Sydney/Perth, April 7
An Australian ship searching for missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner MH370 has picked up signals consistent with the beacons from aircraft black box recorders, in what search officials said on Monday was the most promising lead yet in the month-long hunt.

The US Navy "towed pinger locator" connected to Australian ship Ocean Shield picked up the signals in an area some 1,680 km northwest of Perth, which analysis of sporadic satellite data has determined as the most likely place the Boeing 777 went down.

"I'm much more optimistic than I was a week ago," Angus Houston, head of the Joint Agency Coordination Centre — the Australian agency coordinating the search — told a news conference in Perth in Western Australia, while cautioning that wreckage needed to be found for a confirmation.

"We are now in a very well defined search area, which hopefully will eventually yield the information that we need to say that MH370 might have entered the water just here."

If the signals can be narrowed further, an autonomous underwater ehicle called a Bluefin 21, will be sent to find wreckage on the sea floor to verify the signals, said Houston, who noted that the potential search area was 4.5 km deep, the same as the Bluefin range.

Houston's remarks came only a few hours before the pingers stop transmitting the signals as the batteries inside the beacons, which are designed to start sending signals when a plane crashes into water, last about 30 days after it is activated.

The black boxes record cockpit data and may provide answers about what happened to the Malaysia Airlines plane carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew when it vanished off radar on March 8 and flew thousands of kilometres off its Kuala Lumpur-to-Beijing route.

Malaysia's acting transport minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, told reporters in Kuala Lumpur he was "cautiously hopeful" that the signals picked up would lead to a positive finding soon. "I am more optimistic than some of the leads we have had. This is something much more positive than others," he said. The first "ping" signal detection was held for more than two hours before the Ocean Shield lost contact, but the ship was able to pick up a signal again for about 13 minutes, Houston said.

Chinese patrol ship Haixun 01 had reported receiving a pulse signal with a frequency of 37.5 kHz, consistent with the signal emitted by flight recorders, on Friday and Saturday in an area more than 300 nautical miles from the latest signals. A second search area was being maintained in the area. — Reuters

Kabul, April 7
Preliminary tallies from Afghanistan's presidential election showed former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah leading in parts of Kabul on Monday, but with ballot counting likely to last weeks it was far too early to predict a winner.

The two other frontrunners alleged serious fraud in the April 5 vote, which all being well will lead to Afghanistan's first democratic transfer of power as incumbent Hamid Karzai prepares to step down after more than 12 years in the office. Trucks stacked with plastic ballot boxes began to trickle into the capital on Monday, as officials prepared to open a centre to tally votes from across the rugged country.

Given the United State's plan to withdraw most of its troops by the end of the year, the longer Afghanistan has to wait before a new leader is installed the greater is the risk of instability either from the Taliban insurgency, or rivalries between factions in a country riven by ethnic and tribal fault lines. "We are trying to start the process as soon as possible," said Noor Mohammad Noor, a spokesman for the Independent Election Commission.

"It's a long process. It will take time." If none of the candidates score over 50 percent it will take even longer before a winner is declared, as there will be a second round run off at the end of May at the earliest. Preliminary results are not due until April 24, but a tour of Kabul polling stations showed that Abdullah was firmly in the lead, confirming the suave former anti-Soviet resistance fighter's popularity in the capital.

Running second came Ashraf Ghani, a former World Bank official with a programme of radical economic reform. Ex-finance minister Ghani should score well in the north, as his running mate is Abdul Rashid Dostum, a feared former warlord who holds sway over the region.

Trailing in third was another ex-finance minister, Zalmai Rassoul. He is believed to have Karzai's backing, and as a consequence is expected to do better in the Pashtun-dominated south, where the Karzai family has strengthened its influence over the years. — Reuters

kandahar: A roadside bomb killed at least 15 persons travelling in vehicles that had been diverted from a main road on Monday after an earlier attack in southern Afghanistan, officials said. The blast came after a relatively calm weekend in which no major attacks were reported as Afghans cast their vote.

Islamabad, April 7
Former Pakistani military ruler Pervez Musharraf was today ordered by an anti-terrorism court to appear before it on April 21 or face arrest in connection with the murder case of Baloch nationalist leader Akbar Bugti.

The court in Quetta directed 70-year-old Musharraf to appear before it, failing which his bail would be cancelled. "The court will issue arrest warrants against him if he fails to appear before it," Sohail Rajput, the counsel of Bugti's son Jamil, told reporters quoting the remarks the judge made during the hearing.

Meanwhile, former federal interior minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao and former Balochistan home minister Mir Shoaib Nowsherwani appeared before the court in connection with the case. The court ordered both former ministers to reappear before it on April 21.

Jamil Akbar Bugti, the son of Akbar Bugti, had named Musharraf, former prime minister Shaukat Aziz and other high-ups in the murder of his father. The Balochistan High Court has already issued arrest warrants for the accused persons.

Bugti was killed in a cave on August 26, 2006, during a military crackdown ordered by Musharraf who was the president and army chief at the time. Bugti had led an armed campaign to press for provincial autonomy and a greater share of profits in Balochistan's natural resources. The death of the Baloch chieftain sparked angry protests in the country.

Since Musharraf returned to Pakistan from self-exile in March last year, he has faced prosecution in four major cases, including one in which he has been indicted on high treason charges and another for his alleged involvement in the murder of former PM Benazir Bhutto in 2007. Musharraf was indicted on March 31 in the treason trial. — PTI

Kiev/Donetsk, April 7
Pro-Moscow protesters occupying a government building in eastern Ukraine declared the creation of a separatist republic on Monday, in a move Kiev described as part of a plan to justify a Russian invasion to dismember the country.

Kiev said the seizures of state buildings in three cities in eastern Ukraine's mainly Russian speaking industrial heartland were a replay of events in Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula Moscow annexed after its troops occupied it last month. "An anti-Ukrainian plan is being put into operation... under which foreign troops will cross the border and seize the territory of the country," Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk told a cabinet meeting in Kiev. "We will not allow this."

Pro-Russian protesters seized official buildings in the eastern cities of Kharkiv, Luhansk and Donetsk on Sunday night, demanding that referendums be held on whether to join Russia like the one that preceded Moscow's takeover of Crimea. Police said they cleared the protesters from the building in Kharkiv, but in Luhansk the demonstrators had seized weapons.

In Donetsk, home base of deposed pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovich, about 120 pro-Moscow activists calling themselves the "Republican People's Soviet of Donetsk" seized the chamber of the regional parliament. An unidentified bearded man read out "the act of the proclamation of an independent state, Donetsk People's Republic" in front of a Russian flag.

“In the event of aggressive action from the illegitimate Kiev authorities, we will appeal to the Russian Federation to bring in a peacekeeping contingent,” said the proclamation. The activists later read out the text by loud hailer to a cheering crowd of around 1,000 gathered outside the building. — Reuters