Sunday, August 30, 2009 KABUL: Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Saturday inched closer to the prospect of outright victory in elections marred by allegations of massive fraud and international concerns about their credibility. Officials have now announced results from 35 percent of polling stations in the second ever direct presidential vote in a country dogged by a Taliban insurgency, eight years after the US-led invasion. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, on a lightning visit to the troubled south, pledged to speed up training Afghan security forces in order to battle the insurgency and eventually draw down international troops. As Brown visited Helmand province, an explosion killed a British soldier who was on foot patrol in the province, raising to 208 the number of British soldiers killed in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion, British officials said. Out of 2.03 million valid votes counted, Karzai won 940,558 and former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah 638,924, Daud Ali Najafi, chief electoral officer at the Independent Election Commission (IEC), told a news conference. The figures gave Karzai 46.3 percent of votes announced and Abdullah 31.4 percent, widening the incumbent's previous lead of around nine percent and apparently increasing his prospects of avoiding a second round. The results are being released in stages in a process that the IEC has said will lead up to the announcement of preliminary results on September 3, and the final tally on September 17.The next tranche is due to be released on Monday, the commission said. The time it is taking to release results has seen claims of fraud escalate.
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
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