New York - Burger King, the world's second largest fast food chain, suffered weaker profits in the first quarter of the business year because of higher ingredient costs and the expense of opening additional franchises, the Miami-based firm reported Friday.

Profits at the close of September climbed by only 2 per cent from the same period last year to 50 million dollars. Revenues stood at 674 million dollars.

Burger King boss John Chidsey said he was hopeful that food prices as well as energy costs will drop in the near future and help restore higher profits.

Washington - On Martin Luther King Avenue, in the Anacostia neighbourhood of the nation's capital, the mood before Tuesday's US presidential elections is upbeat and confident.

National polls show the black neighbourhood's favourite, Democrat Barack Obama, 47, ahead over Republican John McCain, 72. And while African Americans there say an Obama presidency would be the ultimate "melting pot" image, they dismiss the suggestion there would be anger, or even riots, if somehow McCain were to win.

New York - A UN General Assembly committee on Friday voted by a large majority to push for an arms trade treaty to control the sale of weapons around the world worth hundreds of billions of dollars a year.

The political committee, known as the First Committee, voted 145-2 to set up a working group that will push for an arms trade treaty that would establish common international standards for the import, export and transfer of conventional arms.

The United States and Zimbabwe were the only countries that voted against the decision to move on to a global treaty.

Rome - Afghanistan director Siddiq Barmak's Opium War and Italy's Giacomo Battiato's Resolution 819, about war crimes in Bosnia, won top prizes Friday at the International Rome Film Festival.

The Golden Marc'Aurelio Critics Award for Best Film was bestowed to Opium War, in which a pair of US military helicopter pilots confront the harsh realities of life in Afghanistan after their aircraft is shot down.

Havana - Cuban President Raul Castro is set to visit Brazil in December for a summit between Latin America and the Caribbean in the north-eastern Brazilian city of Salvador.

"(Castro) is finally going to Brazil," Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said in confirming the upcoming visit in Havana, where Lula and Raul Castro presided over bilateral agreements Friday.

This is to be Raul Castro's first trip abroad since he took over power from his brother Fidel Castro over two years ago, before he formally became Cuban president in February.

Isa Town, Bahrain - An international left-wing youth seminar that opened on the outskirts of the Bahrain capital of Manama on Friday blamed US policies in the Middle East for escalating tensions.

The two-day meeting held under the motto Youth of the Gulf and the Path to Democracy re-affirmed support for armed resistance groups fighting occupation and accused Washington of spreading sectarian tension.

The vice president of the World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY), Omar al-Deeb, accused the US of carrying out major wars beyond its borders.