LUANDA, Angola (AFP) – Angolas president Jose Eduardo Dos Santos yesterday called for “zero tolerance”

of corruption within the country’s government to halt what he said was the “squandering of resources”.

Dos Santos, who has been president of the oil-rich African nation for 30 years, was addressing members of the central committee of the ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, ahead of the party’s sixth congress in December.

“The transparency of management actions and good governance are an aspect where there is still much work to do… The best is to commit ourselves to a kind of ‘zero tolerance’ after the sixth congress,” Dos Santos said.

He said the party had been “timid” in holding officials to account through the courts and parliament and this had been “exploited by irresponsible people and by people of bad faith” to allow the “squandering of resources”.

Dos Santos comments come after the publication last week of Transparency International’s annual corruption index in which Angola fell from 158 in 2008 to 162 out of the 180 countries listed. The index measures the degree to which the countries are perceived to be corrupt.

Angola vies with Nigeria as Africas largest oil producer but two-thirds of the population live on less than two dollars a day and more than half of people have no access to sanitation.

McCain says he enjoyed reading Sarah Palin’s book

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia (AP) – US Senator John McCain said yesterday that he enjoyed reading running mate Sarah Palin’s new memoir and downplayed any tension between their campaign aides as “no big deal”.

“I enjoyed the book and she and I are dear friends. I talked to her on the phone yesterday. We got along fine,” said McCain in an interview yesterday with The Associated Press on the sidelines of the Halifax International Security Forum.

In Going Rogue, Palin confirms reports of discord between her aides and those of McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential candidate. The former vice- presidential candidate says she was kept “bottled up” from reporters during the campaign and denied the chance to deliver her own concession speech on Election Night last November.

But McCain emerges unsullied in the book.

“In campaigns there’s always tension,” McCain said. “Outside of combat, it’s the most tense situation. There’s always differences that arise, but it’s no big deal.”

Swine flu vaccines are effective, despite deaths

PARIS, France (AFP) – Swine flu vaccines are still effective despite reported cases of mutations in the A(H1N1) virus, health experts in Europe and North America said yesterday.

Bruno Lina, director of the national flu virus monitoring centre for southern France, said the mutation of the virus – blamed for around 6,750 deaths so far worldwide – came as no surprise.”

In the United States, Anne Schuchat of the Centres for Disease Control (CDC) said the mutation would have no impact on the effectiveness of the swine flu vaccine or the anti-virals.

The experts’ comments came a day after the World Health Organisation announced that a mutation had been found in swine flu virus samples taken following the first two deaths from the pandemic in Norway.

However, the Geneva-based UN agency stressed that the mutation did not appear to cause a more contagious or more dangerous form of A(H1N1).

It also revealed that a similar mutation had been observed in Brazil, China, Japan, Mexico, Ukraine and the United States as early as April.

The WHO underlined that there was no evidence of more infections or more deaths as a result, while antivirals used to treat severe flu – oseltamivir (Tamiflu) and zanamivir (Relenza) – are effective on the mutated virus.

That view was echoed yesterday by France’s health chief, Didier Houssin, who said in a radio interview that the ability of the vaccine to induce an immune reaction is not affected by the mutation, “so the vaccines remain effective”.

On Friday, World Health Organisation data showed that around 6,750 people had died from swine flu since the virus was first uncovered in Mexico and the United States in April.

Life requested for US suspect in Italy murder case

PERUGIA, Italy (AP) – Prosecutors yesterday asked an Italian court to hand down life sentences to an American student and her ex-boyfriend for their alleged roles in the fatal stabbing of a young British woman during a drug-fuelled sex game.

In their closing arguments, prosecutors said Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito should be convicted on charges of murder and sexual violence for the 2007 slaying of Meredith Kercher. They deny wrongdoing.

Knox, who is from Seattle, took a deep breath when Prosecutor Giuliano Mignini requested life imprisonment – Italy’s stiffest punishment. She then addressed the court, saying that the accusations against her were “pure fantasy”.

“Meredith was my friend, I didn’t hate her,” she said in Italian, fighting back tears.

The Briton’s body, her throat slit, was found in a pool of blood on Nov 2, 2007, in the apartment she shared with Knox in the central Italian town of Perugia.

Prosecutors argued that Knox resented her British roommate and killer her together with Sollecito and Rudy Hermann Guede, of Ivory Coast, under “the fumes of drugs and possibly alcohol”.

They said Knox hit Kercher’s head against a wall, then tried to strangle her, as Sollecito held her and Guede sexually assaulted her.

Guede was sentenced to 30 years in prison last year for the killing after a fast-track trial he had requested. He also denies wrongdoing and is appealing his conviction.

“The murder and the sexual violence were carried out for futile reasons,” Mignini said. “Meredith will never come back.”

He requested nine months of daytime solitary confinement for Knox and two months for Sollecito. A verdict is expected in early December.

Mignini also asked the court to convict the defendants on lesser charges, including staging a break-in and the theft of euro300 (US$444) and Kercher’s cellphones. He said Knox and Sollecito staged a burglary in the apartment by breaking a window in a bedroom in an attempt to sidetrack the investigation.

The 22-year-old Knox maintains she spent the night of the murder at Sollecito’s house in Perugia. The 25-year-old Sollecito has said he was home working at his computer that night. He said he does not remember if Knox spent the whole night with him or just part of it.