World

ISTANBUL — Turkey’s top politicians made a final effort on Saturday to sway undecided voters in a frenetic end to campaigning a day ahead of the closely-contested referendum on expanding President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s powers.

With election rules banning all campaigning after 1500 GMT, both the “Yes” and “No” camps squeezed in a flurry of rallies as the clock ticked down to Sunday’s landmark poll.

Analysts see the poll as a historic choice on the direction of the NATO member which will shape its future political system and determine relations with the West.

If passed, the new presidential system will implement the most radical political shake-up in Turkey’s recent history, dispensing with the office of the prime minister and centralising the entire executive bureaucracy under the presidency.

“Turkey will tomorrow make one of the most important decisions in its history,” said Erdogan as he wrapped up an exhausting nationwide campaign with a rally in the Istanbul district of Sariyer.

Confidently predicting victory, he declared: “The polls look really good.” But he urged people not to succumb to “lethargy” in voting, saying “the stronger result the better”.

“A ‘Yes’ that emerges from the ballot box with the highest margin will be a lesson to the West,” added the president, who has frequently railed against the European Union in the campaign. 

‘Last messages’ 

Erdogan, who has dominated the airwaves in recent weeks with multiple daily rallies and interviews, gave no less than four rallies in Istanbul districts.

The standard-bearer of the “No” camp, Republican People’s Party  leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, warned at a meeting in the Ankara region that Turkey was deciding if “we want to continue with the democratic parliamentary system or one-man rule”.

He described the new system as “a bus with no brakes and whose destination is unknown”.

The opposition has cried foul that the referendum has been conducted on unfair terms, with “Yes” posters ubiquitous on the streets and opposition voices squeezed from the media.

The two co-leaders of the second opposition party the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party, Figen Yuksekdag and Selahattin Demirtas, have been jailed on charges of backing Kurdish militants in what supporters say was a deliberate move to eliminate them from the campaign.

The poll is also taking place under a state of emergency that has seen 47,000 arrested in an unprecedented crackdown after the July 15 failed coup.

“The last messages”, headlined the Hurriyet daily. “With one day remaining to the historic referendum the leaders are making the final calls to influence undecided voters.”

Despite the clear advantages enjoyed by the “Yes” campaign, opinion polls have predicted drastically different outcomes and analysts are expecting a close result.

Security an issue 

The campaign has not been plain sailing for Erdogan, and some heavyweight figures within the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) have been conspicuously silent on the new system.

Former prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu spoke before Erdogan at a “Yes” rally in the Anatolian city of Konya on Friday but, to the amusement of opposition commentators, failed once to endorse the presidential system.

The “Yes” campaign also hit a last-minute hitch when the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), the AKP’s partner in promoting the changes, reacted angrily to comments by a presidential adviser suggesting a federal system could be imposed in Turkey.

Such a system is an anathema to nationalists who believe in the indivisible unity of Turkey and particularly fear the creation of any Kurdish region in the southeast.

Erdogan moved rapidly to say that no such plan was on the agenda and MHP leader Devlet Bahceli said the issue was now closed.

Turkish media said all AKP advisers and ministers had been told to cancel TV interviews scheduled for the last hours of the campaign to prevent further slip-ups.

After a slew of attacks over the last year blamed on Kurdish militants and extremists, security is set to be a major issue on polling day.

Authorities in Istanbul on Friday detained five people suspected of planning an attack on polling day, following the arrest of 19 alleged extremists in the Aegean city of Izmir earlier in the week.

The Dogan news agency said a total of 49 Daesh suspects had been detained in Istanbul alone over the last week.

More than 33,500 police officers will be on duty in Istanbul alone on referendum day, according to Turkish media.

NEW DELHI— It was a balmy August afternoon last year when 11-year-old Piyush Sharma disappeared while playing outside his home in the small east Indian town of Hatia.

The skinny little boy, with big brown eyes and an infectious smile, had just returned from school and told his mother he wanted to play outside before lunch.

When she called for him 15 minutes later he was gone.

“It’s been nine months since I saw him. He was still wearing his school uniform — a pink shirt and blue shorts. Someone must have taken him. He always played nearby,” said Pinki Sharma, 35, Piyush’s mother, by phone from Hatia in Jharkhand state.

“My husband has travelled to many places looking for him, but no one knows anything. But I will look for him until I die.”

 Piyush is one of about 250,000 children registered as missing on the government’s Track Child portal between January 2012 to March 2017 — that’s five children vanishing every hour.

But campaigners say these figures are just the tip of the iceberg, as many cases are not registered by parents or the police, and the children dismissed as runaways.

Most, however, are sold into slavery in a country where poverty prevails and child labour is normalised, despite being banned.

The Track Child data also shows nearly 73,000 children — 30 per cent — are still missing despite a raft of initiatives to better protect and find these children.

A lack of training of police, child welfare and protection officials, poor coordination between agencies in different states, coupled with massive public apathy is hampering the battle to locate India’s “lost generation”, say campaigners. 

Poverty-stricken, then enslaved 

Missing children are so common in India that notices printed in classified sections of India’s daily newspapers are buried alongside tender notices and job vacancies, with blurred black and white photos alongside a description and a contact number. 

Pintu, 10, last seen at a Delhi railway station wearing a red sweater and black trousers. Shiwani, 16, who vanished outside her home in southern Delhi, dressed in blue jeans. Pooja, 13, in white salwar kameez, last seen in a Delhi market.

Each notice ends in the same way: Sincere efforts have been made by local police to trace out this missing girl/boy, but no clue has come to light so far.

Campaigners say some of these children are abused runaways. Others are abducted. Some come from poor families duped by traffickers with the promise of a good job. Some are girls in love — lured by boyfriends who sell them into prostitution.

Rishi Kant from Shakti Vahini, a Delhi-based anti-trafficking charity, says up to 70 per cent of the missing children found are victims of trafficking and slavery.

“Most are trafficked by organised gangs who know the system. They know how to lure, transport and sell them on to employers,” said Kant, who is involved in rescuing trafficking victims. 

“As a result, they end up locked in brothels, wealthy homes and small workshops — making it hard to detect them or for them to escape.” 

India has one of largest populations of children in the world, with more than 40 per cent of its 1.2 billion people below the age of 18, according to its 2011 Census.

An economic boom of the last two decades has lifted millions out of poverty yet many children continue to be born into dire circumstances with India home to over 30 per cent of the world’s 385 million most impoverished children, according to a 2016 World Bank and UNICEF report.

They make easy prey for traffickers, fed promises of a job and a better life but often ending up in forced labour.

While some children manage to escape or are rescued in police raids after tip-offs from activists or local residents, others are not so fortunate, trapped for years.

“The problem is that in many places police are not trained and not integrated into the existing mechanism to register and trace missing children,” said P.M. Nair, chair professor and research coordinator on human trafficking at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai.

“They often do not see the link between missing children and trafficking and may dismiss the case as a runaway child, rather than register it as a crime and investigate it.”

 There is also little communication between police, government officials and activists — making it difficult for those where the child goes missing to coordinate with counterparts where the child may have been taken, he added.

Hidden in plain sight

Year-on-year figures are not available to determine whether the number of missing children is rising, but government crime data from 2015 shows an almost 60 per cent rise in reported kidnappings and abductions of children over five years.

The National Crime Records Bureau data also show related crimes such as trafficking and buying and selling of minors for the purpose of prostitution rising over the same period. 

The country’s first comprehensive anti-human trafficking legislation is being drafted, providing for a special investigative agency to coordinate between states. 

Two official web portals have been set up to register missing children. The “Khoya Paya”, or “Lost and Found”, website is for public use, while Track Child allows police, government and charities to better coordinate.

Child Line, a 24-hour toll free helpline, has been running nationally for over a decade. Over nine million calls were received in 2015/16 with over 25,000 about missing children. 

The government has also launched various public awareness campaigns on India’s vast railway network — the main form of transport used by traffickers — while a periodic police drive “Operation Smile” screens children in shelter homes, train and bus stations, and on the streets to find the missing.

“There has definitely been a major push by police to find missing children in the last few years,” said a police official from Delhi’s crime branch, who did not want to be named.

“Initiatives like Operation Smile in various parts of country has helped us find hundreds of missing children.”

 But some missing children are in public view despite being enslaved, escalating the need for greater public awareness, say campaigners.

They loiter at traffic lights in cities, weaving between cars and knocking on windows to beg, or in make-shift roadside eateries washing dishes, or in fields of cotton, rice and maize, toiling in the heat and exposed to toxic pesticides.

In wealthy middle class homes, they clean and care for children sometimes older than themselves, and in brothels they wait with painted faces to be raped by stranger after stranger.

“Some of these children are in the open. Just a few weeks ago, for example, we managed to find a missing boy who was trafficked and forced to beg in Delhi,” said Raju Nepali from Duars Expressmail, an anti-trafficking charity based in Jalpaiguri in northeastern India. 

“No one — not the police or the public — even try to inquire about these children. They have become part of normality, maybe because they are poor. So we don’t question who they are, why they are there and who they are with.”

MANILA — Extremist militants who landed on a Philippine tourist island triggering deadly clashes with security forces had planned to stage a mass kidnapping, the military said Wednesday as it pursued five fighters still on the loose.

The army said the Abu Sayyaf group, notorious for a kidnap-for-ransom spree that has targeted foreigners, had planned to snatch up to a dozen tourists around Easter Sunday when resorts are packed.

The group of 11 gunmen landed by boat on Bohol — one of the country's top tourism spots — sparking a gunbattle with security forces on Tuesday that left six insurgents dead and also killed three soldiers and a policeman. 

Five Abu Sayyaf gunmen, along with an unknown number of local collaborators, remain at large after the clashes which took place in a rural district, said Military Chief-of-Staff General Eduardo Ano.

Ano said the gang, which arrived on three boats, had planned to acclimatise in the area and send scouts into resorts to scope out kidnapping targets. 

"They are expecting probably to kidnap four or five persons per boat, so at least 10 to 12 kidnap victims was their [overall] plan," he said. 

The Abu Sayyaf launched the strike from their remote stronghold on the lawless southern Philippines island of Jolo, which is about 500 kilometres away from Bohol. 

The island is just half an hour's boat ride from Cebu, another major tourism draw. The incursion is the first on a major destination in recent years by the group, which pledges allegiance to the Daesh.

Ano said the Bohol plan was put into motion late last week as millions of local and foreign tourists prepared to hit the country's beaches ahead of the Easter holidays.

Philippine intelligence agencies got wind of the plot last week, and alerted the military and foreign counterpart agencies, though authorities lost track of the gunmen in the open seas.

The US and Australian governments later warned their citizens about possible "terrorist" abductions in Bohol and Cebu.

Tourism fallout? 

Ano said the five remaining fighters fled after an overnight siege near a remote village.

"They are all running for their lives," he said.

Helicopter gunships were used to bomb the militants, who fought back with high-end sniper rifles while holed up in a concrete house, according to officials.

Ano said that among the dead was a key Abu Sayyaf leader known by his alias Abu Rahmi. The claim could not be independently confirmed.

He said Abu Rahmi was behind a 2015 raid on the southern island resort of Samal in which four tourists — two Canadians, a Norwegian and a Filipina — were snatched.

The two Canadian men were beheaded last year while the Norwegian man and the Filipina were freed unharmed.

Ano said Abu Rahmi's group also attacked a German couple on a yacht at sea last year, murdering the woman on board and taking the man hostage. He was later killed.

Authorities in Cebu, an island of nearly five million people, warned their citizens about potential kidnapping raids following the Bohol attack.

"It is unlikely that they have the operational capability to do further damage now. However, other elements may exist," Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmena said on his Facebook page.

As the government moved to contain the fallout on the lucrative tourism industry, the military said it would repel similar incursions.

Authorities said some 100 residents had fled the fighting. Hoteliers and visitors told AFP the incident had not affected tourist traffic on the island, though there was increased police security.

Over the past year the Abu Sayyaf has been expanding its activities from its main Jolo base in the south where the military launched an offensive last year.

Its boat-riding gunmen have been boarding commercial and fishing vessels and abducting dozens of foreign crew members.

Zachary Abuza, a Southeast Asian security expert at the National War College in the United States, told AFP the Abu Sayyaf had been regularly staging long-range kidnapping raids, including in Malaysia. 

"They clearly benefit from the woefully inadequate maritime capabilities of the Philippine navy and coast guard," Abuza said. 

"The amount of territory is very large, and these guys are moving on very small fast craft that blend in." 

PYONGYANG — North Korean state media on Tuesday warned of a nuclear attack on the United States at any sign of US aggression as a US Navy strike group steamed towards the western Pacific.

US President Donald Trump, who has urged China to do more to rein in its impoverished neighbour, said in a Tweet North Korea was "looking for trouble" and the United States would "solve the problem" with or without China's help.

Tension has escalated sharply on the Korean Peninsula with talk of military action by the United States gaining traction following its strikes last week against Syria and amid concerns the reclusive North may soon conduct a sixth nuclear test. 

North Korea's official Rodong Sinmun newspaper said the country was prepared to respond to any aggression by the United States.

"Our revolutionary strong army is keenly watching every move by enemy elements with our nuclear sight focused on the US invasionary bases not only in South Korea and the Pacific operation theatre but also in the US mainland," it said.

South Korean acting president Hwang Kyo-ahn warned of "greater provocations" by North Korea and ordered the military to intensify monitoring and to ensure close communication with the United States.

"It is possible the North may wage greater provocations such as a nuclear test timed with various anniversaries including the Supreme People's Assembly," said Hwang, acting leader since former president Park Geun-hye was removed amid a graft scandal.

Trump said in a Tweet a trade deal between China and the United States would be "far better for them if they solved the North Korea problem".

"If China decides to help, that would be great," he said. "If not, we will solve the problem without them!"

 Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, met in Florida last week and Trump pressed Xi to do more to rein in North Korea. 

The North convened a Supreme People's Assembly session on Tuesday, one of its twice-yearly sessions in which major appointments are announced and national policy goals are formally approved. It did not immediately release details.

But South Korean officials took pains to quell talk in social media of an impending security crisis or outbreak of war.

"We'd like to ask precaution so as not to get blinded by exaggerated assessment about the security situation on the Korean peninsula," Defence Ministry spokesman Moon Sang-kyun said.

Saturday is the 105th anniversary of the birth of Kim Il-sung, the country's founding father and grandfather of current ruler, Kim Jong-un. 

A military parade is expected in the North's capital, Pyongyang, to mark the day. North Korea often also marks important anniversaries with tests of its nuclear or missile capabilities in breach of UN Security Council resolutions.

Men and women in colourful outfits were singing and dancing on the streets of Pyongyang, illuminated by better lighting than that seen in previous years, apparently practising for the parade planned.

Syrian President Bashar Assad sent a message of congratulations to mark the event, lambasting "big powers" for their "expansionist" policy.

"The friendly two countries are celebrating this anniversary and, at the same time, conducting a war against big powers' wild ambition to subject all countries to their expansionist and dominationist policy and deprive them of their rights to self-determination," the North's KCNA news agency quoted the message as saying.

The north's foreign ministry, in a statement carried by KCNA, said the US navy strike group's approach showed America's "reckless moves for invading had reached a serious phase".

"We never beg for peace but we will take the toughest counteraction against the provocateurs in order to defend ourselves by powerful force of arms and keep to the road chosen by ourselves," an unidentified ministry spokesman said.

North Korea and the rich, democratic South are technically still at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty. The north regularly threatens to destroy the South and its main ally, the United States. 

Russian worries

North Korea is emerging as one of the most pressing foreign policy problems facing the Trump administration. 

The north has conducted five nuclear tests, two of them last year, and is working to develop nuclear-tipped missiles that can reach the United States.

The Trump administration is reviewing its policy towards North Korea and has said all options are on the table, including military strikes, but US officials said non-military action appeared to be at the top of the list.

Russia's foreign ministry, in a statement ahead of a visit by US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, said it was concerned about many aspects of US foreign policy, particularly on North Korea.

"We are really worried about what Washington has in mind for North Korea after it hinted at the possibility of a unilateral military scenario," the ministry said.

"It's important to understand how that would tally with collective obligations on de-nuclearising the Korean peninsula, something that is underpinned in UN Security Council resolutions."

 Russia condemned US cruise missile strikes on a Syrian air base on Friday, calling them an illegal attack on a sovereign state.

The US navy strike group Carl Vinson was diverted from port calls to Australia and would move towards the western Pacific Ocean near the Korean peninsula as a show of force, a US official told Reuters on the weekend.

US officials said the strike group would take more than a week to reach waters near the Korean peninsula. 

China and South Korea agreed on Monday to impose tougher sanctions on North Korea if it carried out nuclear or long-range missile tests, a senior official in Seoul said. 

On Tuesday, a fleet of North Korean cargo ships was heading home, most of the vessels fully laden, after China ordered its trading companies to return the coal to curb the trade, sources with direct knowledge of the trade said.

The order was given on April 7, just as Trump and Xi were set for the summit where they agreed the North Korean nuclear advances had reached a "very serious stage", Tillerson said.

SEOUL — China has agreed to "strong" new measures to punish North Korea if it carries out a nuclear test, Seoul said on Monday after the US signalled it may act to shut down Pyongyang's weapons programme.

South Korea's top nuclear envoy made the comment after talks with his Chinese counterpart Wu Dawei, as the US sent a naval strike group to the region in a show of force.

"We agreed that there should be strong additional measures based on UN Security Council resolutions if the North pushes ahead with a nuclear test or an ICBM launch despite warnings from the international community," kim Hong-Kyun told reporters.

The North may stage a "strategic provocation" to mark key political dates this month, Kim said, adding that Wu's visit would serve as a "strong warning" against Pyongyang. Wu did not speak to the media after the talks.

China is the isolated country's sole major ally and economic lifeline, and Beijing in February suspended all coal imports from the North in punishment for Pyongyang's latest missile test.

Speculation of an imminent nuclear test is brewing as the North marks anniversaries including the 105th birthday of its founding leader on Saturday — sometimes celebrated with a demonstration of military might.

President Donald Trump, fresh from a missile strike on Syria that was widely interpreted as a warning to North Korea, has asked his advisors for a range of options to rein in its ambitions, a top US official said on Sunday.

Beijing pressed 

The talks between Kim and Wu came shortly after Trump hosted Chinese leader Xi Jinping for a summit at which he pressed Beijing to do more to curb the North's nuclear ambitions. 

"[We] are prepared to chart our own course if this is something China is just unable to coordinate with us," US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said after the summit.

He added however that Beijing had indicated a willingness to act on the issue.

"We need to allow them time to take actions," Tillerson said, adding that Washington had no intention of attempting to remove the regime of Kim Jong-un. 

The meeting between Xi and Trump came on the heels of yet another missile test by the North, which fired a medium-range ballistic missile into the Sea of Japan on Wednesday.

The US navy strike group Carl Vinson cancelled a planned trip to Australia this weekend, heading toward the Korean peninsula instead, in a move that will raise tensions in the region.

Seoul and Washington are also conducting joint military drills, an annual exercise which is seen by the North as a practice for war.

Pyongyang is on a quest to develop a long-range missile capable of hitting the US mainland with a nuclear warhead, and has so far staged five nuclear tests, two of them last year.

Satellite imagery analysis suggests it could be preparing for a sixth, with US intelligence officials warning that Pyongyang could be less than two years away from its goal of striking the continental United States.

Military response? 

China, the US, South Korea and Japan all have dedicated envoys who meet regularly to discuss the North Korean issue: a legacy of the long-stalled six-party process that also involved Pyongyang and Moscow. The North quit the negotiations in 2009.

The isolated North is barred under UN resolutions from any use of ballistic missile technology, but repeated rounds of sanctions have failed to arrest its nuclear ambitions.

Trump has previously threatened unilateral action against the reclusive state, a threat that appeared more palpable after Thursday's strike on a Syrian airfield following an apparent chemical attack.

US National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster on Sunday criticised North Korea as a rogue nation engaged in provocative behaviour and said denuclearisation of the peninsula "must happen".

"The president has asked them to be prepared to give us a full range of options to remove that threat," he said on Fox News, apparently referring to Trump's advisers.

South Korea's Unification Minister Hong Yong-pyo said on Monday that the repercussions of a potential military response were worrying.

"Pre-emptive strikes may be aimed at resolving North Korea's nuclear problems, but for us, it is also related to defending the safety of the public," he told reporters.

While a US unilateral strike on North Korea from a shorter range might be more effective, it would likely endanger many civilians in the South and risk triggering a broader military conflict, experts warn.

"The US has always had all the options on the table from a preventive strike to preemptive strike to negotiations," said James Kim, an analyst at Seoul-based Asan Institute for Policy Studies.

"If it's a preventive strike or precision strike, there's danger that this could expand into a broader regional conflict involving China or Japan.

"The upside is that the United States may be able to denuclearise the North by force... but it will come at a huge cost to the region and to the United States," he told AFP.

STOCKHOLM — Huge crowds gathered in Stockholm for a "Lovefest" vigil against terrorism on Sunday, two days after a truck attack that police believe was committed by an Uzbek interested in extremist groups.

Stockholm city officials said more than 20,000 people took part in the vigil, organised after a driver mowed down shoppers in a stolen truck before slamming into the facade of the bustling Ahlens department store on Friday afternoon.

The motive was not known, but the method resembled previous attacks using vehicles in Nice, Berlin and London, all of them claimed by the Daesh terror group.

The suspected driver, arrested hours after the attack, has been identified only as a 39-year-old man from Uzbekistan who had shown interest in extremist groups and who was facing deportation after his residency permit application was denied, police said.

He "showed interest for extremist organisations like Daesh," senior police officer Jonas Hysing told reporters.

A second suspect has also been formally placed under arrest over the attack, Stockholm district court judge Helga Hullman said on Sunday, revealing no information about his link to the Uzbek.

Friday's attack has deeply shocked the usually tranquil Scandinavian nation, which prides itself on its openness and tolerance.

"It's very important to stay strong together against anything that wants to change our society, which is based on democracy," said one participant in the vigil who gave her name only as Marianne, attending with her elderly mother.

"We talk, we don't fight," she told AFP as she joined the crowds thronging the Sergels Torg Plaza, a stone's throw from the scene of the attack.

One woman offered flowers to police officers guarding the plaza. "Thank you," she said with a smile.

"Fear shall not reign. Terror cannot win," Stockholm Mayor Karin Wanngard told the crowd, saying terrorism would be defeated with "kindness and openness".

Linking arms, under flags flying at half-mast, the crowd held a minute of silence for the victims.

"We don't respond with fear, we respond with love," read one poster held by a woman wearing a headscarf.

Suspect 'went underground' 

The Uzbek suspect had been due to be deported from Sweden after his residency application was rejected last year.

"He applied for a permanent residency permit in 2014. The Migration Agency rejected it in June 2016 and also decided that he was to be deported," Hysing said.

The man was told last December that he had four weeks to leave the country, but in February his case was handed over to the police "since the person had gone underground," Hysing told reporters.

Police apparently never found the man, whom authorities have said was known to Sweden's intelligence service for undisclosed reasons.

Media reports said the man, a father of four who worked in construction, did not come across as having been radicalised. "He partied and drank," one of his friends said.

The family of an 11-year-old Swedish girl have meanwhile confirmed she was one of the four people killed in the attack.

The foreign office in London confirmed that a British man, 41-year-old Chris Bevington, was among the dead, while the Belgian foreign ministry said a Belgian woman had been killed.

The fourth victim was only known to be a Swedish national. Fifteen people were injured, four of whom were in critical condition.

Police have said they were increasingly sure the Uzbek was the driver of the truck.

"There is nothing to indicate that we've got the wrong man. On the contrary, the suspicions have strengthened," national police chief Dan Eliasson said on Saturday.

Police had found a suspect device in the cab of the truck.

"A technical examination is ongoing, we can't go into what it is right now... whether it's a bomb or a flammable device," Eliasson said. 

Friday's attack the second terror attack in Stockholm. 

In December 2010, a suicide bomber blew himself up, also on the Drottninggatan street, slightly injuring several passers-by.

PALM BEACH, United States — US President Donald Trump ditched his trademark anti-China bombast, hailing an "outstanding" relationship with counterpart Xi Jinping at the end of a superpower summit Friday overshadowed by events in Syria.

"We have made tremendous progress in our relationship with China," Trump said effusively at the close of a high-stakes but studiously familiar first meeting between the pair at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

"I think truly progress has been made," Trump said, declaring his relationship with Xi as "outstanding".

The friendly tone was a far cry from Trump's acerbic campaign denouncements about China's "rape" of the US economy and his vow to punish Beijing with punitive tariffs.

Xi reciprocated Trump's warm words, saying the summit had "uniquely important significance" and thanking Trump for a warm reception.

Beijing's most powerful leader in decades also invited the neophyte US president on a coveted state visit to China later in the year. Trump accepted, with a date yet to be determined.

We "arrived at many common understandings", Xi added, "the most important being deepening our friendship and building a kind of trust".

The bonhomie extended behind closed doors, where the US president's grandson and granddaughter sang a traditional Chinese ballad — "Jasmine Flower" — and recited poetry for their honoured guests, earning praise from their "very proud" mother Ivanka in a tweet.

"Both the atmosphere and the chemistry between the two leaders was positive, the posture between the two really set the tone," said Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

"All of us are feeling very good about the results of this summit."

 Winter White House 

The start of the meeting came on a night of high drama as Trump not only met his nearest peer in economic world power for the first time but also launched his first military strike on a state target.

Trump informed the Chinese leader personally of the strike as the 59 Tomahawk missiles were winding their way to the Shayrat airbase.

Although China is not implicated in the Syrian war, Trump's actions resonate widely, not least in the debate over how to tackle North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.

China and the United States agree Pyongyang's programmes are a serious problem, but have not seen eye-to-eye on how to respond.

"There is a real commitment to work together to see if this cannot be resolved in a peaceful way," said Tillerson.

Trump asked Xi for ideas on how to proceed, but held out the possibility of unilateral action.

"[We] are prepared to chart our own course if this is something China is just unable to coordinate with us," said Tillerson.

Iran's President Hassan Rouhani meanwhile said that "terrorists" were applauding Trump for launching a missile strike on an airbase of his Syrian government ally.

But he backed calls for an independent inquiry into a suspected chemical weapons attack on a rebel-held town in northwestern Syria on Tuesday that Trump blamed on the Damascus regime.

"This man who is now in office in America claimed that he wanted to fight terrorism but today all terrorists in Syria are celebrating the US attack," Rouhani said in a speech aired by state television.

"Why have you attacked the Syrian army which is at war with terrorists? Under what law or authority did you launch your missiles at this independent country?"

 Iran and Russia are the closest allies of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Deliverables 

There appeared to be little in the way of concrete achievements during 24 hours in the sun, but officials said that a rapport had been built that will carry on the next four years.

The US leader appeared confident when Xi arrived at the Florida venue, even hazarding a joke about his own reputation as a dealmaker.

"We had a long discussion already. So far, I have gotten nothing. Absolutely nothing," he said to laughs from the delegation.

"But I can see that, I think long-term, we are going to have a very, very great relationship and I look very much forward to it."

 The two leaders were joined on Thursday evening by US First Lady Melania Trump, a former model, and Peng Liyuan — a celebrated folk singer Trump hailed as a "great, great celebrity".

There was little evidence of Xi's promised "tweetable deliverables" designed to smooth ties, but they may be rolled out during a 100-day plan on trade.

Sources briefed on Xi's plans promised a package of Chinese investments aimed at creating more than 700,000 American jobs — the same number China's regional rival Japan pledged to Trump during Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Mar-a-Lago visit in February.

In return, Xi hoped to obtain assurances from Trump on punitive tariffs and the delay of an American arms sale to Taiwan, at least until after a major Communist Party meeting later this year.

Trump's position on democratically ruled Taiwan — which China considers part of its territory awaiting reunification — has been a major irritant since he accepted a protocol-breaking phone call from the Taiwanese president after his election victory.

The US leader apparently did speak to Xi about another thorny issue, telling him of "the importance of protecting human rights and other values deeply held by Americans", the White House reported.

SEOUL/TOKYO — The United States and South Korea agreed on Thursday to proceed with the deployment of an advanced US missile defence system that has angered China, a day after North Korea's latest test launch drew condemnation across the volatile region.

Leaders and senior officials from the United States, South Korea and Japan spoke on Thursday to discuss the latest provocation from Pyongyang, hours before US President Donald Trump begins a summit with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.

Analysts have said Wednesday's launch of a ballistic missile from North Korea's east coast probably took place with the summit in mind as the reclusive state presses ahead with its missile and nuclear programmes in defiance of United Nations resolutions and sanctions.

Trump's national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, agreed in a phone call with his South Korean counterpart on the need to proceed with the deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) system in South Korea after Wednesday's launch.

South Korea and the United States say the sole purpose of the advanced THAAD system is to defend against missile launches from North Korea. However, China says the system's powerful radar could penetrate into its territory.

Despite angry opposition from Beijing, the United States started to deploy the first elements of its advanced anti-missile defence system in South Korea last month.

South Korean officials said McMaster spoke with his counterpart in Seoul, Kim Kwan-jin, on Thursday morning to discuss the North's missile launch and the Trump-Xi summit.

"Both sides agreed to pursue... plans in order to substantially strengthen the international community's sanctions and pressure on North Korea," South Korea's presidential Blue House said in a statement.

"... both agreed to push forward the deployment of THAAD by US forces in Korea," the statement said.

Serious threat

In a phone call with Trump, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said the two leaders had agreed that North Korea's latest ballistic missile launch was "a dangerous provocation and a serious threat".

Abe told reporters at his official residence he was watching to see how China would respond to Pyongyang after Xi meets Trump at the US leader's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

In brief comments televised nationally, Abe also said Trump had told him all options were on the table.

The White House said in a statement Trump "made clear that the United States would continue to strengthen its ability to deter and defend itself and its allies with the full range of its military capabilities".

Trump has repeatedly said he wants China to do more to exert its economic influence over its unpredictable ally in Pyongyang to restrain its nuclear and missile programmes, but China denies it has any overriding influence on North Korea.

On Sunday, Trump held out the possibility of using trade as a lever to secure Chinese cooperation, while suggesting Washington might deal with Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programmes on its own if need be.

Any launch of objects using ballistic missile technology is a violation of UN Security Council resolutions. The north has defied the ban, saying it infringes on its sovereign rights to self-defence and the pursuit of space exploration.

US officials said the missile launched on Wednesday appeared to be a liquid-fuelled, extended-range Scud missile that only travelled a fraction of its range before spinning out of control.

They said it flew about 60km from its launch site near Sinpo, a port city on the North's east coast where a submarine base is located.

Military officials in the United States and South Korea had initially said assessments indicated it had been a KN-15 medium-range ballistic missile, the same kind North Korea test-launched in February.

As well as a growing list of ballistic missile launches, North Korea has also conducted two nuclear weapons tests since January 2016. 

BRASILIA — Brazil's top electoral court on Tuesday decided to hear new witnesses in an illegal campaign financing case that could remove President Michel Temer from office, delaying any verdict in the trial until at least May.

The Supreme Electoral Tribunal voted to reopen the landmark case to allow former finance minister Guido Mantega to respond to allegations he solicited an illegal donation of 50 million reais ($16 million) from engineering conglomerate Odebrecht in return for favourable tax legislation.

The delay plays into what Temer's aides have outlined as a defence strategy that centres on dragging the case out through 2018. If successful, that would allow Temer to complete the term of impeached leftist Dilma Rousseff and spare Brazil the turmoil of having two presidents ousted in a year.

The centre-right president served as Rousseff's vice president, before he replaced her in 2016.

If the seven-justice tribunal decides that Rousseff and Temer, her running mate, used illegal money to fund their 2014 campaign, it could annul the election result and force Temer from office.

Congress would then have 30 days to elect a successor, plunging Latin America's largest nation deeper into the political turbulence that has prolonged its worst recession on record.

The court on Tuesday also granted a prosecutor's request to call Rousseff campaign strategist Joao Santana as a witness, following allegations that 20 million reais of his fees were paid offshore by Odebrecht.

The three political parties involved — Rousseff's Workers Party, Temer's PMDB and the PSDB that lost the 2014 election — were also given another five days to present their arguments.

"With the new proceedings, there is no way of knowing when this trial will be over," said Temer lawyer Gustavo Guedes.

'An endless trial’

The TSE judge given the task of studying the case, Herman Benjamin, criticised the calling of new witnesses in a case that opened two-and-a-half years ago.

"We can't turn this into an endless trial. We can't hear everybody. We can't hear Adam and Eve and the serpent," Benjamin told the court.

Brazil's currency and stock market were among the best performing in the world after Temer assumed office in May and pledged to cut a gaping deficit and overhaul pension laws. Investors welcomed the shift towards a more business-friendly agenda after 13 years of Workers Party government.

But the prospect of removing a second president in the space of a year could be devastating.

"It would create more confusion," former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso warned in a radio interview on Monday, urging the court not to make a decision that would scare off investors.

Cardoso's PSDB party filed the complaint about illegal campaign funding in 2014 after narrowly losing the elections. However, since Rousseff's impeachment, it is an ally in Temer's coalition and its lawyers are arguing that he was not responsible for the illegal money.

Among possible outcomes, the court could decide to close the case because Rousseff is no longer president or declare her election victory void, but not punish Temer with a ban from politics.

Temer is currently serving the third year of Rousseff's second four-year term. If a president is removed in the last two years of a four-year term, Congress would get to pick the successor rather than via a popular vote.

Since Temer's coalition holds a majority in congress, that could potentially enable him to stay in office.

OSH, Kyrgyzstan/ST PETERSBURG, Russia — A Russian suicide bomber originally from mainly Muslim Kyrgyzstan detonated the explosives in a St Petersburg train carriage that killed 14 people and wounded 50, authorities said on Tuesday.

The suspect had radical links, Russian media cited law enforcement officials as saying, raising the possibility Monday’s attack could have been inspired by the Daesh terror group, which has not struck a major city in Russia before. So far, no-one has claimed responsibility for the blast.

Kyrgyz officials identified the suspect as Akbarzhon Jalilov, born in the city of Osh in 1995, and Russian officials confirmed his identity, saying he had also left a bomb found at another metro station before it went off.

Biographical details pieced together from social media and Russian officials suggested Jalilov was an fairly typical young St Petersburg resident with an interest in Islam as well as pop music and martial arts but no obvious links to militants.

His uncle, Eminzhon Jalilov, told Reuters by telephone that his nephew was a mosque-attending Muslim, but that he was “not a fanatic”.

The explosion in the middle of Monday afternoon occurred when the train was in a tunnel deep underground, amplifying the force of the blast. The carriage door was blown off, and witnesses described seeing injured passengers with bloodied and blackened bodies. 

State investigative authorities said fragments of the body of the suspect had been found among the dead, indicating that he was a suicide bomber.

“From the genetic evidence and the surveillance cameras there is reason to believe that the person behind the terrorist act in the train carriage was the same one who left a bag with an explosive device at the Ploshchad Vosstaniya station,” they said in a statement.

Russia has been on alert against attacks in reprisal for its military intervention in Syria, where Moscow’s forces have been supporting troops loyal to President Bashar Assad against Western-backed armed groups as well as the hardline Daesh which grew out of the conflict.

Daesh, now under attack by all sides in Syria’s multi-faceted war, has repeatedly threatened revenge and been linked to recent bombings elsewhere in Europe.

If it is confirmed that the metro bomber was linked to radical Islamists, it could provoke anger among some Russians at Moscow’s decision to intervene in Syria, a year before an election which President Vladimir Putin is expected to win. 

Previous bombing

Officials said they were treating the blast as an act of terrorism, but there was no official confirmation of any link to Islamist radicals. 

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said it was cynical to say the bombing in St Petersburg was revenge for Russia’s role in Syria. He said the attack showed that Moscow needed to press on with its fight against global terrorism.

A page on social media site VKontakte, the Russian equivalent of Facebook, belonging to someone with the same name and year of birth as Jalilov, included photos of him relaxing with friends in a bar, smoking from a hookah pipe. He was dressed in jackets and a baseball cap.

A Reuters reporter visited a house in Osh, southern Kyrgyzstan, which neighbours said was the family home of Jalilov. The home, a modest but well-maintained one-storey brick building, was empty. 

Neighbours said Jalilov was from a family of ethnic Uzbeks, and that while they knew his parents they had not seen the young man for years. They said his father worked as a panel-beater in a car repair shop.

“They are a very good family. Always friendly, never argue. And they have good kids,” one of the neighbours, Mirkomil Akhmadaliyev, told Reuters. 

Later on Tuesday, Jalilov’s mother appeared but refused to speak to reporters, saying she needed to retrieve something and hurry back to a security service office.

Osh is part of the Fergana Valley, a fertile strip of land that straddles Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan which is mainly populated by ethnic Uzbeks. It has a tradition of Islamist radicalism and hundreds of people have set out from the area to join Daesh in Syria and Iraq.

A blast at a nightclub in Istanbul on New Year’s Eve that killed 39 people involved a suspect from the same part of central Asia. The bomber in that attack said he had been acting under the direction of Daesh militants in Syria.

Jalilov’s uncle said his nephew moved to Russia in 2012. He is registered at an upscale apartment in the north of St Petersburg, according to a source in the Russian authorities, and he has a Daewoo Nexia car registered in his name.

A man who said he was a representative of the apartment’s owner told Reuters that Jalilov had never actually lived there, but had given the address as his residence in official documents.

His VKontakte page included links to a site featuring sayings from Muhammad Ibn Abd Al Wahhab, an eighteenth century preacher on whose teaching Wahhabism, a conservative and hardline branch of Islam, is based. But there were no links to extremist militants.

Putin visit ‘noteworthy’

Russia’s health minister Veronika Skvortsova said on Tuesday that the death toll from the blast, which hit at 2:40pm, had risen to 14, with 50 wounded.

St Petersburg television showed footage of the corpse of a man they said was the perpetrator. The man, with a close-cropped beard, resembled footage of a young man wearing a blue beanie hat and a jacket with a fur-lined hood captured on closed circuit television identified by Russian media as a suspect.

“It has been ascertained that an explosive device could have been detonated by a man, fragments of whose body were found in the third carriage of the train,” Russia’s state investigative committee said in a statement.

“The man has been identified but his identity will not be disclosed for now in the interests of the investigation,” the statement added.

President Putin, who was visiting St Petersburg at the time of the blast, went to the site late on Monday. 

The Kremlin said it was “noteworthy” that Putin had been in the city. It did not elaborate, but said such attacks on Russia were a challenge for every citizen, including the president.

Two years ago, Daesh said it had brought down a plane carrying Russian tourists home from a Red Sea resort. All 224 people on board the flight were killed.

Monday’s blast raised security fears beyond Russian frontiers. France, which has itself suffered a series of attacks, announced additional security measures in Paris.