China scuttles Coke bid to take over juice makerElection officials declared Afghan President Hamid Karzai the winner of a new five-year term Monday, canceling a runoff election scheduled for Saturday just one day after Karzai’s sole challenger quit the race. The decision ended weeks of political drift since a first presidential poll in August was found invalid because of massive fraud. In...
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Politics
Afghan election commission declares Karzai winner
Abdullah plans runoff boycott to delay Afghan vote
President Hamid Karzai’s challenger plans to call for a boycott of next weekend’s runoff election in an attempt to force the vote’s postponement until spring, his campaign manager said — a move that would dim U.S. hopes for a stable Afghan government for months. Karzai rejected Abdullah Abdullah’s conditions for next Saturday’s vote, including...
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Afghanistan’s day of reckoning
What will be the test of legitimacy for Afghanistan’s elections? No-one is using the age-old electoral mantra "free and fair". It is hard to find anyone who expects Afghanistan’s third major poll since 2001 to be fully free or fully fair. These are the first elections since 2001 run primarily by Afghans – albeit...
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Senator gains release of American jailed in Myanmar
U.S. Sen. Jim Webb obtained the release Saturday of American John Yettaw, who had been sentenced to seven years of hard labor in Myanmar for visiting detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Webb will accompany Yettaw to Bangkok, Thailand, Sunday on a military aircraft, his office said. Webb also met for about 40...
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Mediation stalls in Honduras as leaders refuse Zelaya’s return
Tegucigalpa, Honduras – The month-old mediation effort by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias to resolve Honduras’s political crisis is foundering under the near-universal opposition of Honduras’s top leaders to permitting deposed President Manuel Zelaya to return to power. Political, business, church, and media leaders say they can’t trust Mr. Zelaya to keep the commitments...
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Israel, Hezbollah threaten war – again
Khirbet Silm, south Lebanon – Israel and its arch foe Hezbollah are waging an increasingly heated war of words, fanning concerns about another bruising encounter between the two enemies who fought a devastating but inconclusive conflict in 2006.
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Albania PM claims narrow victory
The governing centre-right party of Albania’s Prime Minister has claimed victory in elections held last weekend. With most results in, the Democrat party headed by PM Sali Berisha was narrowly ahead of its Socialist rivals, but possibly short of a majority. However, the Socialists accused their rivals of manipulating the vote in order to...
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