Afghan voters brave Taliban threats to choose new president who will face stark challenges
Afghan voters brave Taliban threats to choose new president who will face stark challenges
KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghans braved threats of violence and searing heat Saturday to vote in a presidential runoff that likely will mark the country’s first peaceful transfer of authority, an important step toward democracy as foreign combat troops leave. The new leader will be challenged with trying to improve ties with the West and combatting corruption while facing a powerful Taliban insurgency and declining international aid.
Abdullah Abdullah, who emerged as the front-runner with 45 percent of the vote in the first round, faced Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, an ex-World Bank official and finance minister. Neither garnered the majority needed to win outright, but previous candidates and their supporters have since offered endorsements to each, making the final outcome unpredictable.
The two men differ more in personality than policy. Both promise to sign a long-delayed security pact with the United States, which President Hamid Karzai has rebuffed. That would allow nearly 10,000 American troops to remain in the country for two more years to conduct counterterrorism operations and continue training and advising the ill-prepared Afghan army and police. And both pledge to fight for peace and against corruption.
But their different ethnic backgrounds have highlighted the tribal fault lines in this country of 30 million ravaged by decades of war.
Bangkok takes back the night, as a city known for its evening activities emerges from curfew
BANGKOK — The generals who seized power in Thailand disrupted one of the country’s most lucrative industries — the go-go bars that were forced to close early because of a curfew.
Now the junta has lifted the curfew, giving a green light for Bangkok’s red-light districts and other evening activities to roar back to life. For the first time in a month, Saturday night freedom returned to the Thai capital.
“This is a party city, that’s why we’re here,” said Dan Moore, a 40-year-old visitor from England who had arrived Saturday morning and planned to stay up all night to celebrate a friend’s bachelor party. He had flown in, just like the 1980s pop song says, for “One Night in Bangkok.”
Moore’s group started the night on one of the capital’s most infamous red-light streets, Soi Cowboy, where they toasted the curfew being lifted.
“As for what happens the rest of the night? Who knows. This is Bangkok,” said the groom-to-be, another Englishman, who asked to be identified just by his first name, Darren, to save his future marriage.
Israeli prime minister says terror group kidnapped 3 teens — 1 American — missing in West Bank
JERUSALEM — A terror group abducted three teens, including an American, who disappeared in the West Bank, Israel’s prime minister said Saturday, as soldiers searched the territory to find them.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu again blamed the Palestinian Authority for the Thursday night disappearance of the teens. Palestinian officials say they are assisting Israeli forces, who pored over surveillance footage Saturday and arrested more than a dozen Palestinians.
There have been at least three claims of responsibility for the abduction, though none could be immediately verified.
Netanyahu made a televised address Saturday night after meeting with top security officials, saying Israeli forces were conducting “intensive operations” to locate the teens and bring them home.
“Our children were kidnapped by a terror group,” he said. “There is no doubt about that.”
By wire sources