A round-up of today's other world news in brief ...
Communists win 41.7% of vote
CHISINAU – Moldova’s Communist party won 41.7 per cent of the vote in a parliamentary election yesterday, according to a exit poll.
The Institute of Public Politics, a grouping of think tanks and polling organisations, said the Communists would win 45 seats in the 101-member legislature, too few to allow them to elect a new president. At least 61 votes are needed to elect a new president. The opposition Liberal Democrats were in second place with 17.4 per cent of the vote, according to the exit poll. – (Reuters)
Schmidt dropped from campaign
BERLIN – Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germany’s Social Democratic candidate for chancellor, dropped health minister Ulla Schmidt from his campaign team yesterday after she provoked a furore by taking an official car to Spain.
Mr Steinmeier, whose SPD trails the conservatives in opinion polls ahead of the September election, said Ms Schmidt would remain off the campaign team until her use of the car – stolen while on holiday in Spain but later recovered – is cleared by the federal accounting office. – (Reuters)
Powerful Mafia figure shot
MOSCOW – One of the most powerful godfathers of the Russian Mafia has been seriously wounded by a sniper in central Moscow, investigators said yesterday.
Vyacheslav Ivankov, who has been named by the United States as a senior Russian mobster, was shot in the stomach as he left a Thai restaurant on Tuesday after apparently mediating between two rival criminal groups, Russian news agencies said.
Mr Ivankov, known inside Russia by his nickname Yaponchik, or The Japanese, spent much of the 1990s in a US jail.
He was extradited to Russia in 2004 to face murder charges but was acquitted by a local court and freed. Russian law enforcement agencies are hunting for those behind the attack, the prosecutor-general’s main investigation unit said.
– (Reuters)
Women, babies freed by troops
MAIDUGURI – Government forces were closing in on the stronghold of a group dubbed the “Nigerian Taliban” last night after four days of violence that have left more than 200 dead and sent 4,000 fleeing their homes in the north of the country.
About 100 women including mothers with newborn babies were freed by troops after being held hostage for almost a week by the Islamist sect Boko Haram, which is militating for sharia law and opposes modern education.
Fierce fighting continued last night as the military sought to crush the rebels. An official said 4,000 people had fled their homes in the northern city of Maiduguri.
Police in Maiduguri said they had discovered a building full of women and children – some of them newborn – who were being imprisoned on the edge of the city. – (Guardian service)