Tibetans took less than 3,000 years to adapt to living at high altitude, said a new study that could lead to insights on diseases linked to pre-birth oxygen deprivation such as epilepsy.

"This is the fastest genetic change ever observed in humans," said Rasmus Nielsen, a University of California Berkeley biology professor who led the statistical analysis and genome-wide comparison between the Tibetans and the Han Chinese.

According to the study, published in the July 2 issue of Science magazine, the Tibetans and the Han Chinese split into two separate populations some 2,750 years ago, with the larger group moving to the Tibetan plateau where it dwindled while the low-elevation Han expanded dramatically.

The Tibetans, however, quickly evolved a unique ability to live above 4,000 meters (13,000 feet), where oxygen levels are 40 percent lower than those at sea level.

"For such a very strong change, a lot of people would have had to die simply due to the fact that they had the wrong version of a gene," said Nielsen.

Comparing the genes of both ethnic groups, researchers found more than 30 genes with DNA mutations that have become more prevalent in Tibetans than Han Chinese, nearly half of which are related to how the body uses oxygen.

One mutation in particular spread from fewer than 10 percent of the Han Chinese to nearly 90 percent of all Tibetans. It is near a gene called EPAS1, a so-called "super athlete gene" identified several years ago that is associated with improved athletic performance, Nielsen said.

The gene codes for a protein involved in sensing oxygen levels and perhaps balancing aerobic and anaerobic metabolism.

The new findings could steer scientists to still unknown genes that play a role in how the body deals with decreased oxygen, and perhaps explain some diseases, including schizophrenia and epilepsy, associated with oxygen deprivation in the womb, Nielsen said.

"The new finding is really the first time evolutionary information alone has helped us pinpoint an important function of a gene in humans," he added.

Adaptation to low oxygen levels has allowed many peoples, from Andeans to Tibetans, to live at high altitude.

When people from lower elevations move above 4,000 meters they typically tire easily, develop headaches, produce babies with lower birth weights and have a higher infant mortality rate.

Tibetans have none of these problems, despite lower oxygen saturation in the blood and lower levels of hemoglobin levels, which gives blood its red color, and binds and transports oxygen to the body"s tissues.

The study used genome data and a large team of researchers from the Beijing Genomics Institute in Shenzhen, China"s flagship genome center.

The research was funded by various Chinese, American and Danish organizations.

The leaders of the world’s most powerful countries were to pursue talks Sunday on settling their differences over how to nurse the fragile world economy back to health.

The G20 nations convened in the eastern Canadian city of Toronto on the heels of a tough-talking G8 summit, in which the world’s major industrialized powers laid down the law to Iran and North Korea.

US officials called on leading economies to focus on a return to growth, in a move set to pit the world’s top economy against European nations some of whom have ordered spending cuts to slash back public deficits.

“This summit must be fundamentally about growth, and our challenge, as the G20, is that we all need to act to strengthen the prospects for growth,” US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told reporters.

He took a swipe at powers like Germany, Britain and Japan that he fears have moved too quickly towards budget cuts.

“It’s fair to say that I don’t think that you’ve seen from those countries yet a set of policies that would, again, give everybody confidence that you’re going to see stronger domestic demand growth,” he said.

The G20 talks opened late Saturday with battle lines being drawn as members disagreed over the balance to be struck between reducing budget deficits and encouraging growth and spending.

“If it sounds like everyone is rushing to the exit it might cause problems,” a senior G20 official told AFP, summarizing the concerns of the United States and many emerging powers that Europe’s new parsimony could stifle growth.

Brazil warned Europe’s plans to radically cut government spending would hurt emerging economies, comments echoed by UN chief Ban Ki-moon.

“If the cuts take place in advanced countries it is worse, because instead of stimulating growth they pay more attention to fiscal adjustments, and if they are exporters they will be reforming at our cost,” said Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega.

Ban also warned the G20 working dinner that the challenge facing the group had changed from when it first came together in Pittsburgh in September.

“Let me emphasize this evening that, under any circumstances we must not balance budgets on the backs of the world’s poorest people,” he said.

He called for greater investment in agriculture and the green economy which could help fuel jobs.

France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy stuck up for Europe, insisting there was no deep trans-Atlantic rift on the deficit issue.

“I’ve heard Obama say how important it is to support sustainable policies, including for the United States, he has indicated quite clearly the risk posed by deficits and debt,” he told reporters.

Signs also emerged that the US position may not be as firm as it seems.

The New York Times on Sunday cited US administration officials as saying that despite the Obama administration’s public pitches for more stimulus measures, the United States will go along with other leaders who are more concerned about rising debt and join in a commitment to cut their governments’ deficits in half by 2013.

At the end of two days of talks in an exclusive resort north of Toronto, the leaders of the Group of Eight richest nations acknowledged in their final statement that economic recovery remained “fragile.”

The leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States also took a tough stand on pressing international problems.

They demanded Iran reveal the extent of its nuclear program in transparent talks, condemned North Korea’s alleged torpedo attack on a South Korean warship and urged Afghanistan to boost efforts to take charge of its security.

In bilateral talks US President Barack Obama concentrated on ties with Asia, meeting China’s Hu Jintao and assuring his South Korean counterpart Lee Myung-Bak that Washington would stand “foursquare behind” Seoul in its standoff with the north.

Security remained tight, and the G20 leaders’ arrival in Toronto was marred by clashes between so-called “black bloc” anarchist protesters and vandals, who broke away from a large, peaceful protest.

At least three police cars were set ablaze and riot officers arrested 75 people, resorting to tear gas to protect the steel and concrete barricade shielding the downtown conference venue.

Canada spent more than US$1 billion to secure this week’s back-to-back G8 and G20 summits, hoping to avoid the serious street battles that have marred recent gatherings of such global forums.

High seas churned up by Hurricane Alex will delay deployment of a third containment vessel over the ruptured Gulf of Mexico oil well until next week, an official warned.

The White House meanwhile said it would within days roll out a decision on a revised six-month moratorium on offshore drilling, as President Barack Obama called his disaster management team to the White House to discuss next steps.

National Incident Coordinator Thad Allen said the Helix Producer ship had been delayed, as the outer bands of Alex, which battered Mexico, hinted at possible disruption that future, closer hurricanes could cause in the Gulf.

"We will need about three days after the weather calms... for that vessel to be able to hook up to the flexible coupling that it would be required to do," Allen said.

"So we"re looking at somewhere around midweek next week to bring the third production vessel on-line." The vessel had originally been due on station by the end of June.

Once operational, the Helix Producer should be able to double the amount of oil being captured from the ruptured well to around 53,000 barrels per day.

An estimated 35,000 to 60,000 barrels per day has been gushing out of the ruptured well since the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon drilling rig sank on April 22 some 50 miles (80 kilometers) off the coast of Louisiana.

Two other containment ships were still operational despite seven-foot (two-meter) swells, capturing a portion of the escaping oil at a rate of about 25,000 barrels per day.

Allen also said that the storm, a glancing blow from the heavy weather whipped up by Alex, which battered Mexico but was downgraded to a tropical storm earlier Thursday, had significantly hampered on-shore and near-shore skimming operations to stop oil reaching beaches.

"The small vessels that do the skimming have a difficult time operating out there. We had to pull them back," Allen said, adding that some oil may have penetrated deeper on shore than normal.

Some patches of oil may have however been broken up by the agitated waters.

Around 428 miles (689 kilometers) of US shorelines have now been oiled as crude spews into the sea at an alarming rate, 10 weeks into the worst environmental disaster in US history.

Allen also said that progress was slightly ahead of schedule on the operation to drill two relief wells which will eventually be used to seal the ruptured Deepwater Horizon gusher.

But the target date is still in August, said Allen, who appeared at the White House in a civilian suit, one day after officially retiring from the US Coast Guard as an admiral.

The Coast Guard, backed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) meanwhile issued a new directive and specific guidelines to BP Thursday on how the company recovers oil and other contaminated materials from the region, including requirements on transparency for what the firm does with the waste.

The EPA also announced results of toxicity tests on controversial dispersants used by BP to breakdown the oil.

None of the chemicals, said the agency, "displayed biologically significant endocrine disrupting activity," but it said BP was still being directed "to use dispersants responsibly and in as limited an amount as possible."

The White House vowed last week to issue a fresh moratorium on deepwater oil drilling after district judge Martin Feldman said it would cause irreparable economic harm, but Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said new moratorium terms from the Interior Department would likely come out "in the next few days."

Obama first imposed the six-month moratorium in late May, after the true extent of the disaster became clear.

He and Vice President Joe Biden, who visited the southern Gulf Coast disaster zone earlier this week, meanwhile met senior officials involved in the clean-up operation in the secure White House Situation Room.

The briefing, Gibbs later said, also covered hurricane projections for the expected stormy summer season and their potential impacts on the response.

Late Wednesday, Obama directed Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, whom he has put in charge of the restoration of the Gulf Coast, to come up with a long-term recovery plan "as soon as possible." On Capitol Hill Thursday, the focus turned again to the bill for clean-up and restoration.

"It will take billions of dollars -- even trillions," Democratic Representative Sheila Jackson Lee told reporters, citing "a presentation by the president"s team on the BP oil spill" early in the day.

"We will have an ongoing and unending commitment to fixing this disaster," the lawmaker from Texas said.

The patchy US economic recovery faces a crucial litmus test Friday when fresh unemployment figures are released, but few expect positive results.

Most analysts say the ranks of jobless Americans is likely to have swollen to over 15 million, pushing the unemployment rate from 9.7 percent to 9.8 percent.

That would be bad news for President Barack Obama, who is running out of time to put the economy back on track before Congressional elections in November.

Although the White House has repeatedly warned that unemployment will remain high for the rest of the year, polls show it is still a crucial issue with voters.

It would also be bad news for markets, which have been convulsed by worry about a double dip recession in recent weeks.

The last quarter has been tortuous for the top 30 US companies, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average losing more than ten percent of its value, in large part over fears about the fate of the US economy.

"This Friday"s employment report will provide an important gauge on the robustness of the recovery underway," Goldman Sachs analysts warned.

Goldman predicts that payrolls shrunk by 100,000 last month, the first negative figure this year.

One reason for the skepticism is the continued weakness of the private sector, which created just 41,000 jobs in May.

Faced with an uncertain outlook and poor access to credit, US firms have been reluctant to rehire workers.

Analysts fear the June figures will also see the evaporation of hiring for the 2010 Census, which accounted for 95 percent of new jobs in May.

And on Thursday the Labor Department reported yet more people claimed unemployment benefits last week, when new jobless claims rose to 472,000, an increase of 13,000 from the week before.

"Claims drifted higher still over the course of June... suggesting the labor market has not regained the traction that appeared to be building in the first four months of the year," said Deutsche Bank analysts.

The weakness has sparked calls for Obama to provide more government spending to restart the recovery.

But proponents of this plan admit it is nearly impossible as Washington zeroes in on elections in which the national debt is also likely to feature prominently.

Congress is currently locked in a bitter debate over extending unemployment insurance for over one million workers and is likely to balk at a wider spending package.

"I think this report will show that really we need to do more," said Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank. "The private sector is not yet poised to takeover and sustain a robust recovery."

With state governments cutting jobs to balance their books, Shierholz said there was a strong case for extending unemployment benefits and aid to states, despite the political difficulties.

"This is one of those cases where the political realities are completely at odds with economic sense," she said advocating fresh stimulus of around 400 billion dollars.

"I don"t know what is going on in the heads of these people, the economic case is so cut and dry, it is so clear what needs to be done."

Higher taxes on property transactions would do more than a property tax to curb speculation, an influential Chinese policy maker said in an editorial published on Saturday, in which he advocated maintaining current cooling measures in the second half.

Xia Bin called for a continuation of measures imposed in the first half of the year, in order to counter “suspicion” in the market over whether China is firmly committed to current policies, in an op-ed in the Financial News.

Xia, one of three academic advisers on the People’s Bank of China’s (PBoC) monetary policy committee, has knowledge of central bank thinking but his comments represent his personal views, not official policy.

Chinese housing prices dipped in June compared with May, their first such fall since February 2009, prompting hopes among real estate developers that tightening measures will soon be abandoned.

Xia did not lend much enthusiasm to a state think tank’s proposal of a property tax to cool the housing market.

“The time frame for a property tax to be fully implemented is likely to be rather slow. To truly control housing speculation, it would be better to raise the tax rate on property transactions,” Xia wrote.

High housing prices have become an obsession in Chinese popular culture, with many urban young people worried they won’t be able to afford an apartment until they have worked for decades.

In an interview with Reuters Insider earlier this week, Yi Xiaodi, head of property developer Sunshine 100, said many local governments are already circumventing the central government’s tightening rules.

Tropical Storm Alex headed toward the Gulf of Mexico Sunday, but while it was not expected to hit the oil spill area, experts warned strong waves and winds could hamper cleanup efforts there.

With oil continually gushing into the fragile waters for the past 68 days, President Barack Obama’s pointman on the disaster cautioned that volatile weather conditions could set back oil recovery operations for up to two weeks.

Meanwhile, Alex dumped heavy rains over the Yucatan peninsula before moving back into the Gulf later Sunday. Its forecast track meant BP could continue its process without disruption, for now.

“The storm is not an issue for the spill,” said National Hurricane Center spokesman Dennis Feltgen.

Feltgen said forecasters did not expect Alex to head into the northeast Gulf, where the spill is located, “but that doesn’t mean there won’t be some wave impact.”

Early Sunday, the storm packed sustained winds of 40 miles (65 kilometers) an hour, down from 60 miles (95 kilometers) an hour late Saturday, as it swirled 75 miles (120 kilometers) west of Chetumal, Mexico, the center said.

It was expected to weaken later Sunday, but regain some punch as it moves over the Gulf of Mexico by nightfall.

“We are very pleased that there is no weather impact right now,” BP spokesman Ron Rybarczyk told AFP on Saturday.

But while the latest forecasts had BP breathing a sigh of relief, Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen sounded the alarm about the potential for a devastating impact to efforts to contain and siphon off the oil.

“The weather is unpredictable, and we could have a sudden last-minute change,” said Allen, telling reporters that oil recovery operations would have to be suspended for two weeks if Alex, the first named storm of the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season, were to hit the area.

Such a stoppage would exacerbate the spill that has defiled the Gulf Coast’s once pristine shorelines, killed wildlife and put a big dent in the region’s multi-billion-dollar fishing industry.

It would also mean the estimated 30,000 to 65,000 barrels of oil gushing from a ruptured wellhead down on the seafloor would be billowing crude and gas unchecked for days.

An estimated 1.9 to 3.5 million barrels (80 to 150 million gallons) have poured into the Gulf since the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20.

Allen said vessels currently recuperating some of the oil and gas would need up to 120 hours to evacuate the site if weather conditions were deemed dire enough.

“If we get an indication that we have a chance for gale-force winds 120 hours before, we’ll make the decision,” he added before noting that “right now, we haven’t met that threshold.”

BP said it recovered 24,550 barrels of oil on Friday, a 3.5 percent increase from its Thursday total, and collected approximately 413,000 barrels since May.

Still, hundreds of demonstrators came to Manatee County, Florida, beaches Saturday to protest offshore oil drilling and support clean energy strategies advocated by President Obama.

About 350 people formed a human chain at Manatee Public Beach, according to local officials.

“We grew up coming to these beaches, and we want to make sure future generations -- like my daughter, here -- have a place like this to come to,” said local resident Joshua Spaid.

BP’s shares meanwhile hit a 13-year low in London trading after BP ramped up the costs of the spill so far to US$2.35 billion. The company’s share values have been cut by more than half since the disaster that killed 11 workers and unleashed the worst oil spill in US history.

The British energy giant said its plans to drill through 2.5 miles (four kilometers) of rock were on track. No permanent solution to the spill is expected before the relief wells are due to be completed in August.

Heavy drilling fluids would then be pumped into the existing well to drown the oil flow, allowing it to be plugged for good with cement.

Vice President Joe Biden heads to the region on Tuesday and is due to visit the New Orleans-based National Incident Command Center before travelling to the Florida panhandle.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Carol Browner, who heads the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy, will also visit.

In Toronto, Canada, Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron held their first face-to-face talks ahead of a G20 leaders’ summit and agreed BP should “remain a strong and stable company,” Downing Street said.

Greece will overcome its huge debt crisis with its austerity plan, an IMF official said Sunday as a poll showed a majority of Greeks fear that unpopular pension reforms will be in vain.

Poul Thomsen, the head of the International Monetary Fund mission dealing with Greece, told To Vima daily that Athens is making progress on its “ambitious” program of cuts.

The cutbacks have caused labour turmoil and a series of protests across Greece, with a new general strike, the fifth since February, due to be held on Tuesday.

“Such an adjustment is not easy and often causes discontent,” Thomsen said. “This is understandable as people see things getting worse before they improve.”

But he added: “The effort has begun vigorously and I firmly believe that Greece will succeed.”

Thomsen also applauded the Greek government’s decision not to restructure its debt as this “which would entail a huge cost.”

After decades of unrestrained state spending, Greece faced bankruptcy this year with a national debt of nearly €300 billion (US$371 billion).

It was rescued by a bailout loan from the European Union and the IMF for which it had to pledge a spate of deep spending cuts.

Among the measures is an overhaul of the pensions system which has eaten up vast amounts of state funds.

The government this week finalized reforms which progressively raise by 2015 the age of retirement for both men and women to 65 years for a full pension, equating the sexes for the first time.

It also increases the mandatory workforce period from 37 years to 40 years.

The new system will see an average reduction in pensions of seven percent and bonus retirement dues which pensioners used to receive for Christmas, Easter and summer vacations will be slashed.

Parliament is expected to begin debate on the reforms next week.

A poll in Proto Thema daily on Sunday showed that 64.8 percent of Greeks believe their sacrifices will not save the crumbling pensions system, which currently consumes 12 percent of national output.

The Alco poll also found that 51.1 percent of 800 respondents believe Prime Minister George Papandreou is “too submissive” towards Brussels.

Hong Kong researchers have discovered a new way to treat patients suffering from swine flu, a report said Thursday, after the deadly virus killed more than 18,000 people worldwide in the past year.

A joint study by the University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Red Cross and the city"s Hospital Authority has proven that plasma antibodies taken from recovered swine flu patients are an effective treatment for those suffering from the illness, the South China Morning Post reported.

The treatment has been used on about 30 patients who did not respond to antiviral drugs, although some still died, the paper said.

"Some of them died subsequently, but we have enough evidence to conclude that the antibodies are an effective cure, as most patients have since recovered," Ivan Hung, a medical professor at the university, was quoted as saying.

Cambodian premier Hun Sen and several top officials have been infected with swine flu, a Cambodian government spokesman said Tuesday.

The World Health Organization earlier this month said that 18,156 people had died from the virus, a year after it was declared a pandemic, but that the influenza was now "globally less active".

The agency has defended its handling of the pandemic, rejecting a British Medical Journal report that claimed its response was marred by secrecy and conflicts of interest with drug companies among some of its expert advisers.

In Hong Kong, 80 people have died from the virus, the Post said.

The city, which ordered three million doses of swine flu vaccine last year, has been on high-alert over infectious diseases following the outbreak of the SARS virus in 2003, which killed 300 people in the city.

President Barack Obama signed into law the toughest ever US sanctions on Iran, which he said would strike at Tehran"s capacity to finance its nuclear program and deepen its isolation.

The measures, on top of new UN Security Council and European sanctions, aim to choke off Iran"s access to imports of refined petroleum products like gasoline and jet fuel and curb its access to the international banking system.

"With these sanctions -- along with others -- we are striking at the heart of the Iranian government"s ability to fund and develop its nuclear programs," Obama said at a White House ceremony, before signing the sanctions into law.

"We are showing the Iranian government that its actions have consequences, and if it persists, the pressure will continue to mount, and its isolation will continue to deepen.

"There should be no doubt -- the United States and the international community are determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons."

The US Senate and House of Representatives approved the legislation -- which backers described as the toughest ever unilateral US sanctions against the Islamic republic -- by crushing 99-0 and 408-8 margins last week.

The United States spent months assembling an international coalition for new United Nations Security Council sanctions on Iran, which passed last month.

The measures, the fourth such set of UN penalties levied on Iran, are meant to punish Tehran for refusing to halt its uranium enrichment work, the most sensitive part of its atomic drive.

In response, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Monday he would postpone nuclear talks as a "penalty" to world powers as a result of the latest UN sanctions.

The new US sanctions are effectively designed to force foreign firms to chose whether to do business with Iran or the United States.

The law shuts US markets to firms that provide Iran with refined petroleum products that the oil-rich nation must import to meet demand because of a weak domestic refining capability.

It also takes aim at firms that invest in Iran"s energy sector, including non-US companies that provide financing, insurance, or shipping services.

It could also see non-US banks doing business with certain blacklisted Iranian entities -- including Iran"s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and several banks -- shut out of the US financial system.

Some foreign companies have already begun to sever ties with Iran because of the new law.

But observers, though, have questioned how successful the new law, and similar measures being adopted in Europe, and by other close US allies will be, given that Iran has been looking for other sources of supplies.

Obama noted that Iran had spurned the offer of dialogue that he had made last year on coming to office.

"To date, Iran has chosen the path of defiance," he said.

"That is why we have steadily built a broader and deeper coalition of nations to pressure the Iranian government."

World powers led by Washington have accused the Islamic Republic of seeking to build nuclear weapons and are demanding it freeze its uranium enrichment activity, which can be a key step towards developing an atomic arsenal.

Iran denies its nuclear program has a military use.

"The government of Iran still has a choice," Obama said in the prepared remarks.

"The door to diplomacy remains open. Iran can prove that its intentions are peaceful. It can meet its obligations under the (Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty) and achieve the security and prosperity worthy of a great nation."

Kyrgyzstan held an historic referendum on Sunday to create Central Asia’s first parliamentary democracy, with turn-out appearing high despite months of political turmoil and a wave of ethnic violence.

At least 283 people were killed this month -- and possibly hundreds more -- in violence between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in southern Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet republic that hosts U.S. and Russian military air bases and shares a border with China.

Interim government leader Roza Otunbayeva arrived in a motorcade amid high security in the southern city of Osh, the epicentre of the violence. Smiling and appearing relaxed in a bright purple jacket, she cast her vote in a local university.

“Our country today is on the brink of great danger, but the results of this referendum will show that the country is united and that the people are one. It will stand strong on its own feet and move forward,” Otunbayeva said after casting her vote.

The United States and Russia say they would support a strong government to prevent the turmoil spreading throughout ex-Soviet Central Asia, a strategic region bordering Afghanistan where all countries have until now been run by authoritarian presidents.

The referendum calls on voters to support changes to the constitution that would devolve power from the president to a prime minister, paving the way for parliamentary elections in October and diplomatic recognition for the interim government.

The central election commission said 43.14 percent of the national electorate had voted by 3:00 p.m. (0900 GMT), seven hours after polling booths opened across the country of 5.3 million people. There is no minimum turnout requirement.

Under the new charter, Otunbayeva -- the first woman to lead a Central Asian state -- would be interim president until the end of 2011. Parliamentary elections would be held every five years and the president limited to a single six-year term.

Otunbayeva, a former ambassador to the United States and Britain, took power after a revolt in April overthrew President Kurmanbek Bakiyev. Though from the south, she has struggled to gain control of the region, Bakiyev’s family stronghold.

The bloodshed also deepened divisions between the Kyrgyz and Uzbeks who have a roughly equal share of the population in the south. Many ethnic Uzbeks say they were targeted in the violence and are loath to support what they see as a Kyrgyz initiative.

Voters turn out despite violence

Many Uzbeks, however, turned out to vote, some setting off from homes that were burned out in the violence. Friends who had not seen each other since the bloodshed began on June 10 embraced in polling-station queues in neighborhoods of Osh.

Election officials accompanied by armed guards carried transparent ballot boxes to locals who were too afraid to visit the polling stations, ticking off names as the boxes filled up.

“We have to live through this turbulent period, but when we get a real government it will all be stable again,” said Andrei Abdullayev, an ethnic Uzbek veteran of the Soviet war in Afghanistan.

He was one of 600 ethnic Uzbek vigilantes guarding a neighborhood of Osh where a disused vodka distillery served as a polling station. Laundry lines hung between the walls of burned-out homes where people live without the shelter of a roof.

“We have nothing here: no gas, no electricity, no running water,” said Farida Marasulayeva. She was among the tens of thousands of refugees who returned home after days sleeping rough or in camps either side of the border with Uzbekistan.

“Maybe someone will help us. We just want to live in peace,” she said after voting, cradling her year-old son in her arms.

Several women said they could still hear gunfire each night.

The 56-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) declined to send observers to Osh and Jalalabad, another southern city hit by violence, due to security concerns.

Speaking in the capital Bishkek, Janez Lenarcic, head of the OSCE’s election monitoring arm, said the Organization had concerns about the referendum but was hoping for a high turnout.

“There are inconsistencies and shortcomings. Our understanding is that the turnout requirement has been dropped for this referendum. Nevertheless I think the higher the turnout the higher the legitimacy of the whole process,” he said.

“The referendum is legitimate to the extent that Kyrgyz voters legitimize it.”

Constitutional change is widely expected to find support in the capital Bishkek, where early voters were met by the national anthem blaring from loudspeakers inside polling stations.

Olga Shushpanova, 84, was among the first to cast her ballot: “A state cannot exist without fundamental law, so we have to put an end to this chaos.”

Apple chief executive Steve Jobs said that reception problems with the new iPhone 4 have been overblown but apologized to buyers who experienced issues and offered free cases as a fix.

Jobs, speaking at a press conference for a select group of journalists at Apple headquarters, said other smartphones have antenna problems similar to those reported with the latest iPhone model.

“We’re not perfect,” Jobs said. “Phones aren’t perfect either.”

He acknowledged the iPhone 4 drops slightly more calls than the previous version of the smartphone, the iPhone 3GS, but said the issue had been “blown so out of proportion that it’s incredible.”

“There is no ‘Antennagate,’” he said. “We think there’s a problem but we think it’s affecting a small percentage of users.”

Some iPhone 4 users have complained they lose reception when holding the lower left corner of the phone -- whose unusual antenna wraps completely around the device -- in what has been referred to as the “death grip.”

Jobs said Apple will provide free rubber bumpers that surround the sides of the phone and refund buyers who have already purchased the cases.

Some users have said the cases, which cost 29 dollars, remedy the reception problems that have given a company priding itself on the quality of its products a rare dose of negative publicity.

Jobs, who promised a full refund to unsatisfied customers, appeared to have satisfied investors and analysts.

Apple shares were up slightly in after-hours electronic trading after losing 0.62 percent in New York on Friday to close at 249.90 dollars.

“I don’t think they’ve had a lot of serious product issues over the years,” Gartner research vice president Mike McGuire told AFP.

“From a consumer perspective, they’ve now told me how this is going to be dealt with. And they even said if I’m really still unhappy, I can return it... You can’t ask for much more than that.

“Somebody’s always going to complain that they should have done it sooner,” McGuire added, “but they said ‘Hey, let’s go check it out first and get some information.’”

Jobs said the iPhone 4 had received the highest customer satisfaction ever for an iPhone, describing it as “perhaps the best product we’ve ever made.”

“People seem to like it,” he said, adding that Apple has sold more than three million iPhone 4s since it hit stores three weeks ago.

Jobs showed a video of smartphones from Blackberry maker Research in Motion, Taiwan’s HTC and South Korea’s Samsung in a bid to demonstrate that all devices lose signal strength when gripped in a certain way.

“It’s certainly not unique to the iPhone 4,” he said. “Every smartphone has this issue. Smartphones have weak spots.”

Jobs said only 0.55 percent of iPhone 4 buyers had called Apple hotlines to complain about antenna or reception issues and only 1.7 percent of US buyers had returned their iPhone 4 to carrier AT&T.

He issued an apology to “customers that are having problems” but said he would not apologize to investors who bought Apple stock recently and saw it drop.

Apple initially responded to signal strength criticism by telling owners of its latest generation iPhone to be mindful of how they hold the handsets.

That failed to quiet the complaints, however, and Apple was forced to address the issue after Consumer Reports, the influential product review magazine, said it could not recommend the iPhone 4 because of signal loss problems it blamed on a design flaw.

Jobs said Apple was “stunned and embarrassed” by the Consumer Reports review.

Apple has sold more than 50 million iPhones since the device made its debut in 2007 and Jobs said the iPhone 4 was its best-selling model of all time.

The iPhone 4 notably features a higher resolution screen and “FaceTime,” which uses a forward facing camera to enable video chat.

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard Saturday called an August 21 election, vowing to tackle the flashpoint issues of refugees, the economy and global warming, just weeks after taking power.

Gillard, 48, said she would ask the Australian people to endorse her leadership after she ruthlessly deposed former prime minister Kevin Rudd in a party coup.

“Today I seek a mandate from the Australian people to move Australia forward,” Gillard said, officially kicking off the five-week campaign.

“This election I believe presents Australians with a very clear choice -- whether we move Australia forward or go back.”

Australia’s first woman prime minister said the nation had “come too far as a country and evolved too much as a society to risk the kind of backward looking leadership” offered by her conservative opponent Tony Abbott.

The former industrial lawyer laid out her case for re-election on the issues of asylum seekers, economic management and climate change, painting herself as a progressive optimist who was “asking the Australian people for their trust.”

But -- after just three weeks in office in which she insisted she had made some “big strides forward” -- she warned it would be a “very close election” and that a “close, tough, hard-fought campaign” lay ahead.

She faces an uphill battle to deliver the centre-left ruling Labor party a second three-year term in office, after a spectacular fall from the dizzying heights of popularity it enjoyed for its first two years in power.

The bloody campaign pits self-confessed atheist Gillard against scrappy former student boxer Abbott, head of the Liberal-National coalition, who played a key role in sinking Rudd’s career.

Once regular sparring partners on commercial breakfast television, Gillard said she expected Abbott to prove a “robust” opponent.

The staunch Catholic attacked Gillard as “ruthless”, asking how voters could trust her “when even Kevin Rudd couldn’t” and when she couldn’t herself be sure she would serve a full term before being knifed by the factions.

Abbott said his Liberal-National party coalition would “stand up for Australia” and for real action on the economy and boatpeople

“I’m going to end the waste, repay the debt, stop the new taxes and stop the boats. That’s what you’ll get from me,” he said.

Gillard promised to outline her climate policies during the campaign and said she was “a person who believes climate change is real, who believes it’s caused by human activity and who has never equivocated in that belief.”

Abbott, who once dismissed climate change as “absolute crap” countered that a return to Labor would mean a carbon tax, saying: “It will be high and it will impact on everyone’s standard of living.”

The opposition would need to achieve a swing of 2.3 percent to return to power, less than three years after their 11 years in rule were ended by Rudd’s landslide election victory in November 2007.

John Warhurst, a political analyst from the Australian National University said Labor was likely to win, with incumbency and the polls both weighing in their favour and Gillard seen “on balance” as a plus.

Formerly his deputy, Gillard has enjoyed a strong opinion poll surge since succeeding Rudd, who in six months went from being one of the most popular prime ministers in Australian history to being discarded.

But Warhurst warned that it would be a fight won largely on personality.

Gillard could mount a very strong economic argument, but he said the inflammatory issue of boatpeople was “potentially a plus for the opposition.”

“That’s an issue also where I think Julia Gillard has stumbled in the past couple of weeks and has not performed particularly well,” he said.

A Nielsen and Galaxy opinion poll last week gave Labor a narrow but election-winning 52-48 percent lead over the opposition coalition, up from early June.

The election for members of the lower House of Representatives and half of the Senate is expected to be played out in key marginal seats in the populous eastern states of Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria.

North Korea said on Sunday it was open to inter-Korean military talks to address the sinking of a South Korean warship but urged the United States to cease its involvement in the case.

The North, however, renewed a demand that the South first allow Pyongyang to carry out its own inspection to verify the facts of the case -- a condition Seoul has refused.

“Our intention was to dispatch our inspection group to South Korea from the very day the authorities linked the case with us and then open North-South high-level military talks to discuss the results of the inspection,” an unnamed military official from the North said in a message disclosed by the official news agency KCNA.

“We still remain unchanged in our stand to open the above-said military talks and probe the truth about the case,” the official said in a telephone message sent to the US side.

The statement came just a day after G8 leaders condemned the sinking of the South Korean warship, the Cheonan, in an official communiqué released after two days of talks in Canada.

Tensions are running high following the sinking of the South’s corvette near the maritime border in March with the loss of 46 lives.

President Barack Obama said in Toronto he stood “foursquare” behind South Korean leader Lee Myung-Bak and scolded North Korea for its “irresponsible behavior”.

South Korea, citing the findings of a multinational probe, says a North Korean torpedo sank the ship and is pressing for the United Nations to censure North Korea.

But the North strongly denies any involvement and has threatened a military response to any UN actions.

The North’s military official said Sunday that it was “preposterous” and “absurd” for the US-led United Nations Command to address the Cheonan issue.

Seoul insists that the UNC, which has supervised the armistice along the border since the 1950-1953 Korean War ended, should handle the sinking, which it says is a violation of the truce pact.

Pyongyang has demanded that the US-led UNC be dismantled.

“The US forces side should no longer meddle in the issue of North-South relations under the name of ‘UN Forces Command,’” the North’s military official said.

The North’s Committee for Peaceful Reunification of Korea, in charge of handling cross-border relations, issued a statement Sunday denouncing the South’s recent military drills and plans to play a bigger role in US-led global efforts to stop the trafficking of weapons of mass destruction.

It branded such South Korean policies as “reckless and frantic moves of the puppet warmongers to start a war of aggression” against North Korea.

In Toronto on Saturday, Obama and Lee agreed to extend Washington’s wartime command of South Korean forces until 2015 in a demonstration of the strength of their alliance.

This means that in case of war on the Korean peninsula, the United States would assume operational command of South Korean forces. Washington had been due to transfer wartime command to Seoul in April 2012.

The delay in the transfer drew mixed responses from South Korean political parties.

The ruling Grand National Party welcomed it as an appropriate measure to earn more time to better cope with growing threats from North Korea, which conducted a second nuclear test last year.

But the main opposition Democratic Party criticized the government for abandoning a leadership role in defending the nation.