Washington - Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama vowed to close the Guantanamo prison camp for suspected terrorists but provided no timeframe for shuttering the controversial facility.

"I want to close Gitmo as quickly as we can do it - prudently," Obama said in an interview on CNN aired Friday, using the abbreviated name for the naval base that houses about 270 detainees. "I am not going to give a time."

Washington - On Martin Luther King Avenue, in the Anacostia neighbourhood of the nation's capital, the mood before Tuesday's US presidential elections is upbeat and confident.

National polls show the black neighbourhood's favourite, Democrat Barack Obama, 47, ahead over Republican John McCain, 72. And while African Americans there say an Obama presidency would be the ultimate "melting pot" image, they dismiss the suggestion there would be anger, or even riots, if somehow McCain were to win.

Isa Town, Bahrain - An international left-wing youth seminar that opened on the outskirts of the Bahrain capital of Manama on Friday blamed US policies in the Middle East for escalating tensions.

The two-day meeting held under the motto Youth of the Gulf and the Path to Democracy re-affirmed support for armed resistance groups fighting occupation and accused Washington of spreading sectarian tension.

The vice president of the World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY), Omar al-Deeb, accused the US of carrying out major wars beyond its borders.

Washington - As US presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama geared up for a final weekend of campaigning, volunteering and television advertisements, voters turned out in droves to cast their ballots early in states across the country.

Both campaigns claimed an edge in the early voting stakes in key battlegrounds including Florida, Nevada, New Mexico and North Carolina, as well as absentee ballots cast in other states.