Youths fired buckshot at police in clashes in the French city of Amiens overnight yesterday, setting cars and a nursery school alight in a resurgence of urban unrest that president François Hollande said he would do everything to confront.

A former Marxist guerrilla who was tortured and imprisoned during Brazil’s long dictatorship was elected president of Latin America’s biggest nation.

Police stopped the election campaign of Robert Mugabe’s main rival in its tracks today.

South Korea’s prime minister offered his resignation today after drawing a firestorm of criticism for playing golf rather than overseeing the government’s response to a railway strike, the president’s spokesman said.