Giniel De Villiers remains overall leader of the Dakar Rally despite Spaniard Nani Roma winning today’s 13th special stage.

Suspected Basque separatists set a car bomb in the northern Spanish city of Logrono, but the detonator failed and explosives experts managed to defuse it, officials said today.

Former President Carlos Menem has quit Argentina’s presidential race, clearing the way for Nestor Kirchner to become the country’s next president.

FROM the icy reaches of Patagonia to tropical jungles in the north, Argentines began voting yesterday for a new president to rescue Latin America’s number three economy from a crisis that plunged millions of middleclass Argentines into poverty.