World in brief: Post-election duel goes on in Mexico

Mexico’s presumptive president-elect began forming his transition team Tuesday and announced plans for a victory lap through Mexico, while his opponent finished filing a legal challenge alleging election fraud.

With both ruling-party candidate Felipe Calderon and his leftist rival Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador claiming they won the closest presidential race in Mexican history, the struggle for the hearts and minds of the country stretched from foreign embassies to dueling news conferences.

Calderon asked his campaign director, Josefina Vazquez Mota, to reach out to other political parties and help build a coalition government.

Meanwhile, a legal team for Lopez Obrador finished handing over boxes of videos, documents and recordings that it said showed that fraud and illegal campaigning had given Calderon a razor-thin advantage of fewer than 244,000 votes out of more than 41 million cast.

Mogadishu, Somalia

Hard-line fighters force surrenders

Somalia’s hard-line Muslim militia forced hundreds of fighters who had been resisting strict Islamic rule to surrender Tuesday after some of the most ferocious fighting in the capital in months.

Fighting since Sunday has killed more than 70 people and wounded 150, and the death toll was expected to rise as the wounded streamed into hospitals. The bloodshed was the latest sign the radical militia won’t tolerate opposition.

Rome

Longtime Vatican spokesman resigns

Joaquin Navarro-Valls, the silver-haired senior spokesman for the Vatican and longtime confidant of the late Pope John Paul II, resigned Tuesday after more than two decades in the post.

Navarro-Valls, who turns 70 this fall, will be replaced by Father Federico Lombardi, a Jesuit who runs Vatican Radio and the Vatican Television Center. Navarro-Valls’ retirement had been anticipated for some time as Pope Benedict XVI assembles his own team of advisers following his election as pontiff 15 months ago.

Navarro-Valls formed part of the inner circle of John Paul’s advisers, was occasionally dispatched on diplomatic missions and accompanied the pope on scores of international trips. In his most visible role, he emerged as the somber face that delivered dire medical bulletins in the late pope’s dying days.