World

ANKARA, Turkey — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan asserted on Wednesday that many in the US and Europe are branding US President-elect Donald Trump a "dictator" because he wasn't their favoured candidate. Erdogan called on them to respect democracy.

Addressing a meeting of the Organisation for Islamic Cooperation in Istanbul, Erdogan also accused Western nations of calling any leader that did not serve their interests a despot.

"The West will continue to welcome tyrants who have blood on their hands with red carpets and label anyone who criticises them as a dictator," said Erdogan who is frequently criticised for his increasingly autocratic style of governing.

"Are they calling someone a dictator? Then you should think the opposite. That person is good, because [he or she] goes against their interests," Erdogan said.

Turkey's relations with President Barack Obama's administration have been tense. Ankara has strongly objected to Washington's support for Syrian Kurdish militia who are linked to outlawed Kurdish rebels in Turkey and perceptions that the US is reluctant to extradite a Muslim cleric who is accused of masterminding a failed coup in July.

Erdogan spoke with Trump soon after his election and has said he hopes his triumph would be an "auspicious" development.

In the televised speech, Erdogan said anti-Trump protesters in Western nations had no respect for democracy or the result of the US election.

"In America they started calling Trump a dictator. In various countries of Europe they spilled into the streets and started saying 'dictator'," said Erdogan. "I thought you were democrats? Why aren't you respecting the results of the ballot box?"

Erdogan added that he was not concerned about Trump's comments on Islam or Muslims, saying the president-elect would "correct" them once in office.

"We are used to such things in politics," Erdogan said. "They speak that way today and then they'll correct that wrong," he said.

SEOUL — South Korean prosecutors on Wednesday raided offices of the Samsung Group and the state pension fund as the electronics giant is dragged further into a snowballing influence-peddling scandal engulfing President Park Geun-hye. 

The raid comes as Samsung faces allegations it bribed Park's confidant Choi Soon-sil to win state approval for a controversial merger it sought last year. 

Prosecutors visited the group's Future Strategy Office, which oversees key business decisions, the Yonhap news agency reported. 

A Samsung spokesman confirmed the visit by prosecutors but declined to elaborate.

The merger of Cheil Industries and Samsung C&T last year was seen as a crucial step to ensure a smooth third-generational power transfer to Lee Jae-yong, scion of Samsung's founding family. 

It was criticised by many who said it wilfully undervalued Samsung C&T's stocks, but Seoul's National Pension Service (NPS) — a major Samsung shareholder — voted in favour of the deal, which eventually went through. 

US hedge fund Elliott Management, which controls about 0.62 per cent of Samsung, rallied opposition to the deal, and although it lost the battle its campaign was seen as a watershed moment for shareholder activism in South Korea.

Prosecutors also raided several NPS offices on Wednesday, a spokeswoman for the pension fund said. 

The NPS oversees funds of 543 trillion won ($461 billion), making it the world's third largest service of its kind.

The fund is overseen by the welfare ministry and the minister in charge at the time was regarded as very close to Park. 

Choi has been formally indicted on charges of abuse of power and coercion. 

She is accused of leveraging her personal relationship with Park to coerce donations from big firms like Samsung to two non-profit foundations which were then used for Choi's personal gain.

Prosecutors say Park colluded with Choi to extract money from the firms and will question the president as a subject in a criminal investigation

Mass protests 

The president angrily denied the prosecutors' accusations, calling them a "fantasy" based on "imagination and guesswork". 

Park had earlier promised to answer questions "sincerely" but her lawyer said Sunday the president would not meet prosecutors and would only deal with an independent team of investigators which will soon take over the probe.

A key presidential aide who was once a star prosecutor and justice minister Kim Hyun-woong both offered their resignations Wednesday, as tensions between Park and prosecutors reached new heights.

The scandal has seen Park's approval ratings plunge to record lows, and hundreds of thousands of protesters have taken to the streets in a series of weekly protests to demand that she resign.

Activists said Wednesday a fifth weekly protest in Seoul on Saturday would draw between 1.5 and 2 million people, which would make it the largest ever public demonstration in South Korea.

Samsung — South Korea's biggest business group — donated 20 billion won to Choi's foundations, making it the largest single contributor. 

It is separately accused of offering Choi 2.8 million euros ($3 million) to bankroll her daughter's equestrian training in Germany, which led prosecutors to raid Samsung Electronics' offices in Seoul this month. 

The group's advertising unit is also accused of offering a donation to a sports foundation run by Choi's niece, who is seen as her key aide.

A number of Samsung officials — including Lee — have been questioned by prosecutors over the scandal, which has shed light on unhealthy ties between the government and powerful conglomerates that have endured over decades.

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump's surprise victory in the US presidential election has set off a round of resume-polishing across Washington, as the nation's federal civil servants prepare for a leader who has promised to freeze hiring and reverse many of the policies they have spent the past eight years putting in place.

While anti-Washington rhetoric is a staple of US politics, more than two dozen federal workers interviewed by Reuters said Trump's divisive presidential campaign pointed to bigger potential problems than those that would normally come with a routine switch from a Democratic to a Republican administration.

The New York businessman's lack of political experience and contentious rhetoric have prompted some to assess whether they should leave government before he takes office on January 20.

As the Republican presidential candidate, Trump encouraged his supporters to harass journalists and attack protesters. He vowed to sue news outlets and women who accused him of sexual assault and said he would jail his opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Trump's conduct has caused some undercover agents to worry that their identities could be made public if they step out of line, said Susan Hennessey, a former attorney at the National Security Agency who has been urging people in government to keep working in Trump's administration to help resist potential abuses of power.

"I can't and don't blame anyone who feels they can't stay," she said.

Other federal workers worry their integrity could be compromised if they work on cases that affect Trump's vast business interests. Trump's taxes are being audited by the Internal Revenue Service and the National Labour Relations Board is involved in a labour dispute at his Las Vegas hotel. Changes to tax laws or pollution rules could potentially impact some of his property holdings.

"Do I get out or is it all the more important that I stay in to push back on the problematic things?" said one federal worker, who, like others interviewed for this story, asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation at work.

Unraveling policies

A transfer of power always convulses Washington to some degree, particularly when it comes to the departure and arrival of political appointees in more than 4,000 posts. Those top officials oversee 2.7 million civilian workers, from park rangers to tax lawyers, who are expected to enact the president's agenda and enforce laws passed by Congress regardless of their personal political views.

But several workers told Reuters they'd rather leave government service than carry out orders they don't agree with, pointing specifically at Trump's vow to undo President Barack Obama's policies on trade, immigration, health care and environmental protection.

National security officials have printed out their resignation letters, ready to hand them in if Trump tries to revive policies such as waterboarding or mass surveillance of Americans they oppose on legal or moral grounds, according to more than 20 military, intelligence and Foreign Service officers, who all spoke on condition of anonymity.

Regulators at the Environmental Protection Agency privately say they are looking for new jobs ahead of expected cutbacks at their agency, whose climate-change rules were criticised by Trump on the campaign trail.

One manager is urging employees to stay on the job.

"Sometimes democracy surprises you. And while the election results will no doubt bring many changes over the coming months, our job remains the same," Sarah Dunham, director of the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Atmospheric Programs, wrote to colleagues two days after the election.

Misgivings apparently extend into the nation's 1.5 million military service members as well. A survey released by The Military Times on Friday found that one in five service members said they will not re-enlist with Trump as Commander-in-chief.

Deregulation drive

During his campaign, Trump promised to rescind two regulations for every new one his administration issues and freeze hiring at agencies that don't cover public safety, public health or national defence. Republicans in Congress have pushed to erode job protections and scale back benefits.

That would be a further blow for federal workers who have weathered furloughs, salary freezes and a three-week government shutdown in recent years.

The civilian work force has shrunk by 4 per cent since Obama's first year in office, according to White House figures, and it could shrink further. More than one-third of federal workers will be eligible for retirement next year, according to a 2014 Government Accountability Office report.

"This isn't the worst thing that's happened to us," said a scientist who manages a fisheries laboratory in the Pacific Northwest of the expected changes. "It's kind of continual."

 There may be a silver lining for those who are trying to get a job working for Uncle Sam. Trump has promised to increase the number of border-security agents and immigration-enforcement officers as part of a crackdown on illegal immigration.

And several managers said they were rushing to fill vacancies on their teams before Trump's promised hiring ban takes effect.

"Everybody seems to be scrambling to fill the positions they have open now," one said.

SEOUL — Elected on a "no-corruption" ticket, South Korean President Park Geun-hye now looks set to become the country's first sitting president to be formally questioned as a suspect in a criminal investigation.

It is a stunning fall from grace for a politician who had run as an incorruptible candidate, declaring herself beholden to nobody and "married to the nation".

 High-level corruption has long been a stain on South Korea's democratic credentials and the presidential Blue House is no stranger to allegations of cronyism.

Since South Korea's first free and fair election in 1987, every president has faced graft investigations after leaving office and one — Roh Moo-hyun — committed suicide as a corruption probe closed in on his family.

Their cases often involved family members who were able to leverage links to the president in a society where political influence has traditionally had a very close and unhealthy rapport with business success.

Park, the daughter of military strongman Park Chung-hee who led the country from 1961 to 1979, was meant to be different.

Both her parents were assassinated and, estranged from her two siblings, unmarried and childless, she promoted herself as invulnerable to nepotism.

"I have no family to look after nor children to inherit my property... I want to devote myself to the nation and the people," she said in a speech during the 2012 presidential campaign.

The image of duty and self-sacrifice played well with the conservative base of her ruling Saenuri Party, especially older voters who saw her as a virtuous survivor of personal tragedy.

'Queen of Elections' 

As chairwoman between 2004 and 2006, Park was credited with turning around the party's political fortunes, winning a number of key polls and earning her the nickname "Queen of Elections".

As president, she continued to cultivate the persona of the nation's "selfless daughter" — a private person who normally dined alone and spent what little free time she had in the company of her dogs.

All the more shocking then were the revelations of the extraordinary influence wielded over the president by her long-time friend and confidante Choi Soon-sil — now indicted on charges of coercion and abuse of power.

Prosecutors on Sunday said Park had played a "collusive role" in Choi's criminal activities, which included coercing conglomerates into donating tens of millions of dollars to non-profit foundations, allegedly for Choi's personal gain.

Park also faces allegations that she leaked confidential documents to Choi, who holds no official position, and sought her advice on matters of state, including key appointments.

The scandal has seen Park's approval ratings plunge to record lows, as hundreds of thousands of protesters have taken to the streets in a series of weekly protests to demand that she resign.

"It isn't just about corruption. People genuinely think they have been deceived by Park Geun-hye," said Kim Jong-yup, a sociology professor at Hanshin University.

"They thought she had inherited all the good qualities of her parents — the initiative and drive for economic development of her father and the caring and feminine character of her mother.

"They thought she was Park Chung-hee without dictatorship. But now the fantasy has been broken and they realise they have been wrong," Kim said.

The 'lonely' president 

In a televised apology earlier this month, Park spoke of her "lonely" life as president, and acknowledged she had been "careless" and over-trusting in her relationship with Choi.

Under South Korea's constitution, a sitting president cannot be charged with a criminal offence except insurrection or treason. But she can be investigated by prosecutors and possibly charged after leaving office.

"My own sense is that this is a friendship run badly amok," said Robert Kelly, a professor of political science at Busan National University.

"It sounds a lot like she was lonely and lost sight of proper boundaries.

"Choi's influence was likely inappropriate and unethical, but it is not obviously criminal. Barring some bombshell revelation, I doubt Park Geun-hye will step down," Kelly said.

More than 50 companies, including giants like Samsung and Hyundai, were allegedly forced to donate a total of 77.4 billion won ($65.5 million) to the two foundations controlled by Choi.

According to prosecutors, many acted out of fear of reprisals, like harsh tax audits or delays in getting regulatory approvals.

"Although Park kept her distance from her family and relatives, her unconditional trust in Choi led her to believe that the country would benefit from these foundations," said Han Hee-won, a law professor at Dongguk University.

"This is a political scandal rather than corruption. There is no proof yet that Park took the millions for herself," Han said.

SEOUL — South Korea's main opposition party voted Monday to seek the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye after prosecutors named her a criminal suspect in a snowballing corruption case.

But it remains unclear exactly when Park's opponents will formally try to start the process, a difficult and lengthy one with no guarantee about the outcome.

Members of the Democratic Party voted unanimously in favour of seeking Park's impeachment and setting up a working group to review related legal issues, its spokesman Ki Dong-min told reporters. 

"We have decided to join efforts with civic groups, other opposition parties and even members of the ruling party who want Park to be impeached," Ki said.

He said the party would formally begin the process when it sees the "biggest possibility" of parliament approving such a move.

Two smaller opposition parties have already said they will seek to remove Park. Even some members of the president's ruling conservative party have come out in favour of impeachment.

But their commitment to the process is unclear for now, partly due to fear of a political backlash if the impeachment bid fails. 

A failed attempt in 2004 to impeach then-President Roh Moo-hyun backfired badly, with two parties that led the bid suffering a devastating defeat in a general election the same year. 

In some ways, the opposition has had its hand forced by the huge outpouring of anti-Park sentiment, which has seen hundreds of thousands take to the streets of Seoul in recent weeks demanding that she step down.

With Park showing no sign of going voluntarily, the opposition has come under pressure to take a more assertive stance, but is wary of the political dangers involved.

"Even if there is great public anger over Park for now, many lawmakers may be reluctant to take such a big risk by walking into an impeachment minefield," said political commentator Kim Hong-guk.

Park has just over a year to run of her single, five-year presidential term, and impeachment could take months, as it requires a two-thirds approval by the national assembly and a similar majority in the constitutional court.

There are concerns about a backlash from conservative voters who — while disappointed with Park — would see her impeachment as unwarranted and overly punitive.

On Sunday, Seoul prosecutors said Park had colluded with her long-time friend Choi Soon-sil, who is accused of coercing local firms to donate more than $60 million and of meddling in state affairs.

That made Park the first South Korean president to become a criminal suspect while in office.

Choi and a former Park aide were formally indicted on charges of abuse of power and coercion, while another aide was charged with leaking confidential state documents. 

Park had previously said she would submit to prosecutors for questioning, but her lawyer signalled a change on Sunday, saying she would only answer to an independent team of investigators which will soon take over the case. 

A sitting president cannot be charged with a criminal offence except insurrection or treason, but she can be investigated and potentially charged once her term is over. 

The three opposition parties hold a combined 55 per cent of parliamentary seats — short of the two-thirds majority, for which they would require the support of conservative MPs.

The scandal has sent Park's job approval ratings diving to 5 per cent, a record low for a South Korean president. 

WASHINGTON — During the course of the 2016 campaign, Republican Christine Todd Whitman compared Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler. She warned that a Trump administration would bring the country into “chaos”. And a month before Election Day, the former Bush Cabinet official proclaimed her support for Hillary Clinton.

Now, when young Republicans ask her whether they should join the Trump administration, Whitman struggles to find a simple answer.

“I’d sound a note of caution,” says the former Environmental Protection Agency head. “They’re going to have to carry out what the president wants done.”

Dozens of Republican foreign policy experts, business leaders and elected officials broke party ranks to come out against Trump during the contentious presidential race. Now, they’re facing a difficult choice: Get on the Trump train or watch it leave from the station.

“Look, he’s the president,” said Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, a Trump backer. “People are going to want to do everything they can to work closely with him.”

The 2012 Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, who once called Trump “a phony” and “a fraud”, is a leading contender for secretary of state. Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse, long Trump’s loudest critic in the Senate, has urged his Republican followers to root for Trump and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, also under consideration for secretary of state, met with Trump on Thursday. While she eventually voted for him, Haley had criticised his Muslim travel ban and complained that she was “not a fan”. Trump, in turn, tweeted that she “embarrassed” her state.

Sasse and other Trump antagonists in Congress are looking to Vice President-elect Mike Pence, a former Indiana congressman and the state’s governor, as a possible conduit to the administration.

The bridge-building is far more challenging for generations of Republicans who have spent eight years biding their time at think tanks, universities and corporations. But unlike in a typical campaign, when the party rallies behind their nominee, a number of these experts had spent months publicly blasting Trump.

Whether Trump will welcome these former opponents into his administration remains unclear. Trump and his team must fill more than 4,000 jobs, a daunting task for a president-elect with no experience in federal government. And the real-estate mogul is known for his ability to hold a grudge — a trait that worries some job-seekers.

Those concerns are particularly acute for national security experts, dozens of whom signed letters warning that Trump would “put at risk our country’s national security and well-being”.

Peter Feaver, a Bush era White House aide who signed both letters, did not expect that Trump would hire anyone involved with the effort, saying they were “effectively on a blacklist”. But he said that the new administration could still pick from a sizable group of former Republican foreign policy officials who were not signatories.

He’s urging them to consider taking a post, both to shape the policies of the new administration and advance their own careers.

“He is our president and if he asks you to serve the country, you shouldn’t reflectively say ‘no’,” said Feaver, a professor at Duke University. “I have actively encouraged people I know who are good to throw their name in the hat because I want to help this team assemble the best team they can.”

Since the election, there’s been some informal contact between those who spoke out against Trump and the people trying to staff his administration. The conversations haven’t always gone well.

“I’m a little leery from what I have heard of the reaction of the people around him who seem to be a little more of the, ‘We won. You lost. Don’t try to horn in on our act,’” Whitman said. “That’s just counterproductive.”

Those reports have sparked a debate within some Republican circles about whether patriotic duty should outweigh concerns about Trump’s management style.

Eliot Cohen, the former State Department official who coordinated the first letter, said he was asked by a friend close to Trump’s team to suggest potential appointees who might be willing to work in the administration.

He was so turned off by the response to his advice that it prompted him to pen an op-ed declaring that he’d changed his mind: Conservatives, he wrote in The Washington Post, should opt out of serving.

“For a garden-variety Republican policy specialist, service in the early phase of the administration would carry a high risk of compromising one’s integrity and reputation,” he wrote.

Not everyone agrees. Eric Edelman, a national security adviser to former vice president Dick Cheney, said he didn’t expect to get a call from the new administration given that he was a vocal critic of Trump during the campaign.

He’s advising others to at least hear out the offer, saying that “patriotism requires you to do it”. But he isn’t offering any recommendations.

“I don’t want to pick out any names,” he said. “I don’t want to run the risk of damaging them with my association.”

PARIS — France’s Francois Fillon, surprise frontrunner after Sunday’s conservative primary ballot on a contender for next year’s presidential election, could be the closest thing his country has to a true economic and social conservative.

Behind his still-boyish looks and a mild, refined demeanour, the 62-year-old who has spent almost half of his life in politics wants to slash the cost of government — to a large extent by cutting public service jobs.

An admirer of late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher — not at all a popular figure in France — Fillon stood down big street protests in 2003 when he championed reforms extending the age at which people are entitled to retirement pension payments.

Last week, when opinion polls ranked him as an outsider, his proposal of market-oriented reforms went beyond what his rivals preferred in a country where the dirigiste state remains, even on the centre-right, a staple — unlike conservative and liberal positions in the United States or Britain.

Having won over 44 per cent of the first-round vote according to preliminary results, Fillon now enters a run-off next Sunday against Alain Juppe, who garnered less than 30 per cent.

A Sunday night opinion poll after the first round vote said Fillon would win that contest.

Fillon, who loves driving racing cars at the famous Le Mans circuit near his political fiefdom in the west of France, was prime minister under president Nicolas Sarkozy from 2007 to 2012.

His former boss, who lost the 2012 election to Socialist Francois Hollande and on Sunday saw his political comeback dissolve before his eyes as he came third — meaning eliminated — in the vote, once famously described Fillon as effectively no more than a senior member of staff, calling him in French his “collaborateur”.

That relationship was a two-way street though.

With his hallmark hard line against government overspending, Fillon sought to distance himself from Sarkozy when an international debt crisis erupted in 2008, calling his own country “bankrupt”.

That view has returned as the backbone of Fillon’s manifesto, which demands cost-cutting on a scale to which his rivals do not dare commit in a country with one of Europe’s highest public expenditure levels.

Fillon says he will get rid of 500,000 public sector jobs in five years, a proposal dismissed as implausible by Sarkozy and Juppe.

Catholic roots

Born in the Sarthe region some 200km west of Paris, where secular France’s Roman Catholic roots remain strong, Fillon has also distinguished himself by opposing the adoption of children by gay couples.

He is married to the Welsh-born Penelope and they have five children. He was the youngest member of France’s parliament when he was first elected 35 years ago.

Fillon argues that his cost-cutting plan is doable if people on the public payroll work 39 hours a week instead of 35 or less currently.

In a country where more than 230 people have been killed in militant attacks over the past two years, adversaries of Fillon have balked at proposing such deep cuts for fear of accusations that police staffing could suffer.

Former boss Sarkozy stands accused of cutting 10,000 police jobs while president — a policy that the ruling Socialists have mostly reversed through new recruitment since the attacks.

Juppe, who bowed out after big strikes over planned welfare cuts and pension reform when prime minister in the mid-1990s, says Fillon simply cannot deliver on his cut-backs promise.

Fillon vs le pen run-off?

Fillon has been particularly scathing of Sarkozy during the campaign, taking aim at the fact he is under judicial investigation over alleged past election funding irregularities.

On Sunday night, though, he said “defeat should not humiliate anyone because we will need everyone”, adding “I have a particular thought for Nicolas Sarkozy.”

Sarkozy also endorsed him for the second round.

A potent factor in the suspense over the primaries is Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton, whom pollsters and the media tipped as winner up to the final hours of the US presidential election.

Polls have shown that Juppe would beat far right National Front leader Marine Le Pen in a likely run-off vote for the presidency itself next May by attracting a broad church of centrists, the mainstream right, and left wing voters keen to keep the anti-immigrant, eurosceptic Le Pen out of power.

But pollsters are trusted less since the surprise Trump victory, and recent polls have in any case not tested a Fillon-Le Pen run-off, even though some political risk analysts say it would improve Le Pen’s chances of winning.

In a recent TV debate, Fillon had urged voters: “The French are proud and don’t like to be told what to do.”

“Don’t be afraid to contradict opinion polls and the media that had decided it all for you. Vote for what you believe in,” he said.

PUKHRAYAN, India/NEW DELHI, India — At least 119 people were killed and more than 150 injured when an Indian express train derailed in northern state of Uttar Pradesh on Sunday, with the toll set to rise amid a scramble to locate survivors.

Police officials said people were still missing as authorities tried to ascertain what caused 14 carriages of the train travelling between the northeastern city of Patna and the central city of Indore to suddenly roll off the tracks in Pukhrayan, 65km south of Kanpur city.

Authorities said they were checking the condition of the tracks but would need to look further before concluding the cause of the derailment, India's deadliest rail tragedy since more than 140 died in a 2010 collision in West Bengal.

Desperate survivors searched for family members and some tried to enter the damaged carriages to rescue relatives and collect belongings, said senior railway official Pratap Rai.

"We are using every tactic to save lives but it's very difficult to cut the metal carriages," he said from the accident site.

Kanpur district magistrate Kaushal Raj Sharma told Reuters that 119 people were confirmed dead, while 78 of the injured remained in hospital, four of them in a critical condition.

With rescue teams still looking for victims amid the wreckage, the toll from the derailment could rise to become India's worst rail tragedy in this century.

In what was probably India's worst rail disaster, a train plunged off a bridge and into a river in 1981 in Bihar state, killing an estimated 500 to 800 people.

India's creaking railway system is the world's fourth largest. It runs 11,000 trains a day, including 7,000 passenger trains carrying more than 20 million people. But it has a poor safety record, with thousands of people dying in accidents every year, including in train derailments and collisions.

Suresh Prabhu, India's railways minister, said in a tweet that the government would investigate the causes of the derailment and promised accountability with the "strictest possible action", as well as compensation for the affected passengers.

The packed train, operated by the government, derailed in the early hours of Sunday when more than 500 passengers were sleeping, survivors said.

TV footage showed mangled blue carriages, with crowds of people and police on top of the wreckage searching for survivors. One carriage was almost lying on its side, and appeared to have been completely torn apart.

Rescue officials with yellow helmets worked their way through the crowds, carrying victims from the wreckage as teams struggled to remove the derailed wagons from the tracks, one of the main transportation routes for goods and passengers in northern India.

"Suddenly I could feel that the carriage was overturning. I immediately held the metal rod near the bathroom door," said Faizal Khan, who was travelling with his wife and two children, all of whom survived the accident.

Another survivor, Rajdeep Tanwar, said. "I can see bodies lying near the tracks, everyone is in a state of shock. There is no water or food for us."

Buses were being pressed into service to help passengers complete their journey, said police additional director general Daljeet Singh Choudhary.

Rescue teams said they would conclude the search operation before night fall and resume it on Monday. Nearby villagers set up temporary kitchens and erected tents for survivors and officials.

Push to modernise

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who started out selling tea outside a train station, has promised to modernise India's railways and build high-speed lines befitting Asia's third-largest economy.

His government has pledged to replace old tracks and upgrade security infrastructure but little progress has been made so far. More than 90 per cent of the railways' revenues are spent on operational costs, leaving next to nothing for modernisation.

By some analyst estimates, the railways need 20 trillion rupees ($293.34 billion) of investment by 2020, and India is turning to partnerships with private companies and seeking loans from other countries to upgrade its network.

Last year, Japan agreed to provide $12 billion in soft loans to build India's first bullet train.

On Sunday, Modi took to Twitter to express his condolences.

"Anguished beyond words on the loss of lives due to the derailing of the Patna-Indore express. My thoughts are with the bereaved families," Modi said.

BERLIN — Angela Merkel announced on Sunday she wants to run for a fourth term as German chancellor in next year's election, a sign of stability after Britain's vote to leave the European Union and the election of Donald Trump as the next US president.

Despite a voter backlash over her open-door migrant policy, the 62-year old conservative said she would stand again in the September election, ending months of speculation over her decision.

"I thought about this for an endlessly long time. The decision [to run] for a fourth term is — after 11 years in office — anything but trivial," Merkel told a news conference after a meeting of senior members of her conservative Christian Democrat Union (CDU) party convened to prepare for the election.

Some 55 per cent of Germans want Merkel, Germany's eighth chancellor since World War II, to serve a fourth term, with 39 per cent against, an Emnid poll showed on Sunday, highlighting that despite setbacks, she is still an electoral asset.

Merkel has steered Europe's biggest economy through the financial crisis and eurozone debt crisis and has won respect internationally, for example with her efforts to help solve the conflict in Ukraine. US President Barack Obama last week described her as an "outstanding" ally.

With Trump's victory in the United States and the rise in support for right-wing parties in several European states, some commentators see Merkel as a bastion of Western liberal values.

"Angela Merkel is the answer to the populism of this time. She is, as it were, the anti-Trump," party ally Stanislaw Tillich, premier of the state of Saxony, told the RND newspaper group, adding that she stood for reliability and predictability.

However, her decision last year to open Germany's borders to around 900,000 migrants, mostly from war zones in the Middle East, angered many voters at home and dented her ratings.

Her party has slumped in regional elections in the last year while support for the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) has swelled.

In September, after a heavy defeat for the CDU in a Berlin state election, a humbled Merkel surprised the country by saying she wished she could turn the clock back on the migrant crisis, though she stopped short of saying her policy was a mistake.

Big tasks ahead

If re-elected, her responsibilities will range from helping lead talks with Britain on its withdrawal from the EU, soothing tense relations with Turkey, a crucial partner in the migrant crisis and developing a relationship with Trump.

Domestically, her biggest challenge will probably be managing the integration of refugees in an increasingly divided society and keeping Europe's powerhouse economy on track.

An Emnid poll on Sunday put Merkel's conservative bloc down one point at 33 per cent, nine points ahead of her nearest rivals, the Social Democrats (SPD), with whom she shares power.

In a system where coalition governments are the norm, many pollsters see another 'grand coalition' as the most likely option after the election, although the rise of the AfD makes coalition arithmetic more complicated.

The SPD has not decided whether its chairman Sigmar Gabriel, vice chancellor and economy minister, will run against Merkel.

One of the SPD's deputy leaders, Ralf Stegner, said it would be a mistake to underestimate Merkel but that the "myth of invincibility" was over.

Merkel, who grew up in Communist East Germany, is a physicist who only became involved in politics after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. She is seen as a talented negotiator but has also shown a ruthless streak.

A Protestant woman in a mainly Catholic and male-dominated party, at least when she became its leader in 2000, Merkel never built up a regional power base but over the years she has sidelined her main male rivals and has no obvious successor.

She still requires the official backing of her Christian Social Union (CSU) allies in Bavaria, who have fiercely criticised her open-door migrant policy. CSU head Horst Seehofer welcomed her decision on Sunday.

"We now want the trust of the population for another four years and therefore it is good that we have clarity," he said.

Germany has no limit on the number of terms a chancellor can serve. By standing again, Merkel, who said she wanted to serve the full fourth term, could end up matching the 16 years in office of her former mentor, Helmut Kohl. It was Merkel herself who broke with Kohl and told her party in 1999, in the midst of a funding scandal, that it should move on without him.

WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump meets on Saturday with Mitt Romney, one of his most vocal Republican Party critics now considered a long-shot choice for secretary of state, after naming three polarising conservatives to fill key national security and judicial posts.

Anti-immigration Senator Jeff Sessions, one of Trump's earliest supporters during the campaign, was nominated on Friday to be attorney general, signaling Trump is prepared to take his hard line on illegal immigration into the White House.

To lead the CIA, Trump tapped hawkish Congressman Mike Pompeo, a strident opponent of the Iran nuclear deal and a sharp critic of Trump's campaign rival Hillary Clinton during hearings into the 2012 attack on the US mission in Benghazi, Libya.

The incoming commander-in-chief also appointed retired lieutenant general Michael Flynn, a top military counsel to the 70-year-old Republican billionaire-turned-world-leader, as his national security adviser.

Hours after the picks were revealed, New York state's attorney general announced that Trump had reached a $25 million settlement in class action suits accusing his now-defunct Trump University of fraud.

The case had been a cloud over his campaign for months, and the deal spares him the embarrassment of further legal wrangling as he forms his government. Attorney Daniel Petrocelli hailed it as a “victory for everybody”.

In New York, Vice President-elect Mike Pence was booed at a performance of award-winning Broadway musical “Hamilton”, whose cast made an unusual on-stage plea for the Trump administration to “uphold our American values and work on behalf of all of us”.

Reassuring signals  

While his picks suggest he is adhering to conservative positions, Trump made efforts to send reassuring signals about stability and continuity regarding America’s place in the world.

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said he had a “good talk” with Trump by telephone, telling AFP in Brussels he was “absolutely confident” that the incoming president remains committed to the transatlantic alliance.

Kansas lawmaker Pompeo, 52, co-authored a report slamming then-secretary of state Clinton’s handling of the Benghazi attack, in which the US ambassador to Libya and three other Americans died.

Deeper controversy surrounds Trump’s national security adviser Flynn, 57, who is set to play an influential role in shaping policy for a president with no experience in government or diplomacy, including how to contend with an increasingly aggressive Russia.

Flynn raised eyebrows when he travelled to Moscow and dined alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin.

And he has refused to rule out enhanced interrogation techniques like waterboarding, which have been described as torture and which Trump repeatedly condoned while campaigning.

Flynn has described Islam as a “cancer” and a “political ideology”, and in February tweeted that “fear of Muslims is rational”.

He is highly respected as a decorated military intelligence officer who helped combat insurgent networks. But President Barack Obama fired him as head of the defence.

Intelligence Agency in 2014 following complaints about his leadership style.

Flynn’s appointment does not require Senate approval.

But that of Sessions as attorney general does, and he has baggage: racially charged comments he made in the 1980s and which once cost him a chance for a job for life as a federal judge.

A panel denied him a federal judgeship in 1986, after hearing testimony that he had used racially derogatory remarks to describe blacks, that civil rights groups were “communist-inspired” and “un-American,” and joked that the only issue he had with the Ku Klux Klan was their drug use.

Sessions has also been a fiery opponent of immigration, waging war on efforts to pass comprehensive immigration reform through Congress in 2007 and 2013.

Senator Chuck Schumer, who will be the chamber’s top Democrat come January, warned that Sessions could have a confirmation fight on his hands.

“Given some of his past statements and his staunch opposition to immigration reform, I am very concerned about what he would do with the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice,” Schumer said.

‘Working all weekend’ 

The appointments came a day after the president-elect met with a foreign leader for the first time: Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who said he could have “great confidence” in Trump as a US leader.

Some US allies have been rattled by Trump’s campaign comments that questioned whether he would maintain US loyalty to joint security arrangements and free trade accords.

Romney — the moderate, failed 2012 presidential candidate — would be a long-shot choice for secretary of state, alongside former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani.

If chosen, Romney would bring a more orthodox Republican worldview to foreign policy. In 2012, he described Russia as the top geopolitical threat — a sharp contrast to Trump, who has exchanged compliments with Putin.
Romney had described Trump as a “fraud”, rebuking the tycoon for proposals such as banning the entry of all foreign Muslims.