A beautiful woman glances seductively over her shoulder from a billboard on a busy Beirut thoroughfare. But it isn’t perfume or shampoo she’s selling: It’s politics.
The ad, which urges women to “be beautiful and vote,” was one of the more controversial campaign advertisements rolled out by parliamentary candidate Gen. Michel Aoun, whose party is allied with the Islamist group Hezbollah and is expected to make gains in national elections Sunday.

Iran has blocked its citizens from accessing the social networking site Facebook to allegedly prevent campaigning before June’s presidential poll for a leading opposition candidate.
The local ILNA news agency reported on Saturday the prohibition of use of the site for several days.
The elections are on June 12.
The ministry of communications and information technology had announced the decision, according to one internet service provider employee, although this has not been confirmed by authorities.

Bangladeshi politicians have launched a final, hectic day of campaigning ahead of the first elections in seven years.
Monday’s parliamentary polls will end two years of rule by an army-backed regime which stepped in after months of political violence brought the country to a standstill.
The two women who have dominated the political scene for the past two decades, Sheikh Hasina Wajed of the Awami League, and her bitter rival Khaleda Zia of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), will both deliver televised addresses to the nation on Saturday.

New Zealanders go to the polls on November 8 and after nine years as Prime Minister, Helen Clark is facing the toughest fight of her career.
Those who know her say since she was elected in 1999, Miss Clark’s passion for politics has not waned.
“Not every day is perfect, nor is every week or month, but what I know is I give it 1,000 per cent and we can point to the most extraordinary results for New Zealand, whether it’s been on the level of economic growth, the low level …

JERUSALEM: An Israeli pollster says that if the country were on the U.S. election map, it would be bright red.
A survey of Americans in the Holy Land released Thursday found that absentee voters supported Republican John McCain over Barack Obama by a three-to-one margin.
The survey interviewed 817 Americans who have cast absentee ballots for next week’s presidential election. It was conducted by Vote from Israel, a nonpartisan group that has encouraged Americans to vote.
An estimated 40,000 Americans living in Israel are expected to vote.
Pollster Mitchell Barak said there is no …

NEW YORK: A growing number of voters have concluded that Senator John McCain’s running mate, Governor Sarah Palin, is unqualified to be president, weighing down the Republican ticket in the closing stages of the campaign, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
The poll shows that 59 percent of voters believe Palin is unqualified to be vice president – up nine points from a week earlier. Fully a third of voters said that the vice-presidential selection would be a major factor in their vote for president – much …

Dennis Ross, former special US envoy to the Middle East, came to this battleground state Tuesday night to use the weight of his reputation and experience to urge fellow Jewish voters to back Barack Obama.
But the first question he was asked had to do with Obama’s associations with another Middle East figure, Rashid Khalidi.
The McCain campaign is using Obama’s link to the Palestinian advocate and former Chicago university professor to hammer away at Obama, and demanded Wednesday that the Los Angeles Times release a video in its possession showing Obama …

The New Mexico Sun News – whose headline read “Obama wins!” – is fortnightly, and will not publish its next issue until November 8. This being four days after the election, the paper decided to take a gamble in advance.
In what it describes as a special collectors’ edition, the newspaper elected to plump for Mr Obama, the Democratic candidate, due to his current lead in opinion polls over John McCain, his Republican rival for the presidency.
Mr Obama is currently 6.7 per cent ahead in a national “poll of polls” …

Flanked by many of his national security advisers, John McCain this afternoon aggressively challenged Democratic rival Barack Obama’s readiness and capacity to be commander in chief.
“These statesmen and those who have joined me here today are supporting my candidacy because we share many of the same convictions, and the same assessment of the national security challenges before our country. And with good reason, they question whether my opponent in this election has the wisdom or judgment to serve as commander in chief,” McCain said in Tampa.

The View’s Elisabeth Hasselbeck says the focus on Sarah Palin’s wardrobe has been blown out of proportion.
Last week it was revealed that the Republican National Committee shelled out more than $150,000 to dress the hockey mom. (Palin said the clothes were not worth that amount; John McCain said her designer duds will be donated to charity after the election.)
“Who is the real Sarah Palin? The Wal-Mart hockey mom or a clothes horse?” The View’s Joy Behar asked on Monday’s show.
Hasselbeck – who introduced Palin at a rally in Florida …