World News joined 2

At least 31 people have been killed and scores injured in western India in two days of clashes between police and members of a farming caste demanding job quotas for their community.

The violence began on Friday when protesters belonging to the Gujjar caste lynched a policeman in Bharatpur district in Rajasthan state, G C Kataria, the state's home minister, told reporters.

Police shot at protesters as they tried to damage railway lines and government property, he said. At least 15 were killed.

On Saturday, the army was called in to help calm the violence as another 15 people were killed when police shot at a mob protesters trying to torch a police in Sikandra.

Thousands of protesters were blocking a rail route between Delhi and Mumbai, police said. Highways have also been blocked, and state authorities have cancelled many buses.

Gujjars are already considered among the low born in India's complex caste hierarchy. They want to be thought of as even lower – a so-called scheduled tribe – so they can qualify for the nearly half of all government jobs and state college seats reserved solely for the lowest castes, who tend to be poorer than their high-caste compatriots.

But a state government committee did not agree, and announced instead it would spend 2.82 billion rupees ($NZ86.55 million) improving schools, clinics, roads and other infrastructure in Gujjar-dominated areas.

The protesters do not want the money.

"We do not accept the economic package," K S Bainsla, the head of the main Gujjar protest organisation, told reporters. He said the state government must write to New Delhi recommending Gujjars be recategorised. "We'll not accept anything less."

A year ago, Gujjars in Rajasthan fought police and members of another caste that already qualifies for job quotas. At least 26 people were killed in that violence.

Reuters

At least six people have been killed after a shallow, 5.6-magnitude earthquake hit Colombia, destroying homes and shaking buildings in the capital Bogota, where panicked residents fled into the streets.

Three people, including a small baby, were killed when an avalanche crushed their car and three more died in landslides. The quake blocked a highway out of Bogota and flattened ten houses and a church near the epicentre, authorities said.

"They died trapped by landslides," President Alvaro Uribe told a community meeting where he updated the death toll.

At least eight other people were injured by the quake, which was centered 54km east-southeast of Bogota at a depth of 10km, the US Geological Survey said.

The USGS earlier measured the quake at 5.7 magnitude at a depth of 3.5km.

Bogota Mayor Samuel Moreno told local radio some buildings in the city were slightly damaged, but there were no reports of victims in the Andean country's capital.

"The report we have so far is that it was strong and some structures have suffered damage," Moreno said.

One Bogota government building was evacuated after the quake sent a shower of bricks tumbling off one of its walls.

Colombia's coffee-growing region was hit in 1999 by a 6.2-magnitude quake that killed 1230 people and left more than 250,000 homeless in the country's worst natural disaster in the last decade

Reuters

Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has returned to Zimbabwe for an election run-off with President Robert Mugabe.

Tsvangirai arrived at Harare airport aboard a regular South African Airways flight around 1030 GMT after cancelling his homecoming a week ago after his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said it had learnt he was the target of a military intelligence assassination plot.

The government dismissed the plot as a propaganda stunt.

Tsvangirai told a news conference that Mugabe and the ruling ZANU-PF party had launched a concerted campaign against the MDC, which has seen 42 people killed and tens of thousands displaced.

"ZANU-PF wants to decimate MDC structures," Tsvangirai said, adding that many opposition officials were in hiding.

He said he was confident of victory, although conditions are not conducive for a free and fair election and ZANU-PF was trying to destroy his MDC before the run-off.

"The conditions on the ground for a run-off are not perfect, and will never be perfect. But we are saying with the support of SADC (Southern African Development Community), putting in election observers and peacekeepers, we can instil confidence in the people of Zimbabwe".

The MDC chief was cheered by party officials at the news conference when he vowed to knock out Mugabe in the second round, saying he was drawing fresh inspiration from victims of political violence:

"I was in the hospital today, people with scars, wounds, all saying: 'President, we will finish him off, don't let us down'."

Tsvangirai has been travelling abroad since April 8 on a diplomatic drive to pressure Mugabe to surrender power following a March 29 presidential poll, which he says he won outright.

But Zimbabwe's electoral commission says he did not get enough votes for a straight victory and must face Mugabe in a June 27 run-off.

Tsvangirai said the regional SADC will hold a meeting on the run-off vote next Tuesday at which sending regional peacekeepers to Zimbabwe will be discussed.

"But I told them that by the 1st of June they should put these people on the ground otherwise we don't need them. You can't have peacekeepers and observers two weeks before an election because they will not be of any benefit. What we want is a complete demilitarisation of the situation," he added.

SADC, which is due to monitor the run-off, said this month that conditions were neither safe nor fair yet for a fresh vote.

Zimbabweans hope the run-off will start recovery from an economic collapse that has brought 165,000 per cent inflation, 80 per cent unemployment, chronic food and fuel shortages and has sent millions fleeing to nearby countries.

The MDC has vowed to "bury" Mugabe in the run-off, ending his uninterrupted rule since independence from Britain in 1980.

But the 84-year-old veteran leader has also vowed that he will win the June 27 poll because his ZANU-PF could not afford to lose power to an opposition backed by "white imperialists."

Mugabe says the MDC enjoys the backing of Western powers out to oust him over his seizure of white-owned farms to give to landless blacks. The MDC denies the charge.

Mugabe's party lost control of parliament on March 29 for the first time since it came to power, and the opposition says the former guerrilla leader can only win the June 27 re-run through violence and rigging votes.

"If Mugabe thinks he has beaten people into submission, he will have a rude shock on the 27th," Tsvangirai said.

A 30-year-old man, in a small crowd of people who saw Tsvangirai's convoy arriving at a city hotel for the news conference, said he was happy the MDC leader had returned home.

"I don't think he should have stayed away for so long, but I think MDC supporters will support him, and I hope he wins," said the man, who declined to give his name.

Reuters

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Rebels from Nigeria's oil-producing Niger Delta have admitted they attacked an oil pipeline belonging to Royal Dutch Shell and killed 11 soldiers in a gunbattle with the security forces.

The rebel Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) said in an email that it had sabotaged the Shell pipeline at Awoba flow station in the southern Rivers state in the early hours of Monday morning.

Shell was not immediately available for comment.

Reuters

The United Nations children's agency (Unicef) is trying to convince army-ruled Myanmar not to place at least 2000 youngsters orphaned by this month's cyclone into state-run homes.

"We should try and place children within family environments as a priority, and not in institutions," Unicef child protection chief Anne-Claire Dufay said.

"We should try to keep them in their community and even in the interim, before we are able to trace families, we should be able to place children in temporary foster care families. That's the message we are sending," she said.

The junta said last week it would build orphanages in Labutta and Pyapon, two of the hardest-hit areas of the Irrawaddy delta, where the May 2 cyclone left 134,000 people dead or missing and another 2.4 million destitute.

In an attempt to reverse this policy, Unicef is flying in its Asia head, Anupama Rao Singh, to speak in person to Welfare Minister Major-General Maung Maung Swe.

Despite government restrictions on aid workers in the delta, the United Nations says it has established that at least 2000 children have lost both parents.

In Labutta, 282 children were separated from their families, and of those 50 now in the care of officials had no known family, Unicef said.

Their story is repeated across the delta, where - as in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami - children made up a disproportionate number of the dead because they were unable to cling to trees or buildings when the storm surge swept in.

Even before Cyclone Nargis, children in Myanmar faced a challenge to stay alive. Infant mortality rates of 76 per 1000 live births are among the highest in Asia and the UN says one in three toddlers is malnourished.

One of the few positives is that decades of military rule and international isolation have at least protected youngsters from the child trafficking networks that operate elsewhere in southeast Asia.

"If there is one area in Myanmar where we can say the government has taken positive steps, it is child trafficking," Dufay said.

Even though a trickle of aid is getting through, Dufay said Nargis would affect families for months to come as poverty forced children to leave home in search of work, causing a so-called "second separation".

"You have family breakdowns, poverty, single-headed households, women with five children and no husband to go fishing. Child protection issues tend to surface over many months," she said.

As with nearly all outside aid agencies, Unicef has had problems with access to the delta, although said it had been fortunate enough to have some emergency supplies already stockpiled in the area.

Reuters

One of the travellers who arrived at Tokyo's Narita airport over the weekend may have picked up an unusual souvenir from customs - a package of cannabis.

A customs official hid the package in a suitcase belonging to a passenger arriving from Hong Kong as a training exercise for sniffer dogs on Sunday, but lost track of both drugs and suitcase during the practice session, a spokeswoman for Tokyo customs said.

Customs regulations specify that a training suitcase be used for such exercises, but the official said he had used passengers' suitcases for similar purposes in the past, domestic media reported.

"The dogs have always been able to find it before," NHK quoted him as saying. "I became overconfident that it would work."

Anyone who finds the package should contact Tokyo customs as soon as possible, the spokeswoman said.

Reuters

Prince William's girlfriend Kate Middleton has asked that she be called by her formal name Catherine, further fuelling speculation that the couple will soon announce their engagement.

The couple are currently holidaying in the Caribbean, amid intense media speculation that Prince William will use the trip to propose.

Marriage is considered so certain that UK bookmakers have stopped taking bets on the likelihood of the prince popping the question, Britain's Daily Mail reported.

The report said Middleton had asked friends and family to call her by her birth name Catherine - a more formal moniker suitable for a future queen.

"Everyone knows it's about to happen with Kate and William but we were a little surprised about the request to call her Catherine," the paper quoted a close friend as saying.

"There's a distinct feeling that she has started to become very aware of her position."

But a former classmate said those close to Middleton never called her Kate, and that the name was given her by the press.

"No one ever referred to her as Kate - ever," the former classmate said.

"It doesn't irritate her, even when the photographers shout her name out. She's not so precious as to correct them. But her family and close friends have always called her Catherine and that's the way she prefers it."

The prince and his girlfriend are holidaying at an opulent STG1785 ($NZ4564)-a-night villa.

They are expected to stay there until Wednesday, when the prince must return to the UK for a three-month attachment with the Royal Navy.

AAP

A string of letters written by Mercedes Corby in which she repeatedly outlines her drug use discredits her as a witness, an Australian court has been told.

Mercedes Corby is suing the Seven Network for defamation, saying she was falsely portrayed as a drug smuggler and dealer in interviews with her former friend Jodie Power, which were aired in February last year.

Tom Hughes QC, for the Seven Network, today began his closing address to the jury, dismissing Ms Corby's credibility as a witness.

Mr Hughes told the jury letters Ms Corby wrote to Ms Power while she was working in Japan in 1993 and 1994 "nailed the lie" that Corby was an infrequent drug user.

In one letter before the court, she wrote: "Japan has the best mull, I only need two or three puffs of a joint and I am wasted."

In another letter, she refers to putting on weight and writes: "I think when I get home I might go on a speed diet."

In evidence, Ms Corby said she had probably only smoked half a joint while working in Japan, and had exaggerated her claims to show off to Ms Power.

"(Ms Corby said) her total consumption during the period when she was in Japan was no more than half a joint," Mr Hughes said.

"Can you possibly believe that after these enthusiastic statements about her enjoyment of marijuana and the quality of the product?

"(The letters) leave an indelible stain on the plaintiff's credibility as a witness.

"They make it clear that she lied by limiting her total consumption of marijuana in Japan to half a joint."

Mercedes Corby's sister Schapelle Corby is serving 20 years in a Bali prison after being convicted of smuggling 4.1kg of cannabis into Indonesia inside a bodyboard bag in 2004.

The hearing continues before Justice Carolyn Simpson.


AAP