Other stories from around the world in brief
Candidate calls for full recount in Mexico poll
MEXICO CITY - Mexico's left-wing presidential candidate wants every single vote recounted and is threatening to call street protests as he fights an election result giving a razor-thin victory to his conservative rival.
Senior aides to Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a combative former mayor of Mexico City, said yesterday they wanted a recount of Sunday's tight election to include every vote cast, not just the ballot returns reported by polling stations. - (Reuters)
17 killed, six hurt in Afghan incidents
KABUL - A bomb in the Afghan capital Kabul wounded more than six people yesterday and 12 Taliban insurgents were killed in a clash in the south.
Afghanistan is going through its worst phase of violence since the Taliban was ousted in 2001.
In another incident, five Afghan labourers working at a US military base in the east were stopped on their way home and executed by the road, police said. - (Reuters)
More bodies of migrants found
RABAT - Moroccan authorities have found the bodies of nine more migrants, bringing to 30 the total number that have washed up onto the Atlantic shore, officials said.
Meanwhile, the death toll from the latest attempt by African migrants to storm into the Spanish enclave of Melilla in north Africa has risen to three, a Moroccan official said. - (Reuters)
New Lithuanian prime minister
VILNIUS - Lithuania's parliament has confirmed Gediminas Kirkilas as the country's next prime minister, filling a vacuum created by the sudden collapse of the last government five weeks ago after a corruption scandal. - (Reuters)
Mother, daughter found starved
PARIS - A mother and her five-year-old daughter from Mauritius starved to death in the Paris suburb of Aubervilliers and their bodies lay undiscovered for up to four months, according to police.
"The post-mortem showed that it was a natural death and not a murder or intoxication; they died three or four months ago," a police official said, adding that the mother must have prevented her daughter from eating. - (Reuters)
Polish remorse for Jewish pogrom
KIELCE - Poland has expressed remorse and shame over the notorious "Kielce pogrom" of Jewish Holocaust survivors a year after the end of the second World War.
About 40 Jews, including women and children, were stoned and beaten to death by mobs in the southern city of Kielce on July 4th, 1946 after someone spread a false rumour Jews had killed a Christian boy. - (Reuters)
Talks offer on Rome taxi strike
ROME - Taxi drivers waging crippling strikes throughout Italy have threatened to descend on Rome to put pressure on the government to withdraw a deregulation plan welcomed by consumer groups, according to a union leader.
Industry minister Pierluigi Bersani said yesterday he was willing to negotiate with the strikers, but only after they ended their protest. - (Reuters)
Prescott queries on casino links
LONDON - Deputy prime minister John Prescott is facing fresh questions over his stay at the ranch of an American tycoon bidding to turn the Millennium Dome into a super-casino.
Mr Prescott has denied his visit last year to the estate of Philip Anschutz - which he did not declare in the Commons Register of Members' Interests - represented a conflict of interests as he had no role in policy on casinos. - (PA)