Vienna/Paris  - The privatisation of Austrian Airlines AG is facing uncertainty as Air France-KLM said Tuesday it had dropped its bid, and a newspaper reported that Deutsche Lufthansa AG had also not submitted a formal offer.

According to the Austrian newspaper Die Presse, only the Russian S7 Airlines submitted a valid bid by the deadline on Tuesday at midday.

Mexico City  - Police in the northern Mexican town of Ascension, near the US border, received a parcel containing a cooler packed with four human heads, Mexican media reported Tuesday.

The parcel arrived last week, but it was not opened until Monday because it was initially thought to have been sent by mistake to the police command in Ascension, some 150 kilometres southwest of Ciudad Juarez.

The cooler was labelled "Vaccines, delicate material, handle with care," so police first contacted local hospitals and health centres to check whether they had ordered vaccines.

Harare - Zimbabwe's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) threatened Tuesday that party leader Morgan Tsvangirai would boycott another meeting of the Southern African Development Community on the Zimbabwean crisis unless he received a passport.

Tsvangirai did not attend a SADC meeting in Swaziland on Monday at which the breakdown in talks between his party and President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party on the formation of a unity government was discussed. Mugabe attended the meeting.

New York - US manufacturer 3M overcame the economic slowdown in its home market with strong international sales in the third quarter, the company said Tuesday.

Profits rose 3 per cent over the year earlier period to 991 million dollars, the St Paul, Minnesota maker of products like Post It notes and Scotch tape said. Revenue rose more than 6 per cent to
6.6 billion dollars.

The earnings were above analysts' expectations, but the company warned profits for the year could still fall below predictions as the economic downturn spreads worldwide.

New York - Months after increasing his stake in Ford Motor Company, billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian is pulling back from the suffering automaker.

His Tracinda Corp sold 7.3 million shares of Ford stock on Monday for 2.43 dollars each, he had purchased the shares for 8.50 dollars earlier this year. Tracinda is also considering unloading its remaining 133 million shares.

The move comes days after Kerkorian had put 50 million shares of his MGM Mirage casino behind the 600-million-dollar credit line he had used to buy Ford stock, Bloomberg financial news reported.

Baghdad  - Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said that the security pact with the US, also known as Status of Forces Agreement, is unlikely to win approval in Iraq's parliament before the US presidential election on November 4.

The pact would lay down the legal basis for a continued US military presence in Iraq after a UN mandate expires in December

Zebari told al-Arabiya satellite news station Tuesday that Iraq still hoped to enact the pact before the end of this year, when the UN Security Council resolution authorizing the US presence expires. But he acknowledged difficulties reaching agreement among Iraqi political leaders.