"The court is going to say, 'The election was valid and Calderon is the president and that's the end of it,'" said political analyst Oscar Aguilar. "But that won't turn the page. That won't end anything."

Hundreds of supporters of leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador set up an overnight camp at the court's headquarters late Monday, vowing to prevent the judges from declaring Calderon president.

Most of the court's rulings so far have favored Calderon, who has a 240,000-vote advantage over Lopez Obrador. During an early morning session, the seven magistrates will give their final count in the election and decide whether it was valid. While they have the power to annul the election, there are no signs they plan to do so. The court's decision is final and cannot be appealed.

Both sides appeared to agree that the judges would confirm a Calderon victory in the July 2 election.

"We are very calm, very sure," Juan Camilo Mourino, who heads Calderon's transition team, said Monday. "Tomorrow, Felipe Calderon will be president-elect."

Lopez Obrador, who previously has indicated that he expects the court to decide in Calderon's favor, barely made mention of the impending decision Monday during his nightly address to followers in Mexico City's historic central plaza, the Zocalo.

Instead, he focused on an upcoming national convention of his supporters to decide if he should declare himself head of a parallel government. Members of that government would then go on to vote on a series of reforms to the country's institutions.

"This movement is now about transforming the country," he said.

"What we are proposing now could just be a dream - maybe it won't bear fruit, maybe it will be that we fail - but you know what we have? We have confidence, and above all the responsibility to do it," he later added. "The dreams of the men and women of today will be the realities of tomorrow."

The convention is planned for Sept. 16, Mexico's Independence Day, in the Zocalo, where the armed forces traditionally mass for a march down Mexico City's main Reforma avenue. Both places have been occupied by protesters for more than a month.

Lopez Obrador and his supporters claim fraud, illicit government spending and dirty tricks swayed the election in favor of Calderon, a member of President Vicente Fox's National Action Party.

Mexican presidents are limited by the constitution to one, six-year term, and Fox leaves office Dec. 1.

Protesters say they won't go home until Lopez Obrador is declared president - and a court ruling in Calderon's favor will just fuel their fight.

Another potentially explosive confrontation could come well before inauguration day. Shortly before midnight Sept. 15, Fox is expected to visit the capital's central plaza to yell "Viva Mexico!" and kick off the country's Independence Day celebrations. But the city center has been overrun by protesters supporting Lopez Obrador who may try to keep him from speaking.

"For Mexico, in historical terms, that could be like a political Waterloo," said Homero Aridjis, a poet and newspaper columnist. "A lot of things will be decided. It could be the final political defeat for Fox, or the moment in which he regains a little credibility."

Gabriel Juarez, who was among those blocking Reforma, said Fox's administration has pressured the court to favor Calderon.

"Its rulings are lies," the 70-year-old retiree said.

Business leaders said Monday they plan to file lawsuits against Mexico City's government and Lopez Obrador's party, alleging they are responsible for $369 million in lost revenues due to the protests. Lopez Obrador's Democratic Revolution Party controls the capital's government and has refused to remove the protesters, supplying them with electricity and police protection.

Tensions spilled from the streets to the halls of Congress on Friday, when lawmakers from Lopez Obrador's party the podium of the legislature and blocked Fox from delivering his final state-of-the-nation address.

The party has also pledged to keep Calderon from being sworn in before Congress on Dec. 1.

"As TB (Tony Blair) enters his final phase he needs to be focusing way beyond the finishing line, not looking at it... He should be the star who won't even play that last encore," added the five-page document, reported by the Labour-supporting tabloid Daily Mirror.

Blair, who came to power in 1997, has said he will step down before the next general election, due May 2010 at the latest.

But the pledge has turned against him, fueling increasing turmoil within his own party about who will succeed him -- Chancellor Gordon Brown has long been the frontrunner -- and, crucially, when.

Defying pressure, Blair again refused to set a specific date for his much-anticipated resignation in an interview with The Times published last week.

His own backbenchers are becoming increasingly restive, and on Tuesday the daily Guardian reported that the majority of the 38 Labour MPs elected at the 2001 general election have drafted a letter calling for Blair to step aside.

An unnamed MP told the newspaper: "If the prime minister has decided that to set a timetable will undermine his authority, and his authority is already undermined, the obvious thing is for him to go now."

But Blair again refused to be drawn in a breakfast TV interview Tuesday.

"When we have policies for the National Health Service, I hope the National Health Service is going to be there in 50 years' time but I'm not going to be," he told GMTV. "The business of government carries on."

The BBC also reported late on Monday that at least three letters are circulating among Labour MPs calling for Blair to step down, one of which says he should do so immediately.

The broadcaster said that one letter was confined to the 2005 intake of Labour MPs, and that another was circulating among the 2001 intake, citing unnamed sources on both occasions.

A reporter for the BBC's evening current affairs programme also said that one unnamed source told him that there is a third letter, confined to low-ranking members of the government, or parliamentary aides. According to the BBC, none of the letters has been delivered to the prime minister.

News of the letters coincided with the publication of a Populus poll in The Times on Tuesday showing support for Labour fell while the opposition Conservatives held their ground.

Of the 1,504 people surveyed by Populus for The Times, 32 percent supported Labour, a two percentage point decline since July, while 36 percent declared support for the Conservatives.

Tuesday's poll is the latest in a string of such surveys indicating support for Labour is dropping -- a YouGov poll published in The Daily Telegraph last month showed support for the Tories at 38 percent, with Labour at 31 percent.

Blair faces more calls for him to set a date for his departure at Labour's upcoming party conference at the end of the month.

The exercises involving middle-ranking officers from both countries had been due to take place in the Nizhny Novgorod region, east of Moscow, in the second half of September, he said Tuesday.

A spokesman for the defence ministry would not confirm or deny the report. The US embassy in Moscow said it had no immediate comment.

The official quoted by Interfax did not give details about the status problem, but also referred to a series of protests by Communists who said that US troops should not be allowed on Russian soil because of US foreign policy.

"Emotions being raised over these manoeuvres by certain political forces do not match the scope of the planned exercises," the official said.

The Russian Communist Party had demanded the cancellation of the exercises, threatening to demonstrate across the country on September 14.

"The Communists oppose sabre-rattling on our soil by the army that bombed the sovereign Yugoslavia, trampled the statehood of several countries in the Middle East, and is trying by hook or by crook to perpetuate its military presence in the territory of the former Soviet Union," a communist resolution stated Tuesday, Interfax reported.

Russian-US military exercises have been held periodically since the early 1990s, with manoeuvres in 2004 and 2005 dubbed Torgau, after the name of the German town where Soviet and US troops linked up in the last days of World War II.

Construction manager Mr Wood and his wife Joanne, 37, moved into the street in Preston, Lancashire, hoping for a safe neighbourhood in which to raise their children, Liam, 16, and Ellie, six.

But instead he claims they have repeatedly had to endure children kicking footballs through their hedge and into their garden.

"There have been occasions when my wife has been doing our front garden and she's been smacked in the face with a leather football," he added. Matters came to a head when he came across brothers aged 18 and nine scrambling through his hedge trying to retrieve their football.

"One of them asked me if I could get his ball back out of the hedge," he said. "He had been climbing all over the hedge to reach the ball, so I got hold of it and carried on walking up the pathway.

"The youngest child then started having a tantrum and started screaming and shouting that he wanted his ball back.

"I just thought if he can't ask for the ball back politely, then he's not going to get it back at all. So I put the ball in the house and thought nothing more of it."

Mr Wood claims the boys' father, Stephen Burns - who works for the Crown Prosecution Service - came round to confront him, leaving him so worried that he rang the police.

Two days later a community support officer called round and urged him to return the ball, saying it could technically be treated as theft, but Mr Wood said he would not back down until he received an apology.

At that point he expected common sense to prevail - but instead the day after a Pc came round and threatened to arrest him on his doorstep on suspicion of theft if he did not back down.

"I said 'Look, we've been through this, I'm not going to give the ball back unless I get an apology'."

So he faced the humiliation of being handcuffed and marched to a patrol car in front of his neighbours while his daughter looked on in tears. But events turned into a farce as the officer decided not to take him to the station but instead drove him to the nearby church hall and instructed him to thrash it out with his local councillor - still in his pyjamas and dressing gown.

"I think the police realised that they had no power to keep me detained so they'd scored an own goal, so to speak," he said.

Finally, Mr Wood decided things had gone far enough and returned the football to Mr Burns, receiving "a sort of apology".

"He told me he's going to be sending the kids to a park to play football instead, so that's some progress I suppose."

Mr Burns said yesterday he had had no contact with the police and did not know anything about his neighbour's arrest.

But he added: "If you don't return someone's property, I would have thought it was perfectly right under English law to be arrested for theft."

Lancashire Police said they had been called to deal with a dispute between neighbours.

"One man was arrested when he refused to return a football," a spokesman said. "After talks with the arresting officer he agreed to return the ball and apologised.

"He was then de-arrested and the matter appeared resolved."

Earlier this year the Daily Mail told how 68-year-old Roy Markham, from Cubbington, Warwickshire, was arrested for theft after a football from his police sergeant neighbour Stewart Bosworth's garden smashed into his greenhouse.

Warwickshire Police are investigating after Mr Markham complained about his treatment. Last night Mr Wood said he was considering following suit.

Opposition police spokesman Kim Wells said: "The Victoria Police is an organisation you would expect to abide by the law, so I'm gobsmacked by this."

The documents say that specialist forensic officers have been called in to help clear the backlog, raising fears that progress on major criminal investigations has suffered.

Victoria Police has allocated two extra staff members to help tackle the problem.

A police spokesman said: "It is about priorities. Our main one is processing forensic evidence to get criminals off our streets.

"A strategy is in place to rectify the situation. We take our legislative responsibilities very seriously."

A spokesperson for Police Minister Tim Holding said: "The Bracks Government expects Victoria Police to comply with all elements of the legisla-

tion regarding fingerprint destruction."

The documents say measures are in place to stop the prints, which date back as far as 1994, being used.

Det-Supt Paul Sheridan backs warnings from the Forensic Services Department's Fingerprint Branch manager that the Chief Commissioner is breaking the law.

"I reiterate the comments . . . that the Chief Commissioner is in contravention of the Crimes Act and could be subject to penalty," he says in the documents.

Before going any further, let me be clear that as far as I am concerned, any attack on non-combatants is criminal and should be condemned. Yet, in thinking about the comment by the British official, my first and continuing response was: Unimaginable to whom? The probable numbers of people who would have been killed might have gone as high as 15,000 (a very rough guess). As someone who just flew back from the West Coast, I would not look forward to flying on a plane that was the target of a terrorist attack. Nevertheless, in today's world, 15,000 dead civilians is not an unimaginable figure, unless, of course, one means 15,000 dead civilians from Western Europe, the United States or Canada.

I do not wish to be harsh or unsympathetic, but let's count a few numbers and you tell me what conclusions you come to. Since 1997, approximately 4 million people have been killed as a result of the civil war (and foreign interventions) in the Congo. That comes down to approximately 444,000 per year or 37,000 per month or about 1,200 per day. I would call that figure unimaginable (even though it happened), or perhaps inconceivable in the sense that this planet has permitted 4 million people to die with very little international attention. Or, a few miles to the north, in the Sudan, over 20 years, more than 2 million people were killed in the north/south civil war that recently ended. In the Darfur region of the Sudan, more than 400,000 people (not part of the 2 million) have died as a result of the government-backed genocide, and this number starts around 2003. Or, if we wish to be more modest, we can see the more than 1,000 Lebanese civilians killed as a result of Israel's collective punishment of that country, a collective punishment that has specifically targeted civilians and civilian targets, this from an allegedly civilized nation. Should I mention Iraq? More than 2,600 U.S. personnel dead and by most reports more than 100,000 Iraqis dead as a result of an illegal war (by the way, that is more than 30,000 dead per year or about 80 dead per day). This does not count the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who died as a result of the US/British sanctions against pre-war Iraq.

So, I found myself wondering about this term "unimaginable loss of life." The potential tragedy of a terrorist attack on civilian aircraft would deserve condemnation should even one person die as a result. But telling us about an unimaginable loss of life when the government of Britain, let alone the United States, has been prepared to sit back and watch or participate in the massive loss of life in countries of the global South is nothing short of disingenuous.

This returns us to an issue that I have raised in previous columns, i.e., the relative importance or unimportance of the lives of different peoples. Four million dead in the Congo is absolutely unimaginable. It is difficult to even count to 4 million sitting in the same place. It is unimaginable that so many people could lose their lives and yet the Congo has to fight to get the attention of major news media in Western Europe, the United States and Canada. Short of a titillating incident or an obvious and gross atrocity, the loss of 1200 people per day does not seem to merit our consideration.

Perhaps I have a different imagination?