WASHINGTON — With just days to go before Election Day, Senator Barack Obama is warning his supporters that things are going to get unpleasant fast — and that the race will come down to every last vote.

LUSAKA — Zambia’s main opposition party asked officials yesterday to suspend release of further election results as its candidate’s lead over acting President Rupiah Banda became slimmer.

Democrat Barack Obama has built a 4-point lead over Republican rival John McCain in the race for the White House, aided by growing support from women and independent voters, according to a Reuters poll released today.

Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama battled over the best way to help struggling US workers on Tuesday in a sometimes tense presidential debate that highlighted a wide gap in their economic approaches.

Coalition forces in Baghdad have killed the man believed to be the mastermind of recent bombings in the Iraqi capital, the United States military said.

The military has been called in to help split up a town in southeast Nigeria after bloody clashes between two communities, the state government says.

A powerful car bomb exploded near a security complex in the Syrian capital Damascus yesterday, killing 17 civilians in what the interior minister described as a terrorist attack.

ISLAMABAD — A bomb attack has hit the Marriott Hotel in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, killing at least 40 people.

Hurricane Ike barrelled into the densely populated Texas coast near Houston early yesterday, bringing with it a wall of water and ferocious winds and rain that flooded large areas along the Gulf of Mexico and paralyzed the fourth-largest US city.