We've told you again and again: Exit polls tell us how voters say they voted, but the voters can't tell pollsters if their vote will be counted. In Mexico, counting the vote is an art, not a science - and Calderon's ruling crew is very artful indeed. The PAN-controlled official electoral commission, not surprisingly, has announced that the presidential tally is too close to call.

Calderon's election is openly supported by the Bush administration.

On the ground in Mexico City, our news team reports accusations from inside the Obrador campaign that operatives of the PAN had access to voter files which are supposed to be the sole property of the nation's electoral commission.

We are not surprised.

This past Friday, we reported that the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation had obtained Mexico's voter files under a secret "counterterrorism" contract with database company ChoicePoint of Alpharetta, Georgia. (See "Bush team helps ruling party 'Floridize' Mexican presidential election.")

The FBI's contractor states that, following the arrest of ChoicePoint agents by the Mexican government, the company returned or destroyed its files. The firm claims not to have known collecting this information violated Mexican law. Such files can be useful in challenging a voter's right to cast a ballot or in preventing that vote from counting.

It is, of course, impossible to know if the FBI destroyed its own copy of the files of Mexico's voter rolls obtained by Choicepoint or if these were then used to illegally assist the Calderon candidacy.

But we can see the results: As in the U.S., first in Florida then in Ohio, the exit polls are at odds with "official" polls.

In November 2004, U.S. Republican Sen. Richard Lugar, in Kiev, cited the divergence of exit polls and official polls as solid evidence of "blatant fraud" in the vote count in Ukraine. As a result, the Bush administration refused to recognize the Ukraine government's official vote tally ... which proves once again that Republicans are incapable of irony.

The foreign mainstream press has already announced, despite the polling discrepancies, that Mexico's elections were fair and clean - which would be a first for that country, where Obrador's party has seen its candidates defeated by "blatant fraud" before. The change this time is that the fraud is simply less blatant.

Watch for our video reports from Mexico City at www.GregPalast.com to be carried on Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman this Wednesday, July 5. Rick Rowley, in Mexico City, contributed to this report.

He acknowledged that the party had weighed the possible difficulties in having twin brothers as president and prime minister.

"For various reasons, we came to the conclusion that, at this time, putting forward a different candidate - of which we have many good ones - would be a worse way out than recommending me."

Marcinkiewicz would become the Law and Justice candidate for Warsaw mayor in fall elections.

While Kaczynski called the mayoral vote "extremely important," it was still not immediately clear why Law and Justice was removing a popular prime minister whose approval rating has reached nearly 70 percent in some polls.

"Politics is a team game, and demands teamwork," Marcinkiewicz said. "Only in this way can we implement our program, and only this way can we change Poland."

Marcinkiewicz said he would formally submit his resignation Monday to President Lech Kaczynski, who would then find himself in the unusual position of asking his brother to form a new government.

The new government would face a confidence vote in parliament, and if successful would then be sworn in by the president.

Separately, Japan's Maritime Self-Defence Force conducted a missile firing drill off the Hawaiian island of Kauai on Friday as part of a multinational exercise, Kyodo news agency said on Saturday. Three destroyers each successfully fired a missile at an unmanned target aircraft, it said.

A salvo of missile tests by North Korea on Wednesday, including the launch of a long-range Taepodong-2 missile, unsettled the region and led to calls for the
United Nations Security Council to impose international sanctions on Pyongyang.

North Korea has insisted it has the right to test the missiles, and has said it would consider sanctions against it a declaration of war. Much of its anger has been aimed at Japan for pushing for sanctions.

Japan also banned a North Korean ferry, the only regular direct link between the two countries, from entering its ports for six months as part of a package of initial sanctions.

A poll published on Saturday found that four-fifths of Japanese think their country should step up economic sanctions against North Korea in response to the missile launches.

A total of 80.7 percent favored stronger sanctions such as blocking money remittances to North Korea or curbing trade with Pyongyang, according to a survey of 1,011 people conducted on Friday and Saturday by Kyodo.

On North Korea's missile firings, 87 percent expressed anxiety, with 45.2 percent saying they "feel very anxious" and 41.8 percent saying they "feel somewhat anxious," it said.

After Pyongyang defied world opinion and test-fired seven missiles last week, Japan formally introduced a U.N. resolution, co-sponsored by the United States, Britain and France, to impose sanctions against its missile program.

"Kim announced a heroic DPRK (North Korean) position, in which it promised to answer to an enemy's retaliation with retaliation and to an all-out war with an all-out war. That is not empty words," the broadcast said.

Kim did not refer to the missile tests and the North Korean broadcaster did not say when he made the comments, Yonhap said.

In previous official media reports, North Korea promised to use force against any country that tries to pressure it into a halt of its missile launches.

"While we are not excluding the possibility of other casualties, the military forces found the bodies of 16 victims, and three people wounded, on the spot," MINUSTAH said in a statement.

It was not immediately clear whether the casualties included civilians or members of the rival gangs.

The battle began Thursday evening and stretched into Friday, said Haitian police force spokesman Mario Andresol.

"The police force is aware of the developments and taking measures to control the situation," Andresol said. He had initially put the toll at 15 dead.

It was not clear if the fighting had stopped, and the US State Department issued a travel warning for Haiti, urging US citizens to "carefully consider the risks" while travelling to the Caribbean nation.

The US embassy continued meanwhile to prohibit its staff from entering downtown Port-au-Prince after dark.

Established in 2004 and under Brazilian command, MINUSTAH includes about 7,500 military troops and 2,000 international police.

In February the UN Security Council renewed the mission's mandate in the impoverished Caribbean island nation for at least another six months.

Impoverished Haiti has been plagued by violence and kidnappings in recent years, although MINUSTAH recently announced a drop in abductions.

However, on June 20 police chief Michael Lucius said at least 10 police officers had been gunned down, and two of them decapitated, in the previous two weeks.

Lucius said 47 people had been kidnapped in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan region between late April and early June.

MINUSTAH was deployed in 2004 to stabilize the Caribbean nation following the ouster of former president Jean Bertrand Aristide fled a popular uprising.

In May a new government was sworn in promising to reduce the chronic violence.