Paris - Segolene Royal, the defeated Socialist Party candidate in last year's French presidential election, said Wednesday that she wanted to replace her former partner as party chief.
Asked if she would be a candidate for party leader, she told TF 1 television, "I will tell you frankly: it's true that I want to (head the party)."
The Socialist Party will elect a successor to the current party secretary Francois Hollande on November 20, following the party congress, which is due to begin Friday in the city of Reims.
New York - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday welcomed Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir's announcement of an immediate ceasefire in the troubled western region of Darfur.
Al-Bashir said the fighting should stop between the government's armed forces and warring factions and called for an effective monitoring mechanism to monitor the ceasefire. He also called for the disarming of militia forces.
Frankfurt - The European Central Bank called Poland's plan to enter the eurozone by 2012, "ambitious, but realistic," said Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk after talks with the bank's leadership in Frankfurt, Germany on Wednesday.
Tusk said the recent world economic crisis has made the currency swap more difficult for Poland, but not impossible.
Washington - US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Wednesday said he plans to shift some of the focus of the second half of the government's massive financial rescue action to credit card and loan companies and shelve original plans to buy up bad mortgage assets from finance firms.
He also dismissed a proposal that the 700-billion-dollar rescue plan should be used to bail out the ailing auto industry.
Paulson said that the first half of the rescue programme, or 350 billion dollars, had prevented "broad systemic" damage to a financial system that had been on the "tipping point," but warned the financial system "remains fragile" and needs broader help.
Prague/Dublin - Czech leaders Wednesday sought to downplay Czech President Vaclav Klaus' meeting with Ireland's leading opponent of the Lisbon Treaty, which spurred a diplomatic row ahead of the Czech Republic's EU presidency.
"I find it legitimate when someone presents his opinion. And I respect it even if I have a completely different view," said Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, who supports the EU reform pact.
Czech Vice-Premier for European Affairs Alexandr Vondra said that "one dinner can't undermine the Czech presidency, which the government has responsibly prepared for two years."
Port-au-Prince, Haiti - Another school building partially collapsed Wednesday in Haiti, less than a week after a school crumbled leaving more than 90 people dead.
Eyewitnesses said a building adjoining the Grace Divine (Divine Grace) school in the Canape Vert neighbourhood of Haitian capital Port-au-Prince collapsed, falling onto the school itself.
According to preliminary reports, eight people - seven adults and one child - were injured and had to be taken to hospital.
On Friday, at least 93 people, most of them children, died in the collapse of Evangelical Promise school in Petionville, a suburb of Port-au-Prince. Some 160 others were injured and many more remained missing.
Paris - Segolene Royal, the defeated Socialist Party candidate in last year's French presidential election, said Wednesday that she wanted to replace her former partner as party chief.
New York - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday welcomed Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir's announcement of an immediate ceasefire in the troubled western region of Darfur.
Frankfurt - The European Central Bank called Poland's plan to enter the eurozone by 2012, "ambitious, but realistic," said Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk after talks with the bank's leadership in Frankfurt, Germany on Wednesday.
