In brief: Ortega heading to landslide victory

MANAGUA, Nicaragua – Election officials say president and former Sandinista revolutionary Daniel Ortega is winning big in Nicaragua’s presidential election.

Nicaragua’s Supreme Electoral Council said Ortega has nearly 64 percent of the votes, compared with 29 percent for his nearest challenger, Fabio Gadea, with almost 7 percent of the votes counted.

Electoral council President Roberto Rivas said a parallel count representative of the entire vote gives Ortega a big advantage as well.

Ex-general wins presidential election

GUATEMALA CITY – A former general promising to get tough on rampant crime and drug violence easily won Guatemala’s presidential election on Sunday, marking a shift to the right in the poor Central American nation.

Otto Perez Molina of the conservative Patriotic Party won 55 percent of the vote, topping tycoon-turned-political populist Manuel Baldizon of the Democratic Freedom Revival party, who had 45 percent with 96 percent of the vote counted, according to Guatemala’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal.

Perez, 61, is the first former military leader elected president in Guatemala in the 25 years after the end of brutal military rule. While that concerns some international groups, Guatemala has a young population, and many don’t remember the war.

He has never been charged with any atrocities and was one of the army’s chief representatives in negotiating the 1996 peace accords.

Voter turnout was less than 50 percent.

Hundreds of Everest trekkers leaving

KATMANDU, Nepal – A Nepal police official said hundreds of foreign trekkers stranded in the Mount Everest area for the past week are departing on flights now that the weather has cleared at the region’s only airport.

Area police chief Ramesh Khakda said 20 flights left the Lukla airport this morning, and that more were expected through the day. Over the past week, all flights had been grounded because of poor weather.

Small helicopters had made a few rescue flights Sunday, but planes were not able to land or take off from Lukla.

Flooding threatens subway system

BANGKOK – Advancing pools of filthy water threatened the Thai capital’s subway system today and surrounded the emergency headquarters set up to deal with flooding that has claimed more than 500 lives nationwide.

Bangkok Gov. Sukhumbhand Paribatra has ordered evacuations in 11 of Bangkok’s 50 districts, and partial evacuations apply in seven more, as the huge runoff from monsoon-buffeted central Thailand seeps south through the metropolitan area to the sea.

Relentless rainfall has pummeled vast swaths of Thailand since late July, swamping the country and killing 506 people, according to the latest government statistics. Most victims have drowned, while a handful died from flood-related electrocutions.