nationalization of a manufacturing plant, this time a privately owned steel mill.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Sunday his government will take over the Sidetur steel manufacturing plant.

Chavez announced October 25 that the government was nationalizing two U.S.-owned Owens-Illinois glass-manufacturing plants.

Jose Paredes, the vice minister for basic industries and mining, said the government needs to take over the Sidetur plant because it was not providing enough steel to meet the nation's construction demands.

"This business needs to meet the needs of the country," Paredes was quoted as saying by the state-run Agencia Venezolana de Noticias.

Sidetur is owned by Vivencia, which had two mineral plants appropriated by the government in 2008. Chavez also nationalized the nation's largest steel plant, Sidor, in 2008.

The leftist president has had a history of nationalizing industries and land holdings during his 11-year tenure. Last year, he nationalized a local unit of U.S. food giant Cargill. He previously has appropriated privately owned oil, telecommunications, power and cement companies.

CNN

Argentine president makes tearful address about husband's death

(CNN) -- In a nationally televised address Monday, Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner expressed her sorrow for the loss of her husband, former President Nestor Kirchner, and gave thanks for the outpouring of support that followed.

Tearful at times, Fernandez said that each day she continues to govern, but that her life has been changed.

Nestor Kirchner, who was president from 2003 to 2007, died last week from an apparent heart attack.

"I've heard that this is the most difficult time. In reality, it's not," Fernandez said. "It's my most painful moment. And pain is something different than difficulties or adversity".

In her political and personal life she has faced adversity, but it doesn't compare with the pain she feels, she said.

"It's the biggest pain I have had in my life," Fernandez said.

She described Nestor Kirchner as her companion for 35 years in life as well as in the ideals they shared.

The president thanked the thousands of people who paid their respects by wanting to see him or praying for him, she said.

People gave rosary beads, flowers and soccer jerseys that she will keep, she added.

CNN

Former British PM Thatcher comes home from hospital

London, England (CNN) -- Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, 85, returned home Monday after being hospitalized for two weeks with the flu.

She was admitted to a hospital October 19, officials said.

At the time she went into the hospital, a Downing Street spokesman told reporters, "We understand from Lady Thatcher's office that she's been admitted to hospital for precautionary tests following her recent bout of flu." The spokesman then added that Prime Minister David Cameron "wishes Lady Thatcher a speedy recovery".

Thatcher had to miss a reception at Downing Street held to mark her 85th birthday because she had the flu.

Thatcher, who was prime minister between 1979 and 1990, is known as the "Iron Lady," for her personal and political toughness.

She was Britain's first -- and so far only -- female prime minister, and the only one to win three consecutive terms in the 20th century.

She largely retired from public life after a stroke in 2002.

CNN

Early reports show three parties vying for lead in Tanzanian elections

(CNN) -- Partial election results Monday indicated a close race between Tanzania's ruling party and two challenging parties as the president of the relatively peaceful east African nation sought a second term.

President Jakaya Kikwete of the ruling party CCM, or Chama Cha Mapinduzi, won by a landslide 80 percent in 2005, but was facing some of the strongest opposition since the nation took on multiparty politics in the 1990s.

After Sunday's balloting, the CCM and the challenging Chama cha Demokrasia na Maendeleo (Party for Democracy and Progress - Chadema), and Civic United Front (CUF) parties each claimed victory in the presidential, parliamentary and local races.

Vote counting was still going on Monday, with final results of the general election expected to be announced on Tuesday or Wednesday.

The number of eligible voters in Sunday's general elections reached about 19.67 million and about 51,380 polling centers were set up, according to the National Electoral Commission.

Kikwete has pledged to improve education facilities and cut down on poverty in the nation. A majority of Tanzanians live below the poverty line, the International Monetary Fund says.

CNN

Canada says it will accept Guantanamo detainee Khadr in a year

(CNN) -- The Canadian government has agreed to accept Guantanamo detainee Omar Khadr after he finishes a year of incarceration in U.S. custody, a spokeswoman for the Canadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.

"The American government agreed for Omar Khadr to return to Canada. We will implement the agreement between Omar Khadr and the U.S. government," said Melissa Lantsman, spokeswoman for the Canadian ministry.

Khadr agreed to plead guilty in exchange for a sentence of eight years, far less than the 40 years the military commission sentenced him to over the weekend. Part of the agreement was that he would be transferred to Canada to complete the incarceration.

Under rules of Canada's National Parole Board, Khadr could be eligible for parole after serving one-third of his sentence and could be released after serving two-thirds of the seven years, according to information sent out by the U.S. Department of Defense.

Khadr, a 24-year-old Canadian citizen, is the youngest detainee held at the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He pleaded guilty last week to murder, attempted murder, providing material support for terrorism, spying and conspiracy.

CNN

Yemen: 14 al-Qaeda militants surrender

(CNN) -- Fourteen al-Qaeda militants surrendered to local authorities Monday in Yemen's southern Abyan province, state media reported.

Governor Ahmad al-Misari said in a written statement that heightened security measures by local government, as well as pressure from social figures, clerics, and the parents of the militants contributed to their surrender, according to Yemen's official news agency, Saba.

Five of the 14 were considered local al-Qaeda leadership, it said.

Security officials expect additional surrenders in the coming days, adding to a group of al-Qaeda militants arrested last month, Saba reported.

The arrests come shortly after authorities in the United Arab Emirates and Britain found two packages with explosives on board cargo flights shipped from Yemen and destined for synagogues in Chicago, Illinois.

Two schools in Yemen were being looked at in connection with the plot and had been on U.S. radar before, a U.S. official said.

CNN

Children find body while trick-or-treating

YORK, Pa., Nov. 1 (UPI) -- Trick-or-treaters in Pennsylvania discovered an apparent Halloween decoration on the porch of a mobile home was, in fact, a man who killed himself, police said.

The 68-year-old resident, discovered by the children of a next-door neighbor as they began their trick-or-treat visits in the Newberry Township mobile home park, apparently shot himself with a handgun, police said.

The children discovered the body of John Sucic shortly after 6 p.m. Sunday on the porch of his trailer in the Conewago Valley Mobile Home Park, the (York, Pa.) Daily Record reported.

"It was just a scary thing," neighbor Donna Jones, whose children discovered the body, said. "I'm very grateful he was found early so that a lot of kids didn't have to see that".

Officers covered the body and put up police tape to prevent other trick-or-treaters from seeing the suicide scene.

There were indications Sucic had made arrangements before killing himself, police said, and the body was probably on the porch for about a day before being discovered.

UPI

Boy, 5, in critical condition after being shot in head by suspected gang member

A 5-year-old boy was in critical condition Monday after two suspected gang members walked through the alley behind his South Los Angeles home and shot him while he was in his backyard.

The boy, who was dressed as Spiderman and waiting to go to a Halloween party, was in the yard with his grandfather and uncle about 2 p.m. Sunday in the 1000 block of East 84^th Street. One of the suspects opened fired and hit him in the back of the head, said Det. Chris Barling of the Los Angeles Police Department. The grandfather was grazed in the arm by a bullet; the uncle was shot in the leg.

The boy was taken to Harbor UCLA Medical Center where he remains in critical condition, Barling said.

The home in the Florence neighborhood lies near a border between two rival gangs. Detectives suspect that the men, believed to be in their late teens or early 20s, mistakenly thought that the family was connected to their rival gang.

Nobody at the boy's home had connections to any gangs, Barling said.

Los Angeles Times

Rwandan guilty in 1994 church killings

UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 1 (UPI) -- A former Rwandan businessman was convicted by a U.N. tribunal Monday of supervising the massacre of 2,000 Tutsis who had taken refuge in a church in 1994.

The U.N. tribunal based in Arusha, Tanzania, found Gaspard Kanyarukiga guilty of genocide and extermination as a crime against humanity, and sentenced him to 30 years in prison, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda said.

Kanyarukiga was arrested in South Africa in 2004.

The indictment said Kanyarukiga transported police and members of the Interahamwe militia to the church in Western Rwanda in 1994. The United Nations said the police and militia poured fuel through the church roof, set it on fire, and then used guns and grenades to kill those inside.

Kanyarukiga supervised the killings, then ordered the corpses to be removed and the church destroyed, the United Nations said.

At least 800,000 people, mostly Tutsis and moderate Hutus, were murdered in the East African country during the 1994 genocide.

UPI

Medvedev's Kunashiri trip spurs protest

Tokyo lodged a strong protest Monday over Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's visit the same day to Kunashiri Island, one of the four Russian-held islands off Hokkaido that Japan wants returned.

Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara summoned Russian Ambassador to Japan Mikhail Bely to the ministry later in the day to file an official protest over the president's trip.

During the meeting, Maehara told the ambassador that the president's visit "is in conflict with Japan's principle position and hurts the Japanese public sentiment".

After the meeting, Bely told reporters that Medvedev's visit was a domestic issue.

"I said that this visit is purely Russia's domestic issue . . . and there is no overseas or international aspect," Bely said. "I called on the Japanese side to deal with this matter calmly and with balance".

At the end of September, Medvedev said he intended to visit the islands, prompting Maehara to immediately express deep concern that travel there could "damage Japan-Russia relations".

But on Monday, Bely said the decision was Medvedev's.

No one "can say whether the president will or will not visit the Russian region," Bely said. "That is the president's choice".

Prime Minister Naoto Kan also expressed concern about the visit at a Diet committee meeting earlier in the day.

"We have been consistent in stating that the four (Russian-held) islands . . . are a part of our country's sovereign territory," Kan said. "It is extremely regrettable that the president went to this region".

Medvedev's trip to Kunashiri was the first to the territory by a Moscow leader and Japanese officials warned it could hinder bilateral ties. He is expected to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Yokohama later this month.

Medvedev reportedly visited a geothermal power station and met the local islanders.

The islands of Shikotan, Kunashiri and Etorofu and the Habomai islets were seized by the Soviet Union at the end of World War II and their Japanese inhabitants later evicted.

The territorial dispute has prevented Japan and Russia from concluding a postwar peace treaty.

The Foreign Ministry states that "the Northern Territories (Russian-held isles) are an integral part of Japan's sovereign territory that continues to be illegally occupied by Russia".

The Japan Times

Police halt unsanctioned protest outside Japanese embassy in Moscow

Police in Moscow prevented an unsanctioned rally on Monday outside the Japanese embassy, in possible connection with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's visit to the disputed Kurile Islands earlier in the day.

One protester was detained by officers on patrol at the embassy when five young people attempted to gather at the embassy in downtown Moscow at 4 pm Moscow time (13:00 GMT).

Medvedev sparked a diplomatic row with Japan when he visited Kunashir Island, near Japan's northernmost Hokkaido Island.

The visit was the first trip by a head of state of Russia or the former Soviet Union to the South Kurile Islands. The Soviet Union seized four of the Kurile Islands (Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan, and Habomai) from Japan at the end of World War II and Tokyo has demanded their return ever since. The dispute has prevented Russia and Japan from signing a formal peace treaty.

Japan said the move was "regrettable," and had "hurt the Japanese people's sentiments".

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Saturday that he saw "no connection" between the trip and Russian-Japanese relations.

RIA Novosti

Uganda paper publishes names of gays

KAMPALA, Uganda, Nov. 1 (UPI) -- A Ugandan tabloid newspaper has published a list of 10 gay men and women in the African country and urged readers to report them to police, observers say.

It's the second such list published by Rolling Stone -- no relation to the U.S. music magazine -- after an initial publication of 100 names with photos and addresses with the headline "hang them," CNN reported Monday.

At least four people have been attacked since that publication, Ugandan gay rights groups say.

The newest list also contains addresses.

The newspapers editor, Giles Muhame, 22, claims gay people are going to schools and "recruiting" schoolchildren.

Meanwhile, a bill to make homosexuality a crime potentially punishable by death is still in the Ugandan parliament.

Its author says he is confident of the bill's passage.

"We are very confident," David Bahati said, "because this is a piece of legislation that is needed in this country to protect the traditional family here in Africa, and also protect the future of our children".

UPI

Bulgaria Honors Glagolitic Alphabet on Enlighteners' Day

Bulgaria's Foreign Minister Nikolay Mladenov opened a special exhibit for November 1, Bulgarian Enlighteners' Day, dedicated to the first Slavic alphabet known as Glagolitsa.

The Glagolitic alphabet, or Glagolitsa, was the original alphabet drafted by Byzantine monks St. Cyril and St. Methodius in 855 AD in their mission to spread the Christian word among the Slavs, even though the term for its name was not coined until the late Middle Ages – from the verb glagoliti meaning "to speak".

The Glagolitic alphabet was based on the three major symbols in Christianity – a cross, a circle, and a triangle.

St. Kliment Ohridski, the most important Bulgarian disciple of St. Cyril and St. Methodius, while serving the Bulgarian king Boris I later modified the Glagolitic alphabet in the late 9th century because he found its letters were too hard to write.

Based on it, he created the Bulgarian alphabet that he named "Cyrillic" after his teacher St. Cyril, which was introduced by the First Bulgarian Empire, and was then also adopted by other Slavic states in the south and east, including Serbia and Russia.

"The most real Bulgarian alphabet is the Glagolitic. It combines in itself a new beginning for Bulgaria and the Balkans and in many monasteries this alphabet is still kept alive. Each letter in this alphabet has a name of its own, and there is an idea enshrined in each of those names," Bulgarian Foreign Minister Mladenov said at the opening of the Glagolitic exhibit at the Cultural Institute of the Foreign Ministry before foreign diplomats.

Mladenov believes that the Enlighteners' Day, November 1, and the Day of the Slavic Script and Bulgarian Culture, and of St. Cyril and St. Methodius, May 24, are the two most genuine Bulgarian holidays.

Another exhibition about the Glagolitic alphabet was opened on Monday in Plovdiv by the Union of Plovdiv Artists.

Novinite

Gary Condit testifies at Chandra Levy murder trial

A former US congressman has told a Washington court that privacy concerns stopped him acknowledging an affair with an intern who was later murdered.

Gary Condit was testifying at the trial of the man accused of the 2001 murder of 24-year-old Chandra Levy.

Mr Condit, who said his decision to stay quiet was based "purely on principle", was cleared of involvement in her death but his career was ruined.

El Salvadorian Ingmar Guandique is charged with murdering Ms Levy.

Ms Levy had been missing for a year before her remains were found in Rock Creek Park, in Washington DC, in May 2002.

Guandique had previously been convicted of assaulting two other women in the same park where Ms Levy's remains were discovered.

His defence team argue that he has been made a scapegoat for the failures of a botched police investigation.

BBC News

New charges for accused cancer faker

An Ontario woman accused of faking terminal cancer to raise money for her own benefit now faces three new fraud charges.

Ashley Anne Kirilow, 23, was slapped Monday with three more charges of fraud under $5,000. She now faces a total of seven counts of fraud under $5,000 and one count of fraud over $5,000.

She is accused of faking breast and ovarian cancer in order to solicit donations through a Facebook-based charity.

Kirilow's lawyer, Brendan Neil, said the addition of new charges in fraud-based cases are not uncommon.

"There can always be an adjustment of the charges," Neil said Monday. "I didn't walk into court expecting the new charges, but it's not all that surprising".

While Neil would not say how Kirilow would respond to the charges, he said a plea was soon expected.

"It's been scheduled for plea court — take from that what you will," he said. "It won't be resolved on a final basis, but it's all coming to a resolution".

Kirilow is scheduled to appear in a Milton, Ont., court on Tuesday.

The alleged frauds occurred between February 2009 and April 2010.

In August, Kirilow was granted bail when she was facing the original four charges.

The ruling to release her on $5,000 bail was met with much opposition, and Kirilow and her supporters have faced numerous threats, including death threats.

In a convincing online campaign to raise money, Kirilow is accused of shaving her head and portraying the life of a person suffering from terminal cancer. She had the words "never quit" tattooed on her fingers.

Despite the total amount allegedly scammed in the plot by the Burlington, Ont., woman not being that high compared to many other frauds — the financial gain from the alleged scam is about $13,000 — the way she went about it caused much outrage.

The John Howard Society, a non-profit Canadian organization that advocates for the rights of prisoners, took responsibility for ensuring Kirilow meets her conditions. Conditions of her bail included no Internet or cellphone usage and no contact with people she knew through fundraisers.

GlobalNews