Voters in Cayman Islands have approved a new constitution that would allow the territory to gain more autonomy from Britain.
Elections officials say about 7,000 people approved the changes while 4,000 rejected them. There are more than 15,000 registered voters.
British officials will review the draft charter before issuing final approval.

Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission (IEC) on Wednesday rejected President Hamid Karzai’s order of holding the presidential polls in April, months earlier than the date set by the commission.
The independent election authority has announced in January the election would be postponed to Aug. 20 because of logistical and security worries. But Karzai, who has declared his intention to run for a second term, suddenly issued a decree last week, ordering the commission to move the election forward to adhere to the Afghan constitution.
The President’s five-year office term will end on May …

Bolivians voted Sunday on proposed constitutional changes that would give the indigenous majority more political leverage and allow President Evo Morales to run for a second consecutive term later this year.
Television exit polls indicated the new constitution passed with about 60 percent of the vote. Official results were not yet released.
The revised constitution would create a new Congress with seats reserved for Bolivia’s smaller indigenous groups. It also calls for the land holdings of the white and mixed-race farmers of the gas-rich eastern provinces to be limited.

MANILA, Philippines – The Arroyo government is courting public uproar if it refuses to scrap its fresh plans to amend the 1987 Constitution, a senior Catholic bishop said.
Lingayen-Dagupan archbishop Oscar Cruz said pushing for Charter change
(Cha-cha) is tantamount to committing political suicide, especially for the present government.
“I would not advise them to proceed with that because that could trigger something bad to happen. I hope I’m wrong but it might happen,” he said in an article on the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines website.

ANC-Manila: The Philippines’s elections chief says he will resign if the constitution is amended to stop the 2010 presidential election.
Commission on Elections chairman Jose Melo says the poll body will become irrelevant, if the polls are postponed. Melo believes though there’s not enough time to pursue charter change.

MOSCOW (AFP) — A bill lengthening Russian presidential terms passed its latest hurdle in parliament on Wednesday, amid speculation over its implications for the future of powerful Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
The constitutional amendments won overwhelming approval in a second reading debate in Russia’s lower house of parliament, the State Duma, where 351 lawmakers voted for the change while only 57 voted against.
The extension of the presidential term from four years to six has been seen by some Kremlin critics as paving the way for Putin’s return to the presidency after …

MOSCOW — As a bill extending Russia’s presidency to six years from four barreled through the Russian legislature on Friday, it fell to the old-timers from the Communist Party to put up a fight.
“Why do we have to do this today?”Viktor I. Ilyukhin, a Communist legislator, said during discussions Friday in the State Duma, the lower house of Parliament. “Why are we in such a hurry? A strict authoritarian regime has already been established in this country. There is already an unprecedented concentration of power in one person’s hands.”

Russian MPs today took the first step in changing the constitution to pave the way for Vladimir Putin to make a comeback as president.
Putin stepped down in May as he was barred constitutionally from seeking a third successive term as president, and became prime minister. He was succeeded by his protege, Dmitry Medvedev, although Putin, a former head of Russian intelligence, is considered the power behind the throne.

Russia’s parliament is rushing through plans to extend the presidential term from four years to six, leading to speculation that Vladimir Putin plans a dramatic return to the Kremlin.
A constitutional amendment is to be fast-tracked through the Duma, the lower house of parliament, which will vote tomorrow on all three readings of the Bill. Deputies usually take weeks to consider legislation over three readings before passing it into law.

ALGIER (AFP) – Algeria’s President Abdelaziz Bouteflika announced on Wednesday that limited changes would be made to the country’s constitution in the coming judicial year.
In a speech to mark the beginning of that year he said that the revised version would have new measures “devoted to promoting women’s political rights and widening their representation in elected assemblies at all levels,” according to the official APS news agency.