Philippines

Analysts forecast incumbent’s win

A respected independent polling firm forecast a comfortable win in the Philippine presidential election for incumbent Gloria Macapagal Arroyo on Tuesday, prompting Filipino and foreign analysts to agree that Arroyo had secured an electoral mandate.

Social Weather Stations projected Arroyo as the winner with 41 percent of the vote, compared with 32 for her closest rival, Fernando Poe Jr. The firm, which correctly predicted the outcome of the last two presidential elections here, said 81.5 percent of 43 million registered voters went to the polls Monday. It based its projection on a national sample of 4,627 voters.

The official tally is expected to take about a month.

Nigeria

Muslims retaliate for Christian attacks

Angry young Muslim men attacked “nonbelievers” with machetes Tuesday, while others burned cars, stores and apartments in apparent revenge for last week’s killings of hundreds of Muslims by a Christian group.

Three corpses — one charred and another badly mutilated — lay in the streets; it was unclear who killed them. There were unconfirmed reports of several others killed by young men who barricaded streets with burning tires and garbage.

Demonstrators were protesting attacks on Hausa-speaking Muslims by fighters from the Tarok-speaking tribe in the central Nigerian town of Yelwa. A Red Cross official has said between 500 and 600 people died in the Yelwa attacks, while the Nigerian government’s emergency response agency estimates less than half that number.

Taiwan

Opposition troubled by vote recount

Taiwan’s opposition said Tuesday that a recount of the disputed March presidential election has revealed some new problems, including ballots that were improperly stored or not certified by the voters.

But the ruling Democratic Progressive Party insisted that the errors were the result of careless election workers, not voting fraud.

“So far there are no signs that election officials have favored a certain party or rigged votes to favor a party,” DPP official Chung Chia-pin told reporters.

The controversy about the March 20 vote began immediately after President Chen Shui-bian squeaked by with a 0.2 percent victory margin, or about 30,000 votes. He was re-elected one day after being lightly injured in a shooting, which is still unsolved.

Scotland

At least four killed in factory blast

An explosion ripped through a plastics factory in Glasgow on Tuesday, killing four people, injuring dozens and leaving an unknown number buried in the rubble, police and the fire brigade said.

The midday blast at Stockline Plastics wrecked much of the building and left 40 people injured, 16 seriously, the Strathclyde fire brigade said. Three people were pronounced dead at the scene, and a woman died in the city’s Western Infirmary, they said.

Strathclyde firemaster Brian Sweeney said six injured people had been pulled out of the collapsed building and a reporter saw a seventh person brought out alive later. It was not clear how many more remained buried, but rescuers who lost voice contact with the buried sent rescue dogs in hopes of finding more people.