The Honduran interim government defied international pressure on Wednesday and vowed there was “no chance at all” of ousted President Manuel Zelaya returning to office.
World leaders from U.S. President Barack Obama to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez have told the new rulers of the Central American country to restore Zelaya, a leftist who was toppled by the army on Sunday and sent into exile after a dispute over presidential term limits.

Hamid Karzai is the current President of Afghanistan, since December 7, 2004. He became a prominent political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001.

When asked how his New Year celebrations have been, the pilgrim — a middle-aged businessman wearing a heavy winter coat against the bitter winds that knife through the monastery’s narrow alleys — immediately glances up and then over his shoulder. It is the universal, instinctive reaction of Tibetans I talked to on a recent trip to China’s far western province of Qinghai, where ethnic Tibetans make up the majority of the population in the areas closest to the Qinghai-Tibet border. “Cameras,” he hisses, nodding upward. “The police have them everywhere.”

When Iraqis last voted in 2005, some in Washington feared the mainly Muslim nation would veer in the direction of Iran, an Islamic theocracy, instead of becoming the moderate democracy they envisioned for post-Saddam Iraq.
The question when Iraqis elect new provincial leaders on January 31 will be whether the religious parties that have dominated politics since then can hang on to power despite a bitterness felt by voters starved of services and security.
“Religious parties didn’t keep their promises. They exploited our problems,” said Safaa Kadhim, a teacher in Basra, reflecting …

NEW DELHI — After two years of army-backed emergency rule, democracy returned to Bangladesh as the secular Awami League party scored an apparent landslide victory in election results announced on Tuesday.
Voting on Monday had proceeded in a largely peaceful atmosphere, and in many locations it was even quite festive.
According to the Associated Press, the election official Humayun Kabir said the Awami League, in alliance with a smaller party called Jatiya, won a more than two-thirds majority in Parliament after votes in most districts had been counted. “This has been a …

Sheikh Hasina Wazed was the Prime Minister of Bangladesh from 1996 to 2001…

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) — Abhisit Vejjajiva — a patrician 44-year-old with an Oxford education — became Thailand’s prime minister on Monday amid hopes that he can calm the political storms that have battered the country for the past three years.
But untested at the pinnacle of power and said to lack decisiveness, he could face one of the roughest rides in modern Thai history.

Parliamentary elections to the Mejlis (Turkmen Parliament) were held in Turkmenistan on 14 December 2008, with a second round to be held in one constituency on 28 December 2008 and a revote in one constituency on 8 February 2009. The number of MPs was increased from 65 to 125 (while the People’s Council was abolished) in constitutional reforms enacted on 26 September 2008. It was the first election since Turkmen independence in which, theoretically, parties other than the Democratic Party of Turkmenistan are allowed to take part since the …

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) — Victorious anti-government protesters lifted their siege of Bangkok’s two airports Wednesday while leaders of the ousted government named a caretaker prime minister to lead the politically chaotic kingdom.
The country’s immediate crisis, which virtually severed Thailand’s air links to the outside world for a week, appeared to be over and the People’s Alliance for Democracy said it was ending six months of daily anti-government protests. But the alliance warned it would be on the streets again if a new government tried to return to its past …

Thailand’s constitutional court has dissolved the governing People Power Party (PPP) saying there had been vote fraud during the last election.
The party’s leaders, including Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat, were also banned from politics for five years.
But, under the constitution most of its MPs can keep their seats under another party name, and should be able to form another government, correspondents say.