WORLD BRIEFS

GEORGIA: Saakashvili concedes

President Mikheil Saakashvili, who has ruled virtually unchallenged for nearly nine years, declared Tuesday that his party had lost parliamentary elections and would go into opposition. The surprising turn in Georgia's post-Soviet history followed an election that was fraught with danger for the country of 4.5 million on Russia's southern border. But the prospect of the first transfer of power brought about at the ballot box could help develop a still-young democracy and set an example for its authoritarian neighbors. "This is the first time in my life I had a feeling that we have a democracy here," said Tamar Chugoshvili, chairwoman of the Georgian Young Lawyers' Association. Parties led by Saakashvili and his rival, a billionaire businessman named Bidzina Ivanishvili, had run bitterly antagonistic races leading up to Monday's election.

MEXICO: Ambush linked to cartel

A senior U.S. official says there is strong circumstantial evidence that federal police who fired on a U.S. Embassy vehicle, wounding two CIA officers, were working for organized crime in a targeted assassination attempt. Prosecutors were investigating whether the Beltran Leyva cartel was behind the Aug. 24 ambush.

FRANCE: Probe of DSK dropped

A prosecutor in northern France said officials have dropped a preliminary investigation into allegations of rape in a Washington, D.C., hotel by former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn. State prosecutor Frédéric Fèvre in Lille said Tuesday that the supposed victim, an escort girl, went back on her original account and now says no rape was involved, the Sipa news agency reported. Strauss-Kahn resigned last year after a New York hotel maid separately accused him of sexual assault. He is still targeted in France in a separate probe into a suspected prostitution ring run out of the Carlton hotel in Lille.