Washington  - The Chinese immigrant who brutally stabbed, beheaded and then ate the flesh of his seatmate on a Greyhound Canada bus last week has asked to be killed, news reports said Wednesday.

"Please kill me," were the only words uttered by Vincent Li, 40, in a courtroom in Portage La Prairie, the Winnipeg Free Press reported.

Canada abolished capital punishment on July 14, 1976, according to Amnesty International. It was replaced with a mandatory life sentence, without the possibility of parole for 25 years, for all first-degree murders.

Washington  - The US Defence Department on Wednesday formally reopened bidding for the contract to build the next generational of Air Force tanker refuellers, a spokesman said.

The contract was initially won by the Northrop Grumman-EADS partnership but a congressional oversight agency upheld a protest by rival Boeing, effectively forcing the Pentagon to rehold the competition for the 35-billion-dollar contract.

The Pentagon on Wednesday formally asked the companies to resubmit proposals to build the 179 KC-X aerial refuellers, spokesman Chris Isleib said.

Washington  - Britain is in for an "extended period" of high inflation and lower growth that will test the government's policy of fiscal restraint, the International Monetary Fund said Wednesday.

The IMF also warned the Bank of England against further interest rate cuts ahead of its meeting Thursday. Rising food and fuel prices would keep inflation above the government's target of 2 per cent, providing "little scope for monetary easing" despite sluggish growth.

Washington  - Freddie Mac Wednesday reported 821 million dollars in second-quarter losses amid record foreclosures and a US housing slump that has threatened the home mortgage giant with collapse.

The results come after a 151-million-dollar net loss in the first quarter of 2008 as housing prices continue to fall across the United States. The lender reported profits of 729 million dollars in the second quarter of 2007.

Washington  - Republican White House hopeful John McCain made his sharpest divide yet from US President George W Bush, declaring in a new television advertisement Tuesday that the state of the nation has worsened over the last four years.

"Washington's broken. John McCain knows it," a narrator says in the new ad. "We're worse off than we were four years ago."

Washington  - Women hold an important key to winning the US presidential elections in November because neither Democrat Barack Obama nor Republican John McCain has yet won a majority of women voters into their corner, according to a poll released Tuesday.

Obama has won the support of 49 per cent of women, while 38 per cent are for McCain, according to the poll commissioned by a coalition of Lifetime Entertainment Services, a female-oriented TV broadcaster, and hundreds of women's organizations.