Syria spillover risk, say analysts

SYRIA'S neighbours face a growing risk of the conflict spilling across their region with Bashar al-Assad turning to ever more desperate acts to halt rebels, analysts say.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki voiced such concerns on Saturday when he said a new wave of sectarian strife in his country stemmed from violence elsewhere, although he did not name Syria.

However, others believe while Iraq, Israel and Turkey will all be affected, Lebanon and Jordan will be most vulnerable if the conflict spreads.

"There is a significant risk of an increased spillover," says Anthony Skinner of British risk consultancy Maplecroft.

"It is a very vulnerable region and there is a risk of escalation. The whole region may increasingly become involved in the conflict."

Jordan hosts more than 500,000 Syrian refugees, while Lebanon is home to 400,000 but the two countries face other tough challenges.

Amman has found itself dragged closer to the conflict with the deployment of more US troops on its territory amid a warning by Assad the kingdom could be engulfed by the war, and accusations of allowing fighters into Syria.

"Jordan had been pushed because of the escalation next door and because of its concerns regarding militant Islam and Salafists. Jordan is concerned about the potential chaos that may follow for years or decades in the likely event that Assad will eventually be toppled," Skinner said.

Lebanon has witnessed frequent shelling from Syria of both Sunni Muslim and Shi'ite areas of its north and east.

It has adopted a policy of neutrality despite being torn between the Iran-backed Hezbollah and its allies that support Assad, and the Sunni-led March 14 movement that backs the revolt.

Opposition activists in Syria have accused Hezbollah of sending elite fighters to battle alongside Assad's troops in Qusayr, an area near the border.

"Lebanon could be plunging into a state of war - this is a very real risk," Skinner said.

For Yezid Sayigh of the Carnegie Middle East Centre in Beirut, "the main impact on Jordan and Lebanon is the refugees, which puts them under severe pressure.

"Even those who support the Syrian opposition, are becoming fed up with the refugee influx. If the situation develops, more Syrians, maybe millions, will flee to Jordan and Lebanon," exacerbating the chances of conflict in the host countries, he told AFP.

Syria's conflict is increasingly becoming a proxy war, with the rebels backed by US allies Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, and Assad by Hezbollah, Iran and Russia.

Assad's forces are too stretched to retaliate against those who back the rebels, but occasional cross-border shelling is conceivable, said Skinner.

"Though, these attacks would not be deemed large enough to provoke a strong counter-punch, it's conceivable that Assad would use proxies that are not so clearly linked to his line of command," Skinner said.

Turkey and Israel are worried about the fallout.

"The threat of the Syrian conflict has pushed Turkey to engage in what appears to be a serious peace process with the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party)," he said.

Israel fears Syria's chemical weapons arsenal could fall into the wrong hands.

"The United States and Israel have limited options to deal with the chemical weapons. They do not want things to develop, which might give the Syrian regime the chance to use the weapons," Sayigh said.

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Navajo the chosen one for new 'Star Wars'

THE classic Star Wars film that launched a science fiction empire is being dubbed in the Navajo language.

A handful of Navajo speakers have translated the script for Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope and people are now being sought to fill some two dozen roles.

Casting calls are scheduled on Monday in Burbank, California and next Friday and Saturday at the Navajo Nation Museum in Window Rock, Arizona.

Potential actors don't have to sound exactly like Princess Leia or Luke Skywalker but should deliver the lines with character.

Museum director Manuelito Wheeler says he sees the translation as entertaining and a way to preserve the Navajo language.

Wheeler says it's rewarding considering the US once tried to eradicate the language.

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Man arrested over poisoned letters

A MISSISSIPPI man has been arrested on suspicion of sending poisoned letters to US President Barack Obama and others.

Everett Dutschke, 41, was arrested about 12:50am (3:50pm AEST) Saturday at his Tupelo home in connection with the letters, FBI spokeswoman Deborah Madden said.

The letters, which allegedly contained ricin, were sent last week to President Barack Obama, Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi and earlier to an 80-year-old Mississippi judge, Sadie Holland.

Ms Madden said Mr Dutschke was arrested without incident. She said additional questions should be directed to the US attorney's office. The office in Oxford did not immediately respond to messages Saturday.

Mr Dutschke's attorney, Lori Nail Basham, did not immediately respond to phone or text messages Saturday.

Charges in the case were initially filed against an Elvis impersonator but then dropped. Attention then turned to Mr Dutschke, who has ties to the former suspect and the judge and senator.

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Colombian teen hired gun confesses murders

A 19-YEAR-OLD hired gun has told Colombian police he committed more than 30 murders, blaming poverty and his father's violence.

"Seeing the powerlessness when I heard my parents saying they didn't have money for the rent and didn't know how they were going to get it" led him to become a gang enforcer, Andres Leonardo Achipiz told Caracol Television on Friday.

Referring to the physical abuse, he said his father would resort to "physical blows, humiliation, because of having to work so hard to support six children," adding that repressed anger led him to consider doing harm to others.

Achipiz said most of his victims were in their early teens, his first an individual who stole his mobile phone at knifepoint. After several other killings criminals began hiring him.

He said he eventually became a full-time enforcer, estimating that he murdered a total of 32 or 33 people.

Achipiz, who committed his last homicide in November 2012, was arrested last week and could be sentenced to up to 30 years in prison if convicted, a spokesman for the Bogota police force said on Friday.

Police have evidence he carried out eight murders, and Achipiz admitted to those crimes at a court hearing, the spokesman said.

The jailed suspect, who asked forgiveness from the families of his victims, says he hopes his three-year-old son is raised far from the life he chose.

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Italy government unveiled

ITALY'S incoming prime minister Enrico Letta has finally unveiled his new government line-up.

The breakthrough ends a two-month deadlock that saw former premier Silvio Berlusconi reassert his status as a key player and tested the patience of Rome's European partners.

Angelino Alfano, from Berlusconi's party, has been handed the deputy prime minister post and interior portfolio, while former EU commissioner Emma Bonino has been made foreign minister, Letta said on Saturday.

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Duke 'well' despite bruised eye

BUCKINGHAM Palace has played down fears about the Duke of Edinburgh's health after he was pictured with a badly bruised eye.

The Duke, 91, was photographed in Canada with the mark below his right eye during his first major foreign trip since his time in hospital with a bladder infection last August.

It is understood he did not fall and simply woke up with the bruising a few days ago.

A palace spokeswoman said on Saturday: "He is well and is currently undertaking an engagement in Canada."

It is not the first time Philip has suffered a black eye.

In 2004, he was pictured with the injury when he arrived with the Queen to open a new power plant near Port Talbot in south Wales.

On that occasion, he had slipped in the bath and caught his eye with his thumb.

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US authorities make arrest in ricin probe

US authorities have arrested a man as part of a probe into poison-laced letters sent to President Barack Obama and others.

Everett Dutschke was taken into custody "without incident" at his home in Tupelo, Mississippi, early Saturday morning, Tupelo Police Department spokesman Scott Floyd said.

Dutschke had been turned over to the US Marshals Service, he added.

Three letters laced with ricin were discovered last week as the US was reeling from a deadly bombing at the Boston Marathon.

They were addressed to Obama, Republican Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi and a justice of the peace in the same US state, Sadie Holland.

Authorities initially arrested another man but the charges against him were later dismissed and he was released.

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156 dead, thousands injured in China quake

Hundreds of people are dead or injured after a 6.6 magnitude earthquake in China's Sichuan province. Source: AAP

A POWERFUL earthquake struck the steep hills of China's southwestern Sichuan province on Saturday, leaving at least 156 people dead and more than 5,500 injured, nearly five years after a devastating quake wreaked widespread damage across the region.

Saturday's quake, while not as destructive as the one in 2008, toppled buildings, triggered landslides and disrupted phone and power connections in mountainous Lushan county.

The village of Longmen was hit particularly hard, with authorities saying nearly all the buildings there had been destroyed in a frightening minute-long shaking by the quake.

"It was such a big quake that everyone was scared," said a woman who answered the phone at a kindergarten hours later and declined to give her name. "We all fled for our lives."

Rescuers turned the square outside the Lushan County Hospital into a triage centre, where medical personnel bandaged bleeding victims, according to footage on China Central Television.

Rescuers dynamited boulders that had fallen across roads to reach Longmen and other damaged areas lying farther up the mountain valleys, state media reported.

CCTV reported that at least 156 people had died. The government of Ya'an city, which administers Lushan, said in a statement that more than 2,600 people were injured, but other reports suggested the real figure was probably more than double that.

The quake - measured by the China Earthquake Administration at magnitude-7.0 and by the US Geological Survey at 6.6 - struck the steep hills of Lushan county shortly after 8am (1000 AEST), when many people were at home, sleeping or having breakfast.

People in their underwear and wrapped in blankets ran into the streets of Ya'an and even the provincial capital of Chengdu, 115km east of Lushan, according to photos, video and accounts posted online.

The quake's shallow depth, less than 13km, likely magnified the impact.

Chengdu's airport shut down for about an hour before reopening, though many flights were cancelled or delayed, and its railway station halted dozens of scheduled train rides Saturday, state media said.

Lushan reported the most deaths, 76, but there was concern that casualties in neighbouring Baoxing county might have been under-reported because of inaccessibility after roads were blocked and power and phone services cut off.

As the region went into the first night after the quake, rain started to fall, slowing rescue work. Forecasts called for more rain in the next several days, and the China Meteorological Administration warned of possible landslides and other geological disasters.

Tens of thousands of people moved into tents or cars, unable to return home or too afraid to go back as aftershocks continued to jolt the region.

Lushan, where the quake struck, lies where the fertile Sichuan plain meets foothills that eventually rise to the Tibetan plateau and sits atop the Longmenshan fault.

It was along that fault line that a devastating magnitude-7.9 quake struck on May 12, 2008, leaving more than 90,000 people dead or missing and presumed dead in one of the worst natural disasters to strike China in recent decades.

"It was just like May 12," Liu Xi, a writer in Ya'an city, who was jolted awake by Saturday's quake, said via a private message on his account on Sina Corporation's Twitter-like Weibo service. "All the home decorations fell at once, and the old house cracked."

The official Xinhua News Agency said the well-known Bifengxia panda preserve, which is near Lushan, was not affected by the quake. Dozens of pandas were moved to Bifengxia from another preserve, Wolong, after its habitat was wrecked by the 2008 quake.

As in most natural disasters, the government mobilised thousands of soldiers and others - 7,000 people by Saturday afternoon - sending excavators and other heavy machinery as well as tents, blankets and other emergency supplies.

Two soldiers died after the vehicle that they and more than a dozen others were in slipped off the road and rolled down a cliff, state media reported.

Premier Li Keqiang flew to Ya'an to direct rescue efforts, and he and President Xi Jinping ordered officials and rescuers to make saving people the top priority, Xinhua said.

The Chinese Red Cross said it had deployed relief teams with supplies of food, water, medicine and rescue equipment to the disaster areas.

With roads blocked for several hours after the quake, the military surveyed the disaster area by air.

Aerial photos released by the military and shown on state television showed individual houses in ruins in Lushan and outlying villages flattened into rubble.

The roofs of some taller buildings appeared to have slipped off, exposing the floors beneath them.

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Morsi to reshuffle Egypt cabinet: aide

EGYPT'S Islamist President Mohamed Morsi is set to announce a cabinet reshuffle, a presidential aide says, but it is unlikely to meet opposition demands for a complete overhaul of the government.

Morsi wrote on his Twitter account that he would make "a ministerial change" and replace provincial governors, adding the posts would go to "those who are most qualified".

A presidential palace official said Morsi's quote was taken from an interview that will be aired on Saturday night on the Qatar-based al-Jazeera television channel.

A senior presidential aide said Morsi may announce the changes by the end of the week.

"There will be six to eight ministers, and wide-ranging changes among (provincial) governors," he said.

"The ministries that will be affected include some important ones," he added.

"I can't mention which ones because, as you know, this is a sensitive matter."

Morsi has repeatedly declared his confidence in Prime Minister Hisham Qandil, whose sacking is demanded by a coalition of opposition groups as a condition for dropping a boycott of parliamentary elections.

Egyptian newspapers have reported that Morsi may replace Justice Minister Ahmed Mekki and other less prominent ministers.

The opposition remains steadfast in its demand for a national unity government, in a protracted deadlock with Morsi that has delayed a much needed $US4.8 billion ($A4.68 billion) loan from the International Monetary Fund.

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Thousands rally at scandal-hit UK hospital

THOUSANDS of people have flooded a British town centre in a demonstration aimed at keeping major services at a scandal-hit hospital.

Campaigners of all ages packed into the Market Square in Stafford for the rally and public march, many holding placards and banners emblazoned with slogans showing their opposition to the withdrawal of services including maternity care from Stafford Hospital.

A public inquiry into the hospital, which was placed into administration five days ago, found it had provided "appalling" standards of care and caused unnecessary suffering to hundreds of patients over a five-year period up to 2009.

Health regulator Monitor has given two special administrators 45 working days to produce a plan for the sustainable "reorganisation" of future services.

The issue is of extreme importance to people living in and around the town and has now become apolitical, according to Sue Hawkins, chair of the Support Stafford Hospital group which arranged the demonstration.

Speaking in the busy Market Square, where supporters gathered ahead of the kilometre-long march to the hospital, Hawkins said it was important to move on from mistakes of the past.

"I think we've got to talk about 2013," she said.

"What happened, happened. The numbers will be debatable but what we've got to do is move forward and look to the future for our community.

"We've got a safe hospital today and we're looking to the future."

She said she hoped the march would send a clear message that the majority of people in Stafford want to retain acute services in the town and that they did not accept the proposal of a downgrade to a local hospital.

"We need to have an Intensive Care Unit here, we need to have an Accident and Emergency 24 hours a day and we believe that's possible.

"We know there have to be changes, we know there may have to be some alliance with another hospital to achieve that."

The march set off from the town centre at around 2pm in blazing sunshine and many taking part chanted slogans, waved their banners and sang songs as they walked.

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