Ex-junta chief extends lead in Mauritania poll

Sunday, July 19, 2009, NOUAKCHOTT: Mauritania's coup leader Mohammed Ould Abdel Aziz took a commanding lead in the presidential election winning 52.2 percent of votes with more than half the ballots counted, the electoral commission said Sunday.

According to the partial results released with 61.17 percent of ballots counted, the nearest challenger was parliamentary speaker Messaoud Ould Boulkheir, the anti-coup front candidate, with 16.63 percent of votes.

In third place was the head of the main opposition party, Ahmed Ould Daddah, with 13.89 percent of votes.

Out of a field of nine candidates for president, the moderate Islamist Jemil Ould Mansour has garnered 4.66 percent of the vote and the former junta chief in 2005-2007, colonel Elu Ould Mohamed Vall, 3.78 percent.

The electoral commission said voter turnout was at 61 percent.

If the tendency is confirmed, the leader of last August's coup, who ceded control as head of the junta in April and resigned from the army to contest Saturday's election, will be elected in the first round without the need for a runoff.

Supporters of Ould Abdel Aziz celebrated the expected victory of their candidate on the streets of the capital on Saturday night. However, the four main opposition candidates Sunday denounced the poll as a charade as early results came in.

"The results which are starting to come out show that it is an electoral charade which is trying to legitimise the coup," Ould Boulkheir told a press conference.

Saturday's elections are intended to restore constitutional democracy to this arid, but potentially oil-rich country in northwest Africa.

Some 1.2 million of the nation's three million people were eligible to vote in the polls which were monitored by international observers from the African Union, the Arab League and the association of Francophone countries.

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India's swine flu death rate is increasing

Friday, August 14, 2009 MUMBAI: A 26-year-old woman died Thursday of H1N1 swine flu in the southern city of Bangalore, raising India's death toll from the virus to 20, authorities said.The death was the first reported in India's information technology capital, the Press Trust of India reported.Meanwhile in Pune, the worst-affected in India, two more victims of the virus died Thursday, raising the death toll in that western city near Mumbai to 12, the report said. The victims were an 11-month-old boy and a 75-year-old old woman.US media reported movie halls, schools and colleges were ordered closed Thursday for three days to a week in Mumbai, the commercial and financial capital of the country, as fear of the pandemic spread.Prajakata Lavangare, a spokeswoman for the government of Maharashtra state of which Mumbai is the capital, said similar orders were issued in Pune, which is also located in the state.The woman who died in Bangalore was identified only as Roopa, a teacher in...

Suicide bombings kill 18 in Iraq

Thursday, August 13, 2009 MOSUL: At least 18 people, most of them members of the ancient Yazidi religious sect, were killed when two suicide bombers blew themselves up on Thursday in a packed cafe in northern Iraq, a local government official said.At least 31 people were also wounded after the bombers detonated suicide belts packed with explosives in the cafe in Kalaa town, in the district of Sanjar, local district chief Dakheel Qassem Hasoon, told a foreign news agency."Two suicide bombers entered the Cafe Barbaroz at 4:30 pm (1330 GMT) and blew themselves up, killing 18 civilians and wounding 31. Most of the victims were Yazidis," Hasoon said.Kalaa, northwest of the insurgent stronghold of Mosul in northern Nineveh province is predominantly populated by the minority Yazidi religious sect, as well as Arabs and Kurds.The attack is the deadliest since Monday, when 51 people were killed across Iraq, including 28 members of the tiny Shabak sect cut down when two truck bombs det...

US drones to target Taliban in Afghan war

Friday, July 31, 2009 WASHINGTON: The US military plans to use more drone aircraft to target Taliban militants in Afghanistan while focusing less on hunting down Al-Qaeda figures, report said on Thursday.Although defeating the Al-Qaeda terror network remains an overriding goal for Washington, officials now believe the best way to pursue that objective is to ensure stability in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan instead of Al-Qaeda manhunts, the paper said, citing US government and Defense Department officials.It was more important to prevent a slide towards violence and anarchy that could be exploited by Al-Qaeda, which used Afghanistan to stage its attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, the officials said."We might still be too focused on Bin Laden," an official said. "We should probably reassess our priorities."The shift in priorities for the drone fleet comes despite President Barack Obama's declaration that defeating and dismantling Al-Qaeda ...

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