World Highlights

¤ Battered by government scandals, Costa Rica slid further into uncertainty yesterday when a presidential election that could decide the future of a trade deal with Washington was gridlocked. Nobel Peace Prize winner Oscar Arias, a former president, was tied with Otton Solis, and an electoral official said it could take more than a week before a winner was declared. With votes from 85 per cent of polling centres counted in Sunday's poll, social democrat Arias was at 40.6 per cent.

¤ Iran has told the International Atomic Energy Agency to end snap inspection measures at its nuclear sites by mid-February, according to a letter from the Tehran government released by the IAEA yesterday. The move followed Iran's vow to end short-notice IAEA checks of its nuclear plants in retaliation for a vote by the watchdog agency's governing board to report Tehran to the UN Security Council over concerns it is seeking nuclear weapons.

¤ Up to 20 people have been killed in clashes between Yemeni soldiers and Shi'ite Muslim supporters of anti-US cleric Hussein al-Houth, tribal sources said yesterday. They said 10 others were wounded in the clashes in the northern province of Saada. One said those killed included five soldiers. Officials were not immediately available for comment.

¤ Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi will host a mini-summit tomorrow in a bid to ease tension between Sudan and Chad where both governments accuse each other of backing insurgents, Libyan officials said yesterday. The leaders of Sudan, Chad, Congo Republic, which heads the 53-nation African Union, and Burkina Faso, which chairs the Sub Sahara Sahel African grouping, will join Gaddafi in the meeting. Sudan and Chad are members of the Sahel grouping.

¤ Refuse collectors, hospital staff and other workers in south-west Germany walked out yesterday over plans to extend working hours, launching what could spark the largest public-sector strikes in 14 years. The dispute centres on efforts by some public-sector employers in western Germany to extend the working week to 40 hours without extra pay from around 38.5 hours, as well as plans to trim holiday and Christmas bonuses.

¤ Turkish leaders said yesterday the killing of a Catholic priest appeared to be the work of a lone gunman, but also signalled fears of a possible link with the rage sweeping the Muslim world over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad. Police have issued a sketch of the gunman who shot Andrea Santoro, a 61-year-old Italian, while he was praying in his church on Sunday in the Black Sea city of Trabzon.