Pakistan vote count shows big Sharif win

ISLAMABAD (AP) — The vote count from last weekend's nationwide elections in Pakistan on Tuesday indicates a big win for former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's party.

Figures released by the country's election commission, based on 254 of the 269 races where the counting has been completed, show Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-N party will likely get a majority in the national assembly, setting him up to be prime minister for the third time.

As the new premier, the 63-year-old Sharif, a devout Muslim and a populist, is expected to supplant President Asif Ali Zardari as the international face of a nuclear power whose increasing instability and Islamic militant havens are a global concern, especially at a time when the West is looking to end the war in neighboring Afghanistan.

Sharif's party so far has won 123 of the 254 directly elected national assembly seats, the commission spokesman Khursheed Alam said. The commission is still compiling results for 15 seats, and Alam said it hopes the remaining results will be released by Tuesday evening.

Earlier reports from the election commission on Tuesday wrongly indicated that the count was over.

The White House said President Barack Obama had spoken with Sharif by telephone to congratulate him on his party's success. White House spokesman Jay Carney called the election and peaceful transfer of power a "significant milestone" in Pakistan's progress toward a more democratic political system.

The vote marked the first time a civilian government completed its full five-year term and transferred power in democratic elections.

There are 272 directly-elected seats in the lower house of parliament, but races for three seats were not held because a candidate had died. A new vote will be scheduled for those seats after alternative names are proposed.

Independent candidates who normally join the party that forms the government won 25 seats. The combination would give Sharif's party more than the 137 directly elected seats they need to have a majority.

There are an additional 70 seats for women and minorities that are apportioned to the parties based on how well they do in the general election.

The outgoing ruling Pakistan People's Party won 31 seats. The party was battered by allegations of corruption and complaints that it did nothing to address power blackouts and inflation. Almost all of the seats that it did win were in the party's stronghold of Sindh province.

The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party led by former cricket star Imran Khan won 26 seats, which is a huge improvement for a party that boycotted the 2008 election and only claimed one seat in the 2002 vote.

Khan's supporters have protested the vote as unfair, and the cricket star has claimed vote-rigging in the port city of Karachi and in Punjab province. Many of the young people who have come out to vote for Khan have also taken to the streets in recent days in protests in Karachi and Islamabad calling for recounts and new elections in many areas.

But many election observers who monitored the vote have said it was relatively fair.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said they did not find any evidence of systematic rigging and called on all parties to accept the vote.

The Free and Fair Election Network, a Pakistani monitoring group with thousands of observers, has described the balloting in Punjab as "relatively fair."

"The elections were held in a free and fair manner," said the election commission spokesman, Alam, adding the commission was examining complaints it received.

Sharif visited Khan in the hospital Tuesday, where he is recovering from a serious fall last week in which he injured his back, and urged him to accept the election results.

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Associated Press writers Zarar Khan in Islamabad and Josh Lederman in Washington contributed to this report.

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One in five Canadians are born abroad, survey shows

By Randall Palmer

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada is more than ever a nation of immigrants, with one in five Canadians born outside the country, according to a 2011 survey released by Statistics Canada on Wednesday.

That 20.6 percent proportion of people born abroad, up from 19.8 percent five years previously, is far bigger than in most other rich industrialized countries.

Statscan said 12.9 percent of U.S. residents were born outside the country, and 11.5 percent of people in Britain. Australia's rate is higher, at 26.8 percent.

But the federal agency also admitted that it was "difficult to anticipate the quality level of the final outcome" of its survey after changes were made in the way it sought information.

In the past, Statscan sent a mandatory long-form census to 20 percent of the population. But the Conservative government abandoned that approach in favor of a voluntary national household survey, which went to one in three Canadians.

Statistics Canada assumed only 50 percent of those who got the survey would respond to a voluntary questionnaire, while the mandatory form had a much higher response rate.

The government argued the mandatory long census was too intrusive, and its decision prompted the resignation in 2010 of Statistics Canada's chief statistician, who said the decision could endanger the survey's usefulness. Business groups and social activists also said Statistics Canada needed the fuller information of the long-form census so it could assist them with planning and funding.

Canada, with a population of 32.9 million in 2011, aims to take in about 250,000 immigrants each year, partly because of a low birth rate among its citizens. Immigration brought in 1.2 million people between 2006 and 2011, and a total of 6.8 million people in Canada were born outside the country.

Almost 57 percent of the immigrants in the 2006-11 period came from Asia, with the Philippines topping the list, followed by China and India.

The survey also shows that the number of Muslims in Canada is rising strongly, while fewer people identify themselves as Christian and more say they have no religious affiliation.

The number of Christians fell to 67.3 percent of the population in 2011 from 77.1 percent in 2001, while the number with no religious affiliation rose to 7.9 million from 4.9 million in 2001.

The Muslim population nearly doubled during the decade to 1.05 million. Muslims now make up 3.2 percent of the population, up from 2.0 percent in 2001.

(Editing by Peter Galloway)

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Canadian poll shows Trudeau Liberals far ahead

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada's new Liberal leader, Justin Trudeau, would lead his party to a crushing election victory if a vote were held now, according to a poll released on Tuesday that put Liberal support substantially higher than other recent surveys have shown.

The Forum Research poll, the first conducted since the son of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau was elected party leader on Sunday, has the Liberals at 43 percent and the Conservatives at 30 percent. That amount of support would give the Liberals a solid majority government.

The Conservatives, in power since 2006 and plainly concerned about the 41-year-old Justin Trudeau's popularity, came out on Monday with attack ads questioning his judgment and experience.

The Forum numbers would have been enough for the Liberals to win 170 of the 308 seats in the House of Commons, instead of the paltry 34 seats they won in the 2011 election. The next election is due in October 2015.

Other polls have been less rosy for the Liberals, although all show a strong improvement over their 2011 results. An Ekos poll released on Sunday had the Liberals at 29.1 percent support, compared with 28.8 percent for the Conservatives. But they lagged 25.7 percent to 33.8 percent if only likely voters were included.

A Nanos poll released on Friday gave the Liberals 35.4 percent support, compared with 31.3 percent for the Conservatives.

The Conservatives have lost some ground to the Liberals, but most of the new support has come at the expense of the left-leaning New Democratic Party, which won the second highest number of seats in the 2011 election with 30.6 percent of the vote. Forum has support for the NDP down to 19 percent now.

In the last election both the Liberals and the NDP campaigned on higher corporate taxes and on a cap-and-trade system to curb carbon emissions.

Forum's automated telephone poll of 1,764 people was taken on April 14. That sample size that should be accurate to within 2 percentage points 19 times out of 20.

(Reporting by Randall Palmer; Editing by Janet Guttsman and Peter Galloway)

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Talk aside, NKorean capital shows calm, not panic

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — Scores of North Koreans of all ages planted trees as part of a forestation campaign — armed with shovels, not guns. In the evening, women in traditional dress danced in the plazas to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the late leader Kim Jong Il's appointment to a key defense post.

Despite more warnings from their leaders of impending nuclear war, people in the capital gave no sense of panic.

Chu Kang Jin, a Pyongyang resident, said everything is calm in the city.

"Everyone, including me, is determined to turn out as one to fight for national reunification ... if the enemies spark a war," he added, using nationalist rhetoric common among many North Koreans when speaking to the media.

The North's latest warning, issued by its Asia-Pacific Peace Committee, urged foreign companies and tourists to leave South Korea.

"The situation on the Korean Peninsula is inching close to a thermonuclear war due to the evermore undisguised hostile actions of the United States and the South Korean puppet warmongers and their moves for a war against" North Korea, the statement said Tuesday.

There was no sign of an exodus of foreign companies or tourists from South Korea.

White House spokesman Jay Carney called the statement "more unhelpful rhetoric."

"It is unhelpful, it is concerning, it is provocative," he said.

The warning appeared to be an attempt to scare foreigners into pressing their governments to pressure Washington and Seoul to act to avert a conflict.

Analysts see a direct attack on Seoul as extremely unlikely, and there are no overt signs that North Korea's army is readying for war, let alone a nuclear one.

North Korea has been girding for a showdown with the U.S. and South Korea, its wartime foes, for months. The Korean War ended in 1953 with an armistice, not a peace treaty, leaving the peninsula still technically at war.

In December, North Korea launched a satellite into space on a rocket that Washington and others called a cover for a long-range missile test. The North followed that with its third underground nuclear test in February, a step toward mastering the technology for mounting an atomic bomb on a missile.

Tightened U.N. sanctions that followed drew the ire of North Korea, which accused Washington and Seoul of leading the campaign against it. Annual U.S.-South Korean military drills south of the border have further incensed Pyongyang, which sees them as practice for an invasion.

Last week, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un enshrined the pursuit of nuclear weapons — which the North characterizes as a defense against the U.S. — as a national goal, along with improving the economy. North Korea also declared it would restart a mothballed nuclear complex.

Adm. Samuel Locklear, commander of U.S. Pacific Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee in Washington on Tuesday that he concurred with an assessment by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., calling the tension between North Korea and the West the worst since the end of the Korean War.

"The continued advancement of the North's nuclear and missile programs, its conventional force posture, and its willingness to resort to asymmetric actions as a tool of coercive diplomacy creates an environment marked by the potential for miscalculation," Locklear told the panel.

He said the U.S. military and its allies would be ready if North Korea tries to strike.

Heightening speculation about a provocation, foreign diplomats reported last week that they had been advised by North Korea to consider evacuating by Wednesday.

However, Britain and others said they had no immediate plans to withdraw from Pyongyang.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye, who has sought to re-engage North Korea with dialogue and humanitarian aid since taking office in February, expressed exasperation Tuesday with what she called the "endless vicious cycle" of Seoul answering Pyongyang's hostile behavior with compromise, only to get more hostility.

U.S. and South Korean defense officials have said they've seen nothing to indicate that Pyongyang is preparing for a major military action.

State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said there was "no specific information to suggest imminent threat to U.S. citizens or facilities" in South Korea. The U.S. Embassy has neither changed its security posture nor recommended U.S. citizens take special precautions, he said.

Still, the United States and South Korea have raised their defense postures, as has Japan, which deployed PAC-3 missile interceptors in key locations around Tokyo on Tuesday as a precaution against possible North Korean ballistic missile tests.

In Rome, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon described the tensions as "very dangerous" and said that "any small incident caused by miscalculation or misjudgment" may "create an uncontrollable situation."

Also Tuesday, citing the tension, North Korea pulled out all 53,000 workers from the Kaesong industrial park, which combines South Korean technology and know-how with cheap North Korean labor. It was the first time that production was stopped at the complex, the only remaining product of economic cooperation between the countries that began about a decade ago when relations were much warmer.

Other projects from previous eras of cooperation such as reunions of families separated by war and tours to a scenic North Korean mountain have been suspended in recent years.

Though the North Korean Foreign Ministry advised foreign embassies to evacuate, tourism officials are continuing to welcome visitors.

National carrier Air Koryo's daily flight from Beijing was only half full on Tuesday. Flight attendants in red suits and blue scarves artfully kept in place by sparkling brooches betrayed no sense of fear or concern.

Tourist Mark Fahey, a biomedical engineer from Sydney, said he thought a war was "pretty unlikely."

Fahey, a second-time visitor to North Korea, said he booked his trip to Pyongyang six months ago, eager to see how the country might have changed under Kim Jong Un. He said he chose to stick with his plans, suspecting that most of the threats were rhetoric.

"I knew that when I arrived here it would probably be very different to the way it was being reported in the media," he told The Associated Press at Pyongyang airport. He said his family trusts him to make the right judgment, but "my colleagues at work think I am crazy."

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Associated Press writers Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul, South Korea, Nicole Winfield in Rome and Matthew Pennington, Donna Cassata and Richard Lardner in Washington contributed to this report.

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Follow AP's Korea bureau chief on Twitter at twitter.com/newsjean.

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Falklands vote shows 99.8 pct want to stay British

STANLEY, Falkland Islands (AP) — An overwhelming 99.8 percent of Falkland Islands voters have backed keeping their government just the way it is: a British Overseas Territory.

Of the 1,517 valid votes cast, only 3 islanders voted "no" to the question: "Do you wish the Falkland Islands to retain their current political status as an Overseas Territory of the United Kingdom?" One vote was somehow lost, officials said Monday.

The referendum was aimed at showing the world that the residents' self-determination must be considered in any discussion about the future of the remote South Atlantic islands that are claimed by both Britain and Argentina.

Elections officials reported a 92 percent turnout among the approximately 1,650 Falkland Islands voters eligible to cast ballots in the referendum. International election observer Juan Henao said the process was completely normal.

The islands' 2,563 residents did all they could ahead of the vote to show their sympathies, waving Union Jack flags and dressing up in red-white-and-blue.

"The referendum will show the world how we feel, that we are British and that we wish to remain British. We don't want to have nothing to do with Argentina, at all," islander Barry Nielson said as he voted.

The ballot didn't consider any alternatives, such as full independence or some sort of political relationship with Argentina. The Falkland Islands Government had said that if a majority said "no," they could explore alternatives in a second vote later.

The government barred from voting any visiting contractors or personnel from the sizeable British military deployment, as well as anyone who had not resided in the islands for the last 12 months, thus excluding several people with islander status who have chosen to live in Argentina.

Argentines consider the "Islas Malvinas" to be part of their national territory, taken from them by the British more than 180 years ago. One group at the iconic obelisk in Buenos Aires said Monday that it had gathered 100,000 signatures supporting Argentina's claim to the territory and the resource-rich seas that surrounds the archipelago.

The islands' community, which includes families that have worked the land for nine generations, is steeped in British culture, and British Prime Minister David Cameron wrote in the tabloid The Sun on Sunday that "as long as the Falklanders want to stay British, we will always be there to protect them. They have my word on that."

But islanders have worried that British support is not guaranteed. They well remember that Britain was preparing to hand over the islands to Argentina before the military government in Buenos Aires occupied them in 1982, prompting a war that killed 907 people.

Defending them ever since by staffing a large military garrison 8,000 miles (13,000 kilometers) from London has been a costly sore point for Britons facing austerity measures. A Daily Mirror columnist complained about this on Monday, saying that "the result's not in doubt when the Islanders are voting for 'free money.' "

The political columnist, Kevin Maguire, wrote that the UK "spends 75 million euros ($112 million) on troops, missiles, aircraft and warships to guard their sheep lands," an annual military subsidy he calculated at 44,856 euros ($67,000) per island voter.

"It is glaringly obvious that a deal with neighbor Argentina remains the only sensible long-term answer to the Falklands-Malvinas," Maguire concluded.

Argentina maintained that the vote was illegal and that islanders — an "implanted people" — have no voice in a dispute that must be settled bilaterally.

The islanders hope the result will help them keep any deal off the table — and perhaps even persuade neutral nations such as the United States to come down on their side.

Gov. Nigel Haywood is Queen Elizabeth's representative in the islands, a mostly advisory role. The islanders directly elect members of a legislative assembly, and settle all their own affairs except for defense and foreign policy.

"I think countries when faced with the outcome of this will look at it and say ... 'we're in the 21st century, is it right that a country should want to try to take possession of these islands again against the freely expressed wishes of its inhabitants?' Haywood told The Associated Press. "That's just not how countries should act in the 21st century."

Two Falkland Islands lawmakers were already on their way to Washington, preparing to hand-deliver the results of an overwhelming "yes" vote to the U.S. Congress.

"Self-determination is what the United States was founded on and it is a fundamental right. It's a right that they recognize. So I would hope that they would listen to what's happening here today," said another member of the islands' legislative assembly, Dick Sawle.

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History shows NKorean pattern: wait, then attack

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Recent Korean history reveals a sobering possibility: It may only be a matter of time before North Korea launches a sudden, deadly attack on the South. And perhaps more unsettling, Seoul has vowed that this time, it will respond with an even stronger blow.

Humiliated by past attacks, South Korea has promised — as recently as Tuesday — to hit back hard at the next assault from the North, opening up the prospect that a skirmish could turn into a wider war.

Lost in the headline-making North Korean bluster about nuclear strikes on Washington in response to U.N. sanctions is a single sentence in a North Korean army Supreme Command statement of March 5. It said North Korea "will make a strike of justice at any target anytime as it pleases without limit."

Those words have a chilling link to the recent past, when Pyongyang, angry over perceived slights, took its time before exacting revenge on rival South Korea. Vows of retaliation after naval clashes with South Korea in 1999 and 2009, for example, were followed by more bloodshed, including attacks blamed on North Korea that killed 50 South Koreans in 2010.

Those attacks three years ago "are vivid reminders of the regime's capabilities and intentions," Bruce Klingner, a former U.S. intelligence official now at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, wrote in a recent think tank posting.

Almost a mirror image of the current tensions happened in 2009, when the U.N. approved sanctions over North Korean missile and nuclear tests, and Pyongyang responded with fury. In November of that year, Seoul claimed victory in a sea battle with the North, and Pyongyang vowed revenge.

In March 2010, the Cheonan, a 1,200-ton South Korean warship, exploded and sank in the Yellow Sea, killing 46 sailors. A South Korean-led international investigation found that North Korea torpedoed the ship, a claim Pyongyang denies.

The Cheonan sinking may have been retaliation for the naval defeat four months earlier, said Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea specialist at Seoul's Dongguk University.

In November 2010, North Korea sent a warning to South Korea to cancel a routine live-fire artillery drill planned on Yeonpyeong Island, which is only seven miles from North Korea and lies in Yellow Sea waters that North Korea claims as its own.

South Korea went ahead with the drills, firing, Seoul says, into waters away from North Korean territory. North Korea sent artillery shells raining down on the island, killing two civilians and two marines.

South Korea responded with artillery fire of its own, but the government of then-President Lee Myung-bak was severely criticized for what was seen as a slow, weak response. Lee, a conservative who infuriated North Korea by ending the previous liberal government's "sunshine policy" of huge aid shipments with few strings attached, vowed massive retaliation if hit again by the North.

The government of newly inaugurated President Park Geun-hye, also a conservative, has made similar comments, though she has also said she will try to build trust with North Korea and explore renewed dialogue and aid shipments.

South Korea's Defense Ministry on Tuesday repeated that it would respond harshly to any future attack from the North. Spokesman Kim Min-seok said there were no signs that North Korea would attack anytime soon, but warned that if it did, it would suffer "much more powerful damage" than whatever it inflicted on South Korea.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Monday visited artillery troops near disputed waters with South Korea and urged them to be on "maximum alert" because war could break out anytime, according to Pyongyang's official media.

If war broke out, the United States would assume control of South Korea's military because of the countries' decades-old alliance that began with the U.S.-led military response to North Korean invaders in 1950. But South Korea has made clear that it has a sovereign right, and a political necessity, to respond strongly to future North Korean attacks.

A clue to when North Korea might attack may be in the timing of the current threats. North Korea is furious over ongoing annual U.S.-South Korean military drills that will continue until the end of April.

Pyongyang is highly unlikely to stage an attack when so much U.S. firepower is assembled, but analysts said it might hit South Korea after the drills end.

"They are quiet when tension is high and state-of-the-art (U.S.) weapons are brought to South Korea for the drills," said Chon Hyun-joon, an analyst at the government-funded Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul.

If history is any guide, the most likely flashpoint is the Yellow Sea, where North Korea has complained about sea boundaries since the 1950s. The U.S.-led U.N. Command drew the so-called Northern Limit Line after failed attempts to negotiate a border after the Korean War, and Pyongyang says it clearly favors the South by boxing in North Korea close to its shores.

Bloody sea battles in 1999, 2002 and 2009, and North Korea's artillery bombardment of Yeonpyeong Island in 2010, took place weeks after annual drills by South Korea and the United States, Chon said. In those cases and in the current drills, North Korea's state media reacted to the war games with harsh criticism, calling them preparations for a northward invasion.

North Korea sometimes takes months to follow through on its occasionally cryptic threats or warnings, but it also has acted quickly.

North Korea has attempted a military provocation within weeks of every South Korean presidential inauguration dating back to 1992, according to Victor Cha, a former Asia adviser to President George W. Bush, and Ellen Kim at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington. South Korea's new president was inaugurated Feb. 25.

"Expect a North Korean provocation in the coming weeks," Cha and Kim wrote Thursday.

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AP writer Hyung-jin Kim contributed to this report from Seoul.

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Nigeria: Video shows bodies of foreign hostages

KANO, Nigeria (AP) — A video posted online appears to show the corpses of some of the seven foreign hostages abducted by Islamic extremists in northern Nigeria and later killed, a gruesome warning of the growing dangers in the region.

The video, viewed by The Associated Press on Monday, matched still images released earlier by the Islamic extremist group Ansaru when it claimed the killings. The face of one of the corpses in the video also resembled that of one of the hostages already named by authorities.

European diplomats said Sunday that the hostages had been killed.

On Monday, Nigerian Interior Minister Abba Moro told the BBC's Hausa language radio service that those nations said that it was "likely" that their citizens had died in the attack.

"We hope they're alive," Moro said. Moro did not respond to requests for comment Monday from the AP. Nigerian officials often speak to the BBC Hausa service, as it is viewed as one of the dominant independent news sources in Nigeria's predominantly Muslim north.

In the video, a gunman stands in sand, holding a rifle near what appears to be dead bodies. A later shot in the video shows three male corpses, one of whom appears to have been killed by a gunshot wound to the head from a high-powered weapon.

The video has no sound. An accompanying caption for the video in Arabic calls it: "The killing of seven Christian hostages in Nigeria." Another description includes the statement Ansaru released Saturday claiming that it killed the hostages, signed by a man with the nom de guerre Abu Usamatal Ansary.

Ansaru fighters kidnapped the foreigners Feb. 16 from a camp for the construction company Setraco at Jama'are, a town 200 kilometers (125 miles) north of Bauchi, the capital of Bauchi state. In the attack, gunmen first assaulted a local prison and burned police trucks, authorities said. Then the attackers blew up a back fence at the construction company's compound and took over, killing a guard in the process, witnesses and police said.

Those kidnapped included four Lebanese and one citizen each from the United Kingdom, Greece and Italy. Local officials in Nigeria initially identified one of the hostages as a Filipino, something the Philippines government later denied.

The gunmen appeared to be organized and knew who they wanted to target, leaving the Nigerian household staff at the residence unharmed, while quickly abducting the foreigners, a witness said.

In an online statement Saturday in which it claimed the killings, Ansaru said it killed the hostages in part because of reports in the Nigerian press of the arrival of British military aircraft to Bauchi. However, the local news articles cited by Ansaru reported that the airplanes were spotted at the international airport in Abuja, the nation's central capital 180 miles (290 kilometers) southwest.

The British Defense Ministry said Sunday the planes it flew to Abuja ferried Nigerian troops and equipment to Bamako, Mali. Nigerian soldiers have been sent to Mali to help French forces and Malian troops battle Islamic extremists there. The British military said it also transported Ghanaian soldiers to Mali the same way. Ansaru had said it believed the planes were part of a Nigerian and British rescue mission for the abducted hostages.

Nigerian authorities have yet to comment publicly about Ansaru's claim, and the news of the killing of the hostages comes as the nation's security forces remain unable to stop the guerrilla campaign of bombings, shootings and kidnappings across the country's north. The majority of those attacks have been blamed on Boko Haram, an Islamic extremist group that grew out of the remains of a sect that sparked a riot and a security crackdown in Nigeria in 2009 in which about 700 people were killed.

Boko Haram has hit international targets before, including an August 2011 car bombing of the United Nations office in Abuja that killed 25 people and wounded more than 100. An online video also purportedly claims that Boko Haram is currently holding hostage a family of seven French tourists who were abducted from neighboring Cameroon in late February. The group is blamed for killing at least 792 people last year alone, according to an AP count.

Ansaru, which analysts believe split from Boko Haram in January 2012, seems to be focusing much more on Western targets. Analysts say it has closer links to al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb and cares more about international issues, as opposed to Boko Haram's largely local grievances. But much remains unknown about Ansaru, which has communicated through short, sometimes muddled online statements.

The hostage killings appear to be the worst in decades targeting foreigners working in Nigeria, an oil-rich nation that's a major crude supplier to the United States. Most kidnappings in the country's southern oil delta see foreigners released after companies pay ransoms. The latest kidnappings in Nigeria's north, however, have seen the hostages killed either by their captors or in military raids to free them, suggesting a new level of danger for expatriate workers there.

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Associated Press writer Sunday Alamba contributed to this report.

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Jon Gambrell can be reached at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP .

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Trudeau would win next Canadian election for Liberals, poll shows

OTTAWA (Reuters) - The Liberals would return to power in the next Canadian election if, as expected, they choose the son of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau to head the party, according to an opinion poll released on Friday.

The Forum Research poll showed the Liberals with Justin Trudeau as leader would be able to replace the Conservatives in power, albeit with a minority government, if an election were held today.

The center-left Liberals governed Canada for much of the 20th century, but fell to third place in the 2011 election. That left them behind the left-leaning New Democrats for the first time in history as the Conservatives turned their previous minority government into a majority one.

The Forum poll showed the Liberals under Trudeau would take 39 percent of the vote if an election were held now, compared with 32 percent for the Conservatives, and 20 percent for the New Democrats.

An election is not due until 2015, and the Conservatives have not yet ground Trudeau through their formidable advertising machine, making it impossible to predict if the poll figures will hold.

"Justin Trudeau continues to solidify his position at the top of the pops," the National Post newspaper, which ran the poll, quoted Forum President Lorne Bozinoff as saying.

Trudeau is a magnetic 41-year-old former teacher and ski instructor who has attracted 150,000 supporters to the Liberal Party during his leadership campaign, more than all the other leadership candidates combined. He heads into the April 14 convention as the heavy favorite.

His flamboyant father held power from 1968 to 1979 and again from 1980 to 1984. He died in 2000.

Justin Trudeau's popular support comes despite widespread doubts in Ottawa on whether he has the clout to become prime minister. He has given few specifics on how he would run Canada other than offering generic goals such as protecting and expanding the middle class.

The Conservatives will be sure to seize on some of his gaffes, such as saying he might consider joining Quebec separatists if Canada became too conservative.

'UNCRITICAL COVERAGE'

Conservative Party Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said Trudeau had received "largely uncritical coverage" so far in the race, and that polls were irrelevant this far ahead of the election.

"Sooner or later if he becomes Liberal leader, he'll have to undergo a greater degree of public scrutiny, and that goes with the job," he told Reuters after a speech in Ottawa.

Forum said its latest poll numbers would give a Trudeau-led Liberal Party 149 seats in the House of Commons, compared with 115 for the Conservatives and 41 for the New Democrats.

A party needs 155 of the 308 seats in the House to get a majority that cannot be overturned by other parties, although the formula will change when more seats are added for the next election.

The poll showed support for the Liberals at 30 percent in response to questions that did not mention Trudeau, just behind the Conservatives at 31 percent, and ahead of the New Democrats at 27 percent.

A Nanos poll released on Thursday showed the Conservatives at 31.5 percent of committed voters, their lowest Nanos result since August 2009. Nanos has the Liberals at 29.1 percent and the New Democrats at 27.2 percent.

The automated Forum telephone poll surveyed 1,755 Canadians on Wednesday and Thursday. Forum says it has a margin of error of 2 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Nanos surveyed 1,000 Canadians by phone February 19 to 24, including 717 committed voters. The error margin on committed voters is 3.8 percentage points.

(Reporting by Randall Palmer; Editing by Janet Guttsman,; Peter Galloway and Peter Cooney)

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Canadian economy shows signs of recovery in January

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada's hard-pressed economy showed signs of recovery in January, when the nation posted its best trade performance in almost a year and building permits eked out modest growth after the biggest two-month fall in 24 years.

Canada is struggling to cope with weak exports, tough competition, uncertain foreign markets and a strong Canadian dollar, which combined to produce a 0.2 percent drop in gross domestic product in December.

Exports grew faster than imports in January, when the trade deficit shrank to just C$237 million ($230 million), Statistics Canada said on Thursday.

The deficit - less than the C$600 million predicted by market operators - represented the best performance since a C$21 million trade surplus in March 2012. Statscan revised December's deficit to C$332 million from an initial C$901 million.

"The improvement in the trade picture, small as it may be, is an important first step for the Canadian economy this year," Francis Fong of TD Economics said in a note to clients. "After an undeniably weak 2012, exports are going to be increasingly looked to as a driver of growth, given that households and government are expected to moderate spending.

"Over the course of 2013 and through 2014, global economic growth should accelerate, particularly in the U.S., and this should provide Canada's export sector with the shot-in-the-arm it needs to post a more sustained recovery."

The data, along with figures that showed a widening trade deficit in the United States, helped push the Canadian dollar slightly higher. By 9.55 a.m. (1455 GMT) it was trading at C$1.0292 to the U.S. dollar, or 97.16 U.S. cents. It had closed at C$1.0315 versus the U.S. dollar on Wednesday.

January exports rose by 2.1 percent - the greatest month-on-month increase since the 4.3 percent jump seen in December 2011 - thanks mainly to higher volumes for crude oil and crude bitumen as well as precious metals.

Imports increased by 1.9 percent on higher volumes, mainly due to higher shipments of energy products. Imports of metal ores and industrial machinery also grew.

"Higher imports might suggest more robust domestic activity in the month. What argues against this, however, is that much of the monthly rise in import volumes was due to energy and metal ores. Other key import categories were not as strong," wrote Derek Holt and Dov Zigler, economists at Scotia Capital.

Exports to the United States - which took 74.2 percent of all Canadian exports in January - rose by 2.6 percent while imports were up 2.1 percent. As a result, Canada's trade surplus with the United States increased to C$4.25 billion from C$4.03 billion in December.

Separately, Statscan said the value of Canadian building permits edged up by 1.7 percent in January after posting the biggest two-month fall in almost a quarter century.

The increase, less than the 5.3 percent expected by market analysts, follows revised drops of 10.4 percent in December and 16.5 percent in November.

Canada's booming housing industry, boosted by low interest rates, helped the economy recover from the worst of the 2008-09 recession. In a bid to head off a possible bubble, the government stepped in last year to clamp down on the sector with tighter mortgage rules. This has since cooled the market.

($1=$1.03 Canadian)

(Editing by Jeffrey Hodgson; and Peter Galloway)

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