BRITAIN: Ken Livingstone won a last-ditch legal bid yesterday to remain as London mayor - just hours before his suspension was due to begin.
A High Court judge, sitting in private, ruled that Mr Livingstone should have the controversial four-week suspension stayed pending a statutory appeal.
On Friday, the Adjudication Panel for England unanimously found Mr Livingstone guilty of being "unnecessarily insensitive and offensive" in comparing Jewish Evening Standard reporter Oliver Finegold to a Nazi concentration camp guard.
The tribunal decided that he brought his office into disrepute and breached the Greater London Authority code of conduct.
Mr Livingstone said the stay of suspension was "a very welcome development. In my view, the ruling of the case tribunal to suspend me from office when there is no suggestion that I have acted unlawfully strikes at the fundamental principles of democracy."