Italy prepares for landmark election

ITALIANS hit by austerity and recession are preparing to take to the polls for an election being watched around Europe, a day after a mass rally in Rome showed rising social discontent.

Tens of thousands turned out to hear Beppe Grillo, a comedian turned activist whose grassroots Five Star Movement could receive a massive protest vote and become Italy's third biggest political party after the elections on Sunday and Monday.

"Let's send them all home!" the crowd chanted on Friday - a slogan of Grillo's campaign against mainstream politicians, many of whom have been discredited recently by a series of investigations into corruption and waste of public funds.

La Repubblica daily called Grillo the "Rock Star of Populism", while La Stampa spoke of an "apocalyptic climate" and top-selling Corriere della Sera said in an editorial: "An entire system is disappearing."

Grillo has promised to slash politicians' salaries, increase unemployment benefits and hold a referendum on whether Italy should retain the euro.

Candidates could not campaign on Saturday, and voter surveys have been off-limits for the two weeks leading up to the polls.

"I am worried for my country," centre-left leader Pier Luigi Bersani, the favourite in the polls, told supporters at his final rally on Friday.

Renowned film director Nanni Moretti also appeared at the event and said it was time to "liberate" Italy from the scandal-tainted media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi.

Outgoing premier Mario Monti promised to overhaul the labour market to create more jobs.

Three-time premier Berlusconi said he was confident even though polls have put him in second place.

Bersani, a cigar-chomping former communist who now espouses broadly pro-market views, has said he will continue with the budget discipline enforced by Monti to the delight of financial markets.

But he will come under pressure to ease back on austerity and do more to promote growth and jobs as Italy endures its longest recession in 20 years and unemployment hits a record high of 11.2 percent.

The financial markets are monitoring closely as a return to Italy's bad old days of free-wheeling public finances could spell disaster for the eurozone beset by a debt crisis.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told the Stuttgarter Zeitung daily that it was "in Italy's interests" to continue with Monti's reform agenda.

Belgian daily Le Soir carried an editorial titled "Italian Elections, European Stakes".

"The real danger that threatens Italy, and therefore all of Europe, is instability," wrote the paper's editorialist Christophe Berti.

Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza said the election was "A Fight Between Clowns" - Berlusconi and Grillo.

With everything at stake, the campaign has been remarkably underwhelming, with few rallies and a lot of back-and-forth in television interviews that have provided little detail on electoral promises.

A case in point was Berlusconi's vow to refund to Italians - if needed out of his own pocket - an unpopular property tax levied by Monti in an official-looking letter that prompted some to queue at post offices to claim their money back.

The billionaire, who is fighting his sixth election campaign in two decades and is a defendant in two trials for tax fraud and sex with an underage prostitute, has been rising in the polls.

The 76-year-old has pursued a populist campaign, intimating that Italy's social misery can be blamed on a "hegemonic" Germany imposing austerity.

Polls open at 0700 GMT (1800 AEDT) on Sunday and close 12 hours later.

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Pistorius spends time with family

SOUTH Africa's Olympic "Blade Runner" and murder suspect Oscar Pistorius has spent his first day out on bail with his family pending trial for the killing of his lover.

Pistorius was freed on a record one million rand ($A110,656) bail on Friday after eight days in custody and an emotionally charged four-day bail hearing.

"I would like Oscar to just compose himself and to have a normal day," his uncle Arnold Pistorius told the local Eyewitness News.

He will return to court later this year when a date will be set for trial for having shot dead his model girlfriend and law graduate Reeva Steenkamp on Valentine's Day.

When contacted by AFP, his father Henke Pistorius declined to say how his son had slept at his uncle's house in Pretoria.

But a source close to the family told AFP late on Friday "the family just want time together. They haven't thought about anything except being together."

Pistorius claims he repeatedly shot at and killed his lover by mistake thinking she was a burglar.

Steenkamp's grieving parents, however, did not appear convinced.

"It doesn't matter how rich he is and how good his legal team is. He needs to live with himself if he lets his legal team lie for him," her father Barry told the Afrikaans-language daily Beeld.

Pistorius has assembled some of the best legal brains in South Africa to defend his case.

"He'll have to live with his conscience. But if he's telling the truth, I may forgive him one day," Steenkamp's father said.

But "if it didn't happen as he described it, he should suffer. And he will suffer ... only he knows."

Pistorius's family has sent flowers and a card to the Steenkamp family but "what does that mean? Nothing," said June, Reeva's mother.

Pistorius's brother Carl later in the day tweeted: "Thank you to every person that has prayed for both families."

In addition to the bail cash he posted Friday afternoon, which experts say is among one of the highest ever set in South Africa, Pistorius had to surrender his passport and firearms.

The magistrate quadrupled the bail amount initially proposed by the state.

He will have to report twice weekly to Pretoria's Brooklyn police. He was also ordered not to take alcohol or drugs.

Pistorius may also hold talks with his trainer to get back on the track, despite being banned under his bail terms from competing outside South Africa.

"He is a professional athlete. He needs to keep his body in shape," the family source said.

His arrest on February 14 shocked the world and gripped South Africa, where he became a national hero after becoming the first double amputee to compete in the Olympics last year.

The state charged him with the premeditated killing of 29-year-old Steenkamp.

If found guilty he faces a possible life sentence.

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Quake off Indonesia causes panic

AN undersea earthquake has rocked eastern Indonesia, causing panic among residents in neighbouring East Timor.

There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.

The US Geological Survey says the magnitude-5.7 quake that struck on Saturday evening was centred 202 kilometres east of East Timor's capital, Dili, at a depth of 35 kilometres.

Witnesses in Dili say residents ran out of their houses in panic, with many staying outside in fear of aftershocks.

Indonesia's Meteorology and Geophysics Agency put the quake's magnitude at 6.2 with a depth of 10 kilometres.

Indonesia and East Timor are prone to seismic upheaval due to their location on the Pacific Ring of Fire, an arc of volcanoes and fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin.

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Floods isolate thousands in NSW's north

MORE than 3000 people are isolated in NSW's north as gale force winds, strong rains and flooding lash the region.

A severe weather warning is in place for northern NSW, with the Bureau of Meteorology warning of very heavy rains leading to flash flooding over the Northern Rivers, Mid North Coast, Northern Tablelands and Hunter forecast districts.

Late on Friday night, the NSW State Emergency Service said the extreme weather had isolated about 3500 people on the north coast.

An SES spokesman told AAP that "no significant towns have been isolated at this stage" but that Bellingen was likely to be cut off overnight.

He said the SES had received 1000 calls for assistance so far, and had completed nine flood rescues, including one in which three people were dragged from a car at Taree.

He expected the threat of flooding to increase on Saturday.

"We are expecting that tomorrow in particular the Macleay and the Clarence will begin to peak and we'll begin to see a lot more water affect places like Grafton and Kempsey," he said.

On its website, the SES is advising residents at Newry Island, Bellingen Quays and Yellow Rock to evacuate.

Meanwhile, Essential Energy says 33,000 homes are without power on the state's north coast due to the inclement weather.

The company says the worst hit areas included Ballina, Byron, Yamba and Maclean.

Homes are also impacted from Woolgoolga down to Bellingen and Nambucca Heads, it advises.

An Essential spokesman said in a statement that in some customers would have their power off over the weekend.

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Chile fire kills at least 4

A FIRE has killed at least four people in a neighbourhood near Chile's capital.

Firefighters were on Friday still battling the blaze that destroyed three houses in Quinta Normal, which is near Santiago.

They said a 2-month old baby was missing amid the rubble.

A recent fire in the nearby port city of Valparaiso destroyed more than 100 homes, injured dozens and forced the evacuation of more than 1200 people.

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UN sounds alarm over Myanmar boat people

THE UN's refugee agency has raised the alarm over the rising number of boat people perishing in the Indian Ocean, including Rohingya Muslims fleeing communal strife in Myanmar (Burma).

"It is clear that for people fleeing violence and conflict in their homelands, this has become one of the most dangerous stretches of water in the world," UNHCR spokesman Andrej Mahecic said on Friday.

In 2012, some 13,000 people took to smugglers' boats in the Bay of Bengal, of whom 500 died at sea when the vessels broke down or capsized, Mahecic said.

"Already in 2013, several thousand people are believed to have boarded smugglers boats in the Bay of Bengal," he added.

Among the most recent incidents, around 90 people are believed to have died of dehydration and starvation during a two-month journey.

Around 30 survivors were rescued last weekend by Sri Lanka's navy off that country's coast.

"The repeated tragedies at sea demonstrate the need for a co-ordinated regional response to distress and rescue at sea," Mahecic said.

Described by the UN as among the most persecuted minority groups in the world, Myanmar's Muslim Rohingya have for years trickled abroad to neighbouring Bangladesh and, increasingly, to Muslim-majority Malaysia.

Myanmar views its population of roughly 800,000 Rohingya as illegal Bangladeshi immigrants and denies them citizenship.

Buddhist-Muslim unrest has left at least 180 people dead and more than 110,000 displaced in Myanmar's western state of Rakhine since June 2012.

"We are advocating with the Myanmar government to urgently address the root causes of the outflow," Mahecic said.

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More suicide blasts hit Mali

FIVE people, including two suicide bombers, have died in car bombings in northern Mali, a day after fierce urban battles between French-led forces and Islamists left up to 20 militants dead, officials say.

Two kamikaze vehicles targeting civilians and members of the ethnic Tuareg rebel group the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) exploded near the town of Tessalit, killing three and wounding several others, a security source said.

A spokesman for MNLA in Burkina Faso confirmed the report.

Mohamed Ibrahim Ag Asseleh said "the two kamikazes were killed and in our ranks there were three dead and four seriously wounded".

The blasts came after the Islamist rebels claimed a car bomb attack on Thursday near a camp occupied by French and Chadian troops in the city of Kidal, local officials said.

At least two civilians were reported wounded in that attack.

The vehicle, apparently driven by a suicide bomber, was targeting the camp but exploded before it reached it, killing the driver, an official in the Kidal governor's office said.

France sent in its troops in January to help the Malian army oust Islamist militants who last year captured the desert north of the country.

Thousands of soldiers from African countries have also deployed since then.

The French-led forces are increasingly facing guerrilla-style tactics after initially meeting little resistance in their drive to oust Islamists from the main northern centres of Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu.

The Tuareg MNLA blamed Friday's car bomb attacks on the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), one of Mali's main Islamist groups.

The MUJAO made no comment on the latest attacks, but on Thursday it said it was responsible for the car bomb in Kidal.

"More explosions will happen across our territory," MUJAO spokesman Abu Walid Sahraoui warned.

He also said the group had sent fighters to Gao, 1200km from the capital Bamako, where battles erupted overnight on Wednesday after about 40 Islamists infiltrated the city.

The Islamists briefly occupied the courthouse and the city hall but French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Malian and French forces backed by French helicopters repelled the attack on Thursday.

Le Drian said initially that five Islamists were killed in the fierce street fighting, but on Friday the French defence ministry said between 15 and 20 had died.

Sporadic gunfire was heard on Friday morning in Gao, an Agence France-Presse journalist there said.

MUJAO spokesman Sahraoui said the militants were determined to recapture the city: "Our troops have been ordered to attack. If the enemy is stronger, we'll pull back only to return stronger, until we liberate Gao."

Mali's Prime Minister Diango Cissoko said this week that large-scale military operations in the north were winding down, but sporadic fighting has continued.

A French legionnaire was killed on Tuesday in the mountainous Ifoghas region.

The French military said that their Panthere 4 operation in the Ifoghas had already left 30 Islamists dead since the start of the week.

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Confusion over fate of French family

THE fate of a French family kidnapped in Cameroon remains uncertain after a Cameroonian minister denied they were free and a French minister backtracked on his claim they had been found alive.

Hopes for the seven members of the family - a couple, their children aged five, eight, 10 and 12 and an uncle - were raised when a Cameroonian military source said they had been found safe and well in Nigeria.

"They were found abandoned in a house in Dikwa" in northern Nigeria, about 100 kilometres from the border with Cameroon, the source said on Thursday.

France's Veteran Affairs Minister Kader Arif confirmed that information but later said he had merely been passing on media reports and said "there is no official confirmation at this stage".

Cameroon's Communications Minister Issa Tchiroma Bakary bluntly stated: "It is a wild rumour. If this was true, the Cameroonian government would have already given the information to France."

France's foreign ministry said it could not confirm the release and warned against "spreading premature information".

A security source close to the case in Nigeria said there were "serious doubts" about whether the family had been freed.

The family was snatched Tuesday by six armed suspected Islamists on three motorbikes. Officials said they were taken across the border into Nigeria.

President Francois Hollande condemned the seizure as an "odious" act, saying: "This is the first time that children have been taken hostage in this manner."

The French foreign ministry urged citizens in the far north of Cameroon "to leave the area as quickly as possible" and advised against travel to areas bordering Nigeria until further notice.

The ministry could not say how many French citizens are believed to be in the north but 6200 in total are registered as living in Cameroon.

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'Separatists' kill 8 soldiers in Indonesia

INDONESIAN authorities suspect separatists were behind the slaying of eight soldiers in Indonesian Papua, in the biggest attack on security forces in the restive region's recent history.

Gunmen shot dead the eight and wounded another in two separate incidents among the mountains of Puncak Jaya district, a known hideout for rebels where attacks on police and soldiers are common.

Co-ordinating Security Minister Djoko Suyanto said the government "strongly condemned the brutal incident" and suspected the separatist Free Papua Movement (OPM) was behind the shootings.

"Based on our intelligence, there are several (separatist) groups in the area," Suyanto told reporters, adding that groups in Tingginambut and Sinak, where the attacks took place, were led by known OPM commanders.

"We always try to map and chase them but you must understand the mountainous and dense forests in Papua make the work difficult," he said.

Security analyst from the University of Indonesia, Andi Widjajanto, said: "This is a big number of deaths, especially as they were all soldiers. This has never happened before in Papua."

The first incident took place at 9:30am (1130 AEDT), when an armed group opened fire on a military post in Tingginambut village, killing one soldier and wounding another, Papua province military spokesman Jansen Simanjuntak said.

An hour later in nearby Sinak, some 60 kilometres away, armed attackers opened fire at nine soldiers walking to a nearby airport, killing seven of them.

"They were going to the airport to pick up packages containing communication devices. All of the soldiers were unarmed," Simanjuntak said.

Suyanto urged all parties to allow the police and military to carry out their mission in hunting down the perpetrators without disruption, to "defend the rights of our soldiers".

Violence occasionally erupts in Papua - the western half of New Guinea island in Indonesia's extreme east - where poorly-armed separatists have for decades fought a low-level insurgency on behalf of the mostly ethnic Melanesian population.

Jakarta keeps a tight grip on the resource-rich region with a heavy police and military presence and foreign journalists are banned from reporting out of the area.

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Lego sales soar 25%

DANISH toy maker Lego says sales soared 25 per cent last year thanks partly to the new Lego Friends series of building blocks designed for girls.

The privately owned company says on revenue of 23.4 billion kroner ($A4.12 billion) it made net profits of 5.6 billion kroner, up 38 per cent.

The company, based in western Denmark, said on Thursday series like Lego Star Wars and Lego Ninjago were among the more popular.

But it was the novel rollout for girls, Lego Friends, that sold much better than expected - to the extent the company was unable to keep up with demand.

CEO Joergen Vig Knudstorp says Lego has shown it can develop toys children across world "put at the top of their wish lists".

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