Ken Livingstone

Voting closed Wednesday in the race for the Labor Party's candidate for London mayor, a competition that pits party leaders' chosen candidate against a man whose victory could be their political nightmare. The results will not be announced before Saturday. The idea of the party's candidacy going to left-wing lawmaker Ken Livingstone has worried Prime Minister Tony Blair's centrist Labor government. Labor has engineered an electoral college that gives Health Minister Frank Dobson a running start.

The new Battle of Trafalgar--a fight over a home for thousands of London's greedy but popular pigeons--has entered a new phase. In a victory for pro-pigeon forces, Bernard Rayner, the sole seller of bird feed to tourists on the historic British square, has won a temporary High Court reprieve allowing him to continue feeding the pigeons until the case is heard in full in early February.

Power went out in parts of the capital and southeastern England on Thursday, halting much of the London Underground and many regional trains and stranding hundreds of thousands of rush-hour commuters. Electricity was cut for about 40 minutes before it came back on about 7 p.m., said EDF Energy, which handles power transmission for the affected areas of London. The outages appeared to be confined to south London and Kent, a county southeast of the city.

A nationwide rail strike hobbled trains from the suburban express to the London-bound Eurostar on Thursday, leaving many French commuters stuck in traffic jams. The strike tops a week of traffic woes for the French. Bus and subway workers paralyzed dozens of major cities in strikes Monday through Wednesday. Paris was spared in the first job action but was hit hard Thursday, with suburban trains and long-distance and high-speed trains crippled.

The people of this capital, an ancient seat of government that doesn't have a government of its own, apparently decided Thursday that their city ought to have a mayor. Early election returns showed that voters appeared to be approving a proposal to create a central governing authority and an elected mayor for this metropolis of 7.5 million, a capital city since the Romans founded Londinium two millenniums ago. With four of 33 districts counted, 77% of voters supported the measure.

The traffic level dropped by 25% on the first day of London's program to charge motorists $8 to drive into downtown, city officials said Tuesday, but opponents said the anti-congestion plan's launch was aided by a school vacation. Mayor Ken Livingstone, who has staked his turbulent political career on the success of the plan, heaved a public sigh of relief Tuesday.

A 24-hour strike scheduled to begin Tuesday on the London Underground may shut down the 141-year-old commuter train network and force the 3 million daily passengers to make alternative travel plans. Members of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers employed by London Underground Ltd. and Metronet, a company hired to maintain the train system, will walk out at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday London time and return to work at 6:29 p.m. Wednesday. The union rejected a 3.

Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev said in a letter to a London official Thursday that the Soviet Union would give "firm and effective" guarantees that it would not aim nuclear weapons at Britain if it scrapped its nuclear arsenal and ordered U.S. nuclear arms out of the country. Gorbachev also cited the Soviet Union's moratorium on nuclear testing as proof of its willingness to move toward disarmament but did not say whether the moratorium is still in effect.

Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev said in a letter to a London official today that the Soviet Union will not aim nuclear weapons at Great Britain if the British scrap their nuclear arsenal and order U.S. nuclear weapons out of the country. Gorbachev also cited the Soviet Union's moratorium on nuclear testing as proof of its willingness to move toward disarmament, but he did not say whether the moratorium still is in effect.

On a stage of political all-stars Tuesday afternoon at UCLA, former President Clinton announced a new initiative to help cities combat global warming. Joined by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and London Mayor Ken Livingstone, Clinton laid out the challenges ahead. "We have to reduce about 80% of our greenhouse gases over the next 10 years," said Clinton, whose foundation sponsored the initiative.