Russia says it will keep 7,600 troops in Georgia's breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia after withdrawing from the rest of the country.

On Monday, Russia agreed to withdraw its troops from positions within Georgia, taken up during the recent conflict, by mid-October.
But President Dmitry Medvedev ordered that military bases be maintained in South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Russia also says it has established formal diplomatic ties with them.
The move followed a decision - condemned by the US and EU but defined as "irrevocable" by Moscow - to recognise South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states.
Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said troops were expected to remain in the two regions "for the foreseeable future".
"Russian troops will remain on the territory of South Ossetia and Abkhazia on request of their leaders in parliament," Mr Lavrov said from Moscow.
"They will be there a long time. This is absolutely necessary, so as not to allow a repeat of armed actions," he added.
Mr Lavrov said that both regions should also be able to participate in talks on Georgia scheduled for next month in Geneva with "fully fledged" places.
Russia is expected to sign formal agreements on troop deployment in South Ossetia and Abkhazia over the coming days.
International observers
Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov said that some 3,800 men would be positioned in each breakaway region.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev had already indicated that Moscow intended to maintain a military presence in the regions, but Mr Serdyukov's statement provides the first specific breakdown of troop numbers.
On Monday, Mr Medvedev pledged to withdraw troops from the rest of Georgia on condition that the EU would deploy at least 200 observers, along with 220 other international monitors to ensure the security of the two breakaway regions.
Under the deal, Russia will pull out within 10 days of the deployment of EU monitors.
Russian troops are present in both Abkhazia and South Ossetia, as well as in so-called buffer zones around these regions and near the strategic port city of Poti.
Fighting between Russia and Georgia began on 7 August after the Georgian military tried to retake the breakaway region of South Ossetia by force.
Russian forces launched a counter-attack and the conflict ended with the ejection of Georgian troops from both South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Also on Tuesday, South Ossetia's Prosecutor General Taimuraz Khugayev said that investigations had confirmed that more than 500 people had been killed during Georgia's attack last month, according to Russian news agency, Interfax.
Russia initially suggested more than 1,500 people had died in the conflict. Independent observers say they have been unable to confirm such high figures.

[From BBC]

US President George W Bush is set to announce plans to withdraw about 8,000 troops from Iraq by February and to send additional forces to Afghanistan.

Mr Bush will say in a speech on Tuesday that the improving security situation in Iraq will allow a "quiet surge" of troops in Afghanistan in coming months.
A Marine battalion due to go to Iraq in November will be sent to Afghanistan, followed by an army combat brigade.
There are currently 146,000 US troops in Iraq and 33,000 in Afghanistan.
Any long-term decision about their future deployment will be left to Mr Bush's successor, who will take office in January.
'Degree of durability'
The BBC's Jonathan Beale says the continued decline in violence in Iraq since last year's US troop "surge" has given President Bush a chance to ease the growing strain on his country's military.
Acting on the advice of his generals, Mr Bush will announce on Tuesday that a Marine battalion, comprising about 1,000 troops, scheduled to leave Anbar province in November will return home as planned without being replaced.
An army brigade of between 3,500 and 4,000 troops will also leave in February, accompanied by about 3,400 support forces, he will say.
"While the progress in Iraq is still fragile and reversible, Gen [David] Petraeus and Ambassador [Ryan] Crocker report that there now appears to be a 'degree of durability' to the gains we have made," Mr Bush will say in a speech at the National Defense University, according to the White House.
"And if the progress in Iraq continues to hold, Gen Petraeus and our military leaders believe additional reductions will be possible in the first half of 2009."
Our correspondent says the withdrawals announced on Tuesday will mark the start of a slow and limited draw-down based on what Mr Bush calls "return on success". However, it will still leave the bulk of US forces behind in Iraq.
Last month, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki said that although timetable for the withdrawal of the remaining troops did not exist, he had tentatively agreed with the US military to end the presence of foreign combat troops by 2011.
The Iraqi government is currently negotiating a security agreement on the future of US forces in Iraq before a UN mandate expires.
Afghanistan 'fragile'
In his speech on Tuesday, Mr Bush will also signal that the US will make modest increases in the strength of its forces in Afghanistan to combat the growing threat posed by the Taleban.

"For all the good work we have done in that country, it is clear we must do even more," he will say.
"Unlike Iraq, it has few natural resources and has an underdeveloped infrastructure. Its democratic institutions are fragile."
"And its enemies are some of the most hardened terrorists and extremists in the world. With their brutal attacks, the Taleban and the terrorists have made some progress in shaking the confidence of the Afghan people."
In November, a Marine battalion that was scheduled to deploy to Iraq will instead go to Afghanistan. It will be followed in January by an army combat brigade.
The Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief said last month that violence in Afghanistan had reached its worst level since 2001, when US-led forces overthrew the Taleban, with more than 260 civilians killed in July.
Afghanistan's government said the bloodshed was connected to peace deals Pakistan's government had sought with Islamist militants in the north-western tribal areas along the border.

[From BBC]

Russia has pledged to remove its forces from Georgian land - excluding Abkhazia and South Ossetia - within a month.

Russia has pledged to remove its forces from Georgian land - excluding Abkhazia and South Ossetia - within a month, French President Nicolas Sarkozy says.
Russian leader Dmitry Medvedev, who met Mr Sarkozy in Moscow, said the pullout would happen once 200 EU monitors had been deployed in South Ossetia.
Mr Medvedev also said he would need assurances that Georgia would not use force again.
And Russia also agreed to remove a key checkpoint from Georgian territory.
In the same briefing, Mr Medvedev said there would be international talks on the area's security on 15 October.
The two leaders took part in more than three hours of talks, which also involved the EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, and the European Commission head, Jose Manuel Barroso.
Mr Sarkozy was pressing Russia to meet the terms of the ceasefire agreement and withdraw its troops from Georgia.
Russia says the deal allows it to keep peacekeepers in several buffer zones around two breakaway Georgian regions which it has recognised as independent.
Russian troops entered Georgia after responding with force to Georgian attempts to recapture South Ossetia last month.

[From BBC]

US takes over key mortgage firms

US President George Bush says mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have been taken over because they posed "an unacceptable risk" to the economy.
The two companies account for nearly half of the outstanding mortgages in the US, and have lost billions of dollars during the US housing crash.
The most recent figures show about 9% of US homeowners were behind on their payments or faced repossession.
The federal takeover is one of the largest bail-outs in US history.
It was announced on Sunday by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.
"Putting these companies on sound financial footing, and reforming their business practices, is critical to the health of our financial system," President Bush said.
"The actions taken today are temporary, and will support housing finance in the near term."
'Comprehensive action'
As part of the changes, the management of the two companies will be replaced while the firms will be given access to extra funding to support their business going forward.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said the government was intervening in the wider interests of the financial system and of taxpayers since the financial position of the two firms was fast deteriorating.
He added that the two firms' debt levels posed a "systemic risk" to financial stability and that, without action, the situation would get worse.
"We examined all options available and determined this comprehensive and complementary set of actions best met the objectives of market stability, mortgage availability and taxpayer protection," he said.
"Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are so large and interwoven in our financial system that a failure of either of them would create great turmoil in financial markets here and around the globe."
The move is intended to keep the two companies afloat, amid fears that either could go bankrupt as borrowers default on their home loans.
The two firms will be administered by the Federal Housing Finance Agency until their long-term future is decided.
The Congressional Budget Office has said such a move could cost up to $25bn but Mr Paulson said there was no reason why taxpayers should have to directly foot the bill.
Funding guarantee
Together, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae own or guarantee about $5.3 trillion (£3 trillion) of mortgages.
But they have made a combined loss of about $14bn in the past year and officials were worried that they would no longer be able to continue functioning if such losses continued.
The Treasury's funding guarantees to the two firms - which will include it buying up high-risk mortgage backed securities used to fund the mortgage market - will last until the end of 2009.
During that period, neither Fannie Mae nor Freddie Mac will be able to make any payments to their shareholders.
But Mr Paulson warned that the move was only a short-term "stabilisation" exercise.
He said it would be up to Congress to agree proposals to reform the two firms and address their "pervasive weaknesses".
Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke said he "strongly endorsed" the proposals to ensure the two firms remained financially sound.
"These necessary steps will help to strengthen the US housing market and promote stability in our financial markets," he said.
Banks around the world are highly exposed to the two companies and therefore, given the febrile state of markets across the world, it had become dangerous for doubts to persist about whether they were viable and would be able to keep up the payments on their massive liabilities, says the BBC's business editor Robert Peston.
A rescue plan passed by Congress in July gave the US government the authority to offer unlimited liquidity to the two companies, and to buy their shares, in order to keep them afloat.

[From BBC]

Hurricane Ike menaces Cuba, Hanna sloshes into U.S.

Hurricane Ike menaced Cuba and the Gulf of Mexico as a potentially ferocious storm while Tropical Storm Hanna began a rain-swept march up the U.S. Atlantic coast after barreling ashore on Saturday in the Carolinas.

The densely populated Miami-Fort Lauderdale area in south Florida was not out of the line of fire from Ike, a powerful Category 3 hurricane, and visitors were ordered to flee the vulnerable Florida Keys island chain from Saturday.

Computer models, however, indicated Ike was increasingly likely to target Cuba as a devastating Category 4 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson intensity scale, presenting a severe threat to the crumbling colonial buildings of Havana.
Hurricane Ike is visible east-northeast of Grand Turk Island in a satellite image taken September 5, 2008. REUTERS/NOAA/HandoutView Larger Image View Larger Image

Hurricane Ike is visible east-northeast of Grand Turk Island in a satellite image taken September 5, 2008. REUTERS/NOAA/Handout

The storm might then curve into the Gulf of Mexico in the wake of this week's Hurricane Gustav, plowing toward an area that produces a quarter of domestic U.S. oil, and slamming ashore near New Orleans, which was swamped and traumatized by Hurricane Katrina three years ago.

The deeper Ike goes into Cuba, the weaker it will be once it re-emerges over the Gulf of Mexico early next week, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

"Later on, conditions appear rather conducive for strengthening over the Gulf of Mexico," the Miami-based agency added.

Hanna, meanwhile, did not reach hurricane strength before sloshing ashore between North and South Carolina overnight.

It was forecast to move rapidly northeast along the East Coast over the weekend, bringing heavy rains and a risk of flash flooding to the mid-Atlantic states and southern New England. More than 3 inches of rain had already fallen in South Carolina.

North Carolina emergency management officials said they had no early reports of fatalities or major damage.

"We have reports of between 9,000 and 12,000 homes without power in the east," spokesman Mark Van Sciver said. "There is also some localized flooding."

More than 1,500 people were in 45 hurricane shelters along the coast and North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley declared a state of emergency.

From Georgia to New Jersey, beach communities were under evacuation orders, campgrounds were shut and storm alerts were issued.

Hanna was about 40 miles east-southeast of Raleigh, North Carolina, by early morning and racing toward the northeast at 22 miles per hour (35 km per hour). Its winds had dipped to near 50 miles per hour (80 km per hour).

IKE A SERIOUS THREAT

Ike was far more threatening than Hanna as it charted a course that would take it through the Turks and Caicos islands and southeastern Bahamas toward eastern Cuba, where it was projected by the hurricane center to pummel a long stretch of coastline.

Once in the Gulf of Mexico it might find deep warm water to allow it to grow bigger and stronger, although Hurricane Gustav may have stirred up colder water from the depths before crashing into Louisiana on Monday.

By 8 a.m. EDT (1200 GMT), Ike was located around 210 miles

east of Grand Turk Island and moving toward the west-southwest at 16 mph (26 kph), the hurricane center said.

Its top winds of 115 mph (185 kph) made it a weak Category 3 hurricane. Category 3 and higher storms are known as "major" hurricanes and cause the most damage. Katrina was a Category 3 when it struck near New Orleans on August 29, 2005, swamping the city and killing 1,500 people on the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Ike's winds were projected to peak at 132 mph (213 kph) just before landfall in Cuba in 48 hours.

South Florida, where up to 1.3 million people could be forced to evacuate, was preparing for Ike. Visitors were ordered to evacuate the Florida Keys on Saturday and residents were ordered out beginning on Sunday. Officials in Miami urged residents not to be complacent.

Storm alerts were issued for the Turks and Caicos islands, the Bahamas, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and would likely be issued for eastern Cuba later on Saturday, the hurricane center said.

The alerts in Haiti included the city of Gonaives, where at least 495 people died this week when it was flooded by up to 16 feet of muddy water after Hanna dumped torrential rain on the island of Hispaniola, a police commissioner said. In total, Hanna killed 529 people in Haiti.

The Bahamian government sent soldiers and emergency supplies to Mayaguana and San Salvador, southern islands left short of food and water by an overdue mail boat.

"If we have heavy flooding and lose power, we could be in an uncomfortable situation," said chief councilor Earnel Brown of the island of Mayaguana.

Tropical Storm Josephine, meanwhile, dissipated far out in the Atlantic, knocking out the weakest of three storms that followed Gustav's rampage through the Caribbean to Louisiana.

Rice in Libya for historic visit

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has arrived in Libya to meet its leader Muammar Gaddafi in a visit US officials are hailing as "historic".
She is the first US secretary of state to visit Libya since 1953.
Before arriving, she pointed out the "suffering" caused by Libya's long stand-off with the West.
The visit could be overshadowed by Libya's failure so far to honour a deal offering compensation to families of victims of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.
Libya was on the US state department list of sponsors of terrorism until 2003, when it abandoned weapons of mass destruction and renounced terrorism.
Ms Rice said her visit showed that the US did not have permanent enemies.
"It demonstrates that when countries are prepared to make strategic changes in direction, the United States is prepared to respond," she told reporters on the way to Tripoli.
Earlier, she acknowledged that it was "a historic moment" but "it is one that has come after a lot of difficulty, the suffering of many people that will never be forgotten or assuaged".
The BBC's Rana Jawad in Tripoli says that six years ago, such a visit would have seemed far-fetched, but diplomacy and political will have overcome the obstacles.
'Way forward'
Earlier this month, Libya agreed to pay compensation to families of the victims of the Lockerbie aircraft bombing, for which it formally accepted responsibility in 2003.
The deal includes compensation for Libyan victims of the United States' retaliatory bombing raid over Libya in 1986.
Ms Rice's visit was partly intended to be a reward for successful completion of the deal, but Libya has not yet transferred the promised hundreds of millions of dollars into a humanitarian account.
The US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, David Welch, told Reuters that he was optimistic the transfer would happen soon but that Ms Rice would press Libya on this issue.
A trade and investment agreement may also be signed and the two countries have been negotiating a military memorandum to co-operate on fighting terrorism.
Col Gaddafi has stopped short of referring to America as a friend, but in a televised speech this week he said improved relations were a way for both countries to leave each other alone.
Our correspondent says that although the visit is largely symbolic diplomacy, many in Libya hope that US-Libyan relations will only improve in the long-run.
Ms Rice's trip will also include visits to Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco.

[From BBC]

McCain vows to fight to change US

John McCain has accepted the Republican Party's candidacy for the White House in a speech to cheering supporters at the party's national convention.

He vowed to bring change to government, restore the people's trust in the party and to fight for a better nation.

Praising his running mate Sarah Palin, he said she was the right person to help him bring change to Washington.

The Arizona senator said he respected Democratic rival Barack Obama and would seek a bipartisan approach to politics.

Presenting himself once again as a maverick, he pledged to fight corruption, whether Democratic or Republican, and make sure that he worked for the good of the American people.

"Let me offer an advance warning to the old, big spending, do nothing, me first, country second Washington crowd: change is coming," Mr McCain told the crowds in St Paul, Minnesota.

In a criticism of his own party, he said he would "fight to restore the pride and principles" of the party, damaged after some Republicans gave in to "the temptations of corruption".

"We're going to recover the people's trust by standing up again for the values Americans admire," he said. "The party of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Reagan is going to get back to basics."

Mr McCain then turned to attacking the Democrats over taxes and spending, saying they would seek to raise taxes whereas he would keep them low and cut them where possible.

Going into some policy specifics, he pledged create new jobs, improve education and to reduce a "dangerous dependence on foreign oil" by producing more energy at home, including by drilling new offshore oil wells.

Mr McCain promised to take a bipartisan approach to resolving the nation's problems, saying: "Again and again, I've worked with members of both parties to fix problems that need to be fixed.

"That's how I will govern as president. I will reach out my hand to anyone to help me get this country moving again.

"I have that record and the scars to prove it. Barack Obama does not."

After speaking of the five years he spent as a prisoner of war in Vietnam and how that experience had inspired his love of his country, he called on his fellow Americans to fight with him to make it a better one.

"Stand up, stand up, stand up and fight. Nothing is inevitable here. We're Americans and we never give up. We never quit. We never hide from history. We make history."

The almost hour-long speech, which ended in the traditional shower of confetti and red, white and blue balloons, brought to a close the party's four-day event.

'Tested and true'

The BBC's Adam Brookes in St Paul says Mr McCain's speech was measured and entirely lacking in the sarcasm and vitriol which have been levelled at Mr Obama over the past couple of nights.

He said he hated war and would use all America's tools - diplomatic, military and economic - to build what he called a stable and enduring peace, as well as shaking up Washington and including Democrats and independents in a McCain administration.

It was all a rather different tone to the Republican politics of the past eight years, and to many of the other speakers at this Republican convention, our correspondent says.

There was very little of President George W Bush in this speech, our correspondent adds, as Mr McCain tries to show that he is his own man and can signify a break with the Bush years.

Mr McCain's wife, Cindy, in her speech praised her husband's family values, strength of character, war service and leadership.

"If Americans want straight talk and the plain truth, they should take a good close look at John McCain... a man tested and true, who's never wavered in his devotion to our country," she said, after arriving on stage flanked by their seven children.

Her speech followed the convention's formal nomination of Mrs Palin - the Republican Party's first female vice-presidential candidate.

Mrs Palin becomes only the second woman, the first being Democrat Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, to run for the US vice-presidency.

'Integrity and courage'

Speaking ahead of Mr McCain's address, senior Republicans praised his courage and leadership.

Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, at one point hotly tipped to be Mr McCain's running mate choice, described the Arizona senator's life as "a testimony to service, duty, courage and common sense".

"In this time, we don't need a president who can just read a poll or momentarily thrill a crowd. We don't need rhetoric or empty promises," he said.

"We need a president who has the integrity and courage to make the tough choices so America will be stronger and safer."

South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham hailed Mr McCain's determination to back the Bush administration's "surge" strategy in Iraq despite the political risks.

He introduced a video presenting Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as a "maverick" moose-hunter from Alaska who was joining "the original maverick" Mr McCain to bring change to Washington politics.

In a well-received speech on Wednesday, Mrs Palin praised Mr McCain and attacked Mr Obama as having talked of change, but done nothing of substance.

President George W Bush has also strongly endorsed John McCain as the best man to succeed him in the White House.

[From BBC]