Malaysia provides refuge for 'Rohingyas'

MALAYSIA has provided refuge to 40 shipwreck survivors believed to be refugees from Myanmar's conflict-wracked Rakhine state, a Malaysian maritime official says.

The refugees arrived late on Tuesday in the southern state of Johor after they were picked up by a Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency vessel from a Vietnamese cargo ship off Singapore, the official said.

The 40 refugees were rescued by the cargo ship from a boat believed to be carrying 250 people that sank December 5 in the Bay of Bengal.

Many of those on board were still missing.

The official, who requested anonymity, said the refugees were believed to be from Myanmar's Rohingya minority.

All the refugees appeared to be in good health and were undergoing medical examinations, he said.

They were given temporary refuge while they are processed, he said.

Malaysia hosts about 24,000 refugees from Myanmar's Rakhine state, which has seen clashes between Muslim Rohingya and majority Buddhists.

At least 89 people were killed in the violence in October, and more than 5300 houses and religious buildings were burned or destroyed, according to UN figures.

More than 110,000 people have been forced from their homes since the violence first flared in June.

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French judges keep Strauss-Kahn charges

French judges have decided not to drop aggravated pimping charges against Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Source: AAP

FRENCH judges have decided not to drop aggravated pimping charges against Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

His lawyer says the former International Monetary Fund chief will appeal.

Strauss-Kahn's lawyers have argued the investigating judges in the case are biased.

The case revolves around a suspected luxury prostitution ring in northern France.

A court in the French city of Douai decided on Wednesday to retain the preliminary charges.

Strauss-Kahn's lawyers have said he attended "libertine" gatherings but didn't know some women present were paid.

The case is one part of an intercontinental legal saga that exposed Strauss-Kahn's active sex life and buried his French presidential ambitions.

Strauss-Kahn reached a settlement in the US last week with a hotel maid who accused of him of trying to rape her in May 2011.

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High turnout in S Korea presidential vote

HUGE crowds have voted in a tight presidential race pitting the son of North Korean refugees against the conservative daughter of an assassinated dictator, who both favour greater engagement with Pyongyang.

Despite freezing temperatures that hovered around -10 degrees Celsius, turnout was higher than in past elections.

South Koreans stood in long lines, wrapped in mufflers and parkas.

Seoul's election watchdog said turnout was about 59 per cent on Wednesday afternoon, which is 11 percentage points higher than five years ago, when current conservative President Lee Myung-bak won a landslide victory.

It is also five percentage points higher than a decade ago, when Moon's protege and former boss, liberal Roh Moo-hyun, won.

Exit polls give a tiny edge to conservative Park Geun-Hye, daughter of late dictator Park Chung-Hee, in her bid to be the country's first woman leader.

As polling booths closed at 6pm (2000 AEDT), a joint exit poll by three TV stations gave Park 50.1 per cent of the vote, with 48.9 per cent for her liberal rival Moon Jae-In.

The lead of 1.2 per cent was inside the margin of error of plus or minus 0.8 per cent.

The eventual occupant of the presidential Blue House will have to deal with a belligerent North Korea, a slowing economy and soaring welfare costs in one of the world's most rapidly ageing societies.

At the headquarters of Park's ruling New Frontier Party, party members jumped up and cheered as the exit polls were flashed on TV monitors, but there was no concession or claim of victory by either side.

"We're pleased," said Kwon Young-Se, one of Park's top campaign staff.

"Exit polls are still preliminary results, so we will watch with a humble mind until all the votes are counted."

Optimistic Park supporters gathered outside her residence south of Seoul, cheering and waving the South Korean flag.

"The polls showed we were slightly behind, but we still see a ray of hope because it's within the margin of error," said Jin Sung-Mee, spokeswoman for Moon's main opposition Democratic United Party.

Park, 60, was looking to make history not just as the first female president of a still male-dominated country, but also the first to be related to a former leader.

Her father Park Chung-Hee remains one of the country's most polarising figures - admired for dragging the country out of poverty and reviled for his ruthless suppression of dissent during 18 years of military rule.

He was shot dead by his spy chief in 1979.

Park's mother had been killed five years earlier by a pro-North Korea gunman aiming for her father.

Moon, the son of North Korean refugees and a former chief of staff to the late president Roh Moo-Hyun, is a former human rights lawyer who was once jailed for protesting against the Park regime.

While both candidates signalled a desire for greater engagement with Pyongyang, Park's approach was far more cautious than Moon's promise to resume aid without preconditions and seek an early summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un.

The never-married Park had promised a strong, parental style of leadership that would steer the country through the challenges of global economic troubles.

"Like a mother who dedicates her life to her family, I will become the president who takes care of the lives of each one of you," she said in her last televised news conference on Tuesday.

A female president would be a big change for a country that the World Economic Forum recently ranked 108th out of 135 countries in terms of gender equality.

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Medical teams in Iraq to treat president

FOREIGN medical experts have rushed to Baghdad to assist Iraqi doctors treating ailing President Jalal Talabani, whose condition is said to be improving after he suffered a stroke.

Talabani, a member of Iraq's Kurdish minority, was taken to the hospital late Monday and doctors worked to stabilise him into the following day.

His illness raises new concerns about Iraq's stability, which is being tested anew by a recent spike in tensions between the central government and the Kurds.

Talabani's doctors have not formally said the 79-year-old statesman suffered a stroke, though several other government officials have confirmed that is the case.

Deputy Health Minister Issam Namiq said medical teams from Iran and Germany had arrived to assist with the treatment, with additional experts from Britain on their way.

He told reporters the president is getting better, though he offered no details about the severity of the illness.

"His condition is stable. And I underline here that there is an improvement in his condition compared with yesterday," he said.

Neighbouring Turkey has offered to send an air ambulance to fly the president to a hospital abroad.

Kurdish lawmaker Mahmoud Othman also described Talabani's condition as improving, saying he is "in a better situation than yesterday."

Doctors are considering whether to send Talabani abroad for treatment but no decision has been made, Namiq said.

The US Embassy in Baghdad expressed hopes for a speedy recovery. Word of Talabani's illness had trickled out on Tuesday, which marked the one-year anniversary of the end of the US-led war in Iraq.

Talabani's official powers are limited but he is seen as a rare unifying figure able to rise above the ethnic and sectarian rifts that still divide the country.

Iraq's parliament has the authority to choose a new president should Talabani's office become vacant.

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Blasts, clashes rock camp in Damascus

PALESTINIAN refugees have fled as blasts and fierce clashes rocked their camp in Damascus, a day after President Bashar al-Assad's deputy gave a gloomy assessment of Syria's brutal conflict.

UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos, meanwhile, told Damascus she would increase contacts with the opposition inside Syria to provide the needy with assistance.

The Yarmouk refugee camp housing tens of thousands of Palestinians in southern Damascus saw intense battles during the night between rebels and pro-regime Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), activists said.

Explosions and clashes were heard two days after warplanes bombed the camp for the first time since the start of the 21-month-old conflict.

Sunday's air raid killed eight civilians and drew stiff criticism from the international community and Palestinian leaders.

An activist calling himself Abu al-Sukan said as many as 35 per cent of the people have fled for fear of more fighting and air strikes, while in the camp itself, conditions had gravely deteriorated.

"There is a huge humanitarian crisis in the camp. There are no hospitals, no firefighters and the roads are not safe," he said on Tuesday.

The mosques of the camp broadcast an army ultimatum giving the 150,000 residents until midday (1000 GMT) Tuesday to leave their homes, a camp resident told AFP over the phone.

Sukan said fighters of the rebel Free Syrian Army were braced for more clashes.

As the conflict raged, leaving at least 191 people dead on Monday, according to the Observatory, differences emerged at the top levels of power in Damascus with Vice President Faruq al-Sharaa airing views at odds with Assad.

Sharaa said there would be no outright winner in the conflict, which is estimated to have already killed more than 43,000 people.

"No opposition can end the battle militarily, just as the security forces and army cannot achieve a decisive conclusion," Sharaa told Lebanon's Al-Akhbar newspaper.

"(Assad) does not hide his desire to press on militarily until the final victory (and he believes that) after this, political dialogue will actually still be possible."

A Sunni Muslim, Sharaa has for decades served the Assad regime, but has rarely been seen in public since the Arab Spring-inspired uprising erupted in March 2011.

Valerie Amos, the UN humanitarian chief, said Monday she had asked Damascus to allow 10 more aid groups to work inside Syria and that she would increase contacts with the opposition to help those in need.

The Assad government accepted the request, according to Amos.

Reports said Moscow was sending a flotilla of warships to the Mediterranean, which according to military sources could be to evacuate thousands of Russians still in Syria in case the situation in the country worsens.

Russia, a strong ally of Assad, also said two of its nationals along with an Italian steel worker had been abducted in Syria.

Separately, US television journalist Richard Engel was freed after being kidnapped in Syria and held for five days, his employer NBC News said on Tuesday.

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Greece raises 1.3bn euros in debt sale

GREECE has raised 1.3 billion euros ($A1.64 billion) in a three-month treasury bill auction with demand to spare, returning to short-term debt sales after completing an EU-funded debt buy-back last week.

"During the auction of 1.0 billion euros of 13-week treasury bills conducted today, the total bids reached 1.73 billion and the amount finally accepted was 1.3 billion," the state debt management agency said in a statement on Tuesday.

The sale offered a yield of 4.11 per cent to lenders.

In the last three-month auction in November, the agency had raised 1.3 billion euros at an interest rate of 4.20 per cent.

Greece last week attracted offers of 31.9 billion euros in a bond buy-back designed to alleviate its enormous sovereign debt by some 20 billion euros.

The scheme was a condition for the unblocking of pending EU-IMF loans, which had been held back since June owing to reform delays and a protracted electoral campaign in Greece that raised doubts about the future of its fiscal overhaul.

Because of the delay in receiving the EU-IMF funds, Greece had been forced to make emergency one-month debt auctions in November and earlier this month.

Following the approval of European leaders last week, Greece is to receive 34.3 billion euros in scheduled bailout aid in December, and another 14.8 billion euros in the first quarter of next year.

The first seven billion was disbursed on Monday and another 27.3 billion is expected by Wednesday, a Greek official said on Tuesday.

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Five polio workers shot dead in Pakistan

GUNMEN on motorbikes have shot dead five female Pakistani polio vaccination workers, police say, highlighting resistance to the country's immunisation campaign.

Four were killed in three different incidents in the sprawling port city and the fifth in the northwestern city of Peshawar, on the second day of a nationwide three-day drive against the disease, which is endemic in Pakistan.

Sagheer Ahmed, the health minister for Sindh province, of which Karachi is capital, said on Tuesday he had ordered a halt to the anti-polio drive in the city in the wake of the shootings.

Senior Karachi police officer Shahid Hayat said another polio worker was shot dead in the city on Monday, but the circumstances of his death only became clear on Tuesday.

In Peshawar, which lies close to the restive tribal areas, a haven for militants and hotspot for polio, two attackers on a motorbike fired on two sisters working on vaccination, killing one, senior police official Javed Khan told AFP.

The incident took place in Mathra suburb of Peshawar which borders Mohmand tribal district, Khan said.

Hayat blamed "militants who issued a fatwa against polio vaccination in the past" for the Karachi killings.

Pakistan is one of only three countries where the highly infectious crippling disease remains endemic, along with Afghanistan and Nigeria.

But efforts to tackle polio have been hampered over the years by suspicion over vaccination drives.

The Taliban have banned immunisations in the northwest, condemning the campaign as a cover for espionage since a Pakistani doctor was jailed after helping the CIA find Osama bin Laden using a hepatitis vaccination program.

Tuesday's killings in Karachi took place in parts of the city dominated by Pashtuns, Hayat said. Pashtuns are the dominant ethnic group in northwest Pakistan and have a sizeable migrant population in Karachi.

WHO, a partner in government efforts to eradicate the disease, suspended vaccination activities in part of Pakistan's largest city in July after a spate of bloody shootings.

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NBC newsman freed in Syria after five days

US television journalist Richard Engel has been freed after being kidnapped in Syria and held for five days, his employer, NBC News, says.

"After being kidnapped and held for five days inside Syria by an unknown group, NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel and his production crew members have been freed unharmed," the network said in a statement early Tuesday.

"We are pleased to report they are safely out of the country," it said.

Engel, 39, is one of the most high-profile American journalists to report from Syria, where rebels have been fighting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad's regime in a civil war that has claimed some 43,000 lives according to activists.

NBC said Engel and other unnamed employees went missing shortly after crossing into Syria from Turkey on Thursday, and that it had not been able to contact them until it learned they had been freed on Monday.

The network said there was no claim of responsibility, no contact with the captors and no ransom paid.

Engels and his crew were hustled into the back of a truck and transported to an unknown location believed to be near the town of Ma'arrat Misrin, NBC said. They were blindfolded and bound but otherwise unharmed, it said.

When the captors tried to move them to another location late Monday, they ran into a checkpoint manned by Syrian rebels from the Ahrar al-Sham Brigade. A firefight broke out and two of the captors were killed, NBC said.

The other captors escaped, and Engel's crew was not harmed in the incident.

The reporters were able to cross back into Turkey Tuesday morning and were in good health, NBC said.

Syria is one of the most dangerous places in the world to report from.

The 21-month-long rebellion began as a series of Arab Spring-style protests against the Assad family's four-decade reign but has since escalated into a brutal civil war, with fierce battles and intensive shelling in major cities.

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Strong 6.1 quake off eastern Indonesia

AN earthquake of 6.1 magnitude has been detected off the eastern Indonesian island of Sulawesi. There have been no immediate reports of damage or casualties.

The US Geological Survey said the quake was centred 119 kilometres northeast of Luwuk, in Central Sulawesi province, at a depth of 18.5 kilometres. No tsunami warning was issued.

The largest archipelagic Indonesia is prone to earthquake because of its location on the Pacific "Ring of Fire", an arc of volcanoes and fault lines in the Pacific Basin.

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China cracks down on doomsday rumours

CHINA has detained dozens of people, some of whom it terms doomsday cult members, as part of a nationwide crackdown on rumours about a supposed forthcoming apocalypse, state media say.

Authorities in five different areas have detained 52 people for spreading predictions of a December 21 "doomsday" linked to the ancient Mayan calendar, the state news agency Xinhua reported on Monday.

The apocalypse predictions have received widespread coverage in China, thanks in part to the success of the Hollywood disaster film 2012, which was partly-inspired by the supposed Mayan prophecy.

Those detained include 34 people in the eastern province of Fujian, and two in the central city of Wuhan who handed out leaflets about the apocalypse at transport facilities, the report said.

"People have fabricated and spread rumours about the 'end of the world', caused trouble by tricking people out of money, and disturbed social order," the report cited police in the southwestern megacity of Chongqing as saying.

A Christian group known as "Almighty God", which state-run media has labelled an "evil cult" - the same description it applies to the banned Falun Gong sect - has also been targeted in the pre-doomsday crackdown, with reports of dozens of arrests last week.

Thirty-seven Almighty God members were detained in the northwestern province of Qinghai, the state-run Global Times daily said, adding that the group predicts three days of darkness will begin on December 21.

The group has called on its members to overthrow China's ruling Communist Party, which it refers to as "the big red dragon", and tells believers that a new era, presided over by a "female Jesus", has arrived.

"A big eye was found in the sun on December 9 in Beijing, and female Jesus manifested herself with her name. Great Tsunamis and earthquakes are about to happen around the world," the Global Times reported a text message sent by Almighty God members as saying.

The ruling communist party does not tolerate challenges to its authority and has brutally cracked down on religious groups including the Buddhist-inspired Falun Gong, which was banned in the late 1990s.

China has a long history of religiously-inspired anti-government movements, most notably the 19th century Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, led by a Christian convert who gathered hundreds of thousands of followers in an attempt to overthrow the emperor.

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