Partial vote recount begins in Mexico as protests spread
Mexico City – Officials met privately Wednesday to begin a partial recount of votes from July’s disputed presidential election as supporters of the main leftist candidate spread their civil-disobedience campaign to the headquarters of at least two banks.
Party representatives and judges arrived at electoral offices across Mexico to open ballot boxes from 9 percent of the 130,000 polling places where the top electoral court found evidence of irregularities.
Armed soldiers kept watched from rooftops and doorways.
As the recount started, dozens of supporters of leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador demonstrated outside the central offices of the Mexican-owned Bancomer and the British bank HSBC. Bank executives could not be immediately reached for comment.
On Tuesday, hundreds of Lopez Obrador loyalists blocked the entrance to the Agriculture Department and forced open highway toll booths during rush hour.
Demonstrators are demanding the Federal Electoral Tribunal order a recount of all 41 million votes cast in the July 2 election, which gave a 240,000-vote advantage – or 0.6 percent – to Felipe Calderon, the pro-business candidate of the governing National Action Party. They contend the election was stolen from Lopez Obrador.
LONDON
Terror plot involving U.S. flights disrupted
A major terrorist plot to blow up an aircraft midflight between Britain and the U.S. has been disrupted, police said today.
Police arrested a number of people overnight in London after a covert counter-terrorist operation lasting several months, police said in a statement.
The plot was believed to have involved smuggling explosive devices on board an aircraft in hand luggage, police said.
British Airways advised passengers on its website today that no hand luggage was to be permitted on any aircraft leaving Britain.
“It is believed that the aim was to detonate explosive devices smuggled on board the aircraft in hand luggage,” the statement said. Arrests were made overnight in London by the Metropolitan Police Department’s anti-terrorist branch and security service.
“Today’s arrests are the culmination of a major covert counter-terrorist operation lasting several months,” Scotland Yard said.
“We would like to reassure the public that this operation was carried out with public safety uppermost in our minds,” the statement said.
HARCOURT, Nigeria
Gunmen kidnap four oil-rig workers
Gunmen kidnapped four Norwegian and Ukrainian workers from a boat heading to oil rigs in the latest violence targeting the petroleum industry in Nigeria, the continent’s largest exporter of crude oil, officials said Wednesday.
The two Norwegians and two Ukrainians were taken hostage in the Gulf of Guinea late Tuesday during a raid on a supply vessel owned by Norwegian shipping firm Trico Supply, company spokesman Bjorn Endresen said.
Trico Marine Services Inc., the company that owns Trico Supply, said it had made contact with the kidnapped Norwegians and negotiations had begun for their release.
There was no immediate word on the fate of the Ukrainians.
Militants have kidnapped oil workers to bargain for a greater share of the wealth from Africa’s largest crude producer.
GENEVA
Sudan support crucial
for peace, U.N. says
The United Nations said Wednesday that a peace deal signed three months ago between Sudan’s government and the main rebel group in Darfur was “doomed to failure” without more support from Khartoum.
The report by the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights called on Sudan’s government and all parties of the May 5 peace deal to immediately comply with its cease-fire provisions.
“The government should disarm the militia and protect the physical security of all Darfurians by putting in place a credible, capable, and professional police force and judiciary,” the 20-page report said.
NARAY, Afghanistan
19 insurgents killed
in attack on U.S. base
U.S. soldiers and warplanes drove off an insurgent attack on a new American base early Wednesday, reportedly killing 19 militants in an area where rebels are trying to resist a push by coalition troops into remote mountains of eastern Afghanistan.
In the volatile south of the country, wracked by the bloodiest fighting in nearly five years, suspected Taliban rebels hanged a 70-year-old woman and her son from a tree, accusing them of spying for President Hamid Karzai’s government.
Meanwhile, Karzai, whose popularity has declined because of slow progress in reconstructing the war-battered country and poor security, signaled in an interview that he won’t run for president again in elections slated for 2009.
NEW YORK
Youths more alert
to online predators
Fewer youths are receiving sexual solicitations over the Internet as they become smarter about where they hang out and with whom they communicate online, researchers said Wednesday.
The findings from a telephone-based survey run counter to recent media reports and congressional hearings suggesting a growing danger of online predators as more youths turn to social-networking sites like My Space.com.
