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Indira Gandhi, only daughter of India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, is to become the country's next leader.

She was chosen at the end of a bitter leadership battle with former finance minister Morarji Desai.

Following her win, Mrs Gandhi pledged herself to serve the Congress Party and the country, and said she would "strive to create what my father used to call a climate of peace."

Crowds had gathered outside Parliament House while the election was held, and cheered Mrs Gandhi wildly as she went to the President's House to report.

She will not become prime minister until she submits her cabinet to the president.

Mrs Gandhi did not confirm she would be a candidate until four days ago, when chief ministers from 11 of India's 16 states let it be known they would support her to take over.

Another leading candidate, Gulzarilal Nanda, withdrew once it was clear Mrs Gandhi would be running.

He has been acting as prime minister since the unexpected death of Mr Nehru's successor, Lal Bahadur Shastri, earlier this month.

Mr Desai was under extreme pressure to pull out as well and avoid a potentially damaging leadership contest, but he insisted on going to a vote.

It was predicted he would get less than 100 of the 526 votes from Congress MPs, but he surprised many by winning 169 votes to Mrs Gandhi's 355.

Afterwards, Mr Desai pledged to cooperate fully with Mrs Gandhi. It is the second time running he has been defeated in a leadership contest: the first time, against Mr Shastri, he withdrew his candidacy without a vote.

Mrs Gandhi, 48, was educated at West Bengal and Oxford and has two sons, Rajiv and Sanjay, who are both studying in England.

She gets her name not from Mahatma Gandhi, the legendary independence campaigner and founder of the Congress Party, but from her husband Feroze Gandhi, a lawyer who died in 1960.

The couple spent 13 months in prison for subversion after fighting against British rule in India during the 1940s.

She has played a key part in the Congress Party since 1955, and served as information minister in Mr Shastri's government.

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The girls were staying with British couple Alan and Judith Kilshaw who say they paid ?,000 to adopt the girls over the internet. The Kilshaws now plan to fight for custody of the babies through the courts.

Belinda and Kymberley, who are six-months-old, have been the subject of a tug of love between two would-be sets of adoptive parents, on both sides of the Atlantic.

The scandal first erupted when American couple Vickie and Richard Allen complained the twins were taken from them as they were finalising an internet deal to adopt the girls for ?,000.

After two months caring for the twins at their home in California, the Allens say the girls' natural mother asked to say one last goodbye and snatched them back.

Social services were alerted once the babies arrived in Britain.

They applied for an emergency protection order and last night, social services workers and police officers went to the Beaufort Park Hotel in Mold where the girls have been staying with the Kilshaws.

Flintshire social services say the girls have been taken into care for their own safety.

Judith Kilshaw said: "I thought if there was a problem it would be dealt with sensitively.

"They would come at a reasonable time, talk to me and Alan and say this is what we are thinking of doing."

Gloria Allred, legal adviser for the girls' natural mother, Tranda Wecker, says she just wants what is best for the twins.

Richard and Vickie Allen say they are praying for the twins' return - and they have set up a shrine to them in their home.

Mr Allen has appealed to the girls' natural mother not to go through the courts.

He said: "I am asking as a human being to please send me my babies back."

The case will go to the High Court next week.

strangle: to kill by squeezing the throat of so as to cut off the air（扼死）