World

ROME — The number of hungry people in the world has fallen sharply over the past decade but 805 million, or one in nine of the global population, still do not have enough to eat, three UN food and agriculture agencies said on Tuesday.

The number of chronically undernourished people dropped by more than 100 million, equivalent to a country the size of the Philippines, according to a report by the United Nations food agency (FAO), International Fund for Agricultural Development and World Food Programme (WFP).

Government drives to improve nutrition have helped the developing world move towards a UN goal of halving the number of people suffering from hunger between 1990 and 2015, said the report titled "The State of Food Insecurity in the World".

But success stories such as Brazil mask struggles in countries like Haiti, where the number of hungry people rose from 4.4 million in 1990-92 to 5.3 million in 2012-14.

"We cannot celebrate yet because we must reach 805 million people without enough food for a healthy and productive life," WFP executive director Ertharin Cousin said in Rome.

The Ebola virus threatens food security in western Africa, while conflicts in places including Iraq and Syria have meant that people who once had enough food could lose reliable supplies "in just a matter of weeks", she said.

The ambitious goal to halve the absolute number of chronically undernourished people between 1990 and 2015 has been met by 25 developing countries, but there is not enough time for the whole world to get there by next year, the report said.

Brazil, Indonesia and Malawi, among others, have already achieved the development goal by halving the undernourished proportion of their populations through investments and policymaking in areas from agriculture to school meals.

But the agencies urged more efforts elsewhere, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, and southern and western Asia, to reduce the hungry share of the population in developing countries to 11.7 per cent, from 13.5 per cent today, by the end of 2015.

Conflicts and crises

Ebola, which has killed more than 2,400 people this year, endangered harvests and sent food prices soaring in West Africa, is rapidly creating a major food crisis there, Cousin said.

FAO issued a food security alert this month for Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, which were all net cereal importers even before the Ebola outbreak prompted border closures and quarantine zones, contributing to farm labour shortages.

Ongoing conflicts in Syria, South Sudan and the Central African Republic are preventing humanitarian efforts to help people that are affected, Cousin said, adding that WFP and other agencies needed an increase in donations.

Meanwhile, the advance of Islamic State fighters in Northern Iraq has caused concern over the availability of wheat, which FAO says is the most important food grain for humans.

"We are concerned about the fact that [IS] controls two of the major grain facilities in the country," Cousin said. "These are very worrying trends, when you have a party that can control the food that is required by the poorest in the country."

FAO raised its global cereals output forecast for 2014 earlier this month, partly due to unexpectedly high wheat crops in major producing countries, and said global food prices hit a near four-year low in August.

But this is not necessarily good news for the world's poor and hungry, FAO director general Jose Graziano Da Silva said, in part because farmers earn less from their crops.

"Low prices do not ensure that the poorest will get more food," he said. "If there is not... access, low prices will not be enough."

KIEV — Ukraine's defence minister said on Sunday that NATO countries were delivering weapons to his country to equip it to fight pro-Russian separatists and "stop" Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Valery Heletey told a news conference he had discussed weapons deliveries in bilateral meetings with NATO defence ministers during a NATO summit in Wales on September 4-5.

NATO officials have said it will not send "lethal assistance" to non-member Ukraine but member states may do so.

Earlier this month, a senior Ukrainian official said Kiev had agreed on the provision of weapons and military advisers from several members of the US-led alliance. Four of the five countries named, including the United States, denied this.

"We reached agreements in closed talks, without media, about ... those weapons that we currently need," said Heletey, who said Ukraine needed weapons "that could stop Putin".

"I have no right to disclose any specific country we reached that agreement with. But the fact is that those weapons are already on the way to us — that's absolutely true, I can officially tell you," he said.

Heletey said about 3,500 Russian troops were now on Ukrainian territory with a further 25,000 massed on the Russian side of the joint border.

Moscow denies accusations by Kiev and its Western backers that it has sent troops and tanks into eastern Ukraine to support separatists in a conflict with Ukrainian forces that has killed more than 3,000 people.

A ceasefire negotiated by envoys from Ukraine, Russia, the separatists and Europe's OSCE security watchdog has been in place in eastern Ukraine since September 5.

It is broadly holding despite regular but sporadic violations, especially in key flashpoints such as Donetsk.

ABERDEEN/LONDON – British Prime Minister David Cameron is expected to appeal to Scots’ emotions on his last visit to Scotland before this week’s historic referendum by warning them on Monday that a vote to leave the United Kingdom would be irreversible.

With opinion polls suggesting the referendum remains too close to call, Cameron, the leader of the ruling Conservative Party, which draws most of its support from England, will plead with voters not to use the referendum as a protest vote.

“There’s no going back from this. No re-run. If Scotland votes ‘yes’ the UK will split and we will go our separate ways forever,” he will say, according to advance extracts of his speech given to media by his advisers.

Cameron’s trip is a last-ditch effort to try to persuade Scotland’s many undecided voters to reject independence. Up to 500,000 people out of more than 4 million registered voters are estimated to be unsure how they will vote.

Campaigning in Scotland is fraught with difficulty for Cameron, whose right-leaning party is unpopular with Scots who have traditionally voted for the left-leaning opposition Labour Party and harbour bitter memories of former Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s 1979-1990 stint in power.

Cameron’s Conservatives have only one of 59 British parliamentary seats in Scotland and the pro-independence Scottish National Party (SNP) has elbowed Labour aside in recent years to emerge as the dominant political force.

It is also in charge of the devolved government there.

Cameron has conceded his public image as a privileged Englishman with aristocratic roots does not make him the best person to advocate against Scottish independence.

Scottish nationalists criticised him for staying away in the early months leading up to the vote for being complacent and now that he is showing his face, portray him as a condescending Englishman in no position to advise Scots on how to vote.

Details of his visits north of the English border are not revealed until the last minute for security reasons and critics say his advisers try to minimise his contact with the public to try to avoid nationalist heckling. The visit is expected to last only hours.

Alex Salmond, the SNP leader, was out campaigning for independence in Edinburgh on Monday where he met business leaders who back the breakaway campaign.

He predicted Scotland would vote for independence and that the next time Cameron visited would be to discuss the details of the 5-million strong population’s divorce settlement from the United Kingdom.

“The next time he comes to Scotland it will not be to love-bomb or engage in desperate last-minute scaremongering,” Salmond said in a statement. “It will be to engage in serious post-referendum talks.”

Independence supporters say it is time for Scotland to choose its own leaders and rule itself, free of control from London, and politicians, they say ignore their views and needs.

Cameron is likely to repeat the anti-independence “Better Together” campaign’s core message: that by staying in the United Kingdom, Scotland can take advantage of the benefits of belonging to a larger, more influential entity while enjoying an ever-increasing measure of autonomy.

“No” campaigners say Scotland is more secure and prosperous as part of the United Kingdom, and the end of the union would destroy three centuries of bonds and shared history as well as bring in economic and financial hardship.

Cameron’s visit comes after David Beckham, the retired footballer, added his name to a petition of English celebrities who say they want the Scots to stay.

The celebrity group, “Let’s Stay Together”, is organising a public rally on Monday evening in London’s Trafalgar Square.

It was the pro-independence camp’s turn on Sunday night when a host of Scottish rock stars including the band Franz Ferdinand and Mogwai played a concert in Edinburgh.

Singer Amy McDonald told the audience: “People fight and die for this [independence], and all we have to do is put a little cross in a box. Scotland, you know what to do.”

Opinion polls indicate the vote is hard to call.

Out of four recent polls, three showed those in favour of maintaining the union had a lead of between 2 and 8 percentage points. But an ICM poll conducted over the Internet showed supporters of independence in the lead with 54 per cent and unionists on 46 per cent.

More than 4 million Scots as well as English and foreign residents, from the Highlands and Islands to Glasgow’s gritty inner city estates, are eligible to vote.

The question on the ballot paper will ask simply: “Should Scotland be an independent country?

GENEVA — More than 700 people fleeing Africa and the Middle East may have drowned in the latest shipwrecks in the Mediterranean, bringing the death toll this year to almost 3,000, the International Organisation for Migration said on Monday.

In the worst incident, as many as 500 migrants are believed to have died after traffickers rammed their ship off Malta’s coast last week, an event that only came to light this weekend in testimony from two of the nine survivors.

The survivors said the traffickers ordered the migrants to change vessels in the middle of the Mediterranean. The migrants refused, leading to a confrontation that ended when traffickers rammed the ship carrying the migrants, IOM spokeswoman Christiane Berthiaume told Reuters in Geneva.

“Some 500 people were on board — Syrians, Palestinians, Egyptians and Sudanese. They were trying to reach Europe,” Berthiaume said.

“That means that 700 people perished at sea these last days in the Mediterranean, the deadliest incidents in the space of a few days,” she said.

The vessel had set off on Saturday, September 6 from Damiette, Egypt, and sank off Malta’s coast on September 10th, she said. The UN refugee agency also learned of the shipwreck, but said its information was the wreck occurred on Friday.

“In all, nine people survived and were picked up boats,” Berthiaume said. IOM officials interviewed two Palestinian survivors who were taken to Sicily, Italy, while other survivors were taken to Malta and to Crete, Greece, Berthiaume said.

Four days later, another ship packed with up to 250 African emigrants sank off the Libyan coast, and most of them are feared dead, a spokesman for the Libyan navy said late on Sunday. Some 26 people survived.

The UN refugee agency UNHCR said the situation in the Mediterranean was unclear and it was trying to get confirmation of five shipwrecks in all. “At least 500 people have died or are missing in the last three days”, UNHCR spokesman Francis Markus said in an e-mail.

“It was without any doubt the deadliest weekend ever in the Mediterranean,” Carlotta Sami of the UNHCR said.

Some 130,000 people have arrived in Europe by sea so far this year, compared with 60,000 last year, according to the UNHCR. Italy has received more than 118,000, most of them rescued at sea under its naval operation Mare Nostrum.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres and UNHCR special envoy Angelina Jolie visited the naval rescue headquarters in Malta on Sunday, meeting survivors, the agency said in a statement issued on Monday.

“Amidst concerns about the sustainability of the Italian Mare Nostrum operation, they also called for increased efforts by European nations to contribute to rescue efforts and reduce deaths at sea,” the UNHCR said.

Half of those arriving in Europe by boat are refugees from Syria and Eritrea, according to the agency.

“We all need to wake up to the scale of this crisis. There is a direct link between the conflicts in Syria and elsewhere and the rise in deaths at sea in the Mediterranean. We have to understand what drives people to take the fearful step of risking their children’s lives on crowded, unsafe vessels; it is the overwhelming desire to find refuge,” Jolie said.

“It is also part of a bigger problem — the soaring numbers of people displaced by conflicts around the world today, which now stands at over 51 million. Unless we address the root causes of these conflicts, the numbers of refugees dying or unable to find protection will continue to rise,” she said.

GLASGOW — Campaigners for and against Scottish independence scrambled for votes on Sunday ahead of a historic referendum, as a religious leader prayed for harmony after polls showed Scots were almost evenly split.

The Church of Scotland’s moderator John Chalmers called for Scots to “live in harmony with one another” whatever the result and hailed the feverish run-up to Thursday’s vote as “a wonderful democratic concerto”.

“All of those who will vote ‘Yes’ and all of those who will vote ‘No’ need to remember that we belong together in the same Scotland,” he told worshippers at St Mary’s Episcopal Church in Edinburgh in a sermon broadcast on BBC radio nationwide.

“We cannot afford to lose the momentum and interest in civic life which this campaign has generated,” said Chalmers, moderator of the general assembly of the church, the largest religious group in Scotland.

The pro-union camp has been far ahead in the polls for many months, but the difference has narrowed in recent weeks and a raft of surveys over the weekend indicated that Thursday’s vote could go either way.

A Survation poll on Saturday showed the “No” camp at 47 per cent and the “Yes” at 40.8 per cent, with 9 per cent undecided and 3.2 per cent unwilling to say.

An Opinium survey for Sunday’s Observer newspaper put “No” at 47.7 per cent and “Yes” at 42.3 per cent, with 10 per cent not voting or not sure if they would.

An ICM online poll for the Sunday Telegraph placed the pro-independence campaign at 49 per cent and the pro-UK at 42 per cent with 9 per cent undecided, but a senior pollster warned the sample size was too small.

“The polls show that the referendum is on a knife-edge. There is everything to play for,” said Blair Jenkins, chief executive of the “Yes Scotland” campaign.

Both sides are scrambling to win over the undecided voters who could hold the balance in the vote.

Pro-independence First Minister Alex Salmond continued a tour of Scotland’s main cities, while his opponent Alistair Darling, a former British finance minister, was due to meet financial industry workers in Edinburgh.

The “Better Together” campaign has warned of a possible negative economic impact of a pro-independence vote.

The pound has fallen on the financial markets as the polls have narrowed and the shares of Scottish businesses have also lost value on the stock exchange.

Britain’s main political parties have promised to grant Scotland more powers in the event of a “No” vote, arguing this would be the best of both worlds for Scots.

But “Yes Scotland” supporters argue that living standards would improve if Scotland became an independent country and that businesses would benefit from being closer to decision making.

A key battleground for the two camps has been Glasgow, Scotland’s biggest city.

At St Andrew’s Catholic Cathedral, 67-year-old volunteer Tony Maddon said he was opposed.

“Myself and my wife are both firm ‘No’ voters. We’ve already voted by postal vote. We’re British!” he said.

“I think we’re better off together. Small things don’t normally go very far in the world,” the pensioner added.

As he handed out the mass programme, Tom Grady, 69, said he was still undecided.

“There’s been a lot of debate among my friends. It’s the first thing anyone talks about,” he said.

But at Celtic Park football stadium during a match on Saturday between Glasgow Celtic and Aberdeen, Danny McGee said he had made up his mind for separation.

“Without a shadow of a doubt the working class is for this. We feel we’re up against corporate UK,” the 28-year-old Celtic supporter said at half-time.

DONETSK, Ukraine — Heavy fighting erupted around the rebel stronghold of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine on Sunday, piling further pressure on a precarious nine-day-old truce between the government and separatist fighters.

Large clouds of thick black smoke billowed over the industrial city as the boom of sustained shelling and the rattle of automatic gunfire rang out throughout the day, AFP reporters witnessed.

Donetsk council said there had been civilian casualties and described the situation in the city as “critical” but gave no further information.

Kiev accused the rebels of jeopardising the truce by intensifying their attacks on government positions in eastern Ukraine, the scene of five months of deadly combat.

Sunday’s fighting appeared to be concentrated near Donetsk Airport where the Ukrainian military said it had driven back an assault by insurgent fighters on Friday.

AFP journalists were forced to duck for cover on the roof of a building near the airport when they became caught up in the gunfire.

“The terrorist actions are threatening the realisation of the Ukrainian president’s peace plan,” said security spokesperson Volodymyr Polyovy.

He also took aim at comments by two rebel leaders who both signed the 12-point truce deal in Minsk on September 5, but who declared on Sunday they were mere “observers” at the talks.

The ceasefire is seen as a first step in efforts to draw up a longer term peace deal to end a conflict that has cost more than 2,700 lives and set off the worst crisis in East-West relations since the Cold War.

President Petro Poroshenko has pledged to offer the eastern regions that form the economic backbone of Ukraine some limited self-rule, although the separatists say they want nothing less than full independence.

Rebels and government forces also Sunday swapped dozens of captives in the latest exchange agreed to the accord.

But the insurgents said Kiev’s forces were still firing at them.

“From our side, nobody is shooting but they are breaking the rules, everybody in the world knows it,” said a rebel commander defending a checkpoint near a village south of Donetsk.

The simmering crisis has exposed layers of mistrust between the West and Moscow, and between the largely Russian-speaking populations in the east of Ukraine and the pro-Western leaders in Kiev.

The truce halted a rebel counter-surge across the southeast last month with the alleged support of Russian paratroopers and heavy weaponry that turned the tide of the war against Ukrainian forces.

NATO and Kiev say at least 1,000 Russian soldiers and possibly many more remain on Ukrainian soil although the Kremlin denies this.

Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk accused Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday of seeking to “eliminate” Ukraine as an independent country with the goal of resurrecting the Soviet Union.

The West, deeply alarmed at Putin’s less predictable and more aggressive actions, is seeking to isolate the strongman and pledged greater support for the government in Kiev.

Poroshenko heads to Washington this week to meet President Barack Obama, seeking to secure a “special status” with the United States as he steers Ukraine further out of Russia’s orbit.

Obama has rejected direct military involvement but unveiled tougher economic sanctions on Moscow that — together with similar EU measures — effectively lock Russia out of Western capital markets and hamstring its crucial oil industry.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused Washington of trying to use the crisis to “break economic ties between the EU and Russia”.

The punitive measures and an accompanying East-West trade war have left Russia’s economy facing possible recession but have seemingly failed to alter Putin’s course.

Russia on Saturday sent a 220-truck convoy it said was carrying aid to the residents of rebel-held Lugansk, who have been struggling without water and power for weeks.

Ukraine — which did not give permission for the convoy to cross — had expressed fears the trucks may be carrying supplies for insurgents and bitterly protested a similar delivery last month.

On the domestic front, cracks emerged in Poroshenko’s administration when a deputy foreign minister quit over a delay in the implementation of an EU trade deal, apparently under Russian pressure.

The deal — part of a broader association agreement to be ratified on Tuesday — was meant to revive Ukraine’s economy by lifting EU trade barriers, but Russia said it feared it would see its own market flooded with cheaper EU goods.

The pro-Russian Regions Party that ruled Ukraine under ousted president Viktor Yanukovych also announced Sunday it would boycott the October 26 parliamentary ballot and form an “opposition government” designed to fight Kiev’s westward course.

LUHANSK, Ukraine — A convoy of more than 200 white trucks crossed the Russian border to deliver humanitarian aid to a battered Ukrainian city on Saturday, a move made without Kiev's consent yet met with silence by Ukraine's top leaders.

"Early in the morning, we entered Ukraine to bring aid to Luhansk," said Yury Stepanov, a Russian who was overseeing the convoy. "We came in around 215 vehicles," he added, as workers unloaded boxes into a local warehouse.

The much-needed aid arrived as fighting flared again between pro-Russian rebels and government forces, further imperilling an already fragile ceasefire in the region.

On Saturday, Ukraine's military operation in the east said it had repelled a rebel attack on the government-held airport of Donetsk, which came under artillery fire from rebel positions late on Friday. Ukrainian authorities also admitted for the first time since the ceasefire started last week that they have inflicted casualties on the rebel side.

Continuous rocket fire could be heard overnight in Donetsk. A statement on the city council website said that shells hit residential buildings near the airport, although no casualties were reported. A column of three Grad rocket launchers — all its rockets still in place — was seen moving freely through the rebel-held city on Saturday morning.

In the other regional capital of Luhansk, one of the worst-hit cities where tens of thousands have been without water, electricity, or phone connections for weeks, the streets were calm as Russian drivers unloaded aid packages into local warehouses.

Stepanov said the goods consisted mainly of foodstuffs — rice, sugar, and canned fish and beef — but also included medicine, technical equipment and clothes. The deliveries were in closed boxes, small enough to be easily carried by one person, but rice was seen spilling from a broken bag.

Inside the warehouse, an Associated Press journalist saw water bottles carrying the logo of Russia's LDPR Party, led by virulent nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky.

While dozens of local workers unloaded boxes, several carloads of armed militiamen in camouflage arrived to inspect the scene.

Stepanov said his team was responsible only for delivery and distribution will be handled by local authorities — which for now means the separatist leaders of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic.

Gennady Tsepkalo, a senior separatist official, said retirees, hospital patients and schoolchildren would be priorities for aid. He said the food would not be used to feed rebel fighters.

"The militia will feed itself separately. This is for the residents of the Luhansk People's Republic," Tsepkalo said.

Luhansk shows deep scars of an unsuccessful, weeks-long shelling campaign by government troops. The government had regained growing swathes of territory from the separatists over several weeks, but a major rebel counteroffensive beginning in late August halted and reversed that trend.

Luhansk itself was at one point almost totally surrounded by government troops. Those forces have since abandoned many of their former positions.

As the Russian trucks drove back along the border toward Ukraine, rebel fighters along the road punched the air and waved in greeting.

At the border point of Izvarine, a line of cars that stretched for several kilometres was filled with refugees who had fled to Russia but briefly returned during the cease-fire to grab all the household items they could.

An August agreement between Russia, Ukraine and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) allowed Moscow to bring aid to the region, as long as all vehicles were inspected by Ukrainian border guards and escorted by the ICRC. After two weeks of waiting at the border for all sides to agree, Russia sent the cargo across the border without Kiev's consent.

The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe's observer mission to the Russian-Ukrainian border said Saturday that 220 trucks cross into Ukraine, none of which were inspected by the Ukrainian side or accompanied by the ICRC.

"We were not officially notified of an agreement between Moscow and Kiev to ship the cargo," Galina Balzamova, a representative of the ICRC's Moscow office, said Saturday.

The Russian emergency ministry, which coordinated previous humanitarian aid deliveries to Ukraine, could not be reached for comment.

Col. Andriy Lysenko, spokesperson for Ukraine's National Security and Defence Council, told journalists Saturday that Russia's move into Ukrainian territory was "illegal".

But the silence of Ukraine's top leaders marked a dramatic shift in Kiev. 

In August, when Russia sent a convoy of trucks over the border without waiting for Kiev's approval or oversight from the ICRC, Ukrainian officials quickly condemned what they called an invasion of Ukraine. On Saturday, no top Ukrainian leader mentioned Russia's latest delivery at all.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has been at pains to prove that the cease-fire has yielded improvements on the ground in east Ukraine. 

On Friday, he lauded the agreement, which has been riddled by violations since it was imposed last week, as a "fragile but efficient peace process". Allowing more humanitarian aid into the region was one component of the 12-point deal.

EDINBURGH — Thousands of members of the Protestant Orange order marched through Edinburgh on Saturday in a show of strength against Scottish independence, as campaigning ahead of the referendum entered its final weekend.

Organisers claimed up to 15,000 people attended the march to show support for the United Kingdom, among them members from Northern Irish and English branches of the ultra-conservative, anti-Catholic organisation.

The official campaign against independence had distanced itself from the protest amid fears it would fuel sectarian tensions just a few days before Thursday's vote, but it passed off peacefully.

"We are proud to be part of Great Britain. We are passionate about the union. We are here to galvanise the 'No' vote," Henry Dunbar, Grand Master of the order's Grand Lodge of Scotland, told a rally in the shadow of Edinburgh Castle.

Across Scotland, campaigners from both sides were pounding the streets at the end of a week that saw pro-unionists forced to raise their game following an opinion poll that put the pro-independence camp ahead for the first time.

However, a new Survation poll on Saturday suggests the "No" campaign has regained its lead, recording 47 per cent support to the "Yes" camp's 40.8 per cent, with 9 per cent undecided and 3.2 per cent unwilling to say.

But both sides are taking nothing for granted, and the "Yes" campaign led by Scottish National Party (SNP) leader Alex Salmond has 35,000 volunteers out this weekend and plans to deliver 2.6 million leaflets over two days.

Members of the official "Better Together" campaign had rejected the Orange order's involvement in what they said should be a non-sectarian push to keep the union together.

Orange marches in Northern Ireland often descend into violence, and a 12-year-old spectator was hit in the face with a bottle at an event in Glasgow in July.

After that incident, opposition Labour lawmaker Jim Murphy said: "I want nothing to do with them".

Many in the unionist "No" campaign are also wary that interventions by outsiders may be counterproductive, including last week's visit by British Prime Minister David Cameron.

Watching the streams of Orange order pipe bands and marchers singing "God Save The Queen" through the streets of Edinburgh, "No" voter Ginger Fraser said he did not think Scots would be swayed by the event.

"I don't think it will affect the vote. People make up their own mind," he told AFP.

Campaigning in Glasgow, Deputy First Minister and SNP deputy leader Nicola Sturgeon had a similar message, albeit drawing a different conclusion.

"The 'Yes' campaign has been carried along by a flourishing of self-confidence among people in Scotland," she said.

"That momentum is still growing and will soon become unstoppable, as people reject the Downing Street-orchestrated campaign to talk Scotland down."

Business leaders and economists issued a string of warnings this week about the risks of breaking from the 300-year-old union, and Saturday's poll indicated their message was hitting home.

Some 40 per cent of voters said they believed they and their families would be financially worse off in an independent Scotland, against 27 per cent who believed the contrary.

Global investment giant Deutsche Bank said independence "would go down in history as a political and economic mistake" as large as those that caused the Great Depression.

PRETORIA — Oscar Pistorius was cleared on Thursday of murdering girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp but the Olympic and Paralympic track star faces a troubled night after the South African judge adjourned for the day before ruling on a charge of culpable homicide.

The double-amputee, once one of the biggest names in world athletics, has reason to fear a guilty verdict after Judge Thokozile Masipa adjourned seconds after saying key elements of the culpable homicide charge were satisfied when he shot Steenkamp dead on Valentine's Day last year.

"I am of the view that the accused acted too hastily and used excessive force. It is clear that his conduct was negligent," she told the packed courtroom before adjourning until Friday. She also said he had not acted "reasonably".

Earlier, Masipa ruled that prosecutors, led by the combative Gerrie Nel, had failed to prove the 27-year-old intended to kill Steenkamp after an argument.

The defence said Pistorius shot Steenkamp as a result of a tragic accident after mistaking her for an intruder hiding behind a locked toilet door.

As Masipa delivered her not-guilty decision on the primary charge of premeditated murder, Pistorius, who would have faced at least 25 years behind bars if convicted, sat sobbing in the dock, tears streaming down his cheeks.

Culpable homicide — the South African equivalent of Britain's manslaughter — carries up to 15 years in prison but has no minimum sentence.

Although Masipa described Pistorius as a "very poor" and "evasive" witness, she said it did not mean he was necessarily guilty in a case heavily reliant on circumstantial evidence.

"The state has not proved beyond reasonable doubt that the accused is guilty of premeditated murder," she said. "There are just not enough facts to support such a finding."

She then proceeded to absolve Pistorius of a lesser murder charge that requires a different concept of intention, known by the legal term 'dolus eventualis', which holds you responsible for the foreseeable consequences of your actions.

"Clearly he did not subjectively foresee this as a possibility that he would kill the person behind the door — let alone the deceased — as he thought she was in the bedroom," she said.

Legal experts said the state might question this ruling.

"I think the verdict on premeditated murder is acceptable and well reasoned and not a surprise," said Stephen Tuson, a law professor at Johannesburg's University of Witwatersrand.

"However, on dolus eventualis, I think the state would arguably be able to appeal," he added.

‘Fickle humans’

As the 66-year-old former Soweto crime reporter began her methodical review of the 41-day trial — which also included charges for three unrelated firearms offences — a pained and forlorn Pistorius bowed his head in the dock.

Masipa, only the second black woman to rise to the bench in South Africa, read out her verdict calmly and seemingly impervious to the global interest in a case that has drawn comparisons to the 1995 murder trial of American football star OJ Simpson.

In one early blow to Pistorius, she said defence allegations of police contamination of the crime scene "paled into insignificance".

However, as she drew up a detailed timeline of the shooting, she questioned the reliability of multiple state witnesses, including that of a neighbour who testified to hearing the terrified screams of a woman before and during shots.

She also rejected a mass of instant messaging evidence presented by both prosecution and defence to suggest, respectively, that the couple's relationship was on the rocks or loving and strong.

"Normal relationships are dynamic and unpredictable most of the time, while human beings are fickle," she said. "None of the evidence of a loving relationship, or a relationship turned sour, can assist this court."

Gripping trial

The case has transfixed millions around the world who admired Pistorius, a man whose lower legs were amputated as a baby but who reached the semi-finals of the 400 metres at the London Olympics in 2012 running on carbon-fibre prosthetics.

That same year, Time magazine included him in its list of the world's 100 most influential people, "the definition of global inspiration".

In sports-mad South Africa, the shooting caused an even bigger impact, the stunning downfall of a sporting hero feted by black and white alike in a society still divided by its racist past.

The case continued to inflame passions even after Masipa delivered her decision.

"We are here in support of all women who have been abused or killed by their partners," said supermarket worker Joyce Radebe, who took the day off to demonstrate outside the court with members of the Women's League of the ruling African National Congress.

Theatrical prosecutor Nel, who had painted Pistorius as a gun-obsessed hot-head who whooped with joy when he blew apart a water-melon with a high-calibre pistol, was forced to watch as Masipa zeroed in on the few hard facts, brushing aside his courtroom antics and attempts to discredit the athlete.

However, the prosecution's case forced democratic, post-apartheid South Africa — glued to the live television feed — to ask itself some uncomfortable questions.

Foremost among them were queries about male attitudes to weapons and violence and the reality of whites and blacks still inhabiting largely different worlds two decades after the end of white-minority rule.

Why, commentators asked, of more than 30 witnesses called were only two — a security guard and police ballistics expert — black?

Why, Masipa aside, were nearly all the leading protagonists white in a nation where whites are just 10 per cent of the population?

Would a much-maligned justice system stand up to scrutiny against a top-notch and well-funded defence team?

And, as backdrop to it all, the universal white suburban fear: How to protect yourself from an intruder — assumed to be black — in the middle of the night, a fear hardwired by years of apartheid propaganda about the “swart gevaar”, Afrikaans for “black danger”.

NEW DELHI — Floods that have killed 450 people in India and Pakistan began to recede on Wednesday giving rescue teams a chance to evacuate thousands of villagers stranded by the heaviest rainfall in 50 years in the heavily militarised and disputed region of Kashmir.

On the Indian side of the divided region, floods and landslides have cut off more than 1 million people from basic services, triggering a massive military rescue operation that has so far evacuated 80,000 from villages and city rooftops.

Tempers rose on Wednesday with some angry that relief efforts were only reaching them six days after the floods began. Others complained about living conditions in temporary camps.

Villagers heckled some soldiers and beat a rescue official who was airlifted for emergency treatment.

The flooding is the first major humanitarian emergency under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and also comes at a difficult time for Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who has faced weeks of street protests aimed at forcing him out.

"There are some villages where everything has been swept away. People are extremely angry, frustrated and exhausted," Indian police official R.K. Khan said.

Many phone lines in the region have been down since the weekend. A police official estimated that thousands were yet to be evacuated.

State Chief Minister Omar Abdullah vowed to restore emergency services.

"I know people have lost everything. We promise to rehabilitate them. No relief and rehab camps can be perfect. We are doing all we can," Abdullah told reporters.

He said the priority was to distribute clean drinking water, medicines, food for infants and prevent the spread of water-borne diseases.

The prime ministers of India and Pakistan offered each other help at the weekend to deal with the disaster, which temporarily diverted attention from fighting along the border.

Fighting militants

But violence flared up again on the Line of Control on Wednesday, with about two dozen soldiers fighting militants even as flood rescue operations were under way elsewhere.

"Three militants were shot dead by the Indian troops in Kashmir after a 10-hour-long gunbattle," Defence Ministry spokesman Sitanshu Kar said.

Kashmir has been at the heart of decades of rivalry since a war after independence from Britain in 1947. New Delhi maintains a massive military presence in its northernmost territory.

In Pakistan, prominent Islamist Hafiz Saeed accused India of "water terrorism" — causing flooding across the border by discharging dam water downstream.

"India has used water to attack Pakistan, we are in state of War," Saeed said on Twitter. India accuses Saeed of masterminding the 2008 Mumbai attacks that left 166 people dead.

The Indian army has evacuated 80,000 people from their homes, mosques and government buildings. The death toll from the flooding in Jammu and Kashmir, the country's northernmost state, reached 220 by Wednesday.

In Pakistan, at least 231 people were reported to have been killed by the floods across the country, including Pakistan's side of Kashmir.

South Asia experiences monsoon rains from June to September, which are vital for its agriculture. But the rains frequently turn to floods, devastating crops, destroying homes and prompting outbreaks of diseases and diarrhoea.

Environmentalists in New Delhi said the death toll and devastation in Kashmir was alarming, and the government should recognise that floods were getting worse because of climate change.

"The Kashmir floods are a grim reminder that climate change is now hitting India harder," said Chandra Bhusan, head of climate change team at the Centre for Science and Environment.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said this year's monsoon rains had killed more than 1,000 people in India alone.