WORLD IN BRIEF

About 240 Missing After Storms Capsize Ferries in Bangladesh

DHAKA, Bangladesh -- Storms sank two river ferries in southern Bangladesh on Sunday and about 240 passengers were reported missing as divers began a frantic search for survivors.

One of the packed ferries, carrying about 250 people, capsized on the Meghna river; 50 were rescued, the state news agency BSS said.

A second ferry sank on the same river a half-mile away. Forty passengers were missing and six were rescued. A total of 17 bodies have been found so far in a rescue effort familiar to impoverished and disaster-prone Bangladesh.

AFRICA

• ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast -- Hundreds of Liberian refugees stranded at sea for days on a broken ferry said they drank salt water and engine coolant to survive as the ferry drifted deeper into rough seas. More than 300 people aboard were trying to return to Liberia from refugee camps in Nigeria and Ghana where they had lived for years after fleeing civil war at home. A French frigate towed it to Ivory Coast.

• FREETOWN, Sierra Leone -- Voters in Sierra Leone chose local councils for the first time in 30 years Saturday. The country has been wracked by violence and coups for much of its history. No violence was reported in the voting for the 394 local town and district council seats.

• BLANTYRE, Malawi -- Electoral authorities declared Malawi's ruling party candidate, Bingu wa Mutharika, the new president on Sunday, but an opposition coalition accused the government of vote-rigging and said its candidate won.

A defiant Gwanda Chakuamba, leader of the seven-party Mgwirizano opposition coalition, said he won the election despite official figures showing he was in third place.

• NYALA, Sudan -- Arab militiamen killed at least 56 people in a raid in western Sudan, villagers said. The militiamen raided Abga Rajil village, 30 miles south of the town of Nyala on Saturday, witnesses said.

THE AMERICAS

• MEXICO CITY -- Explosions rocked three banks in central Mexico and police said a previously unknown rebel group calling itself the Comando Jaramillista Morelense 23 de Mayo appeared to be responsible for the blasts. There were no casualties.

• GUATEMALA CITY -- Hundreds of migrants were picked up off Guatemala just before the boats carrying them sank, the Guatemalan navy said. The 200 migrants, presumed by the navy to be from Ecuador, had been at sea eight days in "inhuman conditions," one navy officer said.

EUROPE

• TSKHINVALI, Georgia -- The breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia voted for a new parliament, despite new President Mikheil Saakashvili's pledge to unite his fractured nation.

South Ossetia is one of two Georgian regions that broke away in bloody wars in the early 1990s. It rejects Tbilisi's rule and wants unity with northern neighbor Russia. Preliminary election results were expected on Monday.

• BERLIN -- Horst Koehler, a former head of the International Monetary Fund, was elected Germany's ninth postwar president. He was chosen by a special national assembly in the Reichstag parliament building.

Nominated by the center-right opposition, he foiled a bid by the government's candidate, university professor Gesine Schwan, to become the country's first female president.

• LONDON -- A newspaper published what it said were excerpts from a leaked government memo in which British officials expressed disquiet about U.S. tactics in Iraq. The Sunday Times said the memo was dated May 19 and circulated to senior ministers and officials last week.

"Heavy-handed U.S. military tactics in Fallujah and Najaf some weeks ago have fueled both Sunni and Shiite opposition to the coalition, and lost us much public support inside Iraq," the Sunday Times quoted the memo as saying. "The scandal of the treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib has sapped the moral authority of the coalition, inside Iraq and internationally."

-- From News Services