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Hondurans choose a new president today in an election that could ease a crisis triggered by a coup but the vote has pitted Washington against some of the biggest countries in Latin America.

Neither president Manuel Zelaya nor arch-rival Roberto Micheletti, installed as interim president by Congress after Mr Zelaya's overthrow in June, is in the race. That leaves the door open for someone else to take the coffee-producing Central American nation beyond the gridlock that has crippled it for months and cut off international aid.