With 99.97 percent of votes counted, the Social Democrats, led by Borut Pahor, have 29 seats in the new parliament with 30.5 percent of the vote, while the Conservative Slovene Democratic Party of the incumbent Prime Minister Janez Jansa has 28 seats with 29.32 percent of the vote.
Jansa has yet to concede defeat.
Official results, which will include overseas votes _ some 2.7 percent of the electorate _ are expected by October 1.
If the Social Democrats' victory is confirmed, they are expected to form a ruling coalition with the Zares party of Gregor Golobic and the Liberal Democrats, headed by Katarina Kresal.
Turnout so far is 62 percent of the registered 1.7 million electorate.
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LESOTHO MINE YIELDS 478-CARAT DIAMOND
MOSCOW _ A London-based diamond mining company, Gem Diamonds, announced Monday it had discovered a rough diamond weighing 478 carats at its mine in Lesotho.
The company said the stone was the 20th-largest diamond found anywhere in the world and has the highest color grading available for a white diamond.
"Preliminary examination of this remarkable diamond indicates that it will yield a record-breaking polished stone of the very best color and quality," the Gem Diamonds CEO Clifford Elphick said.
The diamond, which has yet to be named, is expected to weigh approximately 150 karats after polishing, still enough to become one of the largest flawless round-polished diamonds in history, with a price of more than $12 million.
The white diamond "of outstanding clarity" was found on September 8 at the Letseng Mine, one of the world's richest diamond deposits, which has so far produced four of the world's 20 largest diamonds. Previous finds include the 603-carat Lesotho Promise in 2006, the 493-carat Letseng Legacy in 2007 and the 601-carat Lesotho Brown in the 1960s.
The stone has the potential to yield a diamond far bigger than the 105-carat round-cut Koh-i-Noor diamond, taken to Britain from India in the 19th century and now part of the British Crown Jewels.
The largest rough diamond ever found was the 3,106-carat Cullinan diamond discovered in 1905, which yielded nine large diamonds, including a teardrop-shaped gem of 530 carats, called the Great Star of Africa.
The world's largest facetted diamond is a 545.6-carat brown gem called the Golden Jubilee.
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TYPHOON HAGUPIT APPROACHES CHINA'S SOUTH COAST
HONG KONG _ Chinese meteorologists warned on Monday that Typhoon Hagupit will make landfall in the country's south on Wednesday morning, the Xinhua news agency reported.
The storm is set to be the 14th typhoon to hit the country this year.
The agency quoted an observatory in the southeast Fujian province as saying the approaching storm, located around 500 km (311 miles) southeast of Taiwan early on Monday, would begin to affect the coastal cities of Xiamen, Zhangzhou and Quanzhou on Tuesday.
Xinhua said a weather station in Guangdong had forecast that Hagupit would make landfall on Wednesday morning.
Chinese weather stations have warned that Hagupit could lead to extensive geological hazards and agricultural damage.
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(c) 2008, RIA Novosti
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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