Free Republic

RULING party conservative Felipe Calderon has finally won Mexico's presidency, ending a two-month legal battle over fraud claims at a July election that has plunged the nation into a crisis. Seven judges at Mexico's top electoral court unanimously ruled that the vote was not rigged and that pro-business candidate Mr Calderon, 44, had won by a razor-thin margin of about 234,000 votes out of about 41 million cast. But left-wing candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador will almost certainly refuse to accept the ruling and has vowed he will never recognize Mr Calderon as president. His street protests could stretch on...

With bone-cracking brutality, the waves of baton-wielding police seemed to confirm what the already demoralised Iranian reform movement had been dreading: the dawn of a new era of political repression. Several hundred pro-reformists had gathered outside Tehran University to demand the release of a jailed dissident journalist, Akbar Ganji, who is in the fifth week of a hunger strike, when they were confronted by massed ranks of officers. In the melee, large numbers of demonstrators, including several women, were hurt. Among the injured were a former reformist MP, Mousavi Khoeini, who had a broken rib after being hit with an...