Briefly world

First time in Iraq vote count,Allawi leads Maliki

BAGHDAD: Former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi edged past Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Tuesday in results from Iraqs fragmented March 7 vote that may lead to months of political bargaining and create a risky power vacuum. With about 80 percent of an estimated 12 million votes counted,only about 9,000 votes separate Malikis and Allawis coalitions. Definitive results could take weeks.

UK opens high-tech hub to screen air passengers

LONDON: A new hi-tech border targeting centre that will electronically check passenger data before arrival at British airports from India and elsewhere has been opened in Manchester. Home Secretary Alan Johnson last week unveiled the National Border Targeting Centre,which will replace the smaller joint border operations units at Heathrow as the operational hub. It is a hi-tech hub where checks on passengers entering and leaving Britain will be carried out.

Kandahar campaign underway: McChrystal

WASHINGTON: Preliminary US efforts to gradually retake full control of the Talibans birthplace Kandahar are already underway,top US and NATO commander in Afghanistan Gen Stanley McChrystal said on Wednesday,offering few details. Kandahar is already being shaped, McChrystal said,briefing reporters in Washington via teleconference,adding that efforts will ramp up in the coming weeks and months. What you are going to see in the months ahead8230; is a number of activities to shape the political relationships in and around Kandahar, he said.

Pills worth 75 million stolen in Connecticut

HARTFORD: In a Hollywood-style heist,thieves cut a hole in the roof of a warehouse,rappelled inside and scored one of the biggest hauls of its kind not diamonds,gold bullion or Old World art,but about 75 million in antidepressants and other prescription drugs. The pills stolen from pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly amp; Co in quantities big enough to fill a tractor-trailer are believed to be destined for the black market,perhaps overseas. The thieves apparently scaled the brick exterior of the warehouse in an industrial park in Enfield,a town between Hartford and Springfield,Massachusetts,during a blustery rainstorm before daybreak on Sunday. After lowering themselves to the floor,they disabled the alarms and spent at least an hour loading pallets of drugs into a vehicle at the loading dock,authorities said.

Three held in Spain for British boys kidnapping

MADRID: The Spanish police have arrested three people suspected of seeking Euro87,000 ransom for Sahil Saeed,the British boy kidnapped in Pakistan and since released,a Spanish newspaper reported on Wednesday. The police arrested two Pakistani men and a Romanian woman in Constanti in Catalunya,the Diari de Tarragona reported without citing sources. However,neither the police nor the Interior Ministry could confirm the arrests.