Montreal - Final results were announced Wednesday in Canada's parliamentary vote, showing Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper back in power, but failing to reach a majority in Canada's 308-seat parliament.

Harper's Conservative Party were elected in 143 ridings, 19 seats since the 2006 election, in Canada's first-past-the-post system, in which a single winner is elected in each constituency.

The opposition Liberals gained 76 seats, followed by the Bloc Quebecois with 50 ridings and the New Democratic Party with 37. Two independent candidates were also elected.

The Conservatives got 37.6 per cent of the vote, followed by 26.2 per cent for the Liberals, 18.2 per cent for the New Democrats and 10 per cent for the Bloc.

Washington - The US government's deficit exceeded projections for the just-ended 2007-08 budget year, hitting a record 455 billion dollars, federal officials announced late Tuesday.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Jim Nussle, director of the Office of Management and Budget, issued a joint statement summarizing the government's revenues and spending for the 12 months through September.

The deficit represents 3.2 per cent of gross domestic product in the 14-trillion-dollar US economy.

The 2006-07 deficit was 161.5 billion dollars, or about 1.2 per cent of GDP.

The previous record deficit was 413 billion dollars in 2004.

Montreal - Canadian voters headed to the polls on Tuesday to elect a new Parliament in the third nationwide vote in just four years.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative Party was favoured to remain in power with a minority government, with one poll showing them leading with 34 per cent of the vote to 29 per cent for the opposition Liberals.

Harper had called for elections in hopes of securing a stable majority government, but support for the party has slipped in the intervening weeks.

Harare - Riot police broke up a student demonstration in Harare, injuring at least four people and arresting three Tuesday, in the first such incident of police violence since the signing of a power-sharing agreement by Zimbabwe's political protagonists a month ago.

The attack on the peaceful demonstration took place just as former South African president Thabo Mbeki began mediating to try and rescue the agreement from collapse after President Robert Mugabe at the

Wilmington (North Carolina, US), Oct. 14: Republican presidential candidate John McCain has pledged to fight for a new direction for the country in an energetic new campaign stump speech Monday that sought to distance him from the economic policies of President Bush.

"We cannot spend the next four years as we have spent much of the last eight: waiting for our luck to change," McCain said while campaigning with running mate Sarah Palin in this once reliably Republican state that has become a battleground this year.

Washington, Oct. 14: An expert forecaster on developments in Washington has claimed that the November 4, 2008 presidential poll is “almost unwinnable” for Republican candidate John McCain.

Though McCain is still championing the fact that he still fight back the advances being made by Democratic rival Barack Obama despite being six points down, Charles Cook, whose forecasts are among the most watched in Washington, has declared that McCain needs to forget any chances of winning and assess how wide a margin is his loss to Obama going to be.