''Whether you voted for me or voted for Barack, the time is now to unite as a single party with a single purpose,'' said Clinton in a speech Democrats hope will end a lingering party rift left over from their bitter nominating fight.

Clinton, a New York senator, praised Obama and said Democrats could not sit on the sidelines and watch Republican presidential candidate John McCain take the White House and ''squander the promise of our country.''

''No way, no how, no McCain. Barack Obama is my candidate and he must be our president,'' Clinton told a roaring crowd waving a sea of white ''Hillary'' signs.

Clinton used her highly anticipated turn in the spotlight to say Democrats must unite to help the first-term Illinois senator beat McCain in the November 4 election. A Democrat is needed in the White House to turn around the struggling US economy, she said.

''When Barack Obama is in the White House, he'll revitalise our economy, defend the working people of America, and meet the global challenges of our time,'' Clinton said.

Her husband, former President Bill Clinton, watched from the balcony. At one point his eyes welled with tears and he mouthed the words ''I love you.''

Obama watched the speech on television in Billings, Montana, as he makes his way to Denver to accept the nomination tomorrow night. ''That was a strong speech,'' he said. ''I thought she was outstanding.''

He called Hillary and Bill Clinton afterward to congratulate them on the speech and tell them he was grateful for their support, Obama adviser Robert Gibbs said.

Clinton also offered plenty of criticism of McCain, an Arizona senator who she called ''my colleague and my friend.''

''But we don't need four more years of the last eight years,'' she said, linking McCain to the policies of Republican President George W Bush.

''John McCain says the economy is fundamentally sound. John McCain doesn't think that 47 million people without health insurance is a crisis. John McCain wants to privatise Social Security. And in 2008, he still thinks it's okay when women don't earn equal pay for equal work,'' Clinton said.

''With an agenda like that, it makes sense that George Bush and John McCain will be together next week in the Twin Cities. Because these days they're awfully hard to tell apart.''

McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said Clinton would not convince undecided voters that Obama was ready to be commander in chief.

''Millions of Hillary Clinton supporters and millions of Americans remain concerned about whether Barack Obama is ready to be president,'' Bounds said.

The second day of the convention focused on economic themes, with speakers praising Obama's plans to aid lower- and middle-class voters suffering in a faltering US economy, which polls show is the top issue in the final months of Bush's term.

The convention's keynote speaker, filling the role that shot Obama to political fame at the Democratic convention in Boston in 2004, was former Virginia Governor Mark Warner. (Reuters)

The airliner was seized on Wednesday after leaving Sudan’s war-battered Darfur region and was forced to land in the remote Sahara desert oasis of Kufrah. The hijackers said they were members of a Darfur rebel faction.

Libya’s Civil Aviation Authority said 95 passengers had been on the Boeing 737/200.

"We can confirm that all the plane passengers have been freed by the hijackers," a top official from the authority told Reuters.

The authority was still talking with the hijackers to seek the release of the seven crew members, another authority official said. Libyan authorities have said there were at least 10 hijackers.

The pilot told Libyan authorities the hijackers were members of a branch of the Sudanese Liberation Movement (SLM), a Darfur rebel group, and wanted to meet the group’s leader Abdel Wahed Nur in Paris, the Jana state news agency said.

But the SLM faction led by Abdel Wahed Mohammed al-Nur strongly denied the hijackers were members of the group. The manager of the Sun Air airline, Mortada Hassan, spoke of only a single hijacker who had demanded food and fuel to fly to France.

The plane, belonging to Khartoum-based private airline Sun Air, took off from the South Darfur capital for Khartoum. Jana said Libya granted permission for the plane to land after the pilot told the authorities the plane was running out of fuel. Another faction of the SLM that has taken part in Darfur’s transitional regional government said the passengers on the hijacked plane included seven of its officers, three of them government members. The faction, led by Minni Arcua Minnawi, said it was still waiting for news.

"We are very, very concerned and are doing all we can to contact them," said Mohammed Bashir, a senior member of the faction, which was the only Darfur rebel group to sign a May 2006 peace deal with Khartoum. (Reuters)

The explosion hit the compound of a restaurant on the outskirts of the capital when dozens of people were taking meals.

Official sources told reporters that the blast was caused by an explosive device.

Earlier, the police had described the incident as a gas cylinder blast, but a few minutes later they got suspicious and said the possibility of sabotage could not be ruled out.

There were some reports that a teenage boy carrying a shopping bag was seen loitering around the restaurant some moments before the blast. (UNI)

"We shall soon be setting up a government. The MDC does not want to come in apparently," state-owned newspaper The Herald quoted Mugabe as telling government officials on Tuesday after opening parliament.

Mugabe, who was booed and jeered by opposition members when he opened the assembly, has said he is still hopeful of agreement in post-election power-sharing talks with Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC, aimed at ending a political crisis.

The MDC said it remained committed to talks but the party insisted on an inclusive government.

"We have expressed confidence in the dialogue, we remain committed to a dialogue process that is going to produce an acceptable outcome for all the players, an inclusive government. We are against this unilateralism and arrogance," MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa said.

The talks, which began a month ago, were still taking place, Zimbabwe’s new parliamentary speaker, Lovemore Moyo, said on Wednesday.

"The talks are on," Moyo, a senior MDC official, told South Africa’s Talk Radio 702. He also said the heckling of Mugabe was regrettable but reflected MDC frustrations over the political deadlock in the country. (Reuters)

"My superiors were not happy. The local bishop was not happy, but they did not understand me either," Father Antonio Rungi told Reuters by telephone from his convent in south Italy on Wednesday.

"It was not at all my intention to put nuns on the catwalk," said Rungi, a priest of the Passionists religious order, speaking from his convent in the town of Mondragone.

Rungi’s idea appeared in newspapers around the world after he wrote of a contest for nuns on his blog, called by some "Sister Italy 2008".

"It was interpreted as more of a physical thing. Now, no-one is saying that nuns can’t be beautiful, but I was thinking about something more complete," he said.

He said his concept for the contest, in which nuns would vote for themselves on his blog, would include attributes such as their spirituality, social awareness, charity and other qualities.

Rungi wrote in his blog that his intention was to show ‘the interior beauty’ of a nun and the work she does for the Church and for society, mostly in education and health care.

"We have to draw more attention to the world of nuns, who are often not sufficiently appreciated by society," he wrote, adding that he had hoped his initiative would help boost sagging vocations to religious lie.

"Many monasteries in Italy are dying because of a lack of religious vocations," he wrote.

Rungi said he received a lot of calls of support but also many sharp emails by people who attacked him for wanting to create a Miss Italy-style event. (Reuters)

Colorado police seized two rifles with hunting scopes and ammunition from a man they arrested a day before the Democratic national convention opened in Denver to formally nominate Obama as its candidate for the November 4 election.

Many voters recall the 1963 assassination of Democratic President John Kennedy and those in 1968 of his brother, Democratic candidate Robert Kennedy, and black civil rights leader Martin Luther King.

Republicans too have been targeted in recent years. In the 1970s and 1980s there were failed attempts on the lives of presidents Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan.

Fears of an attack are compounded in the case of the 47-year-old Obama who, if he defeats Republican John McCain, 71, would be the first black president in US history. America is still racially divided despite Obama’s success.

Concerns about Obama’s safety led the US Secret Service to provide round-the-clock protection from early in his bid.

Altogether three men were arrested. Court documents had one man quoting another as speaking of wanting to kill Obama on his inauguration day, using a sniper rifle to shoot the Illinois senator from high ground.

Some white supremacist groups would like to see Obama killed, according to Mark Potok, an expert in neo-Nazi groups at the Southern Poverty Law Center based in Alabama.

Threats against Obama circulate on the Internet, said Potok, whose organization has developed an international reputation for monitoring and opposing hate groups.

He cited a threat posted on the Center’s website in April that read, with a misspelled word: "ATTENTION, IF OBAMA BECOMES PRESEDANT I WILL KILL HIM MYSELF MAKE NO MISTAKE ABOUT IT".

White supremacists overwhelmingly believe the Colorado case was a setup by authorities determined to smash their groups, argued Potok, who based his assertion on information gleaned from neo-Nazi websites. (Reuters)