World Highlights

¤ Liberians crowded around radios and newspaper stands yesterday as early results showed football star George Weah leading the country's first post-war polls but facing a run-off with former Finance Minister Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. Results trickled in agonisingly slowly from Tuesday's presidential and parliamentary elections, the first since the end of a brutal 14-year civil war, as UN helicopters flew ballot boxes back from remote villages.

¤ Syrian Interior Minister Ghazi Kanaan's body was laid to rest in his northern hometown in a low-key funeral yesterday, and officials said a Lebanese "smear campaign" had pushed him to commit suicide. About 1,000 relatives and villagers walked behind the coffin, draped in a Syrian flag, in the village of Bhamra where black banners hung from some buildings, witnesses said.

¤ London commuters faced major disruption on one of the British capital's busiest underground lines yesterday after drivers walked out, saying the trains were unsafe. The protest on the Northern Line followed the failure yesterday of an emergency brake system designed to stop trains passing red signals. Wednesday's failure was the fifth incident on the Northern Line over the last month, unions said. London Underground said the line would remain closed today.

¤ Mudslides caused by heavy rains in Peru's southern Andes stranded 3,200 tourists at the Machu Picchu Inca citadel yesterday as mud and rocks blocked the railway in and out of the site, train operators said. The nationalities of the tourists were not immediately known, but no one was thought to be injured. Peru Rail said it was working to clear the railway line and had to return tourists to the nearby city of Cuzco via a minor road yesterday.

¤ Workers at the loss-making SNCM ferry company linking Corsica to mainland France voted yesterday to end a 24-day strike, pulling back under government threats to declare the firm bankrupt. The strikers voted by an overwhelming 519 to 73 to go back to work, enabling conservative Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin to see off the first major challenge to his labour policies in just over four months in power.

¤ Countryside campaigners have lost a key round in their legal battle against the British government's ban on hunting. Nine Law Lords yesterday unanimously ruled against their challenge in which the Countryside Alliance claimed that the Hunting Act, which bans hunting with dogs, was invalid.

¤ The lower house of Parliament yesterday voted to re-write Italy's electoral system in a move the opposition says was aimed at saving the government from certain defeat in a forthcoming general election. The proposal to return Italy to proportional representation now passes to the upper house Senate for final approval, which looks certain to come ahead of the election, due by May 2006.