Tokyo—Japan’s ruling conservative party suffered a crushing defeat in elections Sunday as voters overwhelmingly cast their ballots in favor of a left-of-center opposition camp that has promised to rebuild the economy and breathe new life into the country after 54 years of virtual one-party rule, media projections said. The opposition Democratic Party of Japan was set to win 300 of the 480 seats in the lower house of parliament, ousting the Liberal Democrats, who have governed Japan for all but 11 months since 1955, according to

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New Delhi—Veteran politician Jawant Singh has said he wants to remove negativity about Quaid-e-Azam Muhammed Ali Jinnah. I want to remove the negativity surrounding Jinnah,” Singh said while talking to people who thronged a book stall at the book fair here to get the copies signed by the author himself. When asked his future plan after his expulsion from Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Singh said at present, he was concentrating on

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San Francisco—Questions mounted Saturday about how a California man was able to hide for 18 years a girl he kidnapped and the two children she bore him, despite warnings to police that something was amiss. Phillip Garrido, 58, and his wife Nancy, 54, pleaded not guilty on Friday to 29 alleged offenses including kidnapping, rape and false imprisonment, following the discovery of Jaycee Lee Dugard on Wednesday, nearly two decades after the blonde schoolgirl was snatched outside her home in 1991. Dugard, kidnapped at age 11, was confined

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Los Angeles—A wildfire in the mountains above Los Angeles has surged in every direction, going in a single day from a modest threat to a danger to some 10,000 homes. The blaze nearly tripled in size in triple-digit heat Saturday, leaving three people burned, destroying at least three homes and forcing the evacuation of 1,000 homes and an untold number of people. A slight drop in temperatures and an influx of fire crews from around the state were expected to bring some relief Sunday.

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Kathmandu—The United Nations has expressed “serious concern” over an incident in Nepal in which Maoist former fighters left their camps carrying weapons. Thousands of the former soldiers have been living in UN-supervised cantonments since the ten-year civil war between the Maoists and the Nepal army ended in 2006. Their fate is seen as key to the future stability of Nepal, as the peace deal decreed that they should be integrated into the national security forces, but senior military officers have vehemently resisted the policy.

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