TOKYO - JAPAN'S political leaders made final pleas for votes on Saturday on the eve of landmark elections expected to end half a century of almost unbroken conservative rule and bring to power a centre-left party.
Polls predict the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) will trounce Prime Minister Taro Aso's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has been in power for all but 10 months since its founding in 1955.
PARIS - H1N1 flu spreads four times faster than other viruses and 40 per cent of the fatalities are young adults in good health, the world's top health official warned in an interview appearing on Saturday.
'This virus travels at an unbelievable, almost unheard of speed,' World Health Organisation Director General Margaret Chan told France's Le Monde daily in an interview.
'In six weeks it travels the same distance that other viruses take six months to cover. Sixty per cent of the deaths cover those who have underlying health problems,' she said.
NEW DELHI - INDIA'S first moon mission, launched amid much fanfare last year, came to an abrupt end on Saturday after the country's lunar craft lost contact with its controllers, the national space agency said.
India launched an unmanned satellite and put a probe on the moon's surface late last year in an event that the national space agency hoped would give the country international recognition in the lunar business.
SEOUL - A SOUTH Korean fishing boat and its crew that strayed into North Korean waters and were held for a month were returned on Saturday as the communist state reaches out to its foes after months of military grandstanding.
The release of the boat was the latest in a series of conciliatory moves by the North that also included a deal on Friday to resume reunions of families separated by war and the reopening of its border with the South to commercial traffic.
