Sudan election monitor hindered

These and other hindrances could diminish the ability of the center - the only international group Sudan invited to monitor the process - to verify the vote's fairness, the group said.

Sudan is holding its first parliamentary and presidential elections in all regions of the war-torn country next April. The elections are a key part of the 2005 peace deal that ended more than two decades of north-south civil war in which two million people died.

The Carter Center also called on Sudan to disarm militias and revoke the government-declared "state of emergency" in the western Darfur region, saying these too could hamper the elections there.

- AP

China jails crime 'godmother'

Xie was sentenced for running illegal casinos and bribing government officials. Her trial was one of a series of gang prosecutions in the southwestern city of Chongqing that have featured lurid testimony about sex, corruption, and violence.

Xie is the only female gang boss to be tried as part of a months-long crackdown on local gangs. The trials exposed a tangled web of links between government officials and police officers who sought to provide cover for the crime syndicates. Xie was protected for years because she was the sister-in-law of the city's long-serving deputy police chief. - AP

Irish golf club can bar women

In a split 3-2 judgment, Ireland's top court ruled that Portmarnock Golf Club was not violating Ireland's Equal Status Act, because that 2000 antidiscrimination law permits exceptions for exclusively male and female clubs.

The seaside club successfully appealed a 2004 Dublin District Court judgment that found Portmarnock in breach of the law - and threatened to withdraw its bar license if it didn't give women equal access to the clubhouse.

The court majority - including a female justice - noted that Ireland's law permits clubs to restrict membership to one sex, if that club's "principal purpose is to cater only for the needs of persons of a particular gender." - AP

Elsewhere:

El Salvador's president said the country would award its highest honor posthumously to six Jesuit priests murdered by the army in 1989. The killings tarnished U.S. anticommunism efforts after it was found that some of the soldiers involved received training at Fort Benning, Ga.

Roman Polanski has re-appealed to the Swiss courts to be released from custody on bail, officials said, the latest step in the director's protracted legal battle to avoid extradition to the United States.