Election officials declared Afghan President Hamid Karzai the winner of a new five-year term Monday, canceling a runoff election scheduled for Saturday just one day after Karzai’s sole challenger quit the race. The decision ended weeks of political drift since a first presidential poll in August was found invalid because of massive fraud.
In the capital, a sense of relief was instant and palpable. Kabul residents honked horns and exchanged celebratory text messages as the news spread. American, European and U.N. officials rushed to congratulate Karzai and pledged to work closely …

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.

Horst Koehler has been chosen for a second five-year term as Germany’s president.
The re-election of Koehler hands a boost to the ruling Christian Democrats (CDU) of Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, in the run-up to parliamentary elections in September.
Koehler, a former head of the International Monetary Fund, received 613 votes from the 1,224 members of the federal assembly in the vote held on Saturday.

Malawi’s President Bingu wa Mutharika is due to be inaugurated for a second term after a landslide election win.
The election commission said he had won more than 2.7m votes, with nearest rival John Tembo taking nearly 1.3m.
Mr Tembo cried foul but his opposition coalition backer, ex-President Bakili Muluzi, congratulated the incumbent.
Mr Mutharika’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) also won a majority in parliament. Regional heads of state are in Malawi for the inauguration.
Zambia’s President Rupiya Banda, Mozambican President Armando Guebuza and Tanzanian Vice-President Ali Mohammed Shein are also due to …

India’s ruling Congress party looked set to take an unexpectedly decisive general election victory as the 400 million-plus votes cast during the month-long election were counted this morning.
The party defied exit polls and analysts’ predictions, which had indicated a much closer result. With more than 70% of the vote counted the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) was set to take more than 250 seats and the opposition alliance led by the Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) forecast to take 160.

A conservative supermarket tycoon has won Panama’s presidential election, reversing a recent trend of left-wing victories in Latin America.
Ricardo Martinelli had 61%, while the ruling party’s Balbina Herrera was on 37%, with most of the votes counted.
He will also oversee a $5bn (£3.3bn) expansion of the Panama Canal.
Mr Martinelli, the candidate of a right-wing alliance led by his Democratic Change (CD) party, said he would work for a national unity government because that was what the country was calling for.

India is currently holding general elections – the largest democratic election in the world – to the 15th Lok Sabha in 5 phases on April 16, April 22/April 23, April 30, May 7 and May 13, 2009. The results of the election will be announced in single phase on May 16, 2009.
According to the Indian Constitution, elections in India for the Lok Sabha (the lower house) must be held at least every five years under normal circumstances. With the last elections held in 2004, the term of the 14th Lok …

Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Monday he would pay close attention to religious sensibilities in his new role as NATO chief in comments aimed at allaying Muslim concern at his appointment.
Turkey had threatened to veto the former Danish prime minister’s appointment over his handling of a 2006 crisis triggered by cartoons of Prophet Mohammad in a Danish newspaper.
His comments at an Istanbul conference on Monday fell short of the outright apology which Turkish officials had hoped for.

Pakistan sealed off city exits to activists trying to march on the capital and stopped a key lawyer from boarding a flight Saturday, widening a crackdown on protests that has sparked turmoil.
President Asif Ali Zardari, whose popularity ratings are at rock bottom, is locked in a standoff with the main opposition leader Nawaz Sharif over demands that he reinstate judges sacked by former military ruler Pervez Musharraf.
Opposition activists and lawyers have called on hundreds of thousands of protesters to march on the capital Islamabad by Monday, but the authorities …

Shops opened and taxis crisscrossed this potholed capital on Tuesday as calm returned a day after armed men assassinated the president, plunging the small, coup-prone nation into a power vacuum.
Parliament chief Raimundo Pereira, who is to become interim president according to the constitution, was expected to address the nation for the first time later Tuesday at the opening of parliament. Guinea-Bissau’s constitution also calls for elections to be organized within two months.