Site last updated: Saturday, September 21, 2024

Log In

Reset Password
MENU
Butler County's great daily newspaper

WORLD

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Final results from last month's parliamentary elections might not be announced for two more weeks, an official said today, a day after Iraq's main Sunni Arab group agreed on broad outlines for a coalition government.

The Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq has completed its investigation of almost 2,000 election complaints and will announce the findings Wednesday, commission member Hussein Hindawi told The Associated Press.

But the commission won't announce final election results until an international team finishes its work. Officials previously said final results of the Dec. 15 vote would be announced in early January.

The international team, which began its work Monday, agreed to review Iraq's elections after protests by Sunni Arab and secular Shiite groups that the polls were tainted with fraud. Preliminary results give the governing Shiite religious bloc, the United Iraqi Alliance, a big lead but one that still would require forming a coalition with other groups.

U.S. aircraft bombed a house Monday night in Beiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad, killing seven people and wounding four.

In other violence today, gunmen attacked a car carrying construction workers in western Baghdad, killing three and wounding two. Gunmen in the same neighborhood fired on a car carrying civilians, killing two and wounding three.

MOSCOW — Russian and Ukrainian officials agreed today to resume talks on resolving a dispute over the price of natural gas that has reverberated across the continent and left Ukraine cut off from its supplies.A spokesman for Gazprom, Russia's state-owned gas monopoly, said Ukrainian officials were on their way to Moscow. Sergei Kupriyanov did not specify who would be taking part but said the talks would be "at a sufficiently high level."Gazprom cut off natural gas supplies to Ukraine on Sunday after Ukraine refused to meet its demand for a fourfold price increase. When other European countries also reported drops in their supplies, Gazprom accused Ukraine of siphoning off Europe-bound gas, a charge Ukraine denied.Russia supplies about one-quarter of the gas consumed in Europe and 80 percent of that goes through Ukraine.Gazprom promised to turn up the volume to compensate for the falloff and the European countries most affected — Hungary, Austria, Slovakia and Slovenia — reported supplies were back to normal today.Ukraine denies that it is diverting gas intended for others. Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Anton Buteiko said today that his country was sending on the European gas even though there was no contract with Russia and Gazprom was not paying transit fees.

JAKARTA, Indonesia — Rescuers searching through mud and debris left by flash floods in central Indonesia found 17 more bodies today, bringing to 51 the number of people killed in the disaster.Several villages were inundated when heavy weekend rains triggered a landslide on a hill in Panti, a subdistrict of East Java province, and forced a river to break its banks early Monday.Hundreds of houses and boarding schools were destroyed or washed away.

More in International News

Subscribe to our Daily Newsletter

* indicates required
TODAY'S PHOTOS