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Australia will reduce its troop deployment to East Timor because of the improved security situation, Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon said Wednesday.

Australian troop numbers in the fledgling country peaked earlier this year in the wake of attacks on the tiny nation’s president and prime minister.

The decision to bring 100 soldiers home by early next year, following the removal of 200 troops announced in April, will leave some 650 Australian military personnel on the island, Fitzgibbon said.

“The reduction in the total number of deployed personnel under Operation Astute is appropriate given improvements in the security situation in East Timor,” he said in a statement.

The Australians have been serving alongside New Zealand soldiers in the International Stabilisation Force (ISF) which will number 790 personnel following the latest limited withdrawal.

Fitzgibbon said while the Australian and New Zealand soldiers would continue in their mission, Canberra had been encouraged by the growing ability of the East Timorese, with the support of the United Nations, to manage security.

“The East Timorese authorities have shown through their professional handling of the security situation that the time is now right for some drawdown of the Australian ISF presence,” Fitzgibbon said.

Australia will maintain the ability to rapidly reinforce its troops at short notice, as it did following the assassination attempt on President Jose Ramos-Horta in February.

The Timorese government had requested the extra troops after Ramos-Horta was gunned down by rebel soldiers at his home on February 11, the same day that President Xanana Gusmao also survived a shooting attack.

“Australia remains committed to supporting the Government of East Timor in developing its Defence Force and maintaining security and stability,” Fitzgibbon said.

The Swedish Academy is concerned its decision to award Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio the Nobel Prize for Literature may have leaked ahead of the announcement, a prominent member of the academy was quoted as saying on Friday.

The academy’s permanent secretary, Horace Engdahl, told Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter he intended to look into the matter, but that it was unclear how or if the information had somehow got out prematurely.

A senior official at the academy told Reuters that Engdahl would not provide any further comment on the issue beyond the remarks he had already given to Swedish media.

The academy announced that French author Le Clezio had won the prestigious prize on Thursday.

The odds for Le Clezio to win, largely determined by betting volumes, fell sharply in the days leading up to the announcement, raising suspicions of a leak.

“This doesn’t look good,” Engdahl was quoted as saying. “It is the first time that I feel something may have happened, but there was also a wave of speculation that began in Paris. When I was there last weekend I had a feeling that there were some who believed strongly in Le Clezio.”

The head of British betting agency Ladbrokes’ Nordic operations, Lasse Dilschmann, told Reuters that odds in favour of Le Clezio had tumbled from about 15 to 1 at the end of September.

“They (the odds) were heading down well below 2 when we closed the betting,” he said. “It is quite unusual for us to close betting. It has, as far as I know, happened only once before in Sweden.”

Engdahl noted that the academy’s shortlist for the prize had leaked once in the past, when Portugal’s Jose Saramago received a Nobel in 1998. “If anything abnormal has occurred we will have to tighten our routines further,” he was quoted as saying.

The Swedish Academy was founded in 1786 and has decided the winner of the literature prize since it was first handed out in 1901.

The PETA animal rights organization is targeting Armani in its latest anti-fur campaign.

PETA senior vice president Dan Mathews said Tuesday that Armani has used rabbit fur in its winter collections now in stores despite a no-fur pledge.

PETA plans to launch an ad campaign before the Hollywood awards season next winter portraying the designer with a long Pinocchio nose.

The Armani fashion house said in a statement that it has renounced the use of animal fur except for rabbit fur. It calls rabbit fur a byproduct of an animal that is a food staple. Armani accused PETA of exploiting its name and said it includes relatively few fur items its collections compared with other fashion houses.

The Armani statement does not mention any no-fur pledge.

European Union (EU) foreign ministers Monday approved sending observers to Russian-occupied parts of Georgia, diplomats confirmed.The mission of at least 200 civilian observers will deploy in the so-called ‘buffer zones’ along Georgia’s internal borders with the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia before Oct 1.

Under a deal between Russia and Georgia brokered last week by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the current holder of the EU’s rotating presidency, Russia will only end its current occupation of the buffer zone if the EU sends in sufficient ceasefire observers to replace them.

Diplomats say that 11 countries - the Baltic states, Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and Sweden - have already pledged support for the EU mission. The largest contingents are expected to be from France, Germany and Italy.

However, questions remain as to whether the EU mission will also deploy to the breakaway regions, which are currently occupied by the Russian army and which Moscow has recognised as independent states.

‘The first commitment is to deploy the 200 observers before Oct 1. It will be done in time … After that, we will see how the situation evolves,’ EU foreign-policy chief Javier Solana said.

The EU fiercely criticized Russia’s decision to recognise the two Georgian regions and vowed that it would not follow suit. Ahead of Monday’s meeting, EU diplomats said that the observation mission should be mandated to cover ‘all of Georgia’, including the rebel zones.

But Russia retorted that it was up to Abkhazia and South Ossetia themselves to decide who should send observers onto their territory, and accused the EU of being ‘unscrupulous’ in saying that they could send observers there.

That has led some EU member states to warn that any insistence on extending the mission could simply antagonise Russia.

‘We need the agreement of all sides involved, because we do not want to act as an occupying force,’ Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini pointed out.

Russia Sunday completed the withdrawal of its troops from western Georgia, including the strategically important Black Sea port of Poti, in accordance with the EU-brokered deal.

And it began talks with Georgia on allowing up to 80 extra observers from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) into the separatist areas, raising the total figure to about 100.

Despite Israeli denials, a US official confirmed Thursday that Israel and the Palestinians have agreed to negotiate the future of Jerusalem.US Consul General in Jerusalem Jake Walles said the parties are negotiating the establishment of a Palestinian state on the basis of the borders that existed before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, in which Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan and the Gaza Strip from Egypt.

The parties are discussing the 1967 borders, which include the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem and part of the Dead Sea, Walles said in an interview published in the Ramallah-based al-Ayyam.

Both sides have accepted this as a basis for negotiations, he said, adding they both also agreed to make territorial changes to create the final borders.

Israel has said that neither Jerusalem nor the Jordan Valley, which includes the Dead Sea, are being negotiated. The future of the disputed city is seen as the most sensitive of the core issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that need to be settled.

Israel wants to annex major settlement blocs in the West Bank, and has reportedly offered a territorial exchange to make up for the lost land.

Walles told the Palestinian newspaper that the US was not looking for a transitional solution to the conflict and present it to the upcoming Quartet meeting in New York. The quartet of Middle East peace mediators includes the US, European Union, United Nations and Russia.

The goal of the negotiations, he stressed, remains to reach a final settlement before the end of the year. The US, he said, does not intend to surprise anyone by presenting solutions that will not be helpful to the peace process.

‘We see our role as a facilitator,’ he said in a quote translated into Arabic. ‘If both sides see that we can help, then we will consider it. But we are not going to do anything that either party may think is not going to help.’

Walles, the newspaper said, admitted that Israel has intensified its settlement activities after the November Annapolis meeting.

‘We have seen very little progress in removing settlement outposts, for example, which is one of the obligations of the road map, or towards freezing settlements, which is also an obligation of the road map,’ he said.

The US official said also that his government would like to see Israel do more to facilitate movement of Palestinians, which does not only make daily life easier for Palestinians but also is an important factor in revitalizing the economy.

Australia will rapidly beef up its naval strength and extend a A$60 billion ($48 billion) arms build-up to counter the growing military power of neighbours in the Asia-Pacific region, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said.Rudd, in a speech to veterans late on Tuesday, said the modernisation of Asian military forces, including advanced naval submarine and air combat capabilities, meant Australia needed its own substantial arms increase over time.

“The demographic changes in our region will mean that by 2020 when we look to our north, we will see a very different region to the one we see now, one where population, food, water and energy resource pressures will be great,” Rudd said. “The Asia-Pacific will become a much more contested region.

“We need to make sure we have an Australian Defence Force that can answer the call if it is needed. The truth is our defence has been overstretched for a long time,” Rudd said, adding Australia must keep its global “middle power” status.

Rudd did not spell out which countries in Asia could pose a threat to Canberra — a close U.S. ally — but Australian military planners are wary of China’s arms build-up and the expanding reach of India’s military.

Both neighbouring Indonesia and Malaysia are also building more powerful air forces equipped with modern Russian aircraft.

Rudd said the United States would remain “strategically dominant” and be the bedrock of Australia’s future security alliances, but Washington would likely see its influence decline compared with other economies.

BIGGER ARMY

Australia’s military has already embarked on a 10-year modernisation, including large amphibious assault ships, missile destroyers, stealth fighter aircraft, cruise missiles, tanks and helicopters, as well as a bigger army.

“We need to be aware of the changes taking place and we must make sure that we have the right mix of capabilities to deal with any contingencies that might arise in the future,” Rudd said.

“We need an enhanced naval capability that can protect our sea lanes of communication and support our land forces as they deploy,” he said.

Security analyst and retired navy Commodore Sam Bateman said Rudd’s comments were the most aggressive by an Australian leader for many years, almost level with former conservative leader John Howard’s threat of pre-emptive strikes on neighbours if needed.

“This seemed to be a fairly hawkish statement. Within the region there is not necessarily an arms race as such. They are just catching up with what other countries already have,” Bateman told local radio.

Bateman, now teaching maritime security in Singapore, said the statement reflected Australia’s long insecurity with Asia, despite Rudd being a fluent Mandarin speaker and China expert.

“We can have a very insular outlook that smacks of seeking security against that region to our north, rather than with the region,” he said.

Australia was an original member of the U.S.-led coalition that invaded Iraq and has around 1,100 troops, including special forces commandos, in Afghanistan battling the Taliban.

Rudd’s centre-left government, elected last year, is preparing Australia’s first national security statement to flag how it will approach defence and security challenges, ahead of a strategic planning paper early next year.

While the royals are known for their aversion to endorsements, a huge furore has been created after Prince Harry’s snaps playing polo were used by a posh brand in its huge advertising billboards.Fifteen feet-high posters featuring the Prince have been used by elite clothing brand, Hackett for promoting their expensive sportswear.

The images, reportedly taken at a match sponsored by the firm more than a year ago, show Harry wearing a polo shirt flashing a Hackett logo.

Polo fans were taken by surprise when they noticed the prince’s picture being used to endorse the company’s elite sports kit.

“It was a very big temp-orary shop and as you walked in, the very first thing you saw was a huge billboard of Prince Harry. You couldn’t miss it,” the Daily Star quoted a fan at the Soto Grande tournament in Spain, as saying.

The poster shows Harry posing like a hunky male model, with his hands on his hips in the moodily-lit shot.

However, the posters do not make any official reference to its status as a polo sponsor in the posters.

“It looks just like he’s there plugging their ties and blazers,” said one shopper.

While it is known that members of the Royal Family are live by strict rules over sponsorship and freebies, the use of Harry’s pics in advertisements has raised eyebrows at the Palace.

“It’s one thing to pose for happy snaps with a sponsor but quite another to end up on a socking great advert,” said one senior aide.

However, yesterday Harry’s Clarence House office claimed that the pricne did not give his consent to the use of his image.

“There is no advertising arrangement and we were not aware of any photographs being used in this way. We will look into this,” said a spokeswoman.

As of Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2008, at least 4,152 members of the U.S. military have died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

The figure includes eight military civilians killed in action. At least 3,375 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military’s numbers.

The AP count is two fewer than the Defense Department’s tally, last updated Tuesday at 10 a.m. EDT.

The British military has reported 176 deaths; Italy, 33; Ukraine, 18; Poland, 21; Bulgaria, 13; Spain, 11; Denmark, seven; El Salvador, five; Slovakia, four; Latvia and Georgia, three each; Estonia, Netherlands, Thailand, Romania, two each; and Australia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, South Korea, one death each.

Since the start of U.S. military operations in Iraq, 30,568 U.S. service members have been wounded in hostile action, according to the Defense Department’s weekly tally.

American forces on Monday handed over security responsibility to the Iraqis in a province that the U.S. once feared was lost — a sign of the stunning reversal of fortunes since local Sunnis turned against al-Qaida in Iraq.

But a Sunni Arab leader criticized the Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for failing to embrace its newfound allies, underlining the threat that sectarian tensions still pose to a lasting peace.

Nevertheless, the transfer of Anbar province, the cradle of the Sunni insurgency and the birthplace of al-Qaida in Iraq, marked a dramatic milestone in America’s plan to eventually hand over all 18 provinces to Iraqi control so U.S. troops can go home.

The 25,000 American troops remaining in Anbar will focus on training Iraq’s military and police forces and standing by to help if the Iraqis are unable to cope with any surge in violence.

The ceremony was held under tight security in the center of Ramadi, the provincial capital where American troops fought ferocious battles with al-Qaida and other Sunni insurgents until the tide turned in 2007.

“This war is not quite over, but it’s being won and primarily by the people of Anbar. Al-Qaida has not been entirely defeated in Anbar, but their end is near and they know it,” Marine Maj. Gen. John Kelly, the senior U.S. commander in Anbar, said during the handover ceremony.

President Bush hailed the handover as a major achievement, saying the once-violent province had been “transformed and reclaimed by the Iraqi people.”

“Iraqi forces will now take the lead in security operations in Anbar, with American troops moving into an overwatch role,” Bush said in a statement. “This achievement is a credit to the courage of our troops, the Iraqi security forces, and the brave tribes and other civilians from Anbar who worked alongside them.”

Anbar became the 11th province to revert to Iraqi security control, but it is the most significant because it borders Baghdad. The others have been in the peaceful Kurdish north or in the heavily Shiite south, which has proven less difficult for the Shiite-led government to control.

Anbar, a predominantly Sunni Arab expanse stretching from the western edge of the capital to the borders of Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, was long center stage of the war and a springboard for attacks inside Baghdad.

Al-Qaida used the Euphrates River valley as a corridor for smuggling weapons, fighters and ammunition from Syria into the Sunni heartland and on to Baghdad.

The Anbar city of Fallujah fell under the sway of al-Qaida and other Sunni extremist groups and became the symbol of resistance until U.S. Marines stormed the city in November 2004 in the fiercest urban combat of the Iraq war.

But the loss of Fallujah did not deter the insurgents, who quickly rallied in Ramadi and other cities. In August 2006, a U.S. intelligence report widely leaked to journalists concluded that American forces were powerless to curb the rising power of al-Qaida in Anbar.

All that reversed dramatically months later when Sunni tribesmen, fed up with al-Qaida’s brutality, turned against the movement and joined forces with the U.S. to drive the extremists from the province.

Those Sunni groups, known as “awakening councils,” became the model for similar grass-roots movements elsewhere in Iraq credited by U.S. officials with helping curb the bloodshed that had pushed Iraq to the brink of all-out civil war.

Late Monday, a Sunni awakening leader in a nearby province, Imad al-Mashhdani, was wounded when a suicide bomber blew himself up near the sheik’s home 30 miles north of Baghdad, police said. U.S. officials said one person was killed and six others were wounded along with the sheik.

Nevertheless, the Shiite-led national government never fully embraced the Sunni turncoats, fearing they might turn their guns on Shiites some day. The government has moved in recent weeks to crack down on such groups, who drew their members from the ranks of former insurgents and veterans of Saddam Hussein’s security services.

During the handover ceremony, Ahmed Abu Risha, whose late brother spearheaded the Sunni revolt against al-Qaida, alluded to strains over the crackdown, saying the government should appreciate the Sunnis’ role in curbing violence and not judge them because of “their positions” in the Saddam regime.

U.S. troops had planned to hand over Anbar in late June but postponed the ceremony because of sandstorms and a suicide attack that killed three Marines and 20 Iraqis, including locally prominent sheiks.

Sunni politicians in Anbar had asked the U.S. to delay the transfer until next year because of a continuing power struggle between the awakening councils and the main Sunni political party over control of the province.

Lt. Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, the No. 2 U.S. commander in Iraq, alluded to the power conflict, expressing hope that al-Qaida would not exploit political rivalries to attempt a comeback.

“We know that while al-Qaida may be in disarray, it is not yet completely defeated,” Austin said during the ceremony. “And our common enemy is both patient and resilient. But I know the people of Anbar province will not allow al-Qaida the opportunity to destabilize the security progress that has been made here.”

The advice of doctors to Zimbabweans is, don’t get sick. If you do, don’t count on hospitals — they’re short of drugs and functioning equipment.

As the economy collapses, the laboratory at a main 1,000-bed hospital has virtually shut down. X-ray materials, injectable antibiotics and anticonvulsants have run out.

Emergency resuscitation equipment is out of action. Patients needing casts for broken bones need to bring their own plaster. In a country with one of the world’s worst AIDS epidemics, medical staff lack protective gloves.

Health authorities blame the drying up of foreign aid under Western sanctions imposed to end political and human rights abuses under President Robert Mugabe. A power-sharing agreement aimed at bringing the opposition into the government could open the gates to foreign aid. But negotiations have stalled over how much power rests with Mugabe.

Meanwhile, the economic meltdown is evident in empty store shelves, long lines at gas stations — and hospitals where elevators don’t work and patients are carried to upper wards in makeshift hammocks of torn sheets and blankets.

Jacob Kwaramba, an insurance clerk, brought his brother to Harare’s Parirenyatwa hospital, once the pride of health services in southern Africa. Emergency room doctors sent Kwaramba to a private pharmacy to buy drugs for his brother’s lung infection. He returned two hours later to find his brother dead, he told the AP in the emergency room.

“I couldn’t believe it. It wasn’t a fatal illness,” he said.

Another family said a relative dying of cancer was sent home, and no painkillers could be found in Harare pharmacies. Relatives abroad were able to pay for morphine, but by the time import clearance was obtained from the state Medicines Control Authority, the man had died in agony, the family said, requesting anonymity for fear of government retribution.

A report by six independent Zimbabwean doctors indicates the scale of the collapse.

“Elective surgery has been abandoned in the central hospitals and even emergency surgery is often dependent on the ability of patients’ relatives to purchase suture materials from private suppliers,” it said.

“Pharmacies stand empty and ambulances immobilized for want of spare parts … this is an unmitigated tragedy, scarcely conceivable just a year ago.”

The doctors who compiled the six-page report for circulation among aid and development groups withheld their names because comments seen as critical of Mugabe are a punishable offense.

In an interview this year, Health Minister David Parirenyatwa said lack of foreign currency due to sanctions was hindering efforts to maintain equipment. But political violence has added to the burden. The human rights group Amnesty International said hospitals ran out of crutches for victims of attacks blamed on Mugabe’s forces.

The independent Zimbabwe Human Rights Forum, an alliance of human rights campaigners, said doctors and medical staff were chased from rural clinics to keep them from helping opposition supporters, while many city hospitals couldn’t cope with the number of patients injuries sustained in beatings and torture blamed mostly on militants of Mugabe’s party and police and soldiers.

The opposition Movement for Democratic Change says at least 200 of its supporters died in the violence, with thousands more beaten and made homeless.

No data is available on how many lives have been lost because of the medical crisis, but the report said hospital admissions declined sharply because of the cost of treatment and transportation over long distances to clinics and hospitals.

In recent years, 70 percent of births took place in health facilities; now it’s under 50 percent, the report said.

It said that a decade ago Zimbabwe had the best health system in sub-Saharan Africa. But with the economic crisis worsening, 10,000 Zimbabwean nurses are employed in Britain alone, and 80 percent of Zimbabwean medical graduates working abroad.

The main Harare medical school, once renowned for the quality of its graduates, has lost 60 percent of its complement of lecturers, and an unprecedented 30 percent of its students failed this year’s final examinations.

The report said despite the troubles, health professionals still manage to run clean and well ordered facilities.

“The pharmacy may be empty and most equipment out of order, but they will be striving to provide some sort of service,” it said.

Health Minister Parirenyatwa estimated the public sector had only half the doctors it needed. The main Harare hospital is named after his father, one of the first blacks to qualify as a doctor before Zimbabwe won independence from Britain in 1980.

The elite go for care abroad, mostly to South Africa, but also to Asia. Mugabe regularly has checkups in Malaysia.

But the doctors said that if there was a plane crash or similar disaster, victims who might otherwise be saved by prompt and well-equipped care would likely end up as “dead meat.”