The judges examined 175 challenges presented by the leftist coalition headed by Lopez Obrador's Democratic Revolution Party (PRD).

The party had sent an 836-page document to the court claiming that the vote count which gave victory to conservative Felipe Calderon was invalid, and supplied videotapes and other alleged evidence of cheating.

Electoral authorities said that Lopez Obrador, a popular former Mexico City mayor, lost to Calderon by a mere 0.58-percentage-point margin.

The tribunal, the ultimate arbiter in electoral disputes, has until September 6 to formally announce the name of the president-elect.

Lopez Obrador wanted a full recount of the 41.7 million ballots cast, claiming that tallies from 72,197 polling stations, out of a total 130,500, contain errors that clearly demonstrate the vote was fraudulent.

He had maintained that if the commission did not order a full recount it would be covering up a "general election fraud" to Calderon's benefit.

But Calderon insisted his electoral victory was irreversible, and his conservative National Action Party (PAN) branded Lopez Obrador's statements as "schizophrenic."

UN and EU observers pronounced the election free and fair.

Lopez Obrador and his supporters have staged a tent-in demonstration since last Sunday in the heart of Mexico City and on the main avenue that bisects the capital, paralyzing traffic and business and tourism activities.

The fiery former mayor called for the campaign during a massive rally in the capital, which city authorities said brought together a record 1.2 million people.

The rally last Sunday was the largest for Lopez Obrador since the election. On July 16, he drew 800,000 people out to protest in support of him across the country.

The ruling PAN harshly criticized the latest protests, with spokesman Cesar Nava saying they had become "acts of aggression."

The city's chamber of commerce warned the blockades affected tourism as well as the financial sector, and would lead to losses of up to 36 million dollars a day and threaten the jobs of thousands of people.

The protests are reminiscent of the wave of demonstrations that followed the defeat of leftist candidate Cuauhtemoc Cardenas in 1988.

Cardenas was running ahead in the count when the computerized vote counting system mysteriously crashed.

When it was restored, Carlos Salinas de Gortari from the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) was ahead in the count and eventually declared the winner.

The winner of last month's election is to take office on December 1 for a six-year term to replace President
Vicente Fox.

"The firing has stopped. There are fears and apprehensions. There was a small misunderstanding but there is nothing to worry about," Brigadier General GV Satyanarayana, commander of United Nations forces in North Kivu, told Reuters in Sake.

Commanders of Nkunda's fighters and the army's 9th brigade reached a deal after the gun battle to withdraw both forces from the town, to applause from its remaining residents.

U.N. peacekeepers -- part of a 17,000-strong force in Congo -- were patrolling Sake to prevent further hostilities.

Democratic Republic of Congo held its first multiparty elections in more than 40 years on Sunday, aimed at cementing peace after a 1998-2003 war during which Nkunda rebelled against Kinshasa.

"Vote Kabila! Vote Kabila!" people chanted after U.N. forces arrived.

President Laurent Kabila, widely credited with securing the 2003 peace deal, was favorite to win the vote but results are not expected for more than two weeks and opposition leaders have alleged fraud.

"We are singing for Kabila because he is the only one who will bring peace," said Sake resident Faustin Kasolu, 38.

Nkunda, from the Tutsi ethnic group found in Rwanda, Burundi and Congo, is the subject of an international arrest warrant issued by the Congolese government for alleged atrocities against civilians committed since 2004.

He said last week he was willing to negotiate with the winner of Sunday's historic elections to end his insurgency, but also warned he would fight back if a new elected president tried to defeat him militarily.

"Some 30 bodies have already been recovered" from a river swollen by heavy rains in Mardan town, about 50 kilometers (31 miles) northeast of Peshawar bordering Afghanistan, local police official Javed Khan said.

The search for those still missing has been hampered by nightfall, he added.

Local mayor Himayat ullah Mayar earlier said more than 100 people had gathered on the bridge to watch the flooded river when part of it caved in, plunging "almost all of them" into the swirling waters.

He said army troops had been called out to join the rescue work.

"Twelve members of my family are missing," a Mardan resident Iqbal Hoti told reporters.

More than 40 people have died in landslides and floods caused by rain torrents in Pakistan over the past two days.

L/Cpl James Potrowski joined the Irish Guards at 18 and was in one the first units to be sent to Iraq's front line in 2003. On his return to the UK from active duty his mother and sister noticed that his behaviour was becoming strange and erratic. They sought help from the Army but they were constantly rebuffed, they say, even when they reported that their son was sleeping in the garden and was suffering horrifying flashbacks of a little Iraqi girl clinging to her father's dead body. After failing to gain help he insisted on trying to guard the house and stole firearms from his barracks. After a police raid he was sentenced to seven years in prison.

His mother, Deborah Higgins, said that she feels betrayed by the military.

"James went off to Iraq a normal lad. He was in Iraq for four months. He was in the front line. He had seen his best friend blasted to bits. When he came back to me he could not sleep; he was very snappy, and he had mood swings and blackouts. He was definitely suffering from post-traumatic stress.

"James was in turmoil. I was begging for help for my son but getting none," she said. "We were held under the Terrorism Act. He threatened to blow up the police station."

Experts in combat stress warn that the combination of coming under sustained fire and seeing civilians, including women and children killed on a daily basis, presents a lethal combination for soldiers' mental health.

Over the past three years the Ministry of Defence has spent almost £9m admitting soldiers to the Priory clinics, whose clients have included the Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood and the models Kate Moss and Sophie Anderton. Figures obtained by Tim Loughton, the Conservatives' health spokesman, show that since 2003, 801 military patients have been admitted to the Priory clinics "for immediate in-patient treatment".

Others have been sent to the Priory for mental health assessments by trained psychiatric personnel.

The Government has also pumped £2.8m a year into mental health charities to fund support for troops suffering mental problems as a result of tours of duty.

Commodore Toby Elliott, chief executive of Combat Stress, the mental health society which runs courses for ex-military personnel, said the MoD was taking the psychiatric health of soldiers more seriously than ever before. But he warned that it can take years for the symptoms of stress to manifest themselves. "Soldiers grit their teeth or cope. The numbers will accumulate in time."

An MoD spokeswoman said last night that it had introduced pre- and post-deployment briefings for soldiers on how to deal with stress: "Post-traumatic stress disorder is a serious and disabling condition, but one that can be treated."

No word here of the fact al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya (Islamic Group) was provided with "political asylum" in Britain, thus leading us to one of two obvious conclusions-either the British government is clueless, or the group is a British intelligence operation. "Gamaa al-Islamiya (Islamic Group), the terrorist organization responsible for killing 62 tourists in Luxor, Egypt, was provided political asylum in Britain and numerous efforts by the Egyptian government to have members extradited were denied. The Algerian Armed Islamic Group, responsible for the assassination of Algerian President Mohamed Boudiaf on June 29, 1992, has its international headquarters in London," I wrote last August.

It should be noted that Gamaa al-Islamiya was created by Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind cleric currently serving a life sentence for "seditious conspiracy," that is to say he wasn't actually convicted of a terrorist crime, although it is assumed he was involved in Oplan Bojinka, or Operation Bojinka, a terror op described as a CIA and FBI "intelligence failure," in other words, they more than likely had a hand in the scheme. Emad Salem, an ex-Egyptian army officer turned FBI informant, "received money from Kahane Chai, Rabbi Meir Kahane's group," according to the late William Kunstler, the famous attorney retained by Siddig Ibrahim Siddig Ali and Ibrahim El-Gabrowny, two defendants in the case. Kunstler also alludes to Mossad involvement in the plot, according to a 1993 interview with Kunstler by Paul DeRienzo. According to Emad Salem, the FBI was behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, as it refused to swap harmless powder for explosives in the bomb that killed 6 people and injured over a 1,000 (see Ralph Blumenthal, Tapes Depict Proposal to Thwart Bomb Used in Trade Center Blast, the New York Times, October 28, 1993).

Considering the far less than coincidental involvement of the CIA, FBI, Mossad, and other intelligence and law enforcement agencies in a number of so-called Muslim terrorist events, usually dismissed as "intelligence failures," and the terrorists involved are usually clueless patsies incapable of such acts without close supervision, one has to take this latest declaration concerning al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya with a grain of salt, to say the least. In fact, when the wealth of data documenting the link between "al-Qaeda" and American, British, and Israeli intelligence is examined, there is a strong case indicating the al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya and "al-Qaeda" merger is but another phase of the "war on terrorism," or rather the behind the scenes effort to manufacture and unleash contrived terrorist organizations in an effort to gain support for the ongoing "clash of civilizations" war against Islam.

The Cuban Workers Union (CTC) said three million workers have held meetings across Cuba in the past three days to wish Castro a quick recovery and show support for his brother Raul and the Communist Party.

"The Cuban working class will...fight to the last drop of blood to defend the Revolution," the CTC said in a letter in the workers' weekly Trabajadores, apparently to show that support for Castro among loyalists was still firm.

President Bush said it was up to Cubans to decide to transform the "tyrannical situation."

"Our desire for the Cuban people is to be able to choose their own form of government ... and we will make this very clear, as Cuba has the possibility of transforming itself from a tyrannical situation to a different type of society, the Cuban people ought to decide," Bush told a news conference.

Washington has been trying for decades to oust Castro through various means, but U.S. officials last week said it had no plans for a military intervention.

Cuban authorities scorned earlier U.S. urgings for Cubans to grab the opportunity to end one-party rule.

The news last Monday that the former guerrilla fighter, who turns 80 next Sunday, had undergone gastric surgery and provisionally turned over power to Raul Castro stunned the nation he has ruled with a firm grip for nearly 50 years.

Anxiety seemed to ease over the weekend as Cuban officials and Latin American allies said he was recuperating but faced weeks of convalescence.

Their statements were short on detail and appeared aimed at ending speculation about whether the long-time U.S. antagonist was still alive without raising expectations for a rapid return to power.

"The news we have is that he continues progressing well. It will be a number of weeks, but he is going to recover," Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage said in Sucre, Bolivia, where he had traveled for the opening of a constitutional assembly.

One of the world's longest-ruling leaders, Castro is admired in many developing countries as a fighter for social justice. Critics, most notably the United States and Cuban exiles in Miami, see him as a tyrant who has stifled freedoms and brought Cuba to the verge of economic ruin.

He put defense minister brother Raul, 75, in charge of Cuba while he recovers from the surgery. Raul has not been seen or heard in public since then, although state media has been building up his image with flattering articles.

STATE SECRET

In Caracas, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a close ally and economic backer of Cuba, said on Sunday that Castro was able to converse and leave his bed.

Colombia's Marxist rebel group FARC posted a greeting on its Web site wishing Castro a swift recovery and sending him "a fraternal socialist and Bolivarian salute of solidarity."

The group, branded terrorists and drug-traffickers by U.S. and Colombian authorities, has long claimed Castro's communist revolution as an inspiration for its four-decade battle to install socialism in Colombia.

The Cuban government has not revealed the exact nature of Castro's illness on grounds that it is a state secret.

The surgery was announced on July 31 to have been for internal bleeding caused by overwork and stress. Cuban officials have denied a report that Fidel has stomach cancer.

Cuba watchers in the United States said that whether Castro's condition is terminal or not, the transition of his government has begun.

"If we have a debilitated Fidel and an aging Raul, where Fidel would die in the near future and Raul will take the reigns for a few years, enough time will pass for Raul to prepare the landscape for when he is gone," said Frank Mora, a Cuba expert at the National War College in Washington.

"However, we would go from a first among equals to all being equal ... This suggests a power struggle or certainly some serious political maneuvering among the successors, each claiming to speak on behalf of the Fidel-Raul legacy."