Preval’s lead falls below 50 percent
Rene Preval held a commanding lead but slipped below the majority of votes needed to avoid a runoff as counting continued for a fourth day Saturday in Haiti’s presidential elections.
Preval was leading with 49.61 percent of the vote, followed by former President Leslie Manigat with 11 percent and industrialist Charles Baker with 8 percent. Final results are expected today.
The winning candidate needs 50 percent plus one vote to avoid a March runoff with the second-place finisher.
The possibility of a runoff threatened to plunge Haiti into renewed violence as thousands of Preval supporters marched Saturday in scattered demonstrations in the capital city, demanding a Preval victory announcement.
Rome
Italy will elect new government
Italy dissolved its parliament on Saturday and scheduled elections for early April, opening what promises to be a bitter campaign pitting Premier Silvio Berlusconi against a strong center-left opponent.
Parliament ended two weeks later than originally planned after Berlusconi negotiated a delay that allowed his government to rush through a flurry of legislation. It also allowed the premier to keep up a barrage of TV and radio appearances, which will be limited during official campaigning because of rules that give equal time to competing coalitions.
Despite the media blitz, the government’s popularity has been sliding amid economic woes and political infighting. Opinion polls have consistently shown that the center-left bloc headed by Romano Prodi, a former premier and former European Commission president, is leading the race by about 5 percentage points.
Jerusalem
Israel using TV to calm prisoners
Israeli army jailers at a facility for Palestinian security prisoners in the Negev desert have discovered a unique deterrent against disturbances: television.
In the year since the first TV set was installed in the Ketziot prison, there have been no disturbances that required tear gas for dispersal – up to then a common occurrence, said the soldiers’ weekly “Bamahane” in its current issue.
The prison commander, identified only as Lt. Col. Avi by the magazine, said the security prisoners spend their time watching television.
“The culture of planning hostile activity here is withering away,” he told the weekly.
Manchester, England
Pilot suspected of being drunk
An American Airlines pilot was arrested at Manchester Airport on suspicion of being drunk Saturday shortly before his flight was due to take off, police and the airline said.
One of three pilots on Flight 55 to Chicago had been arrested before the flight boarded on suspicion of being intoxicated, airline spokesman Tim Wagner said.
Greater Manchester police confirmed that a crew member, a 45-year-old man from Ohio, had been arrested. He was released on bail pending the results of tests and was due to report to a Manchester police station Tuesday.
Wagner said the airline had begun an internal investigation into the arrest, which he called an “isolated incident.”