President Hamid Karzai has announced that parliamentary elections planned for May will be postponed until September, confirming that logistical glitches have delayed a vote supposed to complete the country's transition to democracy.
A bomb attack that killed five people further underlined the challenges Afghanistan faces more than three years after the fall of the Taliban. Visiting US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pledged sustained support for Afghanistan's democratic transition, though she said Washington has yet to decide whether to keep long-term military bases.
The bomb exploded Thursday on the side of a street in the southern city of Kandahar, killing at least five people and wounding 32. Police blamed Taliban-led rebels for the attack, which hit a passing taxi carrying women and children, a roadside restaurant and other people.
A purported Taliban spokesman denied responsibility for the attack, which took place while Rice was in the capital, Kabul, 240km to the northeast.
The bombing happened 10 days after a British consultant to the Afghan government was assassinated in Kabul, casting doubt on assertions by Karzai and the US military that the country is becoming secure.
The city's police chief Khan Mohammed said that about two hours before the bombing, another explosion 10km west of Kandahar broke the window of a passing UN vehicle. No one was hurt.
The parliamentary vote was scheduled for May but the UN and the Afghan electoral commission have been grappling with problems, including a lack of census data and logistics of registering thousands of returning refugees.
"The preparations are going on and now they told us, the commission chairman, that the elections will be held in September," Karzai said at a news conference with Rice at his Kabul palace. "The Afghan people are waiting very eagerly to send their members to parliament."
Afghanistan adopted a new constitution early in 2004 and successfully held the presidential vote in October, despite worries of violence.
The country's booming heroin industry was a "serious problem," Rice said, though one which both she and Karzai said was being tackled with a crackdown on opium farmers and smugglers and millions in aid to promote legal crops. She said the US made a mistake by losing its focus on Afghanistan following the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, which plunged the country into civil war.
Rice wouldn't elaborate on whether it wanted long-term bases in the country, which borders Iran and other oil-rich Central Asian countries.
James Watson — the Nobel laureate co-credited with the pivotal discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure, but whose career was later tainted by his repeated racist remarks — has died, his former lab said on Friday. He was 97. The eminent biologist died on Thursday in hospice care on Long Island in New York, announced the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career. Watson became among the 20th century’s most storied scientists for his 1953 breakthrough discovery of the double helix with researcher partner Francis Crick. Along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he shared the
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
IMPASSE: US President Donald Trump pressed to end the filibuster in a sign that he is unlikely to compromise despite Democrat offers for a delayed healthcare vote The US government shutdown stretched into its 40th day yesterday even as senators stayed in Washington for a grueling weekend session hoping to find an end to the funding fight that has disrupted flights nationwide, threatened food assistance for millions of Americans and left federal workers without pay. The US Senate has so far shown few signs of progress over a weekend that could be crucial for the shutdown fight. Republican leaders are hoping to hold votes on a new package of bills that would reopen the government into January while also approving full-year funding for several parts of government, but
TOWERING FIGURE: To Republicans she was emblematic of the excesses of the liberal elite, but lawmakers admired her ability to corral her caucus through difficult votes Nancy Pelosi, a towering figure in US politics, a leading foe of US President Donald Trump and the first woman to serve as US House of Representatives speaker, on Thursday announced that she would step down at the next election. Admired as a master strategist with a no-nonsense leadership style that delivered for her party, the 85-year-old Democrat shepherded historic legislation through the US Congress as she navigated a bitter partisan divide. In later years, she was a fierce adversary of Trump, twice leading his impeachment and stunning Washington in 2020 when she ripped up a copy of his speech to the
RSS