Washington  - With only 14 days to go before the US general election, presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama crisscrossed swing states Tuesday that will be crucial to success on November 4.

Obama held a roundtable discussion in Tampa, Florida with economic advisors and state governors from across the country, part of a major tour this week by the Democratic nominee and his surrogates across the state that gave President George W Bush a wafer-thin victory in 2000.

Paris  - Led by a surge of bank stocks after the French government's announcement of a capital injection, shares on the Paris Bourse ended trading on Tuesday with a modest gain, its third winning session in a row.

The benchmark CAC 40 closed up 0.78 per cent, to 3,475.40, with gainers and decliners running about even.

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.