Mongolia

Revolutionary party candidate wins election

A candidate from Mongolia’s former Communist Party won the presidency, government radio reported early Monday, in an election that drew nomadic herders who arrived on horses at polling stations on the country’s vast steppe.

The Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party, the former Communist party now known as MRRP, was voted out in 1996 but re-elected in 2000, and now appears to be riding new popularity.

Polls showed its candidate Nambariin Enkhbayar leading three rivals amid nostalgia for the stability of one-party rule and Soviet subsidies that halted in 1990.

Enkhbayar received more than 50 percent of the vote, the minimum required to avoid a run-off, Mongol Radio reported. It didn’t give vote totals for Enkhbayar or his three challengers in this sprawling, sparsely populated nation of 2.5 million people wedged between Russia and China.

Egypt

Muslim Brotherhood official arrested

Egyptian authorities arrested the fourth-highest official in the powerful Muslim Brotherhood early Sunday, one of 25 members of the outlawed movement detained in a crackdown ahead of a referendum on presidential election rules the group opposes.

Mahmoud Ezzat, secretary-general of the Islamist group and head of its Cairo operations, is the highest-profile Brotherhood arrest since 1996, said a police official. Egyptian police policy is to speak to reporters only on condition of anonymity.

Ezzat and 24 others were picked up in dawn sweeps of several provinces, police and Brotherhood officials said. Brotherhood deputy leader Mohammed Habib confirmed Ezzat’s arrest. Three of the others also held senior positions within the banned group, which advocates the peaceful establishment of an Islamic state.

Prosecutors have begun questioning the detainees on charges of membership in – or in the case of Ezzat and the three others, leadership of – a banned group and organizing demonstrations without permission from the government.

Berlin

Schroeder’s party seeks early election

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder called Sunday for early elections this fall – a year ahead of time – after his party suffered a crushing defeat in Germany’s most populous region, saying he lost the mandate he needs to fix the country’s struggling economy.

A somber Schroeder made the announcement after his Social Democrats did far worse than expected in local elections in their former stronghold of North Rhine-Westphalia, which they had governed since 1966.

“With the bitter election results for my party in North Rhine-Westphalia, the political basis for the continuation of our work has been called into question,” Schroeder said in a brief appearance at his headquarters. “For the continuation of the reforms, I believe clear support by the majority of Germans is essential.”

Early elections would cut short by a year the second term he narrowly won in 2002, helped by his opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

Beijing

Scammers selling pirate copies of ‘Star Wars’

Counterfeiters were selling illegal DVD copies of the latest “Star Wars” movie on Beijing’s streets Sunday, just three days after it opened in Chinese cinemas.

The copies of “Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith,” priced at $2.40, were being offered by vendors from shoulder bags on Beijing’s main avenue.

The pirate copies were slightly blurry but appeared not to have been filmed in a cinema, as are many of China’s imported fakes.

The sales were taking place despite repeated Chinese promises to stamp out a thriving industry in copied goods that foreign companies say costs them billions of dollars a year in lost potential sales.