Democratic presidential hopeful and Illinois Senator Barack Obama addresses supporters during his caucus night rally at Hy-Vee Hall in Des Moines, Iowa, Jan 3.

DES MOINES, USA, Jan. 4--Democrat Barack Obama triumphed in the first 2008 White House nominating contest Thursday, dealing a severe blow to Hillary Clinton’s hopes and boosting his own chances of being the first black US president.
“We are choosing hope over fear. We’re choosing unity over division and sending a powerful message that change is coming to America,“ Obama told a raucus, cheering crowd, AFP said.
Obama won with a strong 38 percent of the votes, compared to 30 percent for John Edwards and only 29 percent for Clinton.
On the Republican side, ordained Baptist minister Mike Huckabee drubbed his top rival in the race Mitt Romney, 34 percent to 25 percent, casting serious doubt on the former Massachusetts governor’s national viability.
Obama’s triumph vindicated the 46-year-old senator’s soaring message of hope and political change even as it cast a long shadow over Clinton’s aspirations to be the first woman president of the United States.
“They said this day would never come. They said our sights were set too high,“ he said. “Years from now, you’ll look back and you’ll say that this was the moment, this was the place where America remembered what it means to hope.“
It confirmed Obama, son of a black Kenyan father and white American mother, as a real threat for the Democratic nomination, and raised doubts whether Clinton’s message of experience and mastery of Washington politics will play with voters.
The former first lady, who ended up in third place just behind former vice-presidential nominee Edwards, must halt the Obama bandwagon in Tuesday’s primary in New Hampshire--the state which revived her husband former president Bill Clinton’s White House campaign in 1992.
She insisted she was “optimistic“ and keen to get on with a national campaign, as aides predicted a “marathon“ battle for the Democratic nomination.

GAZA CITY, Occupied Palestine, Jan. 4--Israeli jets launched a fresh air raid on the Gaza Strip early Friday killing two Hamas militants, sources said, hours after US President George W. Bush insisted diplomatic efforts continue.
A missile strike near the northern town of Beit Hanun killed two members of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, medical sources said. The Gaza Strip has been under the control of Hamas since last year, AFP said.
The latest strike came one day after a series of Israeli ground and air attacks killed nine Palestinians including at least four militants. But civilians were also among the casualties.
Two of the militants killed on Thursday were members of the Islamic Jihad group. The brothers were targetted in their home in the attack that also killed their sister and mother.
Thursday’s raids also left 48 people wounded and several houses destroyed, witnesses and medics said.
An Israeli army spokeswoman said ground forces were engaged in heavy exchanges of fire with Palestinian fighters hiding in houses.
Civilian casualties were caused because “they were letting militants into their homes“, she added.
In Washington meanwhile, Bush remained committed to a push for peace ahead of his visit to the region next week, the White House said Thursday.
“The parties are continuing to try to meet and talk, but obviously it’s fraught with a lot of tension,“ White House spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters.
But Bush had no plans “at this point“ to hold a joint meeting with Israeli and Palestinian leaders during the visit to the Middle East next week, said national security adviser Stephen Hadley.
“We’re not looking for headline announcements. What the president’s looking for is better understanding of the challenge we face and a commitment to dealing with that challenge,“ said Hadley.

Police officers patrol a street in Kibera slum, Nairobi, Kenya, on Friday.

NAIROBI, Kenya,
Jan. 4--A planned opposition rally appeared to falter on Friday, giving Kenya some respite from post-election turmoil that has killed more than 300 people.
“We’re tired, we’re not going to march,“ said Samuel Muhati, a resident of the Mathare slum, where thousands of demonstrators battled police on Thursday. “Let the fighting stop.“
US Assistant Secretary of State Jendayi Frazer was due in Nairobi on Friday evening to meet President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga, who says he was robbed of victory in a December 27 vote in east Africa’s biggest economy, Reuters reported.
“They have an opportunity to come together in some kind of arrangement that will help heal the wounds,“ US President George W. Bush told Reuters, joining a chorus of international appeals to end Kenya’s deadly chaos.
From dawn, police guarded Nairobi’s Uhuru (Freedom) Park, where the protest was supposed to start at 10 a.m. (2 a.m. EST).
But opposition leaders had not arrived at their Pentagon House headquarters by that time, and exhausted supporters in the slums were largely staying at home.
Protesters battled for hours on Thursday to march on the park but were held back by police firing teargas, water cannon and warning shots.
Half a dozen people died, mostly in tribal killings in the slums.
A week of ethnic violence and riots since the election has shocked the world and jeopardized Kenya’s reputation as one of Africa’s most promising democracies.
More than 300 people have died in the clashes--some between police and protesters, others pitting members of Odinga’s Luo ethnic group and other tribes against Kibaki’s Kikuyus.
More than 100,000 people have been forced to flee their homes by the violence, more than 5,000 crossing the border to Uganda.
As international pressure failed to bring Kibaki and Odinga together, there was increasing impatience among Kenyans.

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan, Jan. 4--A British police team arrived in Pakistan on Friday to help probe the killing of Benazir Bhutto after President Pervez Musharraf admitted he was not happy with his country’s handling of the investigation.
According to AFP, the detectives from an elite anti-terrorism team at Scotland Yard flew in amid raging controversy over the assassination of the opposition leader, which sparked a wave of bloody unrest and forced the postponement of elections.
“The team from Scotland Yard has arrived and they left the airport in a private vehicle,“ a senior official at Islamabad airport, which is in the neighboring city of Rawalpindi, told AFP.
Around six suited men believed to be the British team were ushered out of the terminal and into a white minibus, before shutting the curtains of the vehicle and speeding off without talking to reporters.
Interior ministry spokesman Brigadier Javed Cheema said earlier the Yard team was flying in “to help Pakistani investigators with their probe into the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.“
For the first time since Bhutto was killed in a gun and suicide bomb attack that his government blames on Al-Qaeda, Musharraf acknowledged reports the crime scene had been quickly hosed down after her murder, possibly destroying evidence.
He said on Thursday that he hoped his decision to invite foreign help would help dispel “conspiracy theories“ about Bhutto’s death at an election rally on December 27.
Her Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has ridiculed the government account of her death, which said the shooter had missed her and that she died fracturing her skull by smashing her head against her car’s sunroof.
Many Bhutto supporters have blamed the president for her death--at the very least for failing to provide sufficient security after she only narrowly survived Pakistan’s worst terror attack in October, which left scores dead.
But Musharraf denied he or the Pakistani establishment were involved in the killing, and rejected suggestions the country’s powerful intelligence agencies had mounted a cover-up.
“I am sure that they did not do it with an intention of hiding some secrets or that the intelligence agencies instructed them to hide secrets,“ he said, when asked to explain the swift clearing of the site after Bhutto’s death.

CARACAS, Venezuela, Jan. 4--Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced a major cabinet reshuffle on Thursday after a poll defeat last month wrecked his hopes of winning new powers to push ahead with his declared socialist revolution.
Chavez named a soft-spoken replacement for his combative vice-president, Jorge Rodriguez, and said he was making 12 other cabinet changes, Reuters said.
Rodriguez was blamed by many government supporters for the referendum defeat in December, when voters rejected Chavez’s bid for new powers and the right to run for reelection indefinitely
In recent days, an apparently humbled Chavez has dropped his grandiose revolutionary speeches and has instead promised to tackle issues like crime and garbage collection that more directly affect his grass roots supporters.
In a telephone call to state television, Chavez said his new vice president is Ramon Carrizales, a former housing minister. He did not give details on most of the 12 other cabinet changes.
Chavez said it was important to reach out to Venezuela’s middle class and other sectors of society often alienated by his pro-poor policies.
“We are not extremists and we cannot be. We have to look for alliances with the middle classes,“ he said, adding that he had no plans to eliminate private property, a fear of many of his opponents.

VATICAN CITY, Jan. 4--A landmark meeting between Catholic officials and Muslim scholars that aims to spur dialogue between Christianity and Islam is planned to take place in Rome this spring, a senior Vatican official said.
According to Reuters, the top Vatican official in charge of relations with Islam, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, said he expected an advanced group of three Muslim representatives in February or March to lay the groundwork for the meeting, Reuters reported.
“In a certain sense, (the meeting) can be defined as historic,“ Tauran told the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, in an edition published earlier this week.
Some 138 Muslim scholars wrote to Pope Benedict and other Christian leaders in October, saying “the very survival of the world itself“ might depend on dialogue.
The Pope, who as head of the Catholic Church represents more than half the world’s two billion Christians, responded in November by welcoming their call and inviting them to Rome.
The German-born Pontiff sparked Muslim protests in 2006 by making a speech hinting that Islam was violent and irrational.
He repeatedly expressed regret for the reaction to the speech but stopped short of the clear apology sought by Muslims.
Tauran raised eyebrows last year by expressing doubt over whether the two faiths could agree on issues such as God, love and how to read sacred scripture.
But he told L’Osservatore Romano that the Muslim scholars’ call for dialogue in their October open letter may have marked a turning point.
“It’s still true that, for some Muslims, inter-religious dialogue is neither a reality nor a priority. But it’s also true that we’re perhaps seeing an interesting development in the open letter,“ Tauran said. “The 138 signatories effectively represent 43 countries.“
Among the items on the agenda were respect for an individual’s dignity and teaching tolerance to new generations, Tauran said.

COLOMBO,
Sri Lanka, Jan. 4--Heavy fighting between government troops and Tamil Tigers broke out in northern Sri Lanka Thursday, hours after Colombo announced it was pulling out of a tattered ceasefire agreement with the rebels.
According to AFP, at least six Tiger rebels and a government soldier were killed in the latest clashes along the de facto border of the mini-state run by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the defence ministry said.
For their part, the Tigers said they beat back a military offensive into their territory and claimed they killed 10 government soldiers and wounded 15 more. The rebels said in a statement that they did not suffer any losses.
Both sides are known to claim heavy losses for their adversaries and there is no independent verification.
Human Rights Watch has called for a UN human rights monitoring mission in Sri Lanka in the wake of the breakdown of the ceasefire.
The New York-based group said new monitors were needed to replace the Norwegian-led Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission, which is pulling out due to the end of the ceasefire.